Having autism and ADHD is like wearing a tie-dye shirt
Before 2013, diagnostic criteria said that if you were autistic you could not have ADHD and if you had ADHD you could not be autistic. A study from 2022 suggests that 50 to 70% of autistic people have co-existing ADHD and up to 20% of those with ADHD are autistic. A significant number for each condition.
That’s the boring science out of the way. What does that mean to me and others like me? It’s like a tie die shirt. Imagine that autism is yellow and ADHD is blue. A traditional dye it yourself tie die shirt will not only have white, yellow and blue areas, but something new, various shades of green.
I used the simple method. as a young adult I tie-dyed my own white T-shirt first by tying the shirt in a knot and dunking it it a bucket of green dye, then tying it with string and dying red. There was a lot of brown and pink in the result. It was OK for a first effort, good enough to wear, but I knew I could have done better.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have their separate diagnostic criteria, but when they are co-occurring there’s something else there as well, something unique for each person. This has led to a new term for both being