Structured Days, Free-Flowing Mind: An AuDHD Dance of Life

It may surprise you to know - as it does many people, that my seemingly free-flowing creative mind needs predictability and structure to function.

Every morning I have the same routine - get up at around sunrise, get dressed, take the Hector the Studio Dog for a walk. Then feed him. I'll have my breakfast, which is always the same: a cup of tea, three grapes sliced, one or two of each type of berry that's in season, and four spoons of Greek yogurt. And it will stay the same for years, until I decide to change it. Oh - with the occasional fast morning when I have a cup of green tea instead but that is still  built in to my routine. My husband has usually left for work by this time - around 4:30am during harvest.

While I eat breakfast with Hector, I watch a lifestyle or renovation programme on TV.   Then I brush my teeth and wash my face. Make the bed. Put on makeup (which I've done since high school). Then I do emails and I clean the kitchen.  Sunday is the exception.  I have to skip the bed-making because my husband gets up after me and then we head out to breakfast at 6am.

Once I've completed my morning sequence, then it depends on the day. But the order of days has its own pattern too.
Mondays are catch-up cleaning, except every second Monday when I take my mother to appointments and it took nearly two years to adjust to this disruption. Tuesdays I do groceries as soon as the shops open, then work on illustration or bookbinding. Wednesdays are admin day—farm accounts, my own accounts. Thursdays alternate between journaling workshops and deep cleaning housework. Fridays are my stay-home-if-possible day.  But my daily structure continues with 9am morning tea and language study, Midday lunch with a movie if my husband is home (otherwise I eat quickly and keep working on whatever is on my to do list),  4pm feed Hector and take him for a walk  and 5pm check in with my husband so that I can organise evening meal and watch my favourite archaeology stuff on YouTube.  
Because we're on a farm, we don't usually have weekends off as such. Saturdays and Sundays follow their own patterns—workshops, market stalls, or productivity days. 

These things happen in this order. Every day because this is structure I need to function. If something disrupts this sequence, I feel lost. A little bit dazed. Not quite sure what to do next. And I can't reschedule whats changed.  If Wednesday admin is disrupted, I find it really hard to do admin on a different day.  Consequently, because of the ADHD it is forgotten altogether.

When we go out for Sunday breakfast, we go to the same place every week. They open at 6:30, so it doesn't eat into our day. We know the owners. We always tend to sit at the same table. I will more than likely order the same or similar thing—usually bacon and eggs, my favourite since childhood.

I always go to the same grocery stores. For a full shop, I go to the same supermarket because it opens at 8 and is big and open, so it doesn't feel crowded. I go first thing in the morning when there aren't many people.

This is what living with both autism and ADHD looks like for me. I need rigid structure AND the ability to flow between multiple interests. These two needs create a constant dance—sometimes graceful, sometimes chaotic, always exhausting.

When I'm flowing between my multiple projects on my own terms—art, bookbinding, illustration, farm work, housework—it feels amazing. I can switch between painting in my studio and digital illustration in my office, hang the washing out in between. That's fine. But when someone else demands I switch, when the interruption comes from outside rather than from within, everything collapses. If I'm hyper-focused and somebody interrupts me, it's very hard to get back into that mindset. Work might sit there for days, weeks or months. I've even forgotten to complete tax paperwork until my accountant pointed it out too late to avoid the fine.  

The need for structure extends beyond my morning routine. My driving routes are structured too. I've been traveling to town from here for 40 years, and I used to be terrified to go a different way if there were roadworks. I can handle it these days—I've developed two or three acceptable routes. I think that's the autism in me that needs that recognised route. But the ADHD will occasionally  have me try a different route, and if it feels comfortable, I might keep it on my list. A little bit of adventure there.

Here's something else I've noticed: if my husband and I are heading into town and I'm driving, any deviation from my original carefully timed plan causes panic. If he decides to go to a different shop or take a different route, I get really panicked. But if he's driving, I can let go and leave it in his hands. I think its about control—when I'm in control, I need everything to go according to my plan. When he's in control, I can release the rigid structure.

For a long time—up until I was nearly 50—I could not drive more than half an hour from home on my own. When I had to drive the children to another city, I could do it, but my muscles would seize up and my hands would grip the wheel so hard that there would be bruises on my fingers and wrists. After therapy just before I turned 50, I began to be able to drive a couple of hours on my own by breaking my journey into half-hour increments in my mind—which I still do now.

The irony is, I love driving. If I'm driving a known route and relatively short distances, this is a time for me. It's when I can relax and lots of inspiration comes to me. The other irony is that my ADHD brain promptly forgets all of those wonderful creative ideas before I can do anything with them.

When something disrupts any of my carefully built routines, it can be a crisis. When my aging mother began to need emergency hospital trips and ongoing appointments, it caused me to have  meltdowns before or after each appointment for almost two years. Because it isn't just the interruption to my carefully planned routines, it's that I can't re-order and reschedule the things that I would normally have done without change and disruption.  On top of that is the mental drain of dealing with people, exhaustion from executive function issues and the constant energy drain of a hyper empathic mind.    Luckily my meltdowns are usually just just tears and I can mostly manage not to meltdown in public. But as soon as I'm back in a safe place i.e my car or at home, the tears just come. They can last from half an hour—maybe an hour—but then I'm tired and dazed for the rest of the day.  I do think I have finally been able to integrate these changes into my life, but it took a long time.

Structure and predictability didn't really exist in my family life growing up. I was the type of child who desperately needed it, but my parents gave me freedom (which is what everyone else wanted).  When I was a teenager, they didn't want me to tell them what time I'd be home. They said it was because they trusted me. But I thought it was because they didn't care.  I worried that if they didn't have that information, how would they know if something had happened to me?   Consequently, I took matters into my own hands and always told them where I was going and precisely what time I'd be home. And I'm sure they didn't listen.   

So I've come to understand that many of  the structures I've built into my daily life now—the routines, the time frames, the predictability are also safety mechanisms I developed because I didn't have that much needed structure as a child. I created for myself what my family couldn't give me.

Even now, if my husband's not home when I leave the house, I will tell my dog where I'm going and what time I will be home. Even though I know he has no idea. And if I'm going to be a few minutes later getting home, I start to feel panicked and have to talk myself through the fact that it's okay.

But here's what's interesting: on occasion I can operate without a time frame, I can change my routine and it doesn't matter so much. My ADHD takes over. It's the combination of routine AND time frame that locks me in. Without the time restriction, there's more flexibility.  But this happens for short periods of time and I need to get back to the framework I've built to feel safe in a world that often feels chaotic and unpredictable.

I'm learning now that its fine to go with whichever side is to the fore. Sometimes my Autistic brain is dominant. Sometimes it's ADHD. Having all the diagnoses has made it easier to come to terms with the fact that this is who I am. Not something I've got to fix.

Sometimes I frustrate myself. But at least I know it's valid.

The Autism gives me and demands structure, routine, the need for things to be just so. The ADHD gives me the ability to juggle multiple interests, to move between projects, to hyperfocus when something captures me and requires the occasional dopamine hit of excitement. Together, they create this dance—sometimes graceful, sometimes chaotic, always exhausting, but also uniquely mine.

I'm not trying to fix the dance anymore. But I am still  learning the steps.