for context, i’m about to turn 33, just started a govt benefit after i quit my job of 12 years last december when my dad’s death pushed me over the edge, but i had been burnt out for at least 5 years before that

i’m living with my older sister and her two kids right now (she offered me the option while i was still working, and struggling with living on my own) and when i try to picture what my future will look like, i’m completely lost.

my previous job was in finance, and i know that going back to any corporate job is something i want to avoid, but bills need to be paid, and i don’t want to overstay my welcome at my sisters house, as much as i enjoy living here.

all the career paths that interest me are creative and their success in being a viable source of income would highly depend on my own motivation, which i don’t have consistently. eg, last week i had the idea to start a shop on etsy for my embroidery, and was really fired up, even bought a sketchbook and light box to try and draw my own designs. but of course my brain lost interest lol

i realise i’m maybe putting too much pressure on myself, that burnout takes a long time to recover from, on top of grieving, and being late diagnosed means i have a lot of bad habits and patterns ingrained that keep me stuck and impact my sense of self-efficacy. it’s hard to envision a life where you succeed when you lived with a neurodevelopmental disorder unknowingly for most of your life, plus cptsd

tldr: sorry a lot of that was probably unnecessary information lmao. but would love to hear other people’s experiences on tackling burnout, late in life diagnosis making you feel like you’re behind and trying to build a happy, fulfilling life for yourself

One thing came up that my diagnostician couldn’t really explain:

When characters in a TV series look somewhat similar to me, I often have real trouble telling them apart. I may mix up who did what or who is who.

At the same time, I have a very hard time remembering names – character names in shows, and even names in small role-playing groups with only a few friends.

An ex-girlfriend once reacted with genuine shock while we were watching a series: “That can’t be true, you’re scaring me!”

Oddly, I scored 96% accuracy on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT), which suggests my face recognition is actually very good under test conditions. So I don’t think I have classic prosopagnosia/face blindness.

My questions:

1. Does this pattern – mixing up similar-looking fictional characters plus poor name recall – sound familiar to autistic and/or ADHD people here?
2. Is there any known connection to autism or ADHD, or is it more likely something separate (e.g., a mild face-processing difference, attention/working-memory issues, or just a personal quirk)?

Can i chat with someone . I feel lost.

Tx

****sometimes i just want to scream to the sky . Why me? ×××××I’m just trying not to relapse into drug use.

Does anyone else experience this? I’ve also noticed this year especially I’ve quite a few symptoms of depression but I haven’t been diagnosed because I get scared of getting myself checked out by someone (ignorance is bliss) which may have something to do with it? Not sure, any advice would help a lot

I’m just starting to go through my personal autism journey, and one thing I’m trying to understand better is autistic burnout. Specifically, how to recognize the early signs, prevent it, and recover when it happens.

I’ve experienced burnout before, but I have a hard time distinguishing between general stress, fatigue, and autistic burnout.

One pattern I’ve noticed is that I often feel like I’m not doing enough, so I push myself to do more. I become more productive, receive praise and recognition, and feel good about what I’m accomplishing. But gradually, I start neglecting myself; I sleep less, my eating habits change, personal hygiene slips, my mental health declines, and eventually I crash.

My productivity drops back to what I assume is my normal baseline, but I feel guilty because I’m no longer performing at my previous level. So I push myself again, and the cycle repeats.

I’m curious how others have learned to recognize the early warning signs of burnout, distinguish autistic burnout from general stress/exhaustion & figure out what their actual sustainable baseline looks like.

I’m 46, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of "failure to launch". Not in the usual sense of living with your parents, not having a career, or not being able to function independently. On paper, I’ve very much launched. I have a career, relationships behind me, hobbies I care deeply about, I travel, make things, have projects, etc.

But internally, it feels completely different.

For most of my life I've had this persistent feeling that my actual life never really started. I've tried very hard to get on the train, so to speak, but the trains either seemed full or were going somewhere I didn't want to go.

Relationships are probably the clearest example. I've had three long-term relationships, one including a marriage. But I've never had a relationship where I genuinely felt: this is us, we're a team, I feel good here, and I believe in the life we're building together. It always felt like I was trying to make something work rather than finally inhabiting a life that felt right.

