@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd Another question for both groups: do you find you have "spiky intelligence"? As in, you might be amazing in some areas like math, programming, etc., but struggle with executive functions. I'm good with a lot of artistic fields, but definitely struggle with organization, finances, navigation, etc. My wife and I compensate for each others' challenges.
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd 100% — I’m a numbers/science/logic kind of brain that excelled at school and prefers written instructions but can’t process audio to save my life. I’m also discovering that while I am very creative, BEING creative is hard for me.
Missus can’t math and was low-performing in school but is fantastically creative and can learn anything they can get hands on with but struggles to follow or learn from written instructions.
@catswhocode@OtterForce@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
I read somewhere some things can be a trauma response because we don’t allow ourselves to relax when we should have when younger. This can lead us to take ourselves too seriously perhaps?.
You don’t need to be good to have fun I have found.
It was a problem for me so I thought I should mention that.
I thought it could help someone else :)
Being good at things kept me out of the spotlight and allowed me to sometimes unmask as a kid, but applied further pressure to perform above average. It was easier to not share anything I wasn’t great at. That internalized at some point and became I can’t do things I’m not good at.
@OtterForce@EVDHmn@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd > That internalized at some point and became I can’t do things I’m not good at.
Observations over my life, thanks to a Very Spiky Skill Set Assigned At Birth™️ that made quite a few popular activities essentially impossible (not merely more difficult than for most people):
"Getting good at X" is a trap for most X out there and for most people contemplating doing X. Even in circumstances where skill levels are highly relevant, "good at X" can look like anything from "reasonably experienced with X" to "highly skilled at X" to "completely world-class at X", and it's very easy to end up with totally unreasonable expectations.
"Getting to a point where you enjoy the activity for its own sake" is a much better target to envision.
Spiky Skill Sets mean having quite a few activities where "getting to the point where you enjoy the activity for its own sake" may require more skill than you can reasonably expect to get. (This is not a disguised version of "getting good at it." It's based on subjective satisfaction, not some measure of skill level deemed to be "good" by some criterion. But many activities do require some baseline level of skill to obtain that satisfaction.)
Pay attention to the concept of opportunity costs in this context. Be completely willing to walk away from activities (especially recreational ones) that are starting to look like the ones described in 3. above, and give yourself permission to focus on ones that look like something you are more likely to be able to become enjoyably skilled at.
There is a presumption in NT skill acquisition that goes like this:
It's OK to not be good at things for a while. Everyone fails a lot at the beginning. It's how you learn. Give yourself some grace and keep practicing.
After enough of practicing and learning, you'll get enough skill to enjoy the activity you're trying to learn.
remains true for people with Spiky Skill Sets, and (especially for younger people with less overall life experience) is just as critical to remember. Unfortunately, 2. does not remain true. There will, almost by definition, be some activities that are on one of the "negative" spikes and won't be accessible to someone who has that particular negative spike.
The disconnect here regularly leads to conflict with NTs who confuse "unwilling to try activity X" with "afraid of failing at X in the early stages" (i.e., not recognizing the validity of point 1. above). The issue isn't being afraid of doing poorly at the start; it's one of never really being able to enjoy the activity at all, regardless of the effort put into it.
@dpnash@OtterForce@EVDHmn@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
.
just saying, I gave it many years, a real try, all pre-hatching, and I always sensed that it wasn't like this for everybody: every Saturday morning, taking my grip and stance, addressing the ball and saying to myself, How TF do you do this again?
.
Re-learning every time. 😈
@dpnash I seriously want to punch the "NT people who don't experience this" sometimes, even though I don't actually do it :blobfoxlaugh: but they can be real jerks about it sometimes @OtterForce@EVDHmn@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
@EVDHmn thank you! yes, it's helped me 😄 I've been learning to do things like cross-stitching recently, which are more challenging in my case :mastodance: @OtterForce@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd While this is purely anecdotal from our experience as a couple with AuDHD, some of it surely is neurological, but also highly compounded by being late-diagnosed 80s kids. (1/3)
That's eerily close to what happened in my younger years. I was very good at most STEM-ish things, but my first career in that area soon taxed my executive functioning and/or dexterity, neither of which I got very much of, to a point that wasn't manageable, despite very clear strengths in some other ways. I ended up needing to change careers to something less demanding on those fronts.
> I'm good with a lot of artistic fields
The TL;DR for me is my brain can art, my body can't. I've always struggled in creative arts classes with good (or at least, passably interesting) ideas that I couldn't get my hands to work with well enough to be enjoyable.
@dpnash and also like you, perhaps, I had a hard time with things like sculpting and 3d art, because one of my difficulties is in depth perception - that may be due to the brain injury I have. @actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd For me, it's less of a problem of perception and more one of dexterity. There is always a nonzero chance that I won't get my hands or fingers (or some larger body part -- think dance and other performing arts) in the right place at the right time, and practice does not consistently get this down to a usefully low level. (Key word: usefully. Just about every artistic field tolerates some degree of mistakes and outright errors in execution. None of them consistently tolerate the amount of "being off" that my body generates all the time.)
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd Yep. I constantly got told that I just wasn't trying hard enough at maths because I was so "gifted" at languages. I'm really good in some areas but absolutely can't make sense of anything in other areas.
Same with home stuff - organisation I'm amazing at but paperwork and form filling, nope.
I am really good with programming ... as long as it's just enough complication/challenge to be interesting and keep my interest, but not so much that it gets too hard and I get frustrated.
Perhaps oddly, I'm also really good at creative stuff (crochet, drawing, writing), but my interest in it is very ... cyclical. Not on a schedule, but I go from one to another, to a third, and then back to a prior one.
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic Yes, absolutely. I'm good with words (but not letters) and bad with numbers (but okay with algebra and logical notation). I'm good with patterns and systems, with networks and connections, because I can synthesize lots of details into an overall picture, and bad with feelings. I can use my skill with patterns to cover some other gaps: a complex to-do list to cover disorganization, a detailed routine to avoid forgetting things, and sometimes to guess what to say.
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd yes to all that. Plus we’re often creative in the sense that we think of things in different ways than NTs and so can come up with different outputs. Not sure if the world were ND if I would be considered creative.
@catswhocode@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd Absolutely. Give me a problem that I can get my teeth into and I'll see you in a week or two when the answer has been polished to a fine gloss. Helping someone in an emergency? No problem. Figure out which chore to do next? Go away, I'm in hiding...