Jane McFadden:

Hello and welcome back to ADHD Mums. In this podcast, we tackle the tough, often unspoken realities of motherhood, neurodiversity and mental health. Hello and welcome to the next episode of ADHD Mums.

I have Jacinta Thomson here, one of our most popular interviewees ever. She has the episode How to Get a Diagnosis, part one and two, which is still one of our most downloaded episodes ever. Jacinta looks very uncomfortable as I talk about how great she is.

I will give you a quick overview about Jacinta. Jacinta is a clinical psychologist and she has extensive experience in public and private healthcare. She’s taught at universities, she’s presented her research internationally and she’s also done some public speaking.

Jacinta has two young children and she’s particularly passionate about helping parents cope in such a challenging perinatal period. Jacinta has done a couple of with me and she’s also in her own practice up here on the Sunshine Coast. I have had amazing feedback coming into me about Jacinta and her therapy so much so I thought about booking in myself, but I thought, let’s not burn Jacinta out with all of Jane’s energies.

So welcome to you, Jacinta.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Thanks, Jane. It’s good to be back.

I’ve had a lot of fun in the conversations that we’ve had previously and I thought, why not cram another one into December? It’s not like it’s already sensory overload month. It’s another one on top. I’ve been very excited about this because I think it’s such a great topic.

Do you want to give us an overview? It was your idea, Jacinta, and I just think it’s so relevant.

I thought it was really important just to talk a bit more about what it looks like when someone might have both ADHD and autistic characteristics. What sort of patterns we see professionally, clinically, in terms of how one might show up and maybe even masking or camouflaging the other and then that sort of swaps around later in life or in different life stages.

I think maybe up front, I’ll just clarify in my neuro-affirming practice, I use the term autistic, which is an identity first explanation rather than saying someone like a person with autism as if it’s sort of like a bag or an outfit that you can sort of pick up and put down. It’s very central and fundamental to someone’s identity just as ADHD is. And I always try to say autism and I save the term autistic spectrum disorders or ASD only in clinical reference to a diagnosis, say in a diagnostic report.

Try to drop the D because I don’t think it’s a disorder. I think it’s a difference and it can absolutely be something that is a strength if recognized and supported appropriately. And just another thing on semantics today, if I say AUDHD, which is A-U-D-H-D, that’s a common reference for someone who’s been diagnosed with both ADHD and autism. It’s just a bit of a shortcut.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, perfect. I think there’s a lot of people in this podcast that would never want to offend anybody or say the wrong thing. And also we’ve got terrible working memories. So I’m always trying to be careful in my podcast that I’m not offensive to anybody, but I also cannot remember whether it’s a person with autism or I actually listened to you and thought, I actually thought that I read that you should say person with autism because they’re a person first. So now I’m a bit confused.

Would you mind discussing why? Because I think that will make sense to me.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yep. So previously, when it comes to acknowledging a mental health diagnosis, something like depression or even schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, we consider those mental health conditions or diagnoses something that doesn’t necessarily need to be lifelong.

So in other ways, we could talk about them as sort of episodic difficulties or symptoms. So in that sense, we’re taught to use our person first language, so person with depression or an adult who’s experiencing anxiety, for example.

When it comes to neurodevelopmental conditions, so we’re talking about autism and ADHD specifically in this podcast today, they are exactly that. They’re sort of neurodevelopmental. They’re differences in the way the brain is structured and the way that the brain functions that is there from birth. And it’s there for someone’s entire life.

So it’s not like depressive vulnerabilities. Someone goes in and out of depressive episodes. It’s something that is always a part of that person. And quite central, we are talking about the way that the brain is organized and the brain is the lens through which we perceive and interact with the world every single moment of every single day. So it’s very fundamental.

And I think it’s part of this movement of trying to destigmatize having ADHD or being autistic. It’s about saying, yes, this is very much how I am in this world, how I experience this world. And it’s not a problem. It’s actually pretty cool that I have this difference. So just try to own it a bit more, making it sort of centralized to our identity.

 

Jane McFadden:

Perfect. That actually makes total sense to me.

So I thought I might give a bit of a personal spin on this because I’ll struggle not to because of my ADHD. So I’m just going to go there. Right.

So when I took my daughter up to this beautiful equine farm here on the Sunshine Coast, they kind of played with animals and did the diagnosis all in the one play. It was beautiful. Anyway, basically the clinical psychologist there, who I love, she was saying that she thought that I had some autistic traits and I was a little bit confused because I went into high research mode, as we all do, and I tried to find the differences between autistic and ADHD.

