Ep 10: AuDHD Psych Q&A Part 1 - Diagnosis, Self-ID & "Different, Not Defective"

“When I'm surrounded by people like me, I don't feel disordered. I feel understood.”

🎙️ Ep 10: Your Questions Answered – Diagnosis, Self-ID & “Different, Not Defective”

Episode Summary
In this Q&A episode of the AuDHD Psych Podcast, Aaron responds to questions and comments from the community about autism, ADHD, diagnosis, and what it really means to be “different, not defective.” Drawing on both clinical experience and lived AuDHD perspective, he unpacks why being autistic and having an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis are related but not identical concepts, and how context, support, and privilege shape whether traits become impairing or remain simply part of who we are.​

Aaron explores why many clearly neurodivergent people never receive a formal diagnosis, highlighting the role of masking, family strategies, and multi-generational awareness in buffering against distress and “disorder” labels. He uses accessible metaphors (like having legs versus having broken legs) to explain the difference between having autistic characteristics and meeting criteria for a disorder, and reframes autism and ADHD as neurotypes that can generate both difficulty and strength depending on the environment.​

The conversation moves into self-identification versus formal diagnosis, including the privilege, cost, and gatekeeping surrounding assessment and why Aaron prefers the language of being “self-identified” rather than “self-diagnosed.” He also addresses concerns that self-identification “mocks” those with formal diagnoses, noting that most self-identified autistic and ADHD people he meets have done deep research, grappled with imposter syndrome, and know their traits intimately long before tentatively claiming the label.​

Aaron then discusses diagnostic complexity, including how conditions like borderline personality disorder, complex trauma, OCD, and AuDHD can overlap or be misread as one another, especially when clinicians are unfamiliar with neurodivergent presentations. He illustrates how autistic and ADHD traits can be mistaken for personality pathology or compulsions when we don’t yet have a neurodiversity lens, and notes that co-occurrence is also possible — it’s not always either/or.​

Finally, Aaron touches on life stage factors such as perimenopause and shifting environmental demands (like starting university) that can dramatically change how ADHD and autistic traits show up, even when the underlying neurotype has been there since childhood. He closes by reflecting on the power of community, the emotional labour of advocacy, and his gratitude for listeners whose engagement and reviews help spread the core message of the podcast: we are different, not disordered.​

Key Themes & Takeaways

• Autism and ADHD are neurotypes (ways brains work), while “disorder” labels are applied when traits create significant difficulty in current environments.​
• Being autistic and having an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis are not the same thing; diagnosis is a professional label, not the origin of traits.​
• Many autistic and ADHD people remain undiagnosed due to masking, high intellect, strong supports, or family strategies that buffer visible impairment.​
• You can have autistic characteristics without meeting criteria for autism spectrum disorder, much like having legs without having broken legs.​
• Self-identification is often the result of extensive learning, reflection, and i

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello friends, welcome back to the Audi HD Psych podcast. My name's Aaron Howard, Clinical Psychologist, and I need more sleep. Don't we all? Well, thank you to everyone who's tuned in so far. Um, I just want to say a big, big, big thank you to everyone who has subscribed to our Instagram page, subscribed to our podcast on the streaming apps, uh, all of those who have reviewed our podcast, we really appreciate that. It helps the algorithm algorize, and it just helps us get the word out there that we are different and not defective. And that is the central purpose of this podcast. So thank you to everyone who has tuned in to episode 9. I apologize for the poor sound of the first version of uh episode 9. We re-recorded that. Um, as I think I mentioned somewhere else. Uh, I've left both versions up just in case I said something in the original bad audio version that people found valuable. Uh but if you are sensitive to dreadful sound, please just listen to the one that's labelled episode nine and ignore the archived version. Well, this week I wanted to do, rather than a specific themed episode, I guess I wanted to touch in about some questions and points that have been raised in the comments sections, either on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, no Apple Podcast, on Spotify, or on the Instagram page where quite a lot of people have um commented and chatted in the comments there. So I've tried to group these by theme and I'll touch in, they seem to be um common themes of uh questions that people have. So I guess if I scroll in the right part of my page, um I guess I'll scroll in. So I have there's a theme of questions that