Autism, ADHD, Gifted, Women
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[00:00:00] Hey friends, welcome back. Today we are going to talk about Autism, ADHD, and gifted, and how those three can really have some overlap. I also want to throw in there PTSD and CPTSD, which there is a lot of overlap as, as far as symptoms, struggles, and on that note, gifts. So let's talk about, last week we talked about how neurodivergent women.
A lot of their experience is inward, it is not outward, and a lot of their dysregulation happens inward, not outward. So what happens is a lot of time, Women go undiagnosed, girls go undiagnosed, and they don't find out until later on in life. By that time, they have learned years of coping, masking, [00:01:00] camouflaging,
What are some outward symptoms or signs of having one or more of these?
And some other outward signs that you could be managing this is if you heard things like, oh my gosh, you are so sensitive, or oh my gosh, you're just too much.
Have you ever heard the phrase, if you, if your head was not attached, you would lose it? Oh my gosh, you are always late. I swear you're gonna be late to your own funeral. Are you okay? Do I scare you or make you nervous? Why are you always bouncing your leg or your foot? Have you noticed how fidgety and twitchy you are? It's weird. So these are some displays or examples of what it would look like from the outside. Of course, there are many more. You can always feel free to write me in and tell me some of your experiences that you have had. [00:02:00] I love to hear from you guys, so please don't hesitate.
Now, some more internal things that are going on when you are experiencing being gifted ADHD or autism. It's a lot of ruminating thoughts. It's a lot of internal experience. It could be That you really just have a hard time making decisions because you're afraid that you're gonna make the wrong decision.
You have this very deep feeling of self-doubt. It's almost to the point where it's a toxic self-doubt, constantly questioning yourself. If you came from a home that they very much. downplayed you, they belittled you, or they quieted you when you were trying to talk.
It is very common for you to be gifted ADHD or autistic and really challenge [00:03:00] your authority or challenge the parents or teachers. It's not that you're intentionally trying to misbehave. It's just that you think so deeply. And you have such compassion and empathy and you really see things in in the world
Part of that comes from, even as a young child, you could see discrepancies between the way the world is and the way the world could be, or the way something is going and the way something could go. You have this inner drive to try and fix things, or help people, or help others. Any kind of situation, but it can be perceived wrong by people who genuinely do not understand your intentions or they misunderstand you or a lot of time too, it's like, They're [00:04:00] tired of hearing it from you, so they just want you to be quiet, right?
So a lot of time some of the self doubt can come from people cutting you off, or parents quieting you down, almost telling you consistently to lower your expectations of what you're capable of,
When you are On the spectrum, or you are gifted, or have ADHD. There's a lot going on inside us that's not perceived from the outside world. In other words, you really learn from a young age to downplay your achievements, to downplay who you are, and maybe not even be outspoken with your thoughts or afraid to express your thoughts to other people, especially those that are gifted. Think of gifted as just a high IQ, but there's actually [00:05:00] so much more that goes with that. We will find quite often in the neurodivergent community that there is a lot of crossover. So someone that has ADHD most likely is also dyslexic or maybe dysgraphic or dyscalculia, right?
It's very highly probable. Then you can also have ADHD and have autism. Twice exceptional. You can be autistic, ADHD, and gifted, maybe a little bit of dyslexia thrown in there, right? So there is a lot of crossover when it comes to neurodiversity, but one thing that's common with all of them is it's more probable that you're going to have a high IQ.
If you are gifted and or female autistic, you have a a high level of interpersonal [00:06:00] intelligence. There's also a high level of intrapersonal intelligence. There's also this deep sense of a spiritual intelligence. So what this can do is it can make it harder to connect with others, whether that is being a spouse or peers, friends, family, people at work. One word that is used often is awkward. I just, I've always been smart. I've always been able to see things before other people.
I've always been able to sense things. I see a lot of micro expressions or catch people when, taking a deep breath or I am noticing and observing things and catching onto things before other people and also It's hard for me to connect with other people because of that, because of this deep sense of thinking, this deep sense of wanting to understand the world [00:07:00] and wanting to understand life and death and wanting to, research things and get a very deep knowledge of what you're interested in, passionate about, but then also have this extremely deep sense of emotional intelligence.
It can be more challenging to find people to have in your inner circle. But when you do find those people, and you create that bridge of trust, which trust is one of the most important things to us, right? When you create that bridge of trust, you can have the most deep and fulfilling interpersonal relationships.
That is a major bonus. So there's some good in there. There's some on the flip side. There's some struggles right there, right?
Another thing that is really interesting is we really like to thrive on guidelines. It's tell me what the rules are. Tell me what the guidelines are. I [00:08:00] might see a way to use the rules and the guidelines to make things better. But I might have to color outside the lines a little bit, right? It's like we really enjoy and feel safe with rhythm and structure and schedule rules and guidelines, but at the same time, we thrive to have our own identity.