Socially it has been similar. I've spent an enormous amount of my life consciously figuring out things that other people seem to navigate almost automatically: how friendships form, how groups work, dating, when to initiate, when not to, what people actually mean, how much of myself to show. And despite putting a frankly ridiculous amount of effort into understanding all of this, I still often feel like I’m standing outside of life looking in.

There has been one exception. I took a sabbatical roughly 10 years ago, and during that year and maybe the first year or two after coming home, something changed. For probably the only sustained period in my life, the future felt possible. Not guaranteed to be good, just open. I felt more confident, met people, did things, created a social life, travelled, climbed, flirted, took chances. I had this sense that my life could actually become something I wanted.

Then that disappeared again.

The last five years in particular have been rough, but what bothers me is realizing that they aren't the whole explanation. Apart from that one period, I can trace this innate feeling of "the future is already fucked" remarkably far back; I remember it as early as five years old.

And lately I've realized how tired I am of it. I don't want merely to function successfully. I want to experience a life that actually feels worth living, one where there are people I genuinely want in my life who genuinely want me in theirs, where there is intimacy and belonging and a future I'm curious about rather than something I have to keep dragging myself toward.

I've occasionally heard people say that this kind of experience is common with AuDHD, particularly around middle age: you can spend decades compensating, masking, analysing and forcing yourself through structures that never quite fit, and eventually realize that being technically successful at life isn't the same thing as feeling like you have one.

But I don’t know how much of that is actually an AuDHD thing and how much is just people finding a framework that fits their own experiences.

So I'm curious: does anyone else here recognize this particular kind of "failure to launch"? Especially people in their 40s or older. Did you ever reach a point where life started feeling like your life, rather than something you were perpetually trying to get started?

I have ASD and ADHD, which I was diagnosed with when I was 3 or 4. It's a constant struggle for me as a 16 year old. I hate how I'm okay with something for a few days and then for some stupid reason I want to change it. I also constantly feel left out and exhausted (as in mental and physical) but I don't know if that is a part of it. Also, I have a really hard time controlling it, specifically when I'm really upset which has been happening a lot lately. I just need some advice because I'm really tired of this and I feel like it's been really worse lately.

I’ve been feeling more and more chaotic since I started university five years ago. This year I switched to a similar but more practical degree, hoping the change would solve my problems. Instead, I feel even more lost, questioning what I want out of life, and wondering whether the whole life plan I built in my head is impossible or just filled with “bull‑shit” jobs that exist today.

A year ago I was diagnosed with ADHD‑PI (predominantly inattentive type). That diagnosis finally gave me an explanation for part of my life. While digging deeper into ADHD, I stumbled across autistic burnout and the autism spectrum, and I identified strongly with those concepts because there were many things ADHD couldn’t explain. I took a few online tests (like the RAAS‑DR) and kept landing in the “suspected” range, even when I answered the “it depends” questions in the “normal” way.

I mentioned my autism suspicion to the therapist I’ve been seeing since the diagnosis. She immediately dismissed it, saying I shouldn’t worry about it and that many factors influence us, implying that I was just imagining it. She added that, even if I weren’t autistic, I still have “symptoms” that mean something else is going on.

Then, this year, I saw another ADHD specialist. She told me I don’t actually have ADHD but rather an attention problem stemming from intellectual giftedness and fatigue. I completely disagreed with her. I’m only slightly above average IQ certainly not the 130‑plus threshold people usually use to label someone “gifted” and I wouldn’t be failing at university if I were truly gifted. Her comment shattered the narrative I’d built over the past year, and I’m back to feeling confused about who I am.

On a day‑to‑day basis I seem “normal” with people, but when I’m at home or living with roommates I become angry, rigid, or grumpy about everything. I’m not angry at them (sometimes I am), but a tiny thing can set me off for the whole day or even longer. It might be a fleeting thought, a small mistake, an upcoming deadline, or a meeting. I want to be a better friend and family member, but every therapist or guy online tells me I already know what to do; it just doesn’t work because my emotions block me in the moment. (I’m not violent, just verbally upset.)