are around stuff and things. All the stuff, all the things. I was on the wrong part of my thing. Um I bother editing that out. We'll find out. So I guess the first question or theme of questions, series of questions that have a thing, the first thingy thing thing. The first thingy thing. Thingy thing thing thing thing thing thing thing thingy thing thing thing, thing thing thing thing. So the first group of questions have a theme that centers on autism versus diagnosis. Um, and I'm going to mispronounce this, I have absolutely no doubt. But the comment everybody diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder is also autistic, but not everybody autistic is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. And that's really the point we try to make is that diagnosis does not determine whether or not you have the characteristics of autism or ADHD, or those that we have as ADHD is. The diagnosis is a label assigned by a professional that says the difficulties that result from your characteristics are such that it warrants a diagnosis. But, you know, many of us have other strengths that might not be related to our neurodivergent characteristics that mitigate the difficulties that we have. Um, there are a couple of people I've met who are very clearly very neurodivergent, but also have grown up in worlds where they're really comfortable with themselves. And I see no significant evidence that would warrant the disorder label to be attached to their experience. Also, being autistic and being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are not the same. I don't get it, and I did answer this in the comments, but it's exactly that. It's that I can have a characteristic without it expressing in my world in a way that causes problems for me. So, and I do have many of my Audi HD style of thinking, for example, is a bit of a double-edged sword for me. In my work, in my clinical work now, and in my professional work in the Navy for fault finding, I'm really good at thinking about the vaguely related thing that might help me identify what the problem is. Uh, sadly, throw my anxiety into the mix, and I can use that same mental frame to fill in blanks with arguably valid or invalid information that can cause conflict in my personal life. So the point we're making there is autism is a set of characteristics. Autism spectrum disorder is when those characteristics cause some level of difficulty for me in areas of my life. Um, then beautifully put, I've always had it. Just because I wasn't diagnosed yet doesn't mean I suddenly developed it. And that's the truth of every um every form of neurodivergence. They are developmental differences in the way our brains are developing and so the cognitive function are, which means that it's been happening since I was young through my developmental period. So it's not something that just has an onset later in life, it's always there. Sometimes the environmental demands mean that it doesn't express in an unhelpful way. And then sometimes the environmental demands, say going to university, when I've been able to cope with um high school with ADHD most of my life, get to university, extra freedom, extra need for organization. Suddenly my ADHD characteristics are on full display, and I'm assigned the disorder or the deficit label. The characteristics were always there. It's just about whether or not they're causing problems for me in my current context. And then somebody very kindly pointed out not being diagnosed does not mean that somebody doesn't have cancer. The cancer is there, regardless of whether the diagnosis is made. And finally, that's why it's frustrating that you're only able to get a diagnosis if your autism is interfering with your life to the point where it becomes unmanageable. And I don't want to speak for somebody else. But I think what is referring to there is identification or a sanctioned professional identification of your autistic characteristics. And this is the very reason that I'm so pro self-identification. Because if I have the characteristics and I know that other people in my family have the characteristics because neurodivergence runs in families, then why do I need to have disorder to be able to say I have autistic or ADHD or Audi HD characteristics? The diagnosis doesn't make that so. Who we are makes that so. Pardon me. So though the comment there was about diagnosis, I think what the comment uh did mean was about identification in a formal sense. Um any other little points that are worthwhile in there? Oh, I guess the point, the central point there is about autism, ADHD, Aud, learning differences, arguably the other forms of neurodivergent psychosis, are neurotypes. They are types of neurology, types of brains, the way our brains work, versus autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, labels assigned when there is difficulties arising from those characteristics. You know, I often use the example, um, excuse me, uh I use the example in a reel that I can be autistic without a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in the same way that I can have legs without them being broken. I can have autistic characteristics and I can have legs. I don't necessarily need to have autism