why is it so painful to be interrupted when focusing?

😮

I think it’s pretty complicated, as I understand it some people with ASD diagnosed with ADHD are misdiagnosed or rather their ASD is likely responsible for the ADHD symptoms and their brains don’t respond to medication like others with ADHD do. I’ve been trying to read more about AuDHD and neurodiversity to understand how these two are connected, that’s when I found this article:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.837424/full

It’s pretty much about this overlap and what we should think about the common dual diagnosis.

I think I might have some relatively mild traits of both ASD and ADHD, so part of this is to try to help understand myself, but I’m also rather wary of self-diagnosis (and also, currently, unwilling to get an official diagnosis as Zorsith points out due to the political situation).

EDIT: if you have any resources or book recommendations, please send them my way🙏

🔫

pretty sure you’re a girl

It’s true, I think it’s that being a freak stimulates people’s hyper-individualism, while the “man in a dress” (the feminine gender expression on a “male”) stimulates certain men’s homophobia (fear they might accidentally find me attractive) and insecurities in their masculinity (a generalized tendency to engage other men in a way that puts down femininity and promotes hyper-masculinity).

For the most part I was only ever bothered by overly aggressive men who would probably have been assholes in the world generally - it seemed to me the problem was with them and their fragile masculinity more than anything else.

it really do be bad - though obviously violence exists against all LGBT+ identities, by the numbers it hits trans women of color the hardest, and these women are more likely to be sex workers, more likely to contract HIV, and more likely to be victims of crime. Women in general are at greater risk of being a victim of violent crime.

I feel you, I live in the South in the U.S. in one of the most transphobic states. I was terrified to come out, but it ended up going much better than I expected. For the most part people just didn’t care, and the worst I got were stares usually from older or hyper-masculine men.

EDIT: this made me think that a lot of that fear was oversized, more in my head than reality. Transphobic violence is real, but is mostly targeted against poor trans women of color.

what country? I’ve heard there is an organization called the rainbow railroad that helps people escape certain places

yeah, and I’m not familiar with whether the ASD matches the postural issues linked in the articles you shared - sounds more like ADHD than ASD. Interesting!

It’s more ambiguous in my case, I can’t tell whether I have ASD or ADHD or both, lol

Might also look into ASD, sometimes ASD can be the underlying cause of ADHD symptoms, see:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.837424/full

How you react to stimulants might help differentiate, people with ADHD usually respond to stimulant medication differently.

Also, there is suspected overlap in the genetic causes of ASD and gender dysphoria:

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/2/390/5104458

Polymorphisms in two genes were overrepresented in transgender women by allele analysis but not by the (more stringent) genotype analysis.

…

Second, the G allele in STS is associated with reduced enzyme levels; this has been noted mostly in studies of ADHD (41), a condition with fivefold increased incidence of gender dysphoria (42), suggesting a possible overlap in etiology.

and ASD and ADHD both are associated with higher rates of gender dysphoria:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24619651/

As compared to non-referred comparisons, participants with ASD were 7.59 times more likely to express gender variance; participants with ADHD were 6.64 times more likely to express gender variance.

Either way, congrats on moving forward with diagnosis!

oo, that makes sense - I’m starting to suspect I might be neurodivergent, so it might turn out to be a semi-appropriate label for me 😅

The hands on the doorknob hurt so much - I can feel it just from your description, it almost makes me feel sick, lol

omg I feel that so much

I have:

• fallen down stairs 5+ times, breaking my ankle on two such occasions
• stubbed my one of my middle toes on a door frame when attempting to walk out of my bathroom, splitting a toenail
• regularly run into walls, corners, and door frames
• regularly stub my toes on bed frames
• broken so many glasses and plates my parents thought something was wrong with me

I am usually paying attention (I think) and able to see well (I think); I suspect my proprioception is just off. When I was a kid, the ball often hit me in the face when attempting to play sports. I had a hard time coordinating my body, even when trying. There was a notable improvement when I started estrogen, I was able to navigate in the dark better than before, but I still run into objects so it could just be placebo.

this made me literally burst out laughing, omg

at least 10 minutes of this:

and then thousands of light kisses all over

some of us are just clumsy 😄

I’ve noticed /r/sillygirlclub showing up in more popular subs like /r/whenthe, so maybe there is just more activity right now.

in the original comic I guess it’s the bluebird’s first winter

the artist confirmed their original intent was something like a younger bird learning from an older bird: https://old.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/71jfbn/what_oc/dnb7hr0/

however, I personally always read it in a more dark interpretation that not only had the blue bird not experienced winter before, but that they were not meant to know what winter is because they were meant die with the coming of winter, and I interpret the bird’s look in the last panel as one of betrayal and sadness for what winter means for them (i.e. death)

most people I think just interpret the blue bird as being out of the loop and they find it humorous because it responds to everything with “What?”

gaaaaay

for some reason the “y- you wouldn’t” expression made me think of this bird comic, and I had to revise it (excuse my lack of skill and handwriting):

or just the bottom panel:

(Note: the original comic is by False Knees)