The one time my neurodivergent traits really come out to be seen on procession is when I’m under pressure, a topic I have written about before quite recently and which I am picking up again here, but with a slightly different spin.

Because, although it may not look like I’m overtly under pressure right now compared to when we were literally moving out of our old house and relocating hundreds of miles, as we were at that time (as I sit here in in this holding-pattern of quietly waiting, and still waiting, to complete on the purchase of our permanent house…), really every single fibre of my being is tensed-up with the longing and urgent need to get into our own space, meaning there is much more going on than is apparent at the arrested-animation surface of things. Besides, as I’m sure I don’t need to explain, feeling completely ungrounded in an uncertain situation, surrounded by things which aren’t uniquely yours and without all your own particular lifestyle preferences in place, is always going to make all the other neurodivergent challenges show up more than usual.  This is the kind of stress that is very hard to explain to people that don’t have sensory processing challenges or the need for certain precise comforts and routines to help them function at their best; the kind where “things” may look harmless and serene at the surface but are anything but that beneath the waterline of your hypersensitive and executively challenged nervous system!

I look back and notice now how most, if not all, of my school years and young adulthood were like that for me, especially as masking myself in order to seem like I was coping was just so important to me and yet some of the very strong feelings and impulses I was experiencing, on the inside, were telling a very different story. I put on an incredibly good show of being alright and now, looking back with the awareness of my neorodiversity, notice clearly how the times when certain neurodiverse traits became much more pronounced or contrasty with each other were a strong clue as to how much stress was really going on beneath the surface. So, whilst the nature or precise balance of these traits might be completely different for the next neurodivergent person, and we likely have them all the time, not just when under pressure, these are the ones that I am noticing come up most strongly for me right now, specifically provoked because I am under increased stress, which then helps me to see them more clearly:

Increased dopamine seeking with a side order of impulsivity combined with even more control-freakiness

Here’s my case study: we’re meant to be sitting tight for the moment, but sometimes the need for positive stimulation RIGHT NOW is just so urgent in me, at the moment, that I go after the dopamine hit almost like a drug addict in search of meds (note: to someone with ADHD, dopamine actually is much-needed medication). This leads to increased impulsivity, as in, acting on sudden urges to buy that impulse thing or say yes to the treat that I would normally spend much more time considering before going ahead. I’m strongly aware that I’m comforting myself with these splurges right now and yet, here’s the paradox, I also rely on maintaining a predictable level of solvency for my comfort (something the highly unpredictable nature of our current circumstances straddled between houses is already challenging, without my help). My autistic persona spends a day every week putting all of our expenses into a spreadsheet and making sure everything balances, not just now but for weeks and months ahead (and I notice how the “need” to do this also increases under stress) so having both of these sides to my persona makes for an interesting play-off that only gets more pronounced and conflicting when circumstances put me under increased emotional demand and pressure!

On the one hand I’m micro controlling our finances like an obsessed person right now but then I have these random seeming splurges that lead to worry and regret, twin behaviours I’ve had all my life but I now see how their bizarre dance together “hots up” at times of extreme emotional or circumstantial stress (think times of grief, divorce etc, leading to exacerbated problems on top of everything else going on…so that I sometimes felt like I was being my own worse enemy). With new oversight about my frequently contrasting neurodivergent traits and how they become more exaggerated under pressure, I now try to keep the extremes of both sides in check and avoid behaviours that might send one side or the other into meltdown!

Routine-fixating combined with increased need to “stim”

Try that highly contradictory combo on for size but I have to live with it! The extreme paradox of living with both autism and ADHD struck me (yet again) just yesterday when I was watching an episode of Young Sheldon. The autistic part of me is the one who reads all of the instruction manuals and product warranties cover to cover before doing anything with the thing in the box (that’s Sheldon!) and the ADHD part is the one who dives in without wanting any instructions at all!

My personality is like that at every level…push pull. So right now, as a way of coping with this unsettled homeless phase, part of me wants to do things by the book and cling even more to the safety behaviours and familiar routines of the old life. In fact, I’ve even manufactured more of them to try and make this unsettled life feel more settled than it is…meaning my weekdays have become almost choreographed in their newly instated obsessions and habits…but then I also can’t wait to blow them all up with sudden bursts of spontaneity and by chasing after a complete change of scene, at least once a week, as I’ve been writing about in some of my recent posts. Without these break-outs to stimulate me, I feel like I would implode!

I’ve written before on this topic of learning to drive the two horse buggy that is AuDHD and I now notice how keeping both horses happy enough to pull together is even more important (and yet even more difficult to achieve…) at times when I am under emotional or circumstantial stress.

Demand avoidance becoming worse than ever!

It’s interesting how I’m noticing this one particular trait of “demand avoidance” so strongly in me right now since nothing and no one is really making any demands of me at the moment. However, the same way you can sometimes feel something standing there in outline through its very absence, I can strongly sense that any single demand made of me right now, however small, would be the straw that breaks the camels back!