spectrum disorder to have autistic characteristics, and I don't need broken legs to have legs, and that's really the central point I'm making there. Um why autistic people can be undiagnosed is a bit of a theme, uh, and that is because of the requirement of impairment, but also the capacity to mask. If, as I've said in the last episode, if I have um high intellect, above average intellect, I'm more likely to develop strategies to compensate for the difficulties that I might have in certain contexts. And if that's the case, uh I might not have obvious social difficulties or communication difficulties, but I'm probably, not always, but probably going to have a lot higher stress because I'm putting so much more cognitive energy, mental energy into managing what would otherwise be difficulties. Um, but also if I've just got good supports around me. If I come from a multi-generational, aware, neurodivergent family, autistic ADHD learning differences, or DHD, and my great-grandparents recognized that that were different, and they worked out a couple of strategies. Maybe for ADHD, they learned, like my own mum did, to set the clocks 10 or 15 minutes fast so that when my clock said I'm running a bit late, I'm actually running on time. And then my great-grandparents, their children, they came up with, I don't know, another strategy. Oh, if I have an impulse to do something, I count to 10. And so they just did that naturally, that was passed down in family law, and I learned put my clocks forward, and when I'm becoming overwhelmed, count down from 10, calm down, then I'm managing that emotional ability that we talk about. Then I'm managing perhaps my meltdowns. And then their children, my grandparents, maybe they learnt that um, oh, I don't know. Maybe they learnt that if you don't communicate in the same way as other people, that you need to be really direct, but also because other people don't understand our communication style, they always said to be really direct and preface it with, hey, I don't speak the same way that you do, so don't take offense. And they manage some of that social and communication difference that way. And then it comes down to me, and I have this coming in for all of the characteristics of my family's neurodivergence. And so I just live a life where these things are implicit, they're not stressful, I'm not judged for having these characteristics. So I don't end up with anxiety, depression, I don't end up with safety-related concerns. I might not even end up with the label autism spectrum disorder, Aud, ADHD, because it's just implicit in the way that I was raised and the people around me model these different strategies that I manage what other people might experience as difficulties. Now, that's not to say that uh one family is better than any other. Some people notice how to manage these things, some people have a lot of self-awareness, other people don't, and that arguably can be characterological and cultural. Um, and that really is just luck of the drawer. So, scrolling into my next uh round was self-diagnosis versus formal diagnosis and the privilege required. So, am I self-diagnosed autistic? I don't use that language because I do diagnose other people, and it's a very complex role, a very complex process to do an ethically sound job. Um, I need to not only know how to tick the boxes of diagnosis, I also need to know how to challenge my own biases. I also need to know what other conditions can look exactly like neurodivergence uh diagnostic criteria, so that I can make sure I'm making a diagnosis where one is warranted. Uh, the reason I use self-identified is because I don't diagnose myself because I haven't done all the psychometric measures and things like that that I would do for a client. I am self-identified, however, I see my own characteristics so very clearly in almost every person that I have diagnosed, and that's how I came to be aware of my own autism because I was completely unaware that my experience wasn't the same as other people's in so many ways. So, no, I'm not self-diagnosed, I'm self-identified autistic. Um, and I was formerly diagnosed with ADHD by a psychiatrist four or five years ago, three or four years ago. Oh, you do the math. So who says no, you can't be autistic without a diagnosis. Autism is a diagnosis, otherwise, you're delulu. Well, I don't share that point of view, and you're welcome to have the point of view that you do. A diagnosis necessarily requires difficulties. Um, I think anyone who does have a diagnosis will probably be able to say that the difficulties that have led to a diagnosis are not universal. I might become nonverbal in social settings where I don't know people, but I'm not nonverbal all the way across the board. That's not a global thing. If I'm with people that I trust, maybe my intimate partner, my family, my close friends, I'm not nonverbal. That is a characteristic we see, and that can be uh that can demonstrate the difficulties that yield the diagnosis of autism, for example. However, those difficulties aren't global, and if they're not global, that tells me that they're not actually characterological. They're not central to the characteristics, they're an interaction between our characteristics