When Two Diagnoses Hide Each Other: How My ADHD and Autism Took Turns Masking the Truth
When I was first diagnosed with ADHD, everything made sense. I finally had a name for the chaos, the forgetfulness, the mental pinball machine I’d been living in. I started medication and I was able to start accommodating my executive dysfunction. And for a while, I was doing really well. I felt more focused, more productive, and less exhausted.
But what I didn’t expect was that treating my ADHD would make the world start hurting. That the moment my brain stopped sprinting for dopamine, I’d be blindsided by a tidal wave of sensory overload and deep emotional rigidity I couldn’t explain.
When Stimulants Expose the Hidden Truth
Starting stimulants was life changing in a lot of ways. But not all of them were positive, and that wasn’t something I had expected. All of the sudden, I couldn’t walk through a grocery store without wanting to scream. The lights felt like knives in my eyes. The carts squeaked in surround sound. The overhead music and beeping checkout scanners tangled together in my brain until it short-circuited.
Where I used to just feel tired after socializing, now I was wrecked. I’d find myself fully disoriented, irritable, and overstimulated by every damn detail of the outside world. I would need days to feel like I was fully recovered from even a minor social event—even with people that I loved being around.
It wasn’t that these traits weren’t there before, I realized, though. It’s that they were masked. The ADHD had been loud, but beneath the noise there was something quieter, sharper, and more rigid. It wasn’t until I treated the ADHD that I realized it had been cloaking something else entirely: autism. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
The Twisted Dance of AuDHD: Hiding in Plain Sight
The more that time went on and I was able to accept both diagnoses, I realized that it wasn’t just that my ADHD masked my autism. It was that both of them had been taking turns hiding each other my whole life. And that, I think, is why it took me 30+ years to figure out who I actually was.
I started to see that ADHD made me impulsive and scattered but autism made me detail-oriented and structured in the ways that counted. So even though I constantly forgot where I put things, I always had a color-coded planner. Even though my backpack was a disaster, my essays were pristine. Even though I procrastinated on homework, I never missed a due date. I realized that for each area of executive dysfunction that would flare-up from my ADHD, my autistic wiring would kick in and overcorrect, just enough to keep me under the radar.
And socially? The autistic part of me always felt awkward, like I was an alien trying to decode human behavior. But my ADHD and constant dopamine-seeking made me bold, fast-talking, and expressive. So even though I always felt different and out of place socially, my ADHD made me an excellent actor and left no one the wiser, including myself.
Often, when ADHD and autism show up in the same brain, they don’t just exist independently. They blend and even obscure each other. They confuse everyone—including the person living inside them—and can result in neither one getting noticed or recognized.
The Camouflage Effect: AuDHD and the Diagnostic Blindspot
Looking back, it feels almost inevitable that I was missed. Girls like me who are gifted, high-masking, and rule-following on the surface slip through the cracks all the time because we look fine and we don’t fit the stereotypical understanding of neurodivergence. But girls like me with both ADHD and autism? We don’t just slip. We disappear (even to ourselves). Because the chaos of ADHD cancels out the rigidity of autism. The impulsivity buries the shutdowns. The sensory seeking behavior overrules sensory aversions. And the whole damn thing looks “functional” enough to ignore.
But what I’ve learned since then—what I want other women who might be AuDHD to know—is that your truth might be layered too. You might be carrying two neurotypes that are tangled around each other so tightly, they look like something else entirely.
Sometimes, clarity doesn’t come until the noise quiets. Sometimes, it takes naming one part of you to finally hear the other.
Does your brain feel at war with itself, too?
Therapy for your AuDHD can help you untangle the layers.
I offer individual and group therapy to neurodivergent women in Greenwood Village, CO or online across the state. I’d be honored to be a part of your support system.
You can read more about me (an AuDHD therapist), learn about Therapy for AuDHD, or book a consult today!