We thrive to be able to , be independent and make our own rules if we need to get the job done at the best of our ability, right?
It can be said that we are intense, like I remember saying to people, I just don't swim in shallow waters. I swim in deep waters. And for a long time, I think that was very challenging for me. I would have these deep conversations with people and I would absolutely not be Absolutely feel like I was bonding with them.
And [00:09:00] quite often they felt the same way too, especially if they identified with my creativity and my personality. But then there were other times where I felt like I was bonding with someone and they thought we were just having a conversation, right? So there is this depth, I think, with this combination.
Whatever the combination is, there's this depth that we get to hold. And if you are able to really embrace it and really, open up to it, it really can lead to very deep, connected friendships and spousal relationships.
, neurodivergent women, especially with autism, GIFTED, and ADHD. Again, it's so commonly known with our male counterparts or identifying as male counterparts. When it comes [00:10:00] to females, we do really get a lot of extra criticism. In comparisons, the thing I think is so fascinating is people in society have a tendency to pit women against women, and when you are gifted or you have autism or ADHD, you don't really feel that.
inner need or drive to pit woman against woman, but you notice it happening within society, whether it's on social media or it's in the workplace or it has to do with, in high school or, you just notice that society does that. And it really gets under your skin because as far as you're concerned, why can't women just lift each other up, right?
I think the thing that is so interesting is because [00:11:00] neurodiversity is more geared towards males that females that are neurodivergent, especially if they're attractive, it's almost like people don't recognize that they are neurodivergent. They assume that they're not neurodivergent, right? And because we.
are so internal as far as how we are feeling, how we are processing, and when we get dysregulated, it's hard for other people to get it or understand it. And so it can often be taken a little bit misunderstood.
It's really very interesting when it comes to being gifted autistic or ADHD growing up because you have this tendency to ask a lot of questions and ask a lot of deep questions. And some of the people around you, whether it's a teacher or parent, may not be interested [00:12:00] in what you're contemplating, or they might not even have the answer.
to what you're thinking about. And so what this does is it makes you wonder why your reality is so different than other people's reality.
I've done a lot of research on gifted autism and ADHD lately. I have gone through so many things, psychology today, I've gone through studies that had go, went back all the way to the seventies when they really started trying to begin to understand women and females, girls, right?
One of the things that I found in my research was there can be This ability, because we have this deep emotional intelligence, and we have this deep connection to spirituality, whatever that [00:13:00] looks like for you, we can tend to be people's confidant, everyone's confidant, whether it's a teacher, or it's a person riding next to you on a bus, or your friends, Including family members.
It could be that you are a confidant for your family members and there can be some role reversal there. So the child is the parents confidant and that can be very confusing
this also goes along with how , being a gifted person or ADHD or autism, you really do, because you have all four types of empathy, you can be a sponge. And it's almost like you pick up other people's energy everywhere you go. And so it can give you empathetic fatigue or [00:14:00] It can give you energy fatigue, so it takes you longer to be able to fill up your own batteries or fill up your own cup.
It also takes a long time to process things. So whether you had a conversation with your friend or your boss or a spouse or your parents, it can take a longer time to process because they say that people that have higher IQs might have lower processing speeds. I actually got super into this. I probably will do another podcast just about processing speeds alone, but they say that the higher IQ you have, the lower your processing speed is, which For some parents or some spouses or even sometimes relationships between parent and child it can be more challenging because you're [00:15:00] having a conversation and you're interacting with people, but you need time away and time to be alone to be able to process through what happened or what was discussed or what was talked about.
So then you can, because you think so deeply and you think about things in multifaceted, you think about things from multiple different areas, different directions, right? You're thinking about your own experience. You're thinking about the person's experience that. That you were interacting with, you were thinking about the environment, you're thinking about what's going on in their life and you're piecing everything together as a puzzle with within your own lens, but you're also trying to take into consideration everybody else's lens.
So processing speeds in interpersonal connection and interpersonal communication can be slower, but also deeper, if that makes sense.
As [00:16:00] a neurodivergent, gifted, autistic, ADHD woman, and in business, there is this deep inner battle that we tend to have, and that inner battle is the battle between, Being a good parent or being a good mom and taking care of all of the people that you love and Getting work done. So what that can do is that can look like I, once all the kids are fed, once everybody's put to bed, once this is done, once that's done, when, once the house is clean, once all the things are done, then I can get to work, then I can get to my creativity,
to the things that I want to do for me, or then I can't do the things that I need to for me until I've taken care of everyone else. And while that sounds very [00:17:00] noble, what it can do is it can put all of your own needs on the back burner. And there is this balance between burnouts this dance that women can play with getting all of the things that we need to done, getting the laundry done, getting the cooking done, getting the house cleaned, getting the kids taken care of, getting back to all of the teachers, and also doing all the things that we need to for our work or our business.