and the environment. And if that's the case, then you can be autistic without a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. And as somebody who does diagnose, I can very comfortably say with confidence that you can be autistic without a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. The two things are quite different. Uh the next comment I have is from you, Spoonybard. Oh, you Spoonybard. Um, identifying as autistic based exclusively on self-diagnosis makes a mockery of what people like me actually endure. Uh, I don't share that point of view. I don't think that identifying my own characteristics mocks anybody. And I think that's part of an unfortunate perspective that we have in some as parts of the community where we confuse the difficulties that can be related to our neurotype with our neurotype. So if I was to give another example, I failed year 12 twice because I'm tenacious and I thought I'll be fine this time, I still don't know how to study. Now, that doesn't mean that ADHD means I'm an academic failure, which is the implication of autism can't exist without a diagnosis and disorder. Because I'm now partway through a PhD. I've completed six years of study to complete a master's program and become a psychologist. So that tells me it's very clear that I was always smart enough to pass year 12. I just didn't have the skills required because the standard schooling system doesn't teach ADHDers how to anchor their attention on topics that don't seem interesting. So the disorder there was my failure of year 12 twice. Uh that's not inherent to my characteristics. If it was, then I would never have been able to pass undergrad, my fourth year, and my master's program, and I would never have been accepted into a PhD program. And that's the point we're making here. We're not mocking anybody by being able to say, I have these characteristics. Well, all we're doing is saying, I have these characteristics. And my personal experience is that the average person out there who self-identifies as autistic is not somebody who, as in the stereotypes, has seen a TikTok and thinks it's cute. The average autistic or Audi HD person that I've been exposed to who self-identifies without a formal diagnosis is somebody who's gone through a process that may or may not look something like this. Ah, autism, what's that? Ah, oh, I'm that. Oh, I do that too. Oh, maybe I could be autistic. No. And a bit of imposter syndrome comes up, and off we go and do a load of research so that most of the self-identified autistic people that I've met know more about their autism than I ever could. They know what autism is before they very tentatively, and again, this is my experience, very tentatively say, I think I'm autistic. Self-identification, in my experience, is not people doing cartwheels and pretending to be something they're not. It's people who recognize their own characteristics now that we're finally getting neurodivergence out into the sunlight. The great thing of social media is we have influencers who are doing things to raise the profile of neurodivergence. And we have an opportunity to do something a little bit more than that, and that is highlight the fact that we're not inherently flawed. We are different, and that comes with strengths, weaknesses, and neutral expressions of our characteristics. So looking at my timer here without an UMA handy to uh keep me on track, um, I always say that to people, I don't like how people um again, I don't use the language self-diagnose, I use self-identify. Um, but also I don't mind how people self-identify. I don't mind how people identify because no one knows you like you know you. Even if somebody does or doesn't diagnose you with a disorder, that's not a hundred percent guaranteed to be correct because when I'm gathering information about you, um, a really good example is if you have ADHD and you are likely to be expressing that in ways that are unhelpful if you're getting a diagnosis. Neurodivergence runs in families. So your family are likely to have ADHD characteristics, quite strongly likely. But my experience is my normal. So if I'm your family, you're my child, and you're a bit inattentive, uh, maybe a bit impulsive, but so am I. That's my normal. So when a diagnoser comes to me and says, Oh, is your child inattentive or distractable? You think to yourself, or I think to myself, oh no, they're just like me, I know more than anybody else. They don't meet that diagnostic criteria. But if we've got the neighbor's parent in to answer that same question and they don't have those same characteristics, it's very likely that that diagnostic criteria would have been met. So even a formal diagnosis isn't a perfect system, as nothing created by humans is. And it's important to bear that in mind. A formal diagnosis is not the same as validity of characteristics. A formal diagnosis is somebody's assessment that you have clinically significant difficulties that are related to or born of your characteristics in a particular environment. So, is it possible that exposure to this type of content may suggest alignment with Aud Spectrum that I have not previously identified? Um I believe that was from Lewis. So that's a really interesting question. I