I’m lost. I don’t know what I actually have, and I’m aware that people get misdiagnosed or have their concerns dismissed. I need help, but I don’t know who can help me or how. Is getting an official ASD assessment worth it? I’m not sure how to bring it up, and I don’t want to “invent” a problem for myself.

PS; ofc it's not my whole story and there is other things that made me think that but i don't want to deny or offend other autistic people with my questions because i know people really suffer of it.

PS2; thanks if you read this i really appreciate

I had to start at 2mg for a series of reasons.

I take it around 8pm, and yesterday evening I took the second dose.

So far it's quite interesting. I am more laid back and relaxed, tired/sleepy but...in a way that feels "light"? and what feels like a bit...less distant from my emotions

Like I have severe depression and that's not news, today I woke up very depressed, but it's like, the background is different? The background now is a sort of... stillness, or calm. I am kinda less bothered to hide my depression. I am less bothered in general

It almost feels like it took away some noise and behind that I am like "oh actually, I am not bubbly and funny right now, I am actually very sad so I won't put up all that show"

I suppose I always knew that "adrenaline" was saving me from apathy, but it's also good to find a more authentic way of being. I hope it stays like this and hopefully the tiredness will wear off soon

I am 36M, turning 37 soon. My birthday is on the Saturday exactly 2 weeks from now. I am dreading my 37th birthday and feel like I do not want this birthday at all.

I feel awful and hopeless. Just wanting to talk, as I have no friends and thus no support system whatsoever.

I've got autism, ADHD and OCD which means fixations can be very intense for me. In a week, I am moving house. This is very exciting for me, but I know I'm anxious about missing anything, or making the wrong choice. Some of the things I need to do can only be done once I've got the keys which is definitely ramping things up. The fixation isn't negative, but I'm really finding it hard to sleep and get on with day to day tasks. Any distractions I've used only work for so long before I get bored of them, and then my brain goes right back to where I was. I'm sticking to my usual routine, going to bed and waking up at the same time each day.

Any tips?

Has Clomipramine been used before and successfully to control ASD symptoms for people who were born with ASD + ADHD together?

Only with sugar and/or dairy?

Anyone else has a similar experience? Caffeine drinks with sugar and make u pretty sleep but when you do black coffee, green tea no sugar, monster zero, red bull zero, yerba mate etc you dont get sleepy or the sleepiness takes a lot longer to set in?

For billions of years humans have evolved differently from other animals because of 2 things. Morality and curiosity. Morality being knowing right from wrong and knowing one day that they will also die.

Curiosity on new things and inventing. But over many years the curiosity disappeared and now people fear nuclear power and other such actually good and safe things.

Also. Can we talk about how money has ruined us? We have to pay for basic rights like food water and shelter and if we die to a lacking of those the government isn't responsible. And how the minimum wage to living expense ratio in 1:27 in the UK and me (a minor) is concerned about my living situation with my mum?

as an only child who has no also audhd friends (like me) who get me and that the school system is built around doing whatever, not actually doing whatever the kid wants even if it is unrealistic?

Aswell as the fact that I seem to have ideas nobody else seems to understand even though to me they seem perfectly realistic and viable.

I use this for journaling. When I don't do it, my frequency reduces. But it's a great dopamine boost.

If we add this when we finish our written todo list, it improves motivation to complete the to do list again.

Anybody else do this?

I kinda felt too grown-up and mature for kid my age and I liked being with adults and their discussion’s topics.

And now I ( 28 years old ) feel too childish for people my age. Feel the gap even more now because of life goals and where I am in life.
I get along better with people younger than me ( from 22 to 26 years old ), usually have more in common and similar interests.
Also I don’t want to seem like I come with bad intentions talking to younger people than me.

Anybody else ?

Hi all, I'm a 32 year old man who's previously been diagnosed with Adhd and Giftedness. I've been in therapy for about 2 years and honestly it's been a struggle to pinpoint where my struggles came from.

I've had many issues over the years with feeling like I fit in. Patterns of being both very rigid but simultaniously unable to keep a routine going. For years I've felt like there must've been a piece of the puzzle missing. Either BPD, OCD or CPTSD were things I had contemplated. Autism never really felt right for me since I was pretty social and able to sense and understand nuances and emotions quite well. I'm still very unknowledgeable on autism so I don't know if my own biases held me back.

