Autism with ADHD features vs. ADHD with autistic features

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Whenever people on here mention they might have ADHD I always notice that people mention that autism symptoms can look like ADHD. On ADHD websites they sometimes mention that ADHD symptoms can look like autism. How would you know if someone has autism and ADHD, autism with ADHD features or ADHD with autistic features?

No idea but not everyone with autism has ADHD, or the issues associated with ADHD. I was tested for ADHD and found that it was very unlikely that I had ADHD.

I know.

as a child I was dx'ed with [depending on the shrink] schizotypal disorder or schizoid disorder [from surreptitiously reading their notes while they were away]. as an adult, I was dx'ed with ADHD. as a middle-aged person my last dx was AS. so I don't really know which one of those is the dominant feature of my general dysfunction. it could be that they all form a psychiatric stew of addlement.

They thought I had ADHD when I was a kid and it was negative and I was diagnosed as having ADD but none of the treatments worked. I have no idea if I ever had ADD to begin with. I asked my mother if I never had true ADD and she said I did but it was not the correct label because it didn't explain all my issues. That is like diagnosing someone with OCD and saying that is their main problem but it doesn't explain their social issues or sensory or how they process things. ADD is all those but symptoms overlap and I read they can also have sensory issues too and be overwhelmed by noise and be sensitive to it too. No wonder they thought I had it. But hard to tell which is which when you have both.

I strongly feel that I have ADHD with just some mild ASD traits. When I look back on my childhood, I played with toys like a typical child, engaged in imaginary play with other children, and I also remembering being able to understand tone of voice and facial expressions from a young age. Also when I was 4 I used to make my teddy bear have emotions and press his face about to make facial expressions that matched his emotion. Also my mum said that when I was a baby (about 2 months old) I used to look up at my mum and smile playfully right in the middle of having a bottle feed. So I seemed very sociable as a baby, and my social awkwardness through school was more from being annoying from having too much of a hyperactive personality, and not paying attention to the conversation which also probably come across as annoying. I knew all the social cues and everything (like body language), but I chose to ignore it and just jump my way into a friendship because I was so interested in people. I also remember sometimes annoying other kids on purpose (I knew that I was annoying them and I knew that they were getting real annoyed), just to get attention, because I grew bored of just being ''normal'', and felt I wanted to let out some steam.

Also I have a very creative, imaginative, artistic mind, but I'm not very good at actually doing it, if you know what I mean. Like I can think of a lovely way to decorate my bathroom, and buy all the bits I need, but I would not know how to actually decorate the bathroom this way. It would be too tricky for me.

Very good question. I have that sort of mixture and don't know which I am most likely to be diagnosed as.

This is a really good question, and I guess it's the very question I've been trying to figure out since I came to this forum. I'm not sure if anyone really knows the answer.

I know I have ADHD and really don't doubt that diagnosis at all. I'm just not totally sure if I have ADHD + autism or ADHD + strong autistic traits.

I have not met anyone with ADHD who appears to have significant autistic traits.
ADHD traits are harder to observe during social interaction, so even the people I know with ASD + ADHD only appear to have ASD.
I only have ASD, but some people have told me that I appear to have ADHD.
I think I appear to have ADHD, because I can appear hyper and talk fast while switching topics often and doing random things at the same time.

I have both and let me tell you it sucks. The worst part is I and blurt stupid things without thinking about them first. I also develop obessively tendencies and have trouble reading a book without skipping lines or entire paragraphs. It really sucks. If only I had asperger's my life would probably be a whole not better but my ADD causes anxiety , concentration and motivation problems. My autism with the ADD twist really makes me feel like the dumbest person I know. I have gotten better with medication but it makes me feel physically ill and restless later in the day.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 5 "with autistic features", then at age 6 I was diagnosed additionally with PDD-NOS.

I was recently tested for ADHD and it was decided that my pattern was distinct enough to diagnose ADHD in addition to my previous dx of ASD.

For me, my inattentive difficulties are beyond that which one might expect from ASD executive function difficulties alone AND I'm very hyperactive. On the questionnaires which my wife and I scored the only subscale I scored below threshold on was impulsivity.

On the WAIS and additional tests added in (stroop, trail making, etc) I scored very high on vocabularly (99th percentile - on one test I even scored 99.8th) and average on working memory WAIS tasks, below average on processing speed WAIS tasks and even lower on the additional tests (lowest score was 1st percentile, eek!).

I'm very easily distracted - I forget what I'm doing while doing it. Such as forgetting I've put food in the oven or starting lots of cleaning tasks without finishing them. I feel like I HAVE to move. It's like there's something in my body going GO GO GO and I feel an itch to keep moving - like my body is straining to move forwards.

I suppose it's mostly the extent.

Still waiting to go back to the psychiatrist to speak to them for final dx but the neuropsychologist was pretty clear that he thinks I have it - clear enough that my university accepted his report was proof. I had to be referred to the neuropsychologist because the psychiatrist didn't have enough experience to distinguish.

it seems the inattentive subtype of my ADHD makes parts of my AS worse.