think that like attracts like. So, and what I mean by that is if you like football, you're more likely to hang out with people who like football. If you speak Mandarin as a first language, you're more likely to hang out with people who spend speak Mandarin as a first language. If you have an attentional style and a communications and social style that is different from the average person, then it's more likely that you're going to hang out with people who have a similar style of communication or attention. That doesn't mean that because I know autistic people or ADHD is or ADHD, that I am one. But in my personal experience and in my clinical experience, that it is a common thing that I see, and that is like attracts like. So I'll suggest your communication style is like theirs. In the space of autism, it is a difference of social relational communication styles, and of course, the sensory differences and restricted and repetitive patterns of thought, behavior, and use of objects. In terms of ADHD, same thing. If I'm really, really impulsive, I'm going to be attracted to other people that are really, really impulsive. If I'm novelty seeking, I'm going to enjoy being around other novelty seekers. If I'm conversationally tangential as I am, I'm going to really enjoy conversation with people who are conversationally tangential. And don't mind that, Nicole, I'm looking at you. So essentially, being interested in something doesn't necessarily mean you have characteristics. But if you're surrounded by and extremely comfortable with people who have a certain set of characteristics, you may very well have them. And I would suggest using one of the well elevated screeners to see if an environmental Investigation is required. For ADHD, we can use a simple six question ASRS V, the adult ADHD self-report scale, for the DSM V. For autism, the AAQ, the autism quote autism spectrum quotient, there is a 50 question version and a 10 question version, and they're reasonably reliable in identifying many people who have characteristics and reasonably reliable in excluding many people who don't. Again, they can't be perfect, so they're not, but they're a good indicator. What's our next question here? Somebody commented privilege is a keyword here, I think, in response to the fact that I'd made the comment about the distinction between autism and autism spectrum disorder, and disorder is not required for autism. I'd made the comment that there's privilege involved in having a diagnosis, the privilege of knowing what autism is to even seek a diagnosis, to having a clinician who understands what autism is and can assess and make the diagnosis available to you. And then in many parts of the world, having the significant financial resources and resources more broadly to be able to attend a diagnostic assessment and pay for that to get the diagnosis. So if I, as I did grow up in a commission house, as a young person, we might not have had the money to be able to afford for me to have a diagnosis. So again, I stand by one doesn't need a diagnosis to be autistic or to be an ADHD or an Audi HDR or to learn differently. Comments about my stance on self-identification versus clinical diagnosis. I actually already touched on that. Self-identification can be validating and a step towards care. Noticing what my characteristics are, as many people who self-identify do, uh, can one be normalizing. It can be a way of recognizing that actually these difficulties that I have aren't me not trying hard enough, aren't me being lazy, aren't me being too rigid, or aren't me being too OCD. It actually is just the way my brain works. There's some safety or joy in some of my stims, whatever the characteristics are, if I recognize what I am, diagnosis or not, I can feel normal, I can feel human, I can feel not other. And strolling along, so my next round of questions were benefits and limits of diagnosis in adulthood. This is a really broad question. But I, me personally, uh diagnosis and self-identification as uh a middle-aged human. I'm 51 years old, I was diagnosed at 47 with ADHD, I recognized at around 49 that I'm autistic. What is that to me? What are the benefits of that? Um, the benefit of that is I now understand so much difficulty that I had when I was younger, and I think so many of us do. We're able to reframe the experiences that we had and say to ourselves, ah, I thought I was a terrible person for that thing. But actually, what it was is I literally speak a different dialect to everybody else when it comes to social and communication styles. And that's how I describe autism, social differences, and communication differences. We all speak the same language. Just neurodivergent people speak a different dialect. The same basics are there, but you might misperceive my lack of joyful facial expression when you walk in the room as me somehow implying something about you when really it's just I see you walk in the room, my face doesn't need to respond. I mean, my face does because all the movement, but nonetheless. Um that was a question: how does diagnosis have benefits for a middle-aged adult? In terms of autism, uh, if you're comfortable with your characteristics and you uh have access to a clinician who