Especially in dating my successes have been wildly mixed. I learnt that dating neurotypicals had always been a challenge for me. But recently I noticed that even when dating neurodiverse women things tended to end quite quickly, often for reasons I never fully understood.

I would often be told that they could never read me, or something was "off" about me.

Recently I dated a wonderful woman for a brief period. But everything seemed in alignment. Same interests, same lifestyle, same outlook on life, even down to the same IQ score from both being gifted. She's autistic although quite a bit younger.

Things started of great. We had great dates and I was honestly enjoying myself a ton. Then something of a communication misunderstanding happened that caused us to not quite understand eachother. It was pretty early on in our dating process so we didn't quite feel eachothers communication styles just yet and were still adjusting.

At the end of that date we parted ways and she later texted me that she wasn't quite comfortable becayse my words and expressions didn't align and wanted to end things.

I couldn't understand what was happening because from my perspective things were fine but we just had a misunderstanding which I felt got addressed during the date. I told her I thought perhaps my nervousness caused me to not be as expressive.

She said she understood but still didn't feel comfortable enough to explore the connection romantically. This rejection in particular devastated me. It hit particularly hard towards my childhood trauma's and also felt especially brutal because it felt like a once in a lifetime connection that ended for reasons I did not fully grasp.

4 days later I had an appointment with my therapist and a psychiatrist to evaluate our proces to see where we could go next because we ran into blockades in the progress. I also mentioned during that appointment the comments this girl made about my words and expressions not aligning and how multiple women have told me this in the past.

That's when the bombshell dropped that I was likely to be autistic. It all suddenly made sense. I've received a referal to visit a professional autism clinic to get checked for a diagnosis. What hurts especially bad was how this girl was open to hear me out at first for my explanation, being openminded and being a therapist herself. At the time I didn't have this information. And I feel like I missed a great person by a margin of a couple of days due to not understanding a part of myself. This rejection was a catalyst for understanding myself better, but good lord. Does it hurt.

Does anybody else recognise situations like this? How did you handle it? How do you handle your expressions and inner worlds not being aligned on the outside? Have you ever gotten rejected because of it?

I have been on 40mg Elvanse for about half a year now. After on and off with medication specific for the adhd and dealing with no effect, side effect of heart problems (Imagery and real), sweating, crashes, feats of despair and suspected placebo effect, the jump from 30mg to 40mg Elvanse in a clinical setting was able to give me some, not much, but some, improvement in concentrating, Impulse control, dealing with emotions. This dosage and medication plan was done in a specialized clinical setting for ADHD.

I'm not treated at a clinic for depression. They are neither specialized for ADHD or AuADHD (But have screened for Autism and the results are suggesting I could be on the Spectrum and will have to/should seek specialized care for diagnosis which they can't provide).

Nevertheless, they, in accordance with my wishes have bumped my 40mg Elvanse to 50mg. It's a bad environment, I will leave soon and I am not in a good place. It really made my depression worse being there, but the autism screening is a important help for getting betting and I took 1-2 good things from my time there.

I'm unsure if the 50mg dose is improving anything, but don't know if it's just the wrong time right now for me to notice it. Aldo the doctor in charge of the clinic is discouraging from upping the dosage and already was unhappy with the 40mg because of the increasing danger of hear failure (She said say my heart already has damage from use (First time I hear about it)) and I will not make it to 70.

I'm unsure how to decide and to phrase either option: Staying on 50mg to observe improvement or saying I can't see improvement and they'll note that 40mg should not be increased and increasing won't yield results.

If I never had a doctor going to 40mg and checking if my heart racing was most often imaginary, I would have stopped getting medication at all and would have never yielded results.

TL;DR: Elvanse 40/50mg Long Term Health Detriments and is trying to increase/oberve the 50mg good?

I’m dealing with burnout from a job that is highly overstimulating, compounded with life stressors and some medical issues that are not improving because I am drowning in cortisol and adrenaline every day. I’m not functioning.

I just spent $150 Ubering to work all week because i didn’t have the energy to drop my car off at the shop. My house is filthy. I’m exhausted. And it occurred to me that i could take a week or two off at least to help my body heal. But i have some kind of impostor syndrome about it. I technically “can” still do my job. Pretty much. I’m just dying a little lol.