I was just wondering in regards to high masking mums, it can be often extremely difficult to even discover that you are ADHD, let alone autistic. What would be those differences that you would see? Because I found no information on that anywhere.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yeah, it’s a bit of mind boggling really, because if we just came over to the DSM, which is a diagnostic and statistical manual that clinical psychologists, most mental health professionals will look at the criteria there and sort of match up how does this person presenting in front of me tick off these boxes and are there enough sort of ticks in the boxes to reach the threshold that empowers it, that you’ve sort of determined that that’s clinically significant and you’re a warranty of that diagnosis.

So if you look at like autism and then you look at ADHD, they’re actually completely different profiles. There is no overlapping or commonalities between those behaviours or those characteristics on each side, which is, it’s just so far removed from how we actually sort of present in real life.

There is significant amount of parallels and a lot of behaviours that could sit in sort of, you know, be driven by an ADHD sort of need or by an autistic need, but on the outside, those behaviours might look exactly the same. So go figure, hey.

Jane McFadden:

That is not what I have read and not what is widely described. So I’m kind of mind blown already because a lot of people say, oh, I think there’s the stats are, and look, you’ll know better than I am, but it’s like one in 25 have ADHD, one in 36 are autistic and then there’s that blend of overlap and it can look similar and it’s hard to know which is which, but you’re kind of changing that already, which is kind of mind blowing to me because I was always in this impression of how do you even know if you have ADHD or if you’re autistic?

And then I was trying to figure out how many people on my podcast are possibly autistic women that have no idea.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yeah. So I guess what I’m saying is if you’re a pure hardcore DSM enthusiast, then there is no sort of similarities there. We need inverted commas here. It’s easy that there’s that distinct that they can be pulled apart without any sort of major effort.

But in reality, you’re right. I think for so many people and mums as well, ADHD mums, they probably have had these sort of little inklings or questions about, okay, I’ve got a sort of range of neurodivergent characteristics or traits or behaviours or struggles.

It seems like maybe a bulk of them can be explained by ADHD, but maybe there’s a few extra things or sort of overflow, as my own psychiatrist sort of calls them. This is sort of the pattern of what I typically see is mums that come in and they sort of have the ADHD evaluated. And then it might be months or years later, once the ADHD symptoms have stabilised, that those sort of inklings and those questions or queries start to get a little bit louder because they sort of want to know what could be the sort of explanation for these other differences that they’re noticing more and more.

And you mentioned there, Jane, that the overlap in sort of the prevalence there. So the statistics that you shared there, the range varies so widely in the research, but roughly one in 25 adults are ADHD. So about 4%, as you said, and one in 36 are autistic. But about 60% of those individuals will have both characteristics from ADHD and autism.

So what that really means is that we’re actually more likely to have both than we are to be sort of a pure ADHD or purely autistic. So in reality, there’s going to be a lot of mums on here who have ADHD, but they also have clinically significant autistic characteristics.

Now that doesn’t necessarily make you autistic. As I said, there’s just so much overlap and it doesn’t necessarily make it a problem. It’s not something you need to pick up the phone and quickly make a doctor’s appointment.

Shit, I think I could have missed 36 years of being autistic. It’s just something I think as we’re doing, he’s just building that curiosity around what might this mean for you? What can it look like? What sort of severity do those sort of differences like impact your life or your functioning and what sorts of supports might you need to assist with that sort of overflow of stuff around the traditional ADHD struggles?

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, absolutely. And the DMs that I get, which are extensive, there is a huge amount of them that come in. Most of the women list ASD and ADHD in their children. So that would reflect possibly what we’re talking about.

So let’s break through what does autistic traits look like in mums? I mean, I suppose there’s always the Rain Man idea, but how is it different from that?

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

So again, that really comes from our outdated stereotyped images of autism. And that’s really what the research that went into the criteria in the DSM, it comes from sort of white boys with those very overt or like externalised behaviours, sort of the rocking in the corner, the obsessive playing with trains or rotating wheels on their trucks and sort of hours and hours a day at the exclusion of all other activities.

So I guess you probably see that a lot of us would have that image in our head. I think that’s still like a stigma that actually is associated with a lot of fear and worry for parents as well. Once the autism sort of question or word gets presented, there’s a lot of those images that come to mind that I think a lot of parents, especially of our generation and older, they obviously, there’s just so much uncertainty there about the extent of what disability might be attached to that label or that diagnosis.

But like with ADHD, we’ve come so far in recognising that ADHD is not just, do you struggle to sit still in your chair? It’s not just you’re jumping out of your seat to answer every question in the classroom. It’s not just that you turning up late everywhere.

And again, we understand that people develop really clever, sophisticated and effective coping mechanisms, all those compensatory strategies, like I think we’ve talked about before, it’s spending hours and hours just hyper-focusing on the diary and the schedule and making sure everything in the week for the family lines up so perfectly. So you want a bit of paper, you’re not going to tick the box. Are you late everywhere? As the DSM would sort of suggest about an ADHD or with inattentive problems, because you’ve got those sort of systems in place.