also understands the characteristics of autism, whether you have a diagnosis or not, we can use the same interventions, um, whether or not you have a piece of paper saying you're autistic, because that your difficulties will be the same as somebody with a diagnosis. So I literally have said to people who have come to me for a diagnosis of autism, what's the point? And by that I genuinely mean what's the benefit? Because it's a costly process here in Australia. And if you're going to shell out thousands of dollars for a diagnosis and it's not going to facilitate funding for supports for you, or it's not going to give you a level of insight that you believe is worth the money that you're spending, then I would say it's not really worth getting a diagnosis if you're comfortable self-identifying. Um, if you're not, and there are many of us that our imposter syndrome is strong, and we feel that we need the validation of a clinician. Sorry, that was my timer going off, that we need the validation of a clinician for us to be able to say that we're autistic and identify with that label. And to you, I say you do not need somebody else to tell you that you're autistic. You know you better than I know you if you come to me for a diagnosis. And if there's no benefit apart from being able to say I'm autistic in that process for you, then I strongly suggest that maybe the diagnostic process isn't worthwhile for you. But do consider the difficulties that you're having and does the diagnosis serve you in some way? Does it facilitate accommodations? And in that case, then really consider what your needs are and what your cost-benefit analysis are. In terms of the limits of a diagnosis in adulthood, um, I do see a lot of people tend to have quite a lot of grief and regret over a lack of earlier life diagnosis. Now, this is not my experience, so I'm speaking out of school here. My experience is just pure gratitude because I have the privilege of, yeah, I absolutely had difficulties related to my characteristics, but I'm also able to see all of the great joy that it brought into my life. Was it super healthy for me to be working a nightclub and go nightclubbing far for far too many years? No, it wasn't. But there was a lot of joy in that, and a lot of my closest friends are also neurodivergent, and I met them in that time of my life. And were I not impulsive and inattentive and conversationally tangential, I wouldn't have resonated with those people, and they would not be in my life now as some of the core mainstays of joy and privilege that I hold. And that's not everybody's experiences, and I understand that. For many people, it's uh how could my life be different? And I did briefly ask that question myself. What if I hadn't failed year 12 the first time? What if I'd gone to uni and done law, which was my my childhood fantasy? Um, it turns out I'm not quite that into law, but uh what if I had? You know, I may be maybe a KC right now. Um, but I may not. I may have got part way through that degree and realized that it wasn't for me and started something completely different. As it was, my impulsivity had me join the Navy at 19, and then I bounced around that environment for 23 years. I had the honor and the privilege of serving my country, and I had the privilege of meeting so many amazing human beings and seeing so many amazing places, again, full of amazing human beings. So for me, there isn't a great deal of regret and grief, but a lot of people do experience that. If I'd been diagnosed earlier, would I have had less stress? Would I have had less anxiety, less depression, less difficulties? And we can never know the answer to that question. But what we can know is now I know who I am, what I am, and if I've had difficulties in the past, and I can see that they were related to my neurodivergence, then knowing that I am neurodivergent gives me the opportunity to plan moving forward to avoid having those difficulties again. Um I internalize everything. Now I am working on getting my autism diagnosis. It's been a long journey, and I guess I kind of touched on this a moment ago, and it is a long journey for many people to go through the diagnostic process. And I as a somebody who diagnoses and a clinician, I want to acknowledge that. Um, we need a lot of information, a lot of information to be able to confidently say, yes, you are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. And I then write at the bottom of that paragraph uh because I was trained by somebody who indicated to me how important that was, and if you guys can hear, a very navy cat is behind me. Um I always include underneath my diagnosis, uh, and it's I don't include it if it's not true, but if it is, and it usually is, my confidence in this diagnosis is high. That's because I collect a significant amount of information, and it takes quite a long time to do that. I take your information that you give me, I take the cat headbutting my hand, I take your parents or your family members or your partner's information that they give me. I ask you and informants to complete standardized psychometric measures that link into ADHD, for example. Um there's a lot involved. So the process is long. And if you don't have, it's particularly