ADHD, Autism & AuDHD: Trauma, Masking and Late Diagnosis with Ellie AuDHD Capstick

I wanna talk about AuDHD.

Yeah.

Because I think it's something that's not being talked enough about.

So tell us about the combination and how that manifests in maybe your everyday life.

Okay.

So there's ADHD.

So as you know, ADHD can sometimes...

And when I say this, and I always put a disclaimer, once you meet one ADHD person, you've met one ADHD person.

It's like you saying, "I've met a Chinese person, they're all the same," or, "I've met an English person, they're all the same." No, we're all different.

But I'm just saying, for example, ADHD is generally meant to be quite, um, compulsive, uh, quite led by dopamine, um, quite everything like that, you know.

I, I get a lot of dopamine from things that are novelty.

Um, I'm quite impulsive.

I'm not very good at managing my money and all of them things.

So that's ADHD in a very, very basic nutshell, and just my form of ADHD.

Autism, and this is again just my form of autism, I need calm.

I need routine.

I need the light off.

I need time by myself.

So if you can imagine, that AuDHD person sits upon this shoulder, and the autistic person sits upon this shoulder, and I don't know what the f- flip I need.

[laughs] I corrected myself.

[laughs]

I don't know what the flip I need because one part of my brain is saying, "I want to be crazy.

I wanna act like a drunk teenager.

I wanna go to the bar." And then the other half of me is like, "I wanna stay at home.

I wanna curl under a blanket." And people are confused because people are like, "What one are you, Ellie?" And all my life people, people have failed to understand me, and I failed to understand myself because I want to go out and go to the club, but then I get there, and the lights will come on, and I'll have a meltdown, and I won't understand why.