The only group that’s ever accepted me and has welcomed me without doing that so far has been my local drama group (and, of course, this place :) ). There, it seems my “Golden retriever” energy is always welcomed and in fact valued. What’s been your experience?
I’m an extroverted introvert type when it comes to my ADHD. I used to be much more extroverted than I am now. I had a good group of friends in high school, and a lot of off-on friends because they’d get sick of me routinely.
However, there was one friend who was also ND. If you got us in a group together we would go on and on, way too oxerexcited to care about anything else. My friend would get jealous of me “monopolizing” her, because “she was his friend first”. My ex-girlfriend would get jealous of her because it seemed like I got along better with her than my own gf.
Everyone thought we were perfect for each other. Everyone thought we were secretly having an affair. The truth is we were two ND that understood each other in a school full of people who believed ADHD was fake and an excuse to be lazy. We were the two most hyper and flighty people in our entire school.
Did she wind up having a crush on me? Yes. She later told me. Before that, though, she once handcuffed us together and had us walk around town, I sorta figured it out then. Did I have a crush on her? Also yes. But in the end we understood that it couldn’t work. Her plus me equalled absolute pure chaos and sometimes not in a good way. We ran in two completely different groups and worlds.
It was nice to have someone who was just as “annoying” as I was though.
Thanks for sharing, that was really interesting :)
In the last few months I joined a business networking group that was initially meant to be a group to help us all grow our businesses. Within a couple of meetings it basically turned into an ADHD support group though. There’s no business involved really because it’s such an amazing experience just being in a room with 15-20 people who all share the same ways of talking and looking at the world. I always leave those meetings with a huge grin on my face. The only problem is that it’s really disorganised (I mean of course it is…) So you’re never really sure if the people running it will overcome their executive dysfunction and organise the next one hehe
Social groups, relationships, everything.
Of course. See also: friends, spouses, jobs, et cetera.
Hell, I’ve had enough of me
There’s a reason a lot of us only hang out with other NDs
For me it was totally unintentional, it just happens to be who I enjoy being with.
It’s the same for all of us 😅
Is it more about the hyperactivity ?
On my end, I just assume that’ll we’ll probably never meet again cause I can’t for the life of me ask them to hang out
Or remember their names anyway 😅
RSD?
Rejection sensitivity dysphoria?
Oh I definitely have a whole bunch of that!
I think the RSD is a big driver for my introversion, funny how stuff affects us in different ways
That tends to be my experience.
Only see that group half the times they involve you in things.
Out of those I know, only others with ADHD + autism feel the same way. Is it possible you’re also on the spectrum?
Yes, very possibly!
I know your feelings, I had to learn to not overwhelm the people with my energy if I don’t know them enough.
Even my cat is like ‘leave me alone, wtf is wrong with you?’ This is the long road to becoming a socially acceptable person. None of this is written down or ever stated by anyone but if you violate social norms too much you end up quite lonely.
I took this test the other week https://embrace-autism.com/cat-q/#test
And scored 150, particularly bad in the last section which is apparently a red flag.
My wife and her cousin both scored 50
Both of them just say “be yourself” but if I was, that’s the fast road to loneliness