So what we’re trying to do in a really neuroaffirming assessment is to get underneath what those behaviours sort of look like and then figure out what sorts of strategies do people have in place that essentially mask or camouflage or compensate for those ADHD and or autistic differences.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

So in the DSM, the autism is characterised basically by different ways of relating to others. So in terms of non-verbal and verbal interactions, communication, differences in the way autistic people might initiate and maintain relationships, and also different ways of interacting with the environment around us.

So this might be processing sensory information in a really overly sensitive way or underly sensitive way, navigating change and sort of disruptions to routine and plans, really, really deep enjoyment of special interests, which again, there’s quite a bit of an overlap there. So I can imagine with ADHD sort of hyper fixation and also repetitive behaviours or use of objects that basically give an autistic brain a sense of sameness and repetition and its sort of routine predictability that sort of gives their central nervous system a sense of safety in such an overstimulating, overloading world around them.

And I should note as well that that’s not a verbatim definition from the DSM because the DSM uses a lot of medicalised pathologising language, deficits of social and emotional reciprocity. It’s like, well, what does that actually mean? And I’m quite open with the fact that I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and autism, and I wouldn’t say that I have a complete deficit or inability to communicate with people, but I definitely go about it in a different way.

And those differences can be really subtle, whether that’s because I’m using my own social camouflaging and masking strategies, or they can be a bit more obvious, especially when I’m relaxed in informal space with fellow Neurokin. So it’s not just your DSM, here’s the rocking, the nonverbal, the boy with the trains.

There’s such a beautiful diversity within the autistic community as there is with ADHD. So it’s up to people like me and I guess other health professionals to really try and recognise when those sort of overflow of ADHD traits could be explained by autism and really harness that sort of understanding in a way that just is so validating and makes so much more sense. And again, it’s about targeting those supports or treatment sort of strategies in a more individualised way.

Jane McFadden:

That is so interesting. I had a coffee date with one of my good friends. You should have joined us, Jacinta, you would have loved it actually.

And she’s just been diagnosed autistic. And we were at the park with our kids for three hours because we’re both on school holidays. So we were there for three hours. Our kids were actually asking us to leave, right? But we were just going for it on personal development and psychology and who we are as people.

It was a great chat. I mean, look, when you find the right mums that really get you and it’s such a safe space, it’s just so therapeutic. I find there’s nothing more therapeutic than talking to another mum who really gets it, even if they’re neurotypical, someone who just really gets it.

So she was saying to me that because it was quite mind-blowing for her to be diagnosed autistic. And she was only diagnosed because her daughter was. And the clinical psych, the same one I referred to on the farm, eyeballed her and said, I think you need to come and see me as well.

And she was saying about how she has always been quite good socially, but she prefers one-to-one conversations in depth than a group. And she was wondering whether, because she’s very intuitive. She was actually saying whether she wonders whether she feels the room, she feels the emotion in the other person because she doesn’t think she can’t read the faces. She gets it, but she doesn’t, she thinks it might be almost kinesthetic, not actually the face.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yeah. Or possibly she’s just getting all of the information. You know, brains are receiving billions of bits of sensory information every second. And then a neurotypical brain, you know, sort of a metaphor is maybe they have a funnel in a way that their executive sort of thinking part of their brain can actually pick and choose which parts of that environment or that social interaction is really important.

So we can hold on to, you know, we’re going to funnel out the rest of it, filter out the rest of the noise essentially, and just focus on the bits that are important. But neurodivergent brains, there’s no funnel, there’s no filter. They’re taking it all in, which obviously can be incredibly overwhelming and exhausting, especially if you’re somewhere where there is lots of background noise or music, or it’s really hot, or you haven’t eaten in a few hours and your stomach’s rumbling really badly.

So it can feel really flooding. But I definitely relate to that preference, I think, for conversing one-on-one. I think once you start to add people to a group conversation, those dynamics get a lot more complicated.

And especially if you’ve got ADHD and you’ve got that sort of working memory challenges, then it can be so hard to follow multiple sort of trends of thought and conversation and know when the right like micro-moment is to sort of jump in and participate and how much is too much and people interested. And it’s just so, so much information to be sort of monitoring and like analysing at any one time. It can make that, you know, quite taxing or draining and I think stressful too for some people.

Jane McFadden:

So what would be some little known characteristics that we might see mums that you can’t get on Google? Because I Googled all of this before and I was like, this is all stuff you can find online, right? But it’s the little things that I really want to discuss. What would be some of the little things that you can’t find on Google that you would be looking for in a session?

