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AuDHD and Auditory Overload
I'm in my sixties, and I can hear like a twenty-year-old. My children used to get annoyed because I could hear their whispered conversations from one end of the house to the other. Sounds like a useful thing to have.
BUT
My AuDHD wiring means I can't filter sensory input the way neurotypical brains do. Where others can tune out background noise and focus on a single conversation, my brain pays attention to everything at once - every conversation, every scraping fork, every footstep, every hum of fluorescent lights. All of it. Simultaneously. At full volume.
Restaurant Overwhelm
Imagine that you are sitting in a restaurant trying to have a conversation with someone across the table. A typical brain can focus on that person and let everything else fade into pleasant ambient noise.
My brain doesn't work that way.
I'm in my sixties, and I can hear like a twenty-year-old. My children used to get annoyed because I could hear their whispered conversations from one end of the house to the other. Sounds like a useful thing to have.
BUT
My AuDHD wiring means I can't filter sensory input the way neurotypical brains do. Where others can tune out background noise and focus on a single conversation, my brain pays attention to everything at once - every conversation, every scraping fork, every footstep, every hum of fluorescent lights. All of it. Simultaneously. At full volume.
Restaurant Overwhelm
Imagine that you are sitting in a restaurant trying to have a conversation with someone across the table. A typical brain can focus on that person and let everything else fade into pleasant ambient noise.
My brain doesn't work that way.
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How My Neurocomplex Mind Accesses Hidden Channels
For most of my early life, I couldn't explain how I knew things. I just knew. And when I tried to explain my knowing to others, I was met with skepticism, dismissal, or worse—the suggestion that something was wrong with me.
I didn't understand that what felt like a liability could actually be an extraordinary gift, and that my neurocomplex mind was wired to access information through channels most people never experience.
It wasn't until my ADHD diagnosis in the early 1990s that I began to have an inkling as to what was actually happening. And even then it took decades to figure it all out. My autism diagnosis in 2025 was the final piece of the puzzle. But understanding my AuDHD is still only part of the story—I also had to recognise the additional neurological differences that came with it: intuition, empathic abilities, altered consciousness states, and more.
I call this combination my "neurocomplex" mind—not just neurodivergent, but a complex layering of AuDHD plus these other abilities that are so often intertwined with it.
For most of my early life, I couldn't explain how I knew things. I just knew. And when I tried to explain my knowing to others, I was met with skepticism, dismissal, or worse—the suggestion that something was wrong with me.
I didn't understand that what felt like a liability could actually be an extraordinary gift, and that my neurocomplex mind was wired to access information through channels most people never experience.
It wasn't until my ADHD diagnosis in the early 1990s that I began to have an inkling as to what was actually happening. And even then it took decades to figure it all out. My autism diagnosis in 2025 was the final piece of the puzzle. But understanding my AuDHD is still only part of the story—I also had to recognise the additional neurological differences that came with it: intuition, empathic abilities, altered consciousness states, and more.
I call this combination my "neurocomplex" mind—not just neurodivergent, but a complex layering of AuDHD plus these other abilities that are so often intertwined with it.
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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.
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.
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Why my six page CV feels emotionally hollow
I stand in my home, looking at twenty certificates mounted on my wall. Qualifications, awards, distinctions. A 99% average in child psychology. Creative artist of the year. Business awards. My CV runs over six pages.
I feel nothing. They're pieces of paper now. I didn't put them up to celebrate myself - I put them up to remind me what I've achieved in life and so that other people could see what I'd done without me having to tell them. Another form of hiding in plain sight.
I've seen others on social media celebrating their wins, their achievements. When I try, it feels performative, presumptuous - like I'm showing off. So I post occasionally, brief and humble: "So proud and grateful to have won this award." And I'll even agree to newspaper articles and interviews. It's a compromise. Public enough to be seen, but modest enough not to trigger the danger signals that have lived in my nervous system for decades.