It has this delicate balance. And then also the interpersonal communication, it has this delicate balance between burnout. being understimulated and being overstimulated. So it can make our experience very, just overwhelming.
So what can happen is you can have a chronic issues with stomach aches, stomach problems, [00:18:00] headaches, anxiety, depression, and some sleep problems thrown in there. Don't even get me started on hormones and neurodiversity in women, which I should say I will do something on this because it needs to be talked about.
It is so interesting when you are talking about neurodiversity and puberty and neurodiversity with, pregnancy and nursing and then neurodiversity with paramenopause and menopause. I will do a whole episode on that because there's a lot to be said, friends. I got on my tangent. Hang on, let me get off the tangent.
But so when you are working with being gifted, having autism, having ADHD, whichever combination or one of that you have, there is a common thread there of [00:19:00] stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, anxiety, and sometimes depression.
One of the things that is very helpful that you can do for yourself, which if you have autism, ADHD, or you are gifted, twice exceptional,
A few things that you can do for yourself, whether you are autistic, ADHD, gifted, twice exceptional, any one of the combinations, is really take some time that if you are being hard on yourself, which we all do, really try and reframe and help yourself be kinder to yourself. It's almost like we hold this baton of being so hard on ourselves, and that's almost like a noble thing. And I'm telling you, friends, it's much better to try and be kind to yourself and give yourself love and help yourself [00:20:00] get through this. the day, get through the hard times, get through the juggle than it is to beat yourself up and beat your way through the things.
Because it just makes everything so much harder and it takes so much more energy and with our experience in life and all of the things that we need to uphold, being autistic or being ADHD or being gifted, we do struggle with fatigue. And so giving ourselves the ability to be kind to ourselves and listen to our body is so very important and crucial to take care of ourselves.
I think another thing that we can talk about is when we are working with other people and we grasp things faster than other people, we can tend to get frustrated with them and we're like, okay, come on, what's going on? Why aren't you getting [00:21:00] this? And, or, okay, I'm like five steps ahead of you, catch up.
One of the things that we can do is just take a deep breath and realize that while we are 10 steps ahead of our counterparts, it is okay because they will catch up and they will also add some value to whatever it is that you are doing, right? There's that flip side of things is when You are so used to grasping things, or learning things, doing things quicker.
You almost can beat yourself up and struggle if you are taking longer to learn something, or if you fail learning something, or you, if you fail doing something over and over again, it's like we have that inner resi resilience that we'll get up and we'll try again and we'll get up and we'll try again.
But that inner monologue of [00:22:00] what you're going through and what you're holding inside is intense. That failure, yes, we're going to get up and do it again. But the way that we feel inside that deep embarrassment, that deep shame, and how hard we are on ourselves is. Being able to lift ourselves up and out of that and understanding that all failure leads to success and really being kind to yourself through that is probably the best thing that you can do for yourself, right?
Some of the top things that we manage as autism, ADHD, and gifted is we almost have a fear of success. Either that or we have gotten to the success, but we find that once we're there, we're a little bit more lonely, so what happens is we have this deep sense of confidence [00:23:00] issues, right?
And that leads to imposter syndrome. It leads to downplaying or trying to hide your own abilities or what you can do. It also affects the you speak with people and really advocating for yourself and advocating for your needs. So what I say, I'm not going to go too much into imposter syndrome and your ability abilities or doubting your abilities today, because again, those are their own podcasts, right?
But I, I will say that finding this beautiful path to really trusting yourself and trusting your experience in life and asking yourself what you need. And How you would do things differently or what you would need to do differently to succeed is really important.
I think the other thing that we really [00:24:00] struggle with is we have a hard time making our priorities and coming up with our priorities. And so we are, it's almost like we're putting out each fire as we go. And so I really enjoy doing that. My priorities every three to six months and really checking in with my top five values and my top five priorities and using that as my compass guide.
So I don't run out of decision fatigue, right? There's a lot of decision fatigue and it can consume us with how much time we are spending throughout the day. When we are putting out all the fires rather than dealing with one priority after the other, and also, we either, over plan. It's like we are planning and planning and then we don't get to the thing or we're under planning.
We [00:25:00] don't have a plan and therefore we're running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get all the things done and trying to do all the things without any kind of plan to guide us. So really being very clear with your priorities and your value system is very important. I talk about this in my membership.
I talk about this in my business program that I wrote, and of course I talk about this with my one on one clients. Just so you guys know, my space on my one on one clients is very limited.
If you find that this information really hits home for you and you are interested in learning more. Please feel free to reach out. Check out the show notes. I will put my my web address in the show notes. It is teresaminock. com. That's T H E R E [00:26:00] S A M I N O C K. I love you all. See you later. Take care. Bye bye.
