Written in August 2025 to mark the first AuDHD Awareness Day, September 10th 2025
AuDHD manifests sometimes as a power struggle between the ADHD traits and the autistic traits, and sometimes it manifests as an incredible support between the two.
Sometimes the ADHD desire for novelty helps me deal with changes of plan or environment, while at other times the autism makes change hard to process. Happily, change I choose is much much easier to deal with.
The need for routine helps keep my ADHD side focused, and the executive functioning strategies I relied heavily on to manage my anxiety and need for control in my school years has masked many of the ADHD challenges that I missed the signs of for so long.
I can be incredibly task focused, and concentrate intently on things, with my perfectionist streak driving me to success, but at the end of the task or project those last bits (the putting away of items, cleaning up or finding a place for the finished item to “live”) always linger, sometimes for months.
I can do admin and paperwork for other people (and even get the final bits of filing etc. done in this context) but when it comes to my own stuff, I lose interest and motivation quite quickly. I’ll be able to avoid distractions when I am completing a task for someone else, but if it’s my task then all it takes is a split second of staring into space, and I’m off.
I live in a structured kind of chaos. If there are things I’ll be doing for several months on and off (processing foraging stuff, for example) then there’s no point in me putting the equipment away because I’ll need it again soon. However, when the project is fully finished, I will be quite likely to leave the stuff out for another couple of months because I’ve got used to it being there, and tidying it away represents a transition.
To mark the inaugural AuDHD day on September 9th 2025 I wrote a piece called “A Week in the ADHD Life” which you can read here.
My theory on AuDHD
It is only since 2013 that anyone could be diagnosed with both ADHD and autism, so it is no wonder that there seems to be a rise in AuDHD now – there’s just a massive backlog to get through.
I have said for a few years now that I think ADHD and autism are both part of the same neurotype. There are so many co-occurring challenges, especially with executive functioning, attention, sensory processing and social interactions that I see a huge benefit to these two neurotypes being brought together for co-diagnosis.
Post-diagnostic support, strategies, and what clinicians like to call “interventions” should also look to address the needs of AuDHDers. There are many things that support autistic people in terms of sensory regulation that can also be life-changing for ADHDers, and strategies for some of the challenges of ADHD, like client-led coaching, that could make a significant difference for autistic people.
This support should be open to people with a single (formal) diagnosis as well as dual diagnoses. The only reason I have a formal diagnosis of ADHD was because I wanted to switch one tricyclic antidepressant (which I take for chronic pain) for another which also helps with ADHD, and my GP was reluctant to do that without the ADHD being formally diagnosed. I would have been quite happy sticking with self-identification for the ADHD, and there are many people out there in a similar situation – people who have been diagnosed with either ADHD or autism and who know they have the other, but don’t want to wait several years or pay thousands for a private diagnosis. It doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from support aimed at AuDHDers.
I will think of this piece as a time capsule, a formal record of what I’ve said informally since at least 2022. Perhaps within 30 years I will be able to revisit this with the satisfaction that I was right?