My ADHD and shyness seems to mimic autism

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I think it's interesting my ADHD mimics autism, but I really don't think I'm autistic because I could easily explain away my autistic "symptoms" with my inattentiveness. The following is a list of some of the criteria for autistic diagnosis and my comments on why I think they don't apply to me, tell me what you think (oh look, I'm sharing an interest, lol). The key words in my comments are "distracted" and "shy" or "shyness" (social anxiety?).

My eyes tend to wander away spoken to .
(I get distracted, I have to look away to think)

I don't form very close relationships with peers of the same development level.
(I just don't feel like I fit in, I'm shy and emotionally immature)

I sometimes have problems social and emotional reciprocity.
(This only happens when I'm distracted and miss the whole context of the situation. )

I couldn't speak a word until I was two years and a half.
(This could happen to anyone I guess)

I have problems properly initiating a conversation.
(I either speak AT people out of impulse or become too shy to talk)

I am always preoccupied with a narrow set of interests.
(It keeps me from being bored and compensates for my social shyness)

-The End of List- ....

I find it also interesting that my mind tends to lag when listening to a conversation and it takes a little longer to proccess the mental image of a metaphor into the significance of the metaphor. It's like I think literally for a split second, then I catch on to the meaning a few seconds afterward on my own. It could simply be my ADHD getting me a little distracted with semantics and thus I miss the whole context.

....so what's your opinion? Is it only ADHD mimicking autism?

Well some people think that adhd should be part of the autism spectrum because in some ways it is very similar

I think i have social axniety too, so it might explain my shyness.

I have a friend who has ADHD, but can be socially awkward too. But he does not have the same social awkwardness as I have as an Aspie, if that makes sense. He has a better chance of finding and keeping friends than I have, but he is still socially clumsy a lot of the times.

I've met a lot of people with all different conditions, other than AS or Autism, and their conditions affected them socially in some sort of way, but not the same way as me or other typical Aspies. It's a very complex thing to explain for someone like me, so I'm probably not making myself very clear.

In the USA at my first acceptance diagnosis (before that I did not seek help and it was every one else) I was bipolar 2.

Then in the UK the first thing they suspected was ADHD, but nothing fitted.

So then it was back to being bipolar and now I have asperger's.

It's all commonly misdiagnosed, so I guess the final decision and agreement is up to you. I spent time reading about my conditions and trying to put together the pieces, and in all honesty there's no way I could have ADHD.

If I start a project I will not rest or sleep until it's finished. Even if it makes me phsyically ill. They say that people with ADHD don't get anything finished and are easily distracted. Not me ! It's so bad I have had to can any projects completely.

What I am saying (in my usually stupid and short cut around the long way) is, make sure things fit. Always do your reading and study these illnesses to see if the symptoms and signs adhere to you.

Because if not then like me you could end up wasting years of your life taking medications that will only make matters worse.

You sound like you are on the spectrum to me. The speech delay in childhood would indicate you started as a high functioning Autistic, but as often seems to happen with HFAs, you eventually improved into Asperger's Syndrome. You don't sound like you have ADHD, as you are able to concentrate on things of interest, and get stuff done. I suggest you take the online tests available. There are links to them in one of the Autism/Asperger's forums right here on this site.

"Shyness" is a kind of social anxiety, and this is common amongst people on the spectrum. There are some who are relatively free of it, though. I sometimes wish I were one of them.

If you can eggsplain away all your autistic traits through inattentiveness and also your special interests as compensation for social difficulties, then it makes sense to me that you don't have autism. For eggsample, if you can reciprocate normally whenever you are not distracted, then you probably don't have autism. I can give eberryone my full attention and take in eberrything around me and still not reciprocate normally, because I don't naturally think in the way that allows me to know that others eggspect me to reciprocate here, here, and here, or how others eggspect me to reciprocate.

Do you fit the DSM-V criteria for ASD? If you do and have since childhood, then there is a good chance that you do have autism.

It makes no sense that ADHD inattentive and aspergers exist as separate disorders.

I wouldn't normally suggest it, but take a look at the Wikipedia article for ADHD I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADHD_predo ... nattentive

"Some experts, such as Dr. Russell Barkley, argue that ADHD-PI is so different from the other ADHD subtypes that it should be regarded as a distinct disorder.[6][7] ADHD-PI is noted for the almost complete lack of conduct disorders and high-risk, thrill-seeking behavior, and additionally have higher rates of anxiety.[5][8][9] Further research needs to be done to discover differences among those with attention disorders."

Autism *is* social inattentiveness. I guess that's the clue to any difference.

Jason

You know what, now that I think about it (my social-emotional inattentiveness), perhaps I'm not really that reciprocal in that I usually need someone to point things out for me. I also form "rules" in my head based on passed experiences and use it to attempt to predict people's socio-emotional responses (which contributes to my social anxiety) or "guess" what's going on at the moment... although I'm wrong like 50% of the time... lol

For example, if I were to look at a cancer patient, i would be thinking "oh look, he's bald!", but fail to put myself in their position.

Perhaps my "social anxiety" is a subconscious rule book based on lessons learned from social blunders and it keeps me from making the same mistakes. However, it really complicated because every situation is different. Perhaps that's why I like to avoid people alltogether, it keeps me from worrying about social rules.

Another interesting trait about me is that I have difficulty recognizing an emotion when I empathize with certain words (certain words seem to trigger emotional memory or something like that). It's like I feel, but I don't know why.

ADHD-PI is not like autism. I identify not at all with the descriptions in the article about ADHD-PI. As I said earlier, it doesn't matter how socially attentive I am, I just cannot behave in an NT reciprocal way due to not thinking the NT way. In non-social areas, I don't have the particular problems associated with ADHD-PI.

Yeah, personally for me, my inattentiveness explanation though makes more sense. I think my inattentiveness is due to information overload and fixating my attention only on one thing at a time is a coping mechanism. I think I have social/emotional cognition, but it just takes longer to process than normal people. It's only a matter of shifting my attention or thinking over something and then thinking "oh yeah!". It seems like my subconscious mind figures everything out before my conscious mind does (which happens sometimes when feeling empathy).