Hi friends

I know being autistic, or having ADHD, or being AuDHD is not an experience exclusively comprising of sunshine and rainbows. How can it be when we live in a world that was clearly not designed to meet our needs?

I’ve written my fair share of takes on what it means to be AuDHD in a world that doesn’t meet our needs - usually aspects of life I find to be a bit of a pain, to put it mildly. But what I don’t feel I’ve written enough about are the things I personally like about being AuDHD. Sidenote, I’m not saying these are ‘superpowers’ (ew), but instead just aspects of my neurodivergence that I find pleasure and joy in, in the same way I imagine a neurotypical person finds enjoyment in talking about the weather...?

Here’s ten things I love about being AuDHD:

1. Pattern spotting and attention to detail

   I spot patterns in absolutely everything, from things like data to even the ways in which people react to certain situations, which really helps me ‘read’ other people and anticipate how they might react to something. I love proofreading documents a silly amount. Sometimes I feel like I can scan information and get a sense that something isn’t quite right, before I find a mistake in the text or a typo in the data. (I’m tired, so if there’s a typo in this article, well that’s just ironic isn’t it.)

2. Echolalia

   Nothing gives me more enjoyment than hearing a someone say a sentence or sing a line of a song which tickles some part of my brain, making me want to repeat it aloud. Or if someone says something that reminds me of a favourite vocal stim. There have been innumerable moments in my life where something has finally happened and without really thinking I burst out with this Sarah Harding from Girls Aloud at the Brit Awards classic - ‘It’s about tiiiime!’

3. Special interests

   I <3 Wikipedia 4eva. I love learning things. I love the sense of emotional regulation a special interest can provide me. Engaging with a special interest calms me down, and in a lot of instances gives me a sense of community, seeing as many of my special interests are musicians or bands with online fandoms I interact with. (I am so tempted to one day just write a big infodump about one of my special interests and post it here. You can always ignore it if you’d rather not hear about the Bee Gees… Wait, where did everyone go?!)

4. Hyperfocus

   I love deep diving into random subjects and losing hours to it. There’s nothing else like opening your laptop at midday and resurfacing at 9pm, dehydrated, hungry and desperately needing a wee, but full of facts about the Russian Revolution.

5. Sensory joy

   Although some smells, sounds, textures and visual imagery give me such a visceral ick that I want to cartwheel into a bin, there are many which, to me, are sublime. The smell of new carpet. The sound of running water. The feel of a soft blanket. The colour of oil paints. I don’t just like them. They give me such a sense of joy that it is hard to describe. It feels like I am soaring sometimes.

6. The comfort and safety of routine

   As much as routine can bore me to death, I know that I need it to have a happy life. Routine gives me a sense of stability and consistency that makes me feel safe. To not have a routine, to have uncertainty where there doesn’t need to be any, makes me feel uneasy and a bit scared. Routine means I feel comfortable (and sometimes, to not be bored and placate my ADHD, I change up my routines.)

7. Intensity of my opinions

   Ah, black and white thinking. There really are no shades of grey with me, though I am trying to be better at not seeing everything in binaries of good or bad. That being said, I do love that when I like something, I really like it, and if I don’t, I really really don’t. My passion for the things I love feeds into my special interests and I think it also reflects a strong sense of social justice. I guess I like having an intensity in my opinions because it’s the opposite of my experience with alexithymia and being able to recognise how I feel.

8. The way I walk

   I used to be really ashamed of how I walk, with my arms up by my shoulders sometimes and walking on my toes. I’ve learned to own it, it’s what my body wants to do on its own. I love that toe-walking and T-rexing can be such a tell tale sign of neurodivergence as they seem to be so common, it’s almost like a secret code between us all. I’ve stopped self-policing this aspect of me, and it’s helped me to accept myself for who I am. (Ditto stimming.)

9. Experiencing music

   This could have gone under sensory joy but honestly it needed its own entry. For me, there is something utterly magical, all-encompassing and emotional about listening to music. I have sound to colour synesthesia, and that definitely plays a part, but there’s something else to it to. It can be utterly ethereal, soothing and beautiful. I have a hunch there’s something about my brain that causes this response, but obvs I have no way of knowing for sure.

10. Hyperlexia

    Words are my thing. I was very young when I learned to speak, read and write. When I discovered my AuDHD, I also realised that I was hyperlexic as a child. Again, this is about pattern spotting as well, relating to the shapes of letters and words. There was a children’s TV show called Letterland when I was a kid, and I was absolutely obsessed with it. Again, the only way I can describe my love of words is having an itch scratched in my brain in a way that nothing else can. Or perhaps it’s the same feeling as solving a challenging jigsaw puzzle. I’m not so much writing as I am trying to make sentences fit into a specific rhythm and cadence, or decipher a code. God, does that sound pretentious? Funny that I can’t articulate this in writing very well!

There you have it. There’s probably others I have forgotten too. What are your favourite things about being neurodivergent? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Take it easy,

Ren

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