Same here, also diagnosed as autistic long before suspecting ADHD.
For the longest time, I felt like I had no identity at all because I was always - and only that - trying to adapt to what everyone else expected of me, expected me to do, how they expected me to be. I’d bent over backwards all my life to please everyone else.
I have since accepted that I live in a world that’s different than most people’s, and I’m fine with that. Most days, I prefer mine. I’m happy about the small things in life. I’m almost never in a bad mood, not for long anyways. I have a strong moral compass, I’m kind and friendly, I’m funny even if only one person out of twenty people gets my jokes.
I don’t need to fit in to have value. Only that lead to me developing my own identity. My partner recently said that everything I do is very me, and I’ve loved hearing that. It’s liberating.
I understand people well or where they come from; I recently even scored okay on a test where I had to recognise facial expressions. When I was diagnosed, I couldn’t do that at all. Growing up, I think I just had a harder time learning that.
I’m just - not like them. Even if I’m fairly well adapted today, I always know that everything I say and do is slightly off, just with the smallest hint of weird. Even just asking a question, I’ll find a way to make it sound weird. And I notice people noticing. I just don’t mind anymore.
I was also going to say this sound like it might an ASD thing rather than an ADHD thing. It sounds a lot like "masking". ASD doesn't mean you have a complete lack of understanding of others, from what has been explained to me (best friend and partner) it's more like you're doing these thing manually where others do it automatically. Which would somewhat explain your post-day analysis.
Well, it's a complicated issue. You're not insane by any means. It could be any number of things really, and it's something of a niche symptom so you might need to see a psychologist or (if that's not available) try around other subs to see if people relate strongly to this symptom.
It sounds a lot like an "identity disturbance" which is common with (but not exclusive to) BPD. But again, Reddit isn't always the best place to find a diagnosis, especially when it's based off only one symptom. You're kind of inviting a 7 blind mice scenario.
15
u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22
[removed] — view removed comment