So I am a 58 year old woman who has known that I have ADHD for about two and a half years and that I am an autistic person for 3 years. I was a member of Facebook Land at that point in my life so I joined some groups, got some support, received a lot of information and learned tons of useful stuff.
I left Facebook Land three months ago.
I don't know when I joined this community but it wasn't very long ago.
As the title of my post says something that I've been doing a lot of the last 3 years is thinking about my thinking and also thinking about other people's thinking.
I am trying to refrain from going into Analysis Paralysis because that would be neither useful nor helpful.
Or very much fun either.
One thing that is really blowing my mind is the fact that ostensibly the ADHD and/or autistic brain is so radically different from the neurotypical brain.
I want to start going around and asking people "are you neurotypical or are you neurodivergent?" And then pick their brains no pun intended and ask them to explain how they think and how their thoughts think inside of their head so I can compare it to mine.
It just seems so incredibly obvious to me that the way my brain works is the way a brain is supposed to work.
It's actually scary and anxiety provoking to think that other people are walking around looking at life in a radically different way from how I do.
I also am getting into Analysis Paralysis frequently when I have interactions with people and I start wondering 'okay did we have that difficulty with the communication because they're neurotypical and I'm neurodivergent or are they neurodivergent and having their own difficulties with communication that are different from the difficulties I have with communication?'
Then I start wondering if it really makes a difference and matters.
And then I tell myself that it does make a difference and matter because how am I supposed to communicate effectively and have effective interpersonal exchanges if we're basically speaking a different language which is what it feels like a lot of the time except that we're both speaking English but it's like we have two radically different dictionaries.
I hope this makes sense. I'm feeling very overwhelmed and lost and alone.
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MorningDanceTrece
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I am sorry you are feeling alone and overwhelmed, that's not a great combo. You are here with like minded folks who get what you are going through.
The analysis paralysis is very common. It sounds like it is interaction based for you. Trying to figure out if the communication is going well or not, and if not why not, can be all consuming.
Ultimately I don't think it matters if it is two neurotypicals, typical to divergent, or two neurodivergent people speaking there is always room for miscommunication.
We all have definitions for words and falsely believe everyone's definition is the same as ours. All humans do that regardless of wiring.
So if you go into interactions knowing you will likely have to clarify your idea, it can be less stressful. Asking the other person what they heard you say is hugely informative, although it does take practice. It can feel awkward to say "What did you hear me say?"
I usually default to "Does that make sense?" then you are saying it is on you to explain it better. It usually gets agreement or a clarifying question and I can go from there.
The other idea is to embrace that it really doesn't matter why there is a miscommunication. Hone your ability to see them and then correct the issue. It could be you it could be them, either way you want to clear up the idea so you can both move forward with a shared understanding of the topic - does that make sense?
Hang in there and welcome to the group, we are glad you are here.
Thank you very much for your response which I appreciate. I like the idea of asking someone 'what did you hear me say?' rather than does that make sense because to be perfectly honest I think they're bunches of times that something could make sense to somebody but it's not what I was trying to say at all and then we still have a miscommunication and we don't know it and they walk away thinking I said something different from what I said and I walk away thinking they understood me when they didn't.
I definitely am going to add the phrase what did you hear me say to my arsenal or my toolbox.
You are absolutely right. It does make a difference, and it does matter
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this.
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When I first read your post, my brain went off on this tangent:
I think I've been thinking about thinking since I was aware that I could think.
I know that when a person is thinking about their own thinking, it is called metacognition.
(The term preceded the formation of Facebook's parent company, Meta. Probably by a long time.)
That got me wondering what thinking about others' thoughts would be called. Apparently, the term for that is "Theory of Mind".
But much of philosophy is focused on thinking about others' thoughts (philosophies), and psychoanalysis also focused on others' thoughts for mental health purposes.
Hey! I've heard both of those words well one is a phrase and one is a word metacognition and theory of mind. I'm wicked smart and I didn't even know it😂What you shared here is very helpful to me and I appreciate you doing so
Well, the word and the phrase give us a way to label these ideas, but the fact is that we are already thinking about thinking... because that's just what we do! 😉
As a kid, I read X-Men comics and thought it would be amazing to have telepathy like Professor X, to be able to read minds...not to find out people's secrets or control their minds, but just to understand other people better...to know "what makes them tick". (And maybe be able to help other people better, because I love helping people... because that's what "make me tick".)
Hi. I think it’s helpful to some degree, to wonder about other’s thinking brains. For myself, neurodiverse, and my partner, neurotypical, it’s been helpful to realize why we communicate so poorly. Knowing is understanding, understanding is healing, or progress anyway. But now that I understand why, I don’t need to focus on the differences in minds, instead I will be focusing on a solution. Our solution is to try to over communicate and ask a lot of questions, don’t just assume. He said I was very hard to read. I had no idea I was, now I can see it though lol.
I was dx with adhd and asd at 47 and 50.
I also think the adhd brain is different from the asd brain which can possibly cause a conflict from contradictions in our own minds.
It is a struggle, you are right, but as often as you can try to be light hearted with interactions and be yourself. Save the rules and masking for those more important interactions where it may be more necessary.
