So here I am, perched on the edge of doom scrolling through Instagram for the umpteenth time. It’s probably one of my top-tier procrastination tools, the kind that makes you feel vaguely productive because, hey, you’re “researching” something, right? But let’s be real—between the sea of memes, cat videos, and oddly soothing cake-decorating clips, I’ve accomplished nothing except convincing myself that I should maybe take up baking. Spoiler alert: I will not take up baking. I know this because I’ve already forgotten that cake video as I write this. That’s just how the brain works—or doesn’t work—when you pair ADHD and ASD together in this charming mess we call AuDHD. Yea I am probably going to be all over the place, but that is where my head is at right now.

You see, there’s this constant inner monologue happening, as if my brain is auditioning for an off-Broadway play titled *This Is Why You’ll Never Be Normal*. On the one hand, ADHD is there, flitting about, whispering things like, “You should reorganize your bookshelf. Or maybe start drawing again? Oh, look! A bird!” Meanwhile, ASD is sitting in the front row, taking detailed notes and muttering, “No, no, focus on your room. It’s a disaster. The piles of laundry are violating my sense of order.”

It’s a circus. A tug-of-war between chaos and control. And the thing is, I’ve learned to appreciate the absurdity of it all, much to the dismay of my ever-growing collection of “doom piles.” What are doom piles, you ask? Glad you’re curious—these are not your average messes. Oh no, doom piles are the Picasso of clutter, abstract in their formation and baffling to anyone who dares to decode them. I know what’s in each one, thank you very much, but the minute someone else tries to make sense of them, it’s like they’ve stumbled into the Bermuda Triangle of socks, notebooks, and half-finished hobbies. It’s not disorganization; it’s a system. My system. Okay, maybe calling it a system is generous, but don’t ruin my delusions.

And then there’s the other side of my room—the side that screams, “ASD was here!” Everything in its place, labels on containers, color-coded bookshelves. It’s like stepping into the polar opposite of the doom piles, a visual representation of the constant contradiction that is my brain. Sometimes even I catch myself staring at these two sides of the room and wondering if there’s a secret war happening between them at night, like some low-budget sitcom that plays out in my subconscious.

But back to this whole cleaning business. Let me explain why it’s less about “cleaning” and more about a battle of wills between ADHD and ASD. When I decide to clean my room, the ADHD part of me is immediately distracted. Maybe I’ll start by picking up my clothes, but halfway through, I’ve found a notebook and suddenly remembered that I wanted to design a new bullet journal layout—despite the fact that I haven’t touched my old bullet journal in three months. Meanwhile, ASD is glaring at me, arms crossed, muttering, “This is unacceptable. You need to finish the clothes first. Stick to the plan.”

The irony, of course, is that sticking to the plan is like asking a squirrel to sit still. Do you know how hard it is to stay on task when your brain is throwing a hundred ideas at you like dodgeballs? Oh, and let’s not forget the glorious stress spiral that happens when things don’t go as planned. Because apparently, when you live in a brain that thrives on contradiction, even the act of tidying up can turn into a full-blown existential crisis. I don’t get the room cleaned—I get overwhelmed. And what do I do when I’m overwhelmed? Doom scrolling. Because obviously, the best way to avoid stress is to dive headfirst into a black hole of videos about organizing drawers, which I definitely won’t follow.

It’s tempting to turn life into a to-do list, isn’t it? Check off this task, move on to the next, repeat. Sounds logical, right? Except when you’re wired like me, logic takes a backseat to survival. And survival, for the record, sometimes looks like sitting in the middle of your chaos and pretending you’re meditating when really, you’re just trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that you ran out of snacks. The truth is, life isn’t meant to be a series of tasks. It’s messy and unpredictable, like my brain, and the more I force myself to structure it, the more I feel like I’m failing some invisible test that no one else is taking.

Writing helps. It’s how I make sense of this beautiful disaster, even if what I write often feels like a stream of consciousness that could rival any modernist novel. I write with ADHD’s flair for randomness and ASD’s love for detail, hopping between thoughts like a caffeinated rabbit while meticulously crafting sentences that make sense—at least to me. And this unpredictability? It’s something I’ve finally started to embrace. I used to think that writing had to be neat and linear, but now I’m fully in the camp of “Why bother?” Life isn’t linear, so why should my writing be?

