ADHD or aspergers?

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I'm a 20 year old male diagnosed with Innatentive ADHD. As a bit of background, ADHD, aspergers, bipolar and depression all run in my family.
My behaviours which are supposed symptoms of ADHD are as follows:
I tune out a lot. I feel like there is so much interesting stuff to think about, so its hard to listen to people or pay attention. I'm highly creative, I think of ideas most people would never consider, but rarely find the focus to follow up on these ideas and actually create them. My mind races with a million different thoughts going in a hundred directions and I can't stop it. I find it hard to follow instructions. I only really hear half of what people say, and even then I comprehend even less.
Those are the symptoms which are entirely ADHD. Personaly I feel some of my behaviours are a little ambiguous. They may be ADHD, may be something else:
People bore me. I have little interest in other people, other than telling them what I think. I don't listen because I'm much more interested in my own thoughts than what others are saying. Sometimes I feel like I have no desire to socialise. I'm not affraid of it, just bored with it.
I can't understand body language. I was told it was because I don't pay attention... But if people point I just can't figure out what they're pointing at out of the millions of things they could be pointing at. I can't lip read. I don't understand facial expressions or hand gestures unless people SAY what they mean. I take a long time to identify sarcasm. People take me seriously when I'm joking all the time, so I find it strange that I also take them seriously when they joke.
I take the wrong meanings from things often. People may imply something, but I just listen to the semantics of what they are saying. I often make mistakes because I follow people's instructions word for word rather than with common sense.
I can't focus without silence. I hear EVERY sound. I hear sounds other people can't hear - the electronics inside TVs and washing machines, for example. I get distracted by every little sense and feel like the world is a sensory overload.

These things may or may not fit in with ADHD. They CAN fit in with it, but I'm not sure if they do... It may be something else. I don't understand the the list of apsergers symptoms. It isn't that I'm not sure if I relate to them, I just have no idea what they are describing... Could somebdoy explain what having aspergers is like, and if what I'm experiencing is similar?

Just by reading this "I take a long time to identify sarcasm. People take me seriously when I'm joking all the time, so I find it strange that I also take them seriously when they joke. " I would seriously think of AS, BUT this is a forum and I'm not a shrink, so you can of course ask for a opinion here so you can inform your doctor of what we said, BUT you have to get an official diagnosis. For yourself only, so you can inform yourself about AS and what are the right things to do, how to change your life to the better. You only have yourself if you don't get a good diagnosis or a proper one. In any case, a good day schedule and daily exercise is good for anyone, even NT' s.

Taking jokes literally and not being able to read body language are traits of ADHD, but I've noticed that people with ADHD will work on bettering their social skills whereas people with AS just give up. They rather stay at home than go through all the stress of socialising.
You can have both ADHD and AS too, which is what I'm getting tested for.

Well I've tried, yes. After years of trying I still can't manage it so I gave up. But come to think of it, I don't manage it because I don't think on the fly. I respond impulsively, before thinking "hang on, I have difficulty with this, I should think about it calmly". I understand that I do it, I just never think first... So its probably still an ADHD thing. I know I do have ADHD. I'm thinking I may have a mild case of aspergers as well... Are there mild cases?

To WrongPlanet!! !

hmm, being impulsive can also be an AS trait. I can be extremely impulsive, I often had 5 new inventions per day when I was mostly an inventor. Or I could move from another house to another house every few months. Or I could make the decision to go to Australia in a second and leave the next day (which of course f****d me up completely). Now I'm trying to become more stable, focus on one thing at the time and leave the ideas for what they are.

Yes it can be mild.

I could not do that. My friend would one day say they are thinking of moving towns, weeks later they are ready to move. I couldn't leave my town because I have an aversion to change. Going to a new location is nerve wracking. If I were to move it would take a year of planning.
Another difference between ADHD and AS is the spending hours on an obsession. I have my obsessions but I can't spend more than an hour on them, because I get tired easily. I do 10 things in a day because I get easily bored and sick of what I'm doing. I think long term memory is better when it comes to AS.

I was misdiagnosed with ADD (I lacked the hyperactivity so they took the H out of it). This is the difference:

People with ADD/ADHD have trouble focusing on any one topic.
People with Asperger's focus on one topic to the point that they tune out the rest.

I can't do that now also anymore, it completely f*cks me up. I get so much anxiety from that, I burned out because of doing that. I'm now stuck in this extremely small village at home with my parents, I'm not planning to move for a while anymore, it makes me mad and really extremely confused

Also, when I was traveling and stuff I was fighting AS instead of accepting that I can't have the normal life everyone has, but AS won

Yeap, long term memory is excellent in AS, I had a chat with a guy in church who treats people with autism, he said 'I will forget this conversation tomorrow, you will remember it in weeks.' Well, it's now three months later and I still remember it, I wish I wouldn't remember that much stuff, it's annoying. I would prefer my short-term memory to be better then my long-term one.

Guys,

You are taken the classifications as given. The fact is that nobody really understand the causes of each disorder, and they all share lots of common symptoms, in different degrees.

Most autistic people present symptoms of ADHD, and in the autistic spectrum you have people more and less "autistic", with varying degrees of ADHD-like symptoms.

So, basically, until scientists are capable of diferentiate the mechanisms that are behind the disturbances in each people, ADHD and Asperger's are two artificial groupings of sets of traits in a continuous multi-dimensional spectrum.

And mpw123, for your info, I was diagnosed with ASD-like symptoms (so "possible" PDD-NOS), but I prefer to think of myself as "hypersensitive gifted, with prevalence of intellectual overexcitability, and part of the ASD". And a lot of people like me are just diagnosed as ADHD.

To add: I think almost all the symptoms you have could be caused by "executive dysfunctions". Look for executive system, or executive function, and tell us what do you think.

Who here doesn't have executive dysfunction? That's like saying someone with AS might actually have a stimming syndrome.

Back on AS and ADHD: I think if the severity of your symptoms is lack of concentration then it's ADHD, if the severity has to do with socialising it's AS. That's my take on it.
You can also have both because both conditions share the same genes.

Last edited by pensieve on 04 Feb 2010, 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

pensieve, I agree. And that is part of why I think it does not make so much sense to try to fit in one category, if both categories can be consequences of the same type of underlying problem.

Even about Arroyo wrote:

Probably, both Asperger and ADHD will be largely reformulated in the next DSM - Asperger merged with Autism and Inattentive ADHD (or a sub-type) splitted to create an independent condition (Sluggish Cognitive Tempo).

I have the suspiction that, after the merge of ASD and the split of ADHD, some "mild" people who today will be diagnosed with AS (because they are more similiar to "typical AS" that to "typical ADHD"), will be diagnosed with SCT instead of with autism (because they will be more similar to "typical SCT" than to "typical Autism").

Well if I end up with SCT I can start a group called The Slugg Club (Harry Potter reference).