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Maybe what I can give or walk you through an example of like a very generic sort of situation. If a mum is in a social situation, like you’re just describing before, Jane, and we can think about how the nuances of say ADHD and the idiosyncrasies of autism sort of mask or compensate for each other.

So again, on paper or behaviourally, it might not be that obvious, but it’s, yeah, it’s really interesting to sort of think about what could actually be going on behind the scenes and how each of those sort of conditions might be driving that.

So if we think about like an untreated ADHD mum who’s also got autistic traits or a diagnosis of autism, if she is in a social setting, she might appear like outwardly engaged and confident, making eye contact and participating in that sort of back and forth conversation that we all think perceive as sort of normal, neuro-normative, but on closer inspection, she might really struggle with the subtleties of non-verbal communication such as difficulty understanding implied meanings or sarcasm.

Actually on that note, my husband, poor guy, gets so frustrated that I just don’t understand sarcasm. I don’t really get his jokes. I mean, they are dad jokes, but they’re probably not that bad. And I set up a Christmas tree the other day and it’s like a hundred dollar one I got off Amazon. And it’s just all these like LED lights. It’s basically just a rave in my lounge room. And the sensory thinking part of my brain is like, and then he said, you’re going to, you’re going to give the kids epilepsy for Christmas.

And I immediately stopped. I was horrified. I looked at him. I was like, that is not funny. Why would you even joke about that? And then about three days later, it finally dawned. He’s like, oh, cause photosensitivity could possibly do seizures.

And I was laughing. He’s like, what are you laughing about? I was like, I just got your joke. He’s like, yeah, okay. Three days later, you know, that’s pretty good for you actually. I’ll take it.

So in a social situation though, potentially if other people are laughing, that AUDHD mum, they’ll pick up on other people laughing and they’ll join in too, but they might not have actually sort of understood the subtext or implied meaning what the joke was. So it can feel sort of inauthentic. And again, it’s quite taxing. There’s a lot of that monitoring and analysis going on.

I know I’ve got a lot of autistic clients or AUDHD mums that tell me there’s so much planning and preparation and analysis that goes into just eye contact. So even though it might look like I’m making sort of appropriate eye contact in their own heads, they’re really trying to think about how much eye contact is. It’s normal to show that I’m interested and engaged in this conversation versus I don’t want to make too much eye contact and sort of intimidate them or sort of freak them out.

But in the same time, direct eye contact might be viscerally really uncomfortable for them. So they try to pick a point, whether that’s between the other person’s eyebrows or slightly off to the side of their face. So the conversational partner sort of has experience of, they’re listening to me, they’re making eye contact for the other person’s using a whole lot of masking strategies.

Yeah, really complicated and distracting ones to just try and behave, I guess, in that neuro normative way. You’ve probably read a lot of those articles and really good blogs on the internet, Jane, they talk about how some of the traits of ADHD and autism can be really contradictory to each other, which just sort of leads to a bit of a shit show or it’s a hot mess.

So one of the most common things we talk about and we see is how the ADHD brain craves stimulation and novelty and really doesn’t like routine and really rejects scheduling and planning too far ahead. Or maybe it wants to, but it just finds that really hard to do. But that autistic brain is very easily overwhelmed and overstimulated and absolutely needs routine and sameness to feel regulated and controlled.

So you can imagine there’s quite a friction point between very different needs for those sort of two parts of the neurotype that that person lives with. We also see a lot of overlap with sort of sensory sensitivities and executive functioning challenges.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

So an ADHD mum might find it really difficult to like schedule in all these sort of extra social events or obligations. So if you’ve got an event coming up, ADHD brain might really naturally struggle to schedule that in, to fit that in, then to do all the planning that goes around that. It might be organizing a new outfit, booking in a babysitter, figuring out how you’re going to get there and I think it’s a lot of mums that carry that cognitive load of all that organization. So that can be really stressful and difficult, prone to careless errors.

But then an autistic brain might be so overwhelmed by not having a highly detailed plan that this anxiety fuels the hyperfocus on organization. So the ADHDers might struggle to turn up on time, but because an autistic brain just absolutely can’t cope with anything unexpected or potentially risk an awkward social entrance to the event by turning up a bit late, then it’s like the autistic part and that anxiety will fuel someone’s hyper-detailed sort of preparation and planning.

So instead of turning up late, they might actually be like an hour or more early. A lot of my friends, there’s this sort of running joke where they will tell me if there’s a dinner on, they’ll tell me that it starts half an hour later than it actually does because then I’ll turn up on time versus if they tell me it starts at six, I’ll be there probably somewhere between five and five-thirty when I’m still in the middle of like witching hour and definitely not ready for a visitor.