I used to think this was just me. That I was ungrateful, or broken somehow.
But then I realised - my son does exactly the same thing - so I researched.
I feel nothing. They're pieces of paper now. I didn't put them up to celebrate myself - I put them up to remind me what I've achieved in life and so that other people could see what I'd done without me having to tell them. Another form of hiding in plain sight.
I've seen others on social media celebrating their wins, their achievements. When I try, it feels performative, presumptuous - like I'm showing off. So I post occasionally, brief and humble: "So proud and grateful to have won this award." And I'll even agree to newspaper articles and interviews. It's a compromise. Public enough to be seen, but modest enough not to trigger the danger signals that have lived in my nervous system for decades.
I used to think this was just me. That I was ungrateful, or broken somehow.
But then I realised - my son does exactly the same thing - so I researched.
- Published on
Aged 13 with my cat Snippy
Of all the traits that come with being neurodivergent, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) is one of the hardest for me to deal with. It's taken me years to understand what it is, and even longer to learn how to manage it. I only discovered that RSD was "an actual thing" recently - and suddenly, so much more of my life made sense.
What is RSD?
RSD isn't something you're born with - it develops over time, particularly in children with ADHD. Here's a statistic that stopped me in my tracks: ADHD/AuDHD children receive an estimated 20,000 more criticisms than neurotypical children by the time they reach high school age.
Twenty. Thousand. More!!
What is RSD?
RSD isn't something you're born with - it develops over time, particularly in children with ADHD. Here's a statistic that stopped me in my tracks: ADHD/AuDHD children receive an estimated 20,000 more criticisms than neurotypical children by the time they reach high school age.
Twenty. Thousand. More!!
- Published on
Aged 7 at Pompeii in 1970
The Weight of Hours: My Lifelong Battle with Time
I was six years old when my grandmother died, and someone told me that people usually live to about 70. I remember lying in bed that night, doing the math—64 years left—and feeling an overwhelming sense of panic. It wasn't enough. How could 64 years possibly be enough time to figure out why I was here? What my purpose was.
Most children that age are worried about losing teeth or learning to ride bikes. I was lying awake at night, gripped by existential dread, convinced I would run out of time before I'd even started.
I was six years old when my grandmother died, and someone told me that people usually live to about 70. I remember lying in bed that night, doing the math—64 years left—and feeling an overwhelming sense of panic. It wasn't enough. How could 64 years possibly be enough time to figure out why I was here? What my purpose was.
Most children that age are worried about losing teeth or learning to ride bikes. I was lying awake at night, gripped by existential dread, convinced I would run out of time before I'd even started.
- Published on
Have you ever had the experience of knowing exactly what you want to say, but the moment you pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard, pick up a paint brush, or even open your mouth to speak, your thoughts scatter like startled birds and disappear? You're not alone, and it's not incompetence or lack of intelligence. For many of us with dysgraphia and or AuDHD, this "download problem" is a daily reality that goes far beyond messy handwriting and failure at school.
What Is the Download Problem?
I call it the download problem because it feels to me, like trying to transfer files with a broken connection. The information is all there in the mind—complete, detailed, vivid—but when I attempt to write it down, the transfer fails. It's as if the act of writing, speaking, or otherwise expressing creatively, causes interference that scrambles the signal between my thoughts and my ability to 'download' them.
This isn't like writer's or artists block in the traditional sense. That type of block suggests you don't know what to write or paint or say. With the download problem, I know exactly what I want to say, or paint, or dance, but the pathway from brain to hand, mouth or body, seems to short-circuit the moment I try to access it.
What Is the Download Problem?
I call it the download problem because it feels to me, like trying to transfer files with a broken connection. The information is all there in the mind—complete, detailed, vivid—but when I attempt to write it down, the transfer fails. It's as if the act of writing, speaking, or otherwise expressing creatively, causes interference that scrambles the signal between my thoughts and my ability to 'download' them.