And here’s the kicker: I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to “fix” my brain isn’t to fix it at all. Instead of fighting the contradictions, I let them coexist. Yes, my room is half doom piles and half pristine organization. Yes, I doom scroll and procrastinate and sometimes write about nothing at all. But I also laugh at the absurdity of it all because, really, what else can you do? AuDHD is a circus, but it’s my circus. And this chaotic, colorful, contradictory brain? It’s the reason I can write like this, flipping between humor and chaos and somehow landing on something that resembles coherence.

So here’s a toast to the doom piles, the distractions, and the weird inner monologues. To the days when the bedroom stays a mess and the writing goes nowhere. To the days when the distractions are the story and the chaos is the punchline. And to the glorious, messy, unpredictable circus that is my brain—because, in the end, this is my brain on a good day. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Yet when overstimulation or understimulation comes into play, it feels like my brain is being tossed into a whirlwind of contradictions. Honestly, it’s almost laughable—how can one brain swing between extremes like a hyperactive pendulum? For the longest time, I didn’t even realize understimulation was a real thing. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a few insightful Instagram posts—ironically, during a doom-scrolling session—that the concept even landed on my radar. Suddenly, pieces of my mental puzzle clicked into place with unsettling clarity. This fog I’d been wandering through wasn’t just random tiredness or a lack of focus. No, it was a deep, gnawing understimulation that I had failed to recognize for what it was. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

Looking back now, it all makes sense—almost too much sense, like that eerie feeling when you finally solve a mystery that’s been haunting you. For days, I’d felt bone-deep exhaustion, the kind that mimics the aftermath of running a marathon or deep-cleaning an entire house. Except, here’s the catch: I hadn’t done anything. This wasn’t physical fatigue; it was mental. And it hit me out of nowhere—first thing in the morning, before I’d even had breakfast. The signs had been there all along, but I had no framework for understanding them. This foggy haze had been dragging me down for days, silently sapping my energy and focus.

Take this morning as a prime example. I woke up with the vague intention of eating breakfast, but somewhere along the way, I got derailed. I told myself, “I’ll just sit down for a minute,” which is, of course, the biggest lie I tell myself regularly. That “minute” somehow stretched into four hours of doing nothing in particular. By the time I finally had breakfast, it wasn’t because I felt hungry or motivated to nourish myself—it was because my dog had reached the end of their patience and insisted on going outside. If not for them, who knows how long I would’ve gone without eating?

And then, as if the understimulation hadn’t done enough damage, my guilt decided to chime in. I gave myself a relentless internal lecture, branding myself as “lazy” and unproductive, even though those judgments weren’t fair or accurate. The truth is, I wasn’t being lazy—I was stuck, caught in the sticky web of understimulation without even realizing it. And now that I do realize it, I’m left grappling with the next big challenge: what to do about it. Awareness is the first step, sure, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real work lies in figuring out how to adapt and move forward.

This brings me to the tried-and-true mantra of my life: identify, adapt, and overcome. It’s a formula that’s served me well in countless situations, and now I’m applying it here. I’ve identified the problem—understimulation—and now it’s time to figure out how to adapt. But here’s where things get tricky: adaptation isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. What works for someone else—let’s call them John—might not work for me. We’re all wired differently, and those differences make navigating this process uniquely challenging. It’s like trying to follow a map that was drawn for someone else’s journey; the landmarks don’t quite line up, and the directions feel off. And to make things even harder, I live in a place where there are precious few resources or support systems available for adults like me.

So, what does adaptation look like for me? I’m not entirely sure yet, but I know it’s going to involve a lot of trial and error. Maybe it starts with creating a routine that feels manageable—something that provides structure without feeling suffocating. Or perhaps it’s about finding small ways to keep my brain engaged throughout the day, preventing it from slipping into that understimulated fog. It might even mean celebrating tiny victories, like making breakfast without needing external intervention. Whatever the solution ends up being, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be messy and imperfect, just like the brain I’m working with. And that’s okay.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the circus that is my mind, it’s that perfection is overrated. The journey—the messy, unpredictable, chaotic journey—is where the real growth happens. Whether it’s wrestling with doom piles, battling distractions, or simply making it through the morning in one piece, every step forward is a triumph worth acknowledging. And in those moments of triumph, no matter how small, I find a glimmer of hope—a reminder that even in the midst of chaos, progress is possible. This is actually why today’s post is so very late in the day. I was lost in a meltdown caused by understimulation and I had no clue.