And that’s because my autistic brain is just desperately can’t handle the thought of things. There’s traffic or the parking situation is more complicated than I anticipated or like again, a multitude of possible deviations that I just can’t even fathom how I would cope with those things in the moment. So the DSMs ask about ADHD is are you often late? But you can see in that example there, the autistic brain does a good job at sort of masking those sort of challenges with organization, timing.

So say we’ve got everything organized, we turn up to this Christmas party.

Jane McFadden:

Yes.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Okay. I’m half an hour early. That’s fine. Everyone knows me.

In the event itself, obviously an autistic brain might feel really anxious and overloaded and uncertain, not knowing who will be there, how perfectly the outfit matches the dress code. And for me, as we know, how long can I cope with this annoying underwire strapless bra until I feel like I implode. Feeling uncomfortable with the whole small talk thing.

What’s the right amount of eye contact, preferring to hold back during interactions because a lot of autistic people just love observing and sort of taking it all in and it’s that hyper-processing that happens. Ideally, we have a little bit of space and room to do that. That being sort of an intense group conversation.

But on the flip side, the ADHD part of my brain, a lot of other AUDHD brains is all excited, dressed up, energetic, sensory thinking. So it’s really going to rally a lot of that motivation, that drive just to bounce around the room, approach new people, initiate conversations. That person might have a few sort of pre-scripted ways of engaging in small talk if that doesn’t come so naturally.

And there’s certainly that sort of analysis and awareness of eye contact and body language that an autistic brain might do a lot of masking, compensating around. So from the outside, that particular person, there’s certain flavors of me in there. But a lot of mums I know listening to this podcast, they don’t necessarily look neurodivergent, whether that’s ADHD and or autistic, but they certainly are.

And they’re doing a whole lot of work behind the scenes to sort of manage how those differences might present. I always think about that duck thing. I think you’ve mentioned a few times, Jane. It’s like on the surface of the water, the duck looks really calm and grounded and chilled out. But under the surface, those legs are going a million miles an hour just to stay afloat in that particular environment.

And that’s when I feel personally a lot in social events, but mostly social events where I’m not overly familiar with the people or the sorts of topics that they would be talking about. Like my husband’s Christmas party with his construction in the construction industry. There’s a lot of conversations that I have no personal interest and or sort of knowledge about.

And we all know that ADHD brains and autistic brains, they’re interest-based nervous systems. So they’re going to find it really hard to sustain conversations that aren’t of that sort of intrinsic interest.

Jane McFadden:

A lot of that landed with me. I’m a little thrown. I was like, Oh, this is I do like to arrive an hour early wherever I go. But I always thought that was like anxiety about being late. Like I’ve always relied on my anxiety to move me.

So when people say, Oh, you’re always late, you have ADHD. I’m never late ever because I’m like freakishly early because I anticipate every single thing that could happen on the way over the planet. So it’s a difficult one, isn’t it? I mean, obviously not for you because you’re a clinical psychologist, but as a mom and you’re like, well, I’m not always late, but I thought that was heavily masking ADHD. I mean, geez, it is a bit confusing.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

No, but it absolutely can be. You’re just saying it’s driven by anxiety and the rates of anxiety in neurodivergent people, especially even ADHD is significantly higher than the general population. So there is a lot of running on adrenaline and there’s been a lot of mistakes, right? A lot of feeling let down, letting other people’s down. There’s a lot of extra trauma that goes into trying to live in a neurotypical world that I think fuels that anxiety.

And there’s a lot of other factors to temperament. Maybe you grew up in a family where punctuality was a really, really valued sort of trait to quality of behavioural trait. So there’s a lot of other factors that I think would influence the way that someone experiences sort of these things like time management and punctuality and organization and strategizing and so forth.

So I don’t in any way mean to sort of simplify it as, well, if you do this, therefore you’re probably also autistic. It’s just that in these situations, it’s like the autistic part is actually a source of anxiety because by definition, the autistic brain really struggles to cope and adapt flexibly in situations where something unexpected happens or something, you know, calls the plan off track.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, got it. Okay.

There seems to be a common pattern when mums are getting diagnosed and treated for ADHD either as a child or an adult. And then months or years later, they start to question if they then might be autistic. So you mentioned earlier in some of your other episodes around your personal journey. Can you share with us how that went for you in what sequence?

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yeah. So I was initially, I think misdiagnosed with narcolepsy, although narcolepsy and ADHD do commonly co-occur. But then as I sort of went into uni years, really that was re-evaluated and reinterpreted as ADHD combined.

So I took stimulant medication on and off for most of my 20s, which really helped with those particular symptoms. And then, yeah, it was quite a shock when my ADHD psychiatrist, and then I followed up with a second opinion, actually proposed that some of those sort of leftover neurodivergent traits might be better explained by also being autistic.