In fact, my back is almost arched in resistance as I chant and plead and beg inside of me “no, life, don’t you dare make any demands of me right now…” because I just couldn’t take “an expectation” coming at me from any quarter, not even an implied one. I went out of my way to defuse some implied social expectations over the weekend by having some fairly awkward conversations with people, just because I could feel the pressure of them expecting things off me just hovering there in the unspoken airwaves between us, which then makes all of my nerves go into a sort of gridlock of resistance that’s quite impossible to explain to someone who has never experienced demand resistance as “a thing” in their life, though it is a very common trait of neurodivergence. All I know is that, right now on top of everything else, it would be way too much to ask of me if anyone was to try and hold me to an expectation and this would only push me into a degree of stubbornness that might shock or, equally, into random, erratic-seeming avoidant behaviours (btw sudden health crashes as a form of avoidance are one of my classic things…which is a very interesting spotlight on one of the potential roots of having chronic health issues; being a tendency to sabotage an expectation or demand by making myself physically unable to deliver it).

The very fact of feeling so touchy about demands and expectations, whereas I can sometimes cope with minor demands (though a lifelong general dislike of any kind of demands or expectations is surely one of the biggest realisations I had when I first learned more about neurodivergence…I should probably write a post on it some time) flags up just how much stress I am currently under, even though my days appear to be quite serene and unchallenging. Part of me is in hyper vigilant mode, scouring for any demands on the horizon so that it can fire them down before they properly materialise as I just cant be having any right now. Its as though I have nothing surplus to give and can only focus on what I personally need; not because I’m selfish or antisocial but because that’s all that I have left in the way of resources at the moment. Combined with a need to control my own universe very tightly at times like this, I literally can’t deal with anything that would take me off outside of myself in order to be at the disposal of other demands or agendas. It would stretch me too far from what I am currently fixated on, which is keeping myself and my routines held together as best I can for as long as this uncertain phase lasts!

The irony is that softening my knee-jerk reaction to any demands that I feel are being made of me (often, the best approach is to speak my truth to whosoever the demand is coming from) and then choosing to offer small parts of myself, in ways and at times that I can manage without burnout or meltdown, can sometimes help me to climb down from the edge of panic and make me feel like a better person. If I can bear to make small do-able overtures towards helping other people, on my own terms, it can help me stay somewhere in the middle, and feel less like I am in falling headlong into resistance or conflict when confronted by situations I don’t like (since the last extra thing I need right now is to feel like I’m caught up in drama and controversy because I am perceived as “letting anybody down”). This then helps me to feel like I am doing my bit at being a decent human being whilst not losing all control of my all important inner universe and most particular sensory needs.

This all makes me sound so selfish or at least extremely self-oriented but, the truth of the matter is, I constantly provide a steady and readily available listening ear, an extremely calm, non-judgemental source of support, to several people in my life and am always open to doing my best for them when called upon to hear their thoughts or offer my own back to them…its just that I can’t always manage to offer the more physical kinds of assistance that other people are so good at, plus I struggle to plan ahead or commit to taking on an extra load, at least when I am so close to burnout. Seen in this light, my increased demand avoidance is always a direct clue to the fact I am already very close to that edge, even though it may not seem like it.

Increased withdrawal yet longing for stimulation 

“Leave me alone… I need to be alone in my thoughts” could be my forehead sticker; thankfully, my husband just knows to do this, based on a few behavioural cues he picks up on, without me having to ask for it. In fact, at such times, I am often feeling over-stimulated by even the slightest sensory things so the last thing you would think that I want is more stimulation. Yet if there’s one thing driving me nuts right now it’s the loneliness and boredom of this too-quiet place and the severe lack of stimulation (including the stim of being around other people without necessarily having to engage with them) when I crave it, which I sometimes do. So when the weekend comes, I gobble up opportunities to see or be around the kind of people that are wired not too dissimilarly to me, mostly family members that I am extremely comfortable with, and only then can I cope with the more inner times that I have during the rest of the week (as written about before).

When life is less stressful, these urges don’t feel all that disparate and I can accommodate them more easily within myself, making smooth transitions as needed. I might spend a few days deep in my head hyperfocusing on some project and yet be happily stimming myself with lively music at the same time and still able to bob up for some social engagement whenever I’m taking a break from whatever I’m doing, without the sheer effort of having to switch from my inner to my social head exhausting or flummoxing me utterly. However, when I’m most struggling with things, the transitions between these two parts of myself become distinctly more clunky and I’m either all on or all off, with extreme effort required to move from one to the other.

Sometimes that transition has to be orchestrated and enforced, as in, I have to prise myself out of the fixed routine and literally make myself stick to the previously agreed social engagement since a very big part of me is now kicking and screaming in resistance. Typically (and I notice this a lot now) my body may throw up a really strong symptom such as a migraine or sudden extreme tiredness to try and get me out of the thing and, as happened on Friday, I have to override it to keep to the arrangements I’d made, treating it as a version of Tension Myositis Syndrome rather than a genuine physical complaint. Once I got there, having allowed myself the gentle transition of taking a back seat in the conversation until I was ready to join in, I was absolutely fine and really enjoyed myself, which then turned into two full days of much needed change of pace, in fact a really surprising and lovely weekend, to get me the stimulation I needed. At that point, I’m able to go quiet again for a few more days.

Neither of these parts of me are false or put-on; they are both equally important aspects of me and if I don’t tend to both of their needs I really struggle, which is the last thing I need right now. I have to throw both of them a fish to get through the most challenging times and coming to understand this is a real game changer because I realise I need to pay attention and not just leave things to bumble along on their own momentum since my conscious intervention is so often needed to get the balance right.

In fact, noticing all of these apparently disparate aspects of my personality as they come up even more strongly than usual, as a result of increased stress, is a gift that helps me to understand myself better at all times, with or without the added pressure!