Wow! Thank you so much. I especially appreciate you pointing out that the ADHD part of my brain and the autistic part of my brain might be getting in the way of each other so to speak. It reminds me of a meme I have in my meme arsenal and it's a picture of Tigger being spastic Tigger jumping up and down on his tail with a giant goofy grin on his face and holding the paws of poor Eeyore who has a woebegone expression on his face and the caption is 'when my ADHD meets my autism'
Yes! That’s exactly right! Here’s an obvious example from my life…..my asd brain loves order, and loves when everything is in its place (after all everything has a home lol), but my adhd brain is so scattered and finds it very hard to keep things orderly. This is torture lol, and this one is obvious. Imagine the contradictions that we are not in tuned to?
Again. Excellent point. Thank you so much. I don't know how to explain it in words but the one part of an equation liking extreme order and the other part of the equation not being able to achieve order is actually something I can translate to trying to verbally connect with another person. There's some kind of a pattern there at least to my mind there is so thank you for that word picture
morningDanceTrece, just remember that at the end of the day sometimes the mis communication doesn’t really matter too much. You can walk away giggling to yourself and thinking, I don’t think that translated right lol. At times, yes, it will be more important for the communication to be understood properly, and you can try some things from your toolbox. Other times, I think we have to try and not be so hard on ourselves. Shrug your shoulders and go “oh well” and smile
For certain people, maybe family, if it makes sense to the situation perhaps you can write what you meant you seem to be clear when you write I often have to do that with my partner. I send him emails to clarify what I meant lol
I think it’s great though that you are here to look for input, guidance from others.
Thank you. You are correct that sometimes it is not as important as others. Part of what happens with me that I hadn't made clear yet in this thread is that I have that wonderful situation of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria in addition to the way that my ADHD expresses itself is really internally in the mind much more so than physical hyperactivity.
Because of this my Busy Brain will HYPER FOCUS and ruminate FOREVER while my emotions at the same time are DEVASTATED and feeling like a Catastrophe Of Epic Proportions is looming over my head.
Yes, this would certainly make things that much harder. So you can relate to this….today at work I check my personal email and there was an email from my building’s management. It had a picture of a box with a couple of things that I had at my indoor parking spot. They sent me the condo guidelines and that there could be a fee next time, and to remove it from the parking spot. My body went anxious, I felt guilt, embarrassed. My brain immediately said to explain to them why it was there, that I have never before left anything there, etc etc. instead I simply replied with thank you for the reminder. Of course I couldn’t focus on work for the rest of the day lol, but I think there was progress lol.
What would you suggest to others if they came to you looking for advice because they are struggling as you are? Maybe that perspective will help? Of course, just opening up on here is sometimes helpful in itself
I'm sorry to hear that you had to deal with an upsetting situation but it does sound like you experience progess in the way you dealt with it.👍That's a great advice to ask myself what kind of suggestion I would give to somebody else if they had the same situation however unfortunately I have no earthly clue whatsoever😬
Diagnosis did help me realize that communication was an issue due to being neurodivergent. I do feel like we are on different lingo, like saying creek from north vs. south USA. I learned that part of it is that we learned the language around our disabilities, and most people haven’t. More people in education are more informed of that lingo, but there is a large number of populous that still doesnt know what we are talking about with it in a way that most people in the populous dont understand transgenders unless they interact with it regularly.
Something that helps me is being well medicated. Stimulants didn’t help me because they made me more anxious, but being on stratera is helping me slow down and be in the moment better. I dont say as much because I am able to decide to use my therapy more effectively.
MorningDance Trece, I was thinking about you yesterday when I had a spat with my partner. I realized I may have a communication issue example. My partner and i were getting out of his car and he took from the car a box. He said I bought a rice cooker. I said “a rice cooker? Why? You make really good rice already”. He said “yes but not sticky rice. I only make regular rice”. I said “but that makes regular rice”. He said no it doesn’t, it makes sticky rice. I kept insisting, then he said “it doesn’t make the fried rice, it makes the sticky rice which is what I want.” Anyway, it was important to me to try and clear up whatever confusion was happening. I couldn’t let it go because I needed to understand what I was missing from this conversation and why I didn’t seem to be clear. We ended up raising our voices but did make up later.
This kind of banter happens to us a lot. With other people I just say “I’m confused” and I drop it, but with him I just keep going. He end up thinking that it’s me just wanting to prove something, wanting to be right, or just trying to pick a fight or something. It’s hard for him to understand that I’m just lost in the confusion of the communication.
Oh, in the end the confusion was because to him his regular rice, was referring to how he usually makes it, which is fried. To me regular rice was plain cooked rice in water. And sticky rice is what you use for sushi. In this example I think it was a tie on both sides for the misunderstanding, but putting that aside, and just looking at my side of what happened , this happens a lot for me. I struggle to drop it because I want to understand what is going wrong with the miscommunication. I usually end up very confused lol
Thank you for sharing that although I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through it.You made me think of a good point that a lot of times I get confused (and perhaps rightly so because the other person isn't being clear) and I simply ask a question to try to clarify things and I get accused of being argumentative.
And it really seems to me that anybody with more than two functioning brain cells that we don't need Captain Obvious to see that I am in fact asking a question not arguing but too many people have egos that are way too fragile and they can't deal with being asked to clarify what they said without feeling attacked. 🙄
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