And even as a clinical psychologist at that stage, I had the immediate fear response as well. Like, does that mean I’m going to be non-verbal, sort of rocky on a corner? I’m not going to be able to progress in my, with my career aspirations and so forth, which like, of course not. I’m me. I’ve always been me.

And the trajectory sort of, as I sort of decide that, of course, that’s not going to be me. I am who I am. I’ve always been this person, regardless of whether someone’s clarified the sort of neurodivergent diagnoses or not. So it really doesn’t have to be a limitation. We just need to understand it.

So a lot of those sort of extra, or the leftover traits that the psychiatrist identified for me were the really extreme sensory sensitivities, the rigidity, so around like routine and needing everything to be really detailed and organized and planned to a T. And again, ADHDers can be like that, but it’s like, what happens if things don’t go to plan? ADHDers can be a bit more creative and flexible in their like problem solving, troubleshooting, whereas an autistic brain can be quite overloaded and shut down with that sort of stress.

And I found a lot of my social mannerisms to evolve after the ADHD side of things were sort of stabilized with the medication. So if we think about that example before, the ADHD masking, maybe some of that social anxiety for the autistic brain in a social setting, all of a sudden the impulsivity and the restlessness and sort of that excitability is like dialed down a few notches on stimulant medication. So in a way, it’s like I lost a bit of that armory or the masking that came from untreated ADHD, at least in those like interpersonal settings.

So that is a common pattern that I see clinically is mums often, yeah, like you said before, kids are getting sort of diagnosed and parents are like, well, I recognize a lot of those traits. They get the ADHD evaluated and treated. And then a few years later, they’re like, okay, well, some of that stuff has sort of settled down for me, but now I notice like how awkward I feel in social settings, or I just hate small talk and I just cut people and I don’t have the energy and I just want to talk about someone’s deepest, darkest traumas.

Jane McFadden:

Wait, that’s just me. It’s like they sort of start to see.

Oh no, I did that on the weekend. I circulated around a prep birthday party, which I haven’t been to any all year. I always send my husband because I can’t stand them. And my son said to me, mummy, you never come and meet my friends’ mums.

And of course that tugs at your heartstrings. I was like, don’t worry, I’m going to buffer up for it. I had to cancel nippers because I couldn’t do both. I was like, I can’t, I can’t actually do both. That’s not going to work for me. So to cancel nippers, to go to this party.

And then I went there and found the most neuro divergent mums I could find because you can kind of pick out the kids.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Oh, that’s amazing.

Jane McFadden:

Yes, you’ve got to read up. So I figured out who was who from the mix and who I’d seen at the Christmas concert with headphones on and sensory issues, clearly. They had water guns. Some of the kids couldn’t cope with the water being shot at them. And I was looking at who was comforting them and I was like eyeballing them. I’m like, that’s who I need to talk to.

Then I would then go and isolate them into a corner and we would go deep and dark. And I had the best time. I only spoke to about three people, but I had the best time with them all. And then I said to my son afterwards, mate, like, how do you feel about this kid? Really like them. How about we do a play date? And he’s like, I don’t like any of those kids.

And I was like, come on. Well, tough. We’ll be friends. We will be friends.

I think it’s a really interesting thing that you bring up because a lot of mums who are medicated get that initial excitement. They get that feeling. They’re very excited on the DMs. Probably three, four, six months later, they’re messaging me again. This is such an interesting topic because what is left? What a great point.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

It’s like the differences as well. We’re not looking for deficits. It’s the differences in the way people communicate both in terms of the content. So obviously you and I, we sort of share a preference there for deep and meaningful sort of philosophical, abstract conversational content over discussing the webinar, for example.

But there’s also a difference in the way in which you communicate. So in a neurotypical world, it’s not very common just to go the first time I’ve met you, let’s sit down and let’s really pull apart this sort of existential threads of meaning of life type of stuff. But that just feels so right and so connecting and so bonding, especially for I’m just going to say neurodivergent brains there.

So there’s those differences. And again, from an outsider’s perspective, they go, no, Jane’s fine. She does a podcast. She’s got all these qualifications. She’s done all these cool things. I can see her here at the party. She’s deep in conversation, totally connected, paying attention. She couldn’t possibly be neurodivergent, but then once you get underneath the behavior and you actually sort of tease apart those idiosyncrasies, then you go, okay, there are some differences here.

So how do we better understand those differences? A lot of it could be ADHD. Absolutely. Are there sort of leftover things that maybe aren’t so neatly explained and what else could be sort of, yeah, like influencing that?