This isn't like writer's or artists block in the traditional sense. That type of block suggests you don't know what to write or paint or say. With the download problem, I know exactly what I want to say, or paint, or dance, but the pathway from brain to hand, mouth or body, seems to short-circuit the moment I try to access it.
- Published on
In a world that often focuses on deficits and challenges, I want to share some of the strengths that come with my neurocomplex mind. My neurodivergence includes AuDHD (Autism and ADHD),
2e giftedness, mirror touch synesthaesia and heightened existential awareness (plus a few more I could add)—a combination that shapes how I experience and interact with the world in ways that I've come to deeply value.
2e giftedness, mirror touch synesthaesia and heightened existential awareness (plus a few more I could add)—a combination that shapes how I experience and interact with the world in ways that I've come to deeply value.
- Published on
“A perspective on living with ADHD, Autism, and the harm of casual comparisons”
"Everyone is a little bit neurodivergent." If you're AuDHD—living with both ADHD and Autism—you've probably heard this phrase more times than you can count. It's usually said with good intentions, meant to be reassuring or inclusive. But here's the reality: this statement minimises and dismisses the profound ways neurodivergent people navigate the world differently.
Being neurodivergent isn't about having quirks or occasional struggles that everyone experiences "a little bit of." It's about fundamentally different neurological wiring that affects every aspect of daily life—from how we process information to how we interact with our environment and other people.
Being neurodivergent isn't about having quirks or occasional struggles that everyone experiences "a little bit of." It's about fundamentally different neurological wiring that affects every aspect of daily life—from how we process information to how we interact with our environment and other people.
- Published on
Discovering that I’m autistic as well as ADHD and 2eGifted has been like finding that long-lost puzzle piece that finally completes the picture of who I am. For more than 60 years, I’ve carried an unshakable sense that something was missing—like I was navigating life without the full manual.
The best way I can describe it is this: it’s like suddenly realising the reason I could never “run on Windows” was because I’m actually a Mac. I was built differently, but beautifully, and that difference was never the flaw I believed it to be.
This discovery hasn’t erased the struggles, but it has changed how I see them. I look back at the child I once was—the misunderstood little girl who tried so hard to fit in, who believed she had to be like everyone else—and my heart aches for her. She carried the weight of feeling “wrong” for so long. Today, I want her to know: you have been heard.
We are free now. Free to just be. Free to embrace the wonderful, unique person we were always meant to be.
Of course, the journey hasn’t been without scars. Along the way, I’ve gathered CPTSD, Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS and anxiety. These challenges are part of my story, but they no longer define it. I’ve adapted, learned, surrendered, and risen again, time and time over the decades.
This late diagnosis doesn’t make those years wasted. It gives them meaning. It allows me to honour my younger self for surviving in a world that never fully understood her. Now, together, we can move forward—healing, thriving, and living authentically as the person we were born to be.
The best way I can describe it is this: it’s like suddenly realising the reason I could never “run on Windows” was because I’m actually a Mac. I was built differently, but beautifully, and that difference was never the flaw I believed it to be.
This discovery hasn’t erased the struggles, but it has changed how I see them. I look back at the child I once was—the misunderstood little girl who tried so hard to fit in, who believed she had to be like everyone else—and my heart aches for her. She carried the weight of feeling “wrong” for so long. Today, I want her to know: you have been heard.
We are free now. Free to just be. Free to embrace the wonderful, unique person we were always meant to be.
Of course, the journey hasn’t been without scars. Along the way, I’ve gathered CPTSD, Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS and anxiety. These challenges are part of my story, but they no longer define it. I’ve adapted, learned, surrendered, and risen again, time and time over the decades.
This late diagnosis doesn’t make those years wasted. It gives them meaning. It allows me to honour my younger self for surviving in a world that never fully understood her. Now, together, we can move forward—healing, thriving, and living authentically as the person we were born to be.