When I was diagnosed with ASD, it felt like a revelation wrapped in frustration. I’d known about the ADHD since I was six, but the ASD diagnosis didn’t come until adulthood. To be fair, there were referrals when I was a kid, but they were refused by my, let’s call them “delightful” parents. If you’ve read any of my past posts, you’ll know just how far from delightful they were.

The moment of diagnosis itself was bizarrely underwhelming. I was told, quite matter-of-factly and verbatim, “You are right, you have ASD. Do you remember where you parked your car?” That was it. No grand explanations, no roadmap for the future—just a rhetorical question about my vehicle. It felt like I’d fought tooth and nail to reach this point, only to be handed a pamphlet’s worth of information and sent on my way. I even had to push for the old diagnosis term, Asperger’s, just to understand where I stood in the research landscape. Yes, the terminology has changed with the DSM updates, but that doesn’t erase the decades of studies tied to the older name. That battle to get clarity turned me into an unrelenting advocate at the “I’m not moving until you tell me” stage. Which means I had been fighting for quite a bit of time and was getting fed up. The next stage is, here is my own medical background. Let’s try this again because you know I know where to report your ass for lack of continuity of care. Not like it was ever actually possible with the ASD being caught as an adult.

To say I was pissed off would be an understatement. Here I am, an adult, with a mental health challenge that’s been lurking in the shadows for decades. When you’ve been late-diagnosed, you either lose the skills that helped you stay hidden, or you suffer a mental breakdown when perimenopause hit’s (or so I have heard, I have heard around the age for 40, so haven’t quite sorted the when out just that it will happen). It’s one or the other. For me, it felt like being thrown into a storm without a compass, with no supports or resources provided besides what I could scrape together online. And that’s the part that stings—not just as the patient but also as a medical professional. How is it that in 2019, when I was diagnosed, I was still left in the dark about basic aspects like the inner monologue or the nuances of understimulation? It’s infuriating. Overstimulation, well that is all over the place for information, not understiumlation though and given my deep dives and need to know, this says alot.

And let’s face it, finding accurate information? It’s a minefield. This is sometimes what triggers the doom scrolling in the first place. I’ll stumble upon someone’s video or post and think, “Is this relatable? Does this align with my experience?” But before I can trust it, I end up watching countless other videos by the same person, trying to piece together a coherent truth from fragmented anecdotes. It’s exhausting, and yet, it feels like the only way forward because the only base I have to go off of, that is my own experience. When you have an alphabet soup of things going on, that makes it even harder. Then I give myself crap because I have let my readers and followers down. It is not fun to be in these headspaces, and they get worse when understimulated and like depression it is harder to spot, at least in my experience.

But here’s the kicker: in digging through this chaotic, contradictory mess, I’ve accidentally discovered fragments of hope and understanding. While it shouldn’t have taken this much effort, I’ve learned to embrace the journey—not because it’s easy or fair, but because it’s mine. And if I can find clarity in the storm, maybe someone else can as well just from what I have found from others who have shared such intimate details about themselves like… yea only the small compact small fork and spoon feels right and I have issues with anything besides the desert spoon and fork (I think that is the name of the smallest ones)… that I discovered while typing this up isn’t just me. There are others!!! You have any idea how much relief it is? I am constantly thinking, is this because my brain is wired differently or is it because I am an odd ball? Am I being silly and to picky or is this valid?

No matter if you are nerodiverent or not, I would love to hear what surprising details you have stumbled upon with mental health becoming more known. Though it doesn’t stop the doctors from stopping at whatever acronym for mental health I am on and deciding that this is the issue, not the issue I am telling them is going on. Sadly the medical field is where I face some of the worst and most dangerous discrimination. So let’s share our knowledge so we can maybe help someone who is just watching and reading, or so we can learn and pipe up when a doctor is being an ass with a loved one. Remember, stop being a compliant patient. Best way to do this is knowledge. So share please my lovelies!

And yes I will get an email out with the posts since the last one, however with my headspace being not so great and partly in meltdown still as I only just discovered why I was feeling so off a few hours ago. I am not going to make promises as to when. The only promise I can make and will always keep, is to post each day with some random topic as the headline.

Siearra