if you're an ADHD, because we have presentations that aren't consistent with typical ADHD and typical autism. Um nobody exists exclusively in one discrete group there. We will all have characteristics that are scattered all over the place, um, often uh dominant in say autism or ADHD or perhaps learning difference. Um we'll all have a sprinkle of cognitive characteristics that relate to other things also. If I'm being diagnosed by a clinician who doesn't understand that difference in presentation of an ADHDR and my impulsivity and inattention versus an ADHDR, or my cognitive rigidity and how that uh is expressed compared to the way it's expressed by an autistic person in their life, um, I might be missed. It might be a really long process, or the clinician might need to get more and more information so that they can confidently say that they can diagnose you with that particular condition. Now, I have talked for over half an hour today, so I'm going to quickly scroll down and see if there was anything much more. Oh, okay, there was about the misdiagnosis and overlapping conditions and life stage. So, miss and missed diagnosis, overlapping conditions, and life stage are really important and they all intersect. I touched in last episode, I think, or the episode prior, about the miss or misdiagnosis that can often come from borderline personality. Borderline personality is a set of difficulties that are specifically underpinned by impulsivity and social differences. There's some black and white thinking involved there, idealization, devaluation of people. But when you overlay that on the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and autism, you can see how it can very easily be a presentation that comes of Audi HD characteristics and interpersonal trauma or stresses. When we look at, I think the other example I gave was OCD. If somebody doesn't have a strong understanding of autistic stims or neurodivergent stims, a lot of our stims can look a lot like OCD compulsions. If I'm doing something and it brings my anxiety down, that can be read through the lens of I have an obsession, a thought that makes me anxious, and I do this repetitive behavior that reduces that anxiety. That sounds like an OCD compulsion. But actually, my eyebrows is the example I often use. I stim with my eyebrows. Those of you on video, I was just doing it for you. My eyebrows like to dance. Um, day to day, there's no real value in that. It just feels nice to me to do that. However, the more stressed or tired I become, the more I do it, and the more pronounced it becomes. So it's moving more into that stress relief kind of space. Whereas day-to-day, it's kind of like when I had hair twirling my hair around my finger. It's something that has no apparent value, but just feels good or right or egosyntonic to do. So there's also somebody very kindly shared on Instagram how it goes in the other direction as well. They're the people around them are autistic, ADHD, or Audi HD is, um, and their diagnoses are borderline and complex traumatic stress disorder. And that's their experience and their situation. So that's a really valid point that um borderline doesn't only exist in the context that I've presented that it may exist in an Audi HD presentation with um chronic or early life interpersonal trauma, but it can also exist exclusive um neurodivergence, also. Uh, and quite a few people commented that they either believe that they had been or had been diagnosed earlier in life with borderline and later been diagnosed with Audi HD or neurodivergence. Um, a couple of people commented about their experience in perimenopause. I won't speak too deeply into that because I don't have a significant uh knowledge base there. But what I can say is we do know that that really impacts on our ADHD characteristics and how they express and can really impact on those attentional differences. So the period in life that I'm in, and also, and I touched on this with you know family history, the management strategies that I've been able to develop across my life can change how my characteristics present, also, for better or for worse. Well, my throat is exceptionally dry. There's more questions that I could um I could speak to here, but I apologize. I've monologued quite a bit and I will wind up now. But thank you all very much for having a little listen to my noise. I really appreciate it. And one more time, if you have a chance, uh please like us, follow us, and subscribe us on social media, Instagram, or on your streaming platform. If you have a couple of moments there and you enjoy what we do, please give us a rating on the streaming platforms because it helps get the word out there. And finally, thank you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it. And I just want to clock on my little ego wall that we're about to click over 5,000 followers on Instagram, which is unbelievable to me. And we've just clicked over on BuzzSprout, who hosts our podcast. Over 5,000 downloads on there. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I cannot say it enough, and I truly appreciate all of your support. All right, friends, you take care. We'll see you next time. And we are different, not disordered. Take care.