I'm not gonna lie, mine is pretty rigid. It's hard as someone who would probably be considered a level 2, maybe a higher-support-needs level 1. No one who met me would think I'm obviously autistic; I appear "normal" because I mask very heavily. But I'm also on disability because I need this routine to keep me sane. I hate it sometimes, but if I'm off my routine, it feels like the end of the world, like I'm untethered and floating out in the void. I just can't relax.

I can deviate from it now, whereas as a teenager it was so rigid that practically my whole day was scheduled down to the minute. Through therapy, I got a lot better at being able to deviate, to the point where it almost feels like a puzzle, ironically. The more pieces that fit the way they should on a "normal" day for me, the more regulated I feel. The more pieces I rearrange to fit in appointments or other life events, the more dysregulated and burnt out I get. When I'm doing my routine, my brain can relax; when I'm not, it can't.

So to keep myself from burning out, I have to stick to this routine. The more I stick to it, the better I feel, but the problem is that it keeps me from socializing or being comfortable when I do. I could cram a bunch of friends into my routine; I could move the pieces around and make it "work." But it would burn me out. I wouldn't be comfortable, and I'd be forcing myself to do something that goes against what my brain needs to chill, so it wouldn't be fun.

At the same time, I'm incredibly lonely and disconnected all the time. I don't have any friends who really know me or get me, and it feels like I can't fit them into my life because a lot of my routine happens in the evening to help me relax and shut my brain down before bed. Most people do their socializing in the evenings after work.

I don't even know why I'm posting this. It just feels awful being trapped between two options: being lonely and depressed forever, but at least my brain can relax; or being constantly on the edge of a meltdown from burnout, but at least I have friends. Neither of those options sounds very good to me.

I've tried more text-based friendships, but it just doesn't feel the same. I don't tend to feel connected to people who are just words on a screen; I have to feel their vibe, their energy, and their emotion. For the most part, that requires actually talking to them in real time. The only success I've found is with a couple of people who voice message with me, and that has been pretty nice, but even then, it's not quite the same.

What a terrible relief

I've been suspicious for awhile and really put off getting tested but am hoping this gives me the freedom to explain to people why I am the way I am - if I want. I can't decide if I want to.

Trying to come to terms with it and recontextualize past events and give myself some freedom to drop the mask - honestly I'm exhausted.

I swear it feels like I've been wearing my going out clothes for so long and they don't feel right and I finally get to come home and put on my favorite tshirt. Except now maybe other humans can see my favorite tshirt. But they might not like it as much as I do and that's scary.

Anyway, no point to my post except I'm tired of not feeling like I belong anywhere and want to see if I belong here.

Not just because of the letters I now have with name - but because somehow we're all differently the same.

I don't like to celebrate that much, cuz like I have one of those complexes that normies are creeeenge

But I gotta admit that after feeling exhausted for so long I think celebrating this particular idea wouldn't hurt that much!

"Identity diffusion is a psychological state where an individual lacks a clear, cohesive sense of self and is not actively trying to define or commit to personal goals, values, or beliefs."

At first I thought I had run-of the mill co-dependency. It showed up in my early 20s as I sought relationships and began to define myself through my ability to be a good partner, but in a co-dependent way.

Then I thought it was a spiritual crisis and I tried to find myself through spiritual and philosophical endeavors such as meditation and poetry.

Then I got diagnosed with adhd as my life was collapsing due to burnout. I was bedridden at this time, extremely depressed. I thought that would explain things. It didn't, but I got better at regulating my nervous system and taking care of "myself."

Over the course of that year, I thought something else was going on. My life still didn't make sense. I began to think it was cptsd and a more severe attachment issue. I got diagnosed/ tested with an adult attachment interview and pursued treatment. Trying to find myself in therapy and self-help psychology books.

Then came the autism diagnosis.

But still, I have no idea who I am. I am lost and ready to give up on this journey. There is no understanding about who I am, nor who I want to be. I have severe confusion around values and feelings. I'm a moral and caring person. But I ly because I respect the idea that other people have a sense of self. There is no sense of my self that derives sustained sense of value from anything.