AuDHD

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A place for those that got both Autism and ADHD, those confirmed as one and are suspecting they got the other as well, and also everyone who is neither and just genuinely curious.

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DAE experience unstoppable energy drain from being perceived (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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in my past crusing thru autism posts on the bad site, once in a while somebody would post something talking about this and it was like reading my own experience in somebody else's words.

for those of you who read the subject line and know exactly what I'm talking about: can you also never shut off masking except when alone and in fact can't even relate to the concept of being able to "not mask" around others? or maybe around 99.99999% of the human race apart from a few people you know well and have known for years?

I've found (thru being homeless and couchsurfing starting well into adulthood haha do not recommend) that I can't live with most people, even introverts, because their activity pattern is not like my parents that I grew up with, and so my brain fixates on what they're doing and then I hear every. human. sound. in the house. at full attentional processing. every waking moment of my life. forever.

this decimates my ability to work because I touch computers for a living and I can only touch them correctly in 1 of 2 ways, either collab with others using tools like kanban and a ticket system, or solo hyperfocus for days on end, which has 0% chance of happening without the above going on...

but I got off topic. the question I am curious about is: if you relate to the subject line of the post, do you think the mental energy drain comes from being unable to shut off your awareness of (potentially) being perceived by others in the house; by your having to keep your mask on standby, warmed up and ready to go at all times when others are in the house; or, both? and do you have other thoughts on this particular topic which I suspect is related to a subtle but extremely impactful neurotrait some few tortured souls among us have???

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I feel like the stress of being perceived is exactly what drives me to need to be masking all the time, but when I am able to start my hyperfocus I stop noticing the perception as much. I think it's moreso the actual masking that drains me. But now that I think about it, I remember living with my family and how I would get stressed when other people were awake because they might come to my room and try to talk to me so I ended up doing most of my work at night so I wasn't keeping my mask on standby to use your words. I ended up being pretty much nocturnal. I don't think my awareness of the sounds in the house were quite as acute as yours but it was definitely a Thing for me to be bothered by noises in the house when trying to focus, especially when near burnout. And honestly I feel drained just by being in public, even without interacting with anyone. It's probably a mix of both.

I can relate to a lot of what you've written here though. I mask all the time, I don't really know how to stop, but it just leaves me completely wrecked after just a few hours of doing it.

I'm working on finding ways to maybe not unmask, but find more sustainable lower energy masks with safe people. Part of that I guess is finding more safe people. I can pretty much unmask with my partner, but that's taken a long time to get there. I'd like to be able to spend time with more than exactly one person without burning all my energy on my dumb mask.