And same thing for me. Like I remember before my wedding, my husband and I was like over 10 years ago now, but I remember losing so much sleep and sometimes just randomly crying, trying to figure out how I would like introduce different like tables, like different domains of friends and family from different parts of our life, like sort of bring them together in some cohesive group where everyone was sort of finding common ground to talk about it.

And I remember my husband was trying to convince me that that wasn’t my responsibility. And people generally don’t find that too hard. They don’t need someone standing instead of coaching them through that. And I’m actually really, I didn’t believe him.

I was like, well, that’s so complicated though. Like, where do you start? And what about if you feel awkward and you don’t want to be in the conversation anymore, but you don’t know how to get out or you’re at the same table together and you’re stuck there for four hours. And he’s just like, people don’t generally sort of think and overanalyse that sort of stuff.

You don’t need to plan for that. But then again, the autistic part of my brain was like, well, how do I not plan for that? So that was things like that I get really lost in.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

So you were talking about your diagnosis, Jacinta, and how that came. So just like getting a diagnosis of ADHD as an adult, like many of your listeners, Jane, I think my secondary diagnosis of autism also came as a mix of relief and its own challenges.

On one hand, understanding the AUDHD neurotype can provide a lot of clarity and self-awareness and a huge amount of self-compassion, but it might also bring a sense of grief and missed opportunities for support and coping strategies earlier in life. Nonetheless, I think overall, it’s been a hugely valuable experience for me to help, I guess, to learn about both sort of parts of my brain and the unique needs.

I’ve had the opportunity to be able to recognize and understand about sort of both those neurotypes that sometimes work together really well, like best friends. And sometimes they’re like my young children sort of brawling, ripping down the Christmas tree and sending my kitchen and my lounge room into just such a mess.

I feel like sometimes that the autism and the ADHD are completely in conflict. But again, if I sort of have that knowledge of why I feel that way at that time, then I try to ask myself, which part do I feel is like louder or those needs are louder right now? And how can I prioritize meeting those and then reassess?

So an example of that process would say be at a Christmas event. If I’m really struggling to follow a conversation and I’m sort of asking questions about things that have already been discussed, or I just can’t filter out the background music and the noise and the movement and everyone just having a good time. But if I start to feel like that sensory overload, then I think, right, the autistic part of my brain really needs me to manage that, regulate that sensory input or the environment before I could possibly do anything else that’s meaningful or interesting or rewarding.

So often that will mean that I need to leave or I need to take some quiet time outside or do some scrolling on my phone in the bathroom for a little bit. But my husband, he’s also very supportive of me just smoke bombing, which is just like just bailing without doing the whole neuro normative, go around the room and sort of thank everyone, which I want to do. And I like the value that that gratitude represents.

But if I’m already at 90 out of a hundred with sensory and social overload, then I know that’s going to be too much, like you said, with the nippers. You just have to cut your losses and send a text later. That feels like a much more accommodating way of dealing with it.

Jane McFadden:

Oh yeah, there’s nothing wrong with a disappear. I disappeared from my own Christmas party the other day and it was my own party. I was the owner of the party.

It was my party. No, it was at a venue in Brisbane. It was so funny because I was pretending to go to the toilet. And the reason what set me off was I saw all of these people setting up like those photo booths and they had the silly hats and all of the stuff. And I saw them all starting and I was like, no, no, I can’t. I’m out. I’m out.

And anyway, so I walked, I got my bag and I was like, I reckon I’m either going to have to do photos with every person here with all this weird shit on, which I’m going to hate, or I could go to the toilet. And I thought I’ll go to the toilet real quick and go up to the Sunshine Coast and I’ll hightail it out.

As I’m going to the toilet, of course, because I’m spatially just ridiculously unaware, I couldn’t find the exit because that’s who I am. I can’t find any exit ever. So I’m trying to disappear as I’m trying to exit, right? Someone comes and grabs me and goes, you’re not leaving, are you?

I completely denied it. I was like, oh no, of course not. I’m just going to the toilet. Then this lady had just seen me in the toilet. I just left some things in my car. She’d seen me in the toilet. She saw me.

And I was grabbed and I was like, where is the exit? I need to leave. And she’s like, you should have just pulled the fire alarm button. Just everyone fails into the cupboard.

I was on so bad. And then I was trying to get into the lift and there was someone else in there that I was trying to avoid and I was out and I was in. And then my husband was ringing me and I was like, I’ve got to get out of here. And I said, Terra, Terra, I just had to get out.

And then people messaged me later on. Oh, I didn’t get to say goodbye. And I was like, oh, I’m so sorry. I just had to go.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yeah. But even then it’s like, we don’t need to say sorry to it. We can actually just be really authentic and just acknowledge the fact that I’ve reached my limit. And I really enjoyed it for the time that I was there.

But obviously I wanted to quit while I was ahead. And it was so good to see you. It was like, that’s it. We can just normalize that rather than having to be like, oh, I’m sorry to do it in a neurotypical way.

Unfortunately, my two year old is like hyper social. And anytime we go somewhere, he’s really drawn to wanting to like wave and hug and interact and be picked up by pretty much everyone in the room. And that’s even in public places, like just going to the cafe, he wants to interact with everyone in the space.

So if we have any other appointments or, oh yeah, like Christmas events or family duties, which again, I generally really enjoy, but I would prefer when I’m reaching my limit, then a very subtle exit out the back door or whatever it is. But he will be like, oh no, he’s like, hug, hug, hug. He’s like very, very demanding of those sort of formalized farewells. And meanwhile, I’m just like trying to hide behind a curtain. So I’m just being like, tell me when you’re done.

Jane McFadden:

Oh yeah, especially my kids are huggers too. And I always stand there like a board. Cause I’m like, I’m a non-consensual hugger. I’m like, you can hug me, but I’m not going to move. I’m going to make it really awkward because I don’t want you to hug me again. Let’s just be authentic and just say, cheers, I’m not a hugger.

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

Yeah. And look, if my kids didn’t want to hug someone, I would say, just say that you don’t want to hug. But sometimes I just feel like it’s so off-putting for people to hug someone that’s standing there like a board. They never go in twice.

Jane McFadden:

So what should our ADHD mums do if they think they might have autistic characteristics?

Dr. Jacinta Thomson:

As we’ve covered today, Jane, I think it can be really tricky to tease apart ADHD and autism. And especially for people who have other sort of co-occurring complexities like anxiety or depression or learning disorders or dyslexia or dysgraphia or anything like that.

So really don’t feel like it’s your responsibility or it’s your job to have that specialist ability to be able to tease those apart. Yes, you can deep dive into research. I suspect a lot of mums will do that after listening to this podcast today, but don’t feel like you’ve got to figure it out.

And on the other side of the same coin, I think it’s also important to acknowledge that self-identification is really valid as well. So if you’re reading more about autism and especially high-masking or high-camouflaging variants of autism, and you think, wow, there’s a lot of that that really does fit to me, then it’s perfectly okay for you just to build that curiosity and that self-understanding and to run with that.

It’s just about what works for you and how that helps you. You really only need to look into a formalized diagnosis with a clinical psychologist or other appropriately qualified health professional if you’re wanting to look at supports like NDIS or disability support pension, things like that, that have formalized acceptance criteria. So there’s no medical treatment sort of gold standard for autism because it’s not a disease. You don’t need treatment and you can’t be cured.

So we got to stop looking for a fix, which is quite a different paradigm than we think about ADHD and the very well-studied, well-accepted efficacy of stimulant medication. But autism, there’s nothing like that. That’s sort of a pill that can make things different.

But if you do want to explore it with a psychologist, if you don’t want to go down that formal diagnostic route, which, as we’ve said before, can be expensive and a few barriers to that, if you just want to chat about it and peel back the layers of the onion more informally, you could speak with your GP about getting a mental health care plan, a referral to chat to a psychologist or an OT. It could be other health professionals that hopefully have experience in mums with these sort of high-masking neurodivergent characteristics.

So if you’re going down the path of using a mental health care plan, then to be eligible for those Medicare rebatable sessions, you need to have some other co-occurring challenges like anxiety or mood challenges or like adjustment difficulties and so forth.

And really, yeah, that’s what I love doing in my sessions as well, is just like really respectfully and gently teasing apart those more traditional stereotype traits. And then there’s really beautiful idiosyncratic ways that these differences can also manifest. It feels like there’s this light bulb that it just keeps glowing brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter.

And there’s no stopping it until obviously we all have a migraine from fluorescent light. But yeah, it’s just such a nice therapeutic way of like exploring those different sort of parts of you and your personality. Do your own research, just like with ADHD, get in there.

There’s some fantastic resources out there that I love, especially for the presentations for the characteristics we’ve been talking about today. So I think Jane’s going to link to those in the show notes. One of my absolute favourites is the website neurodivergentinsights.com. Dr. Kristin Neff, she’s a ADHD psychotherapist. Yeah, if you’ve got questions, I’m sure she’s got a blog article about it. She just writes in such a digestible way.

Jane McFadden:

We are going to finish up. Jacinta, this episode has been fascinating. It really has been. Thank you so much for your time, Jacinta.

I’m going to add in all of Jacinta’s details and all of the information that she’s given on the episode notes. If you have loved this, make sure you follow us, leave a review. The key message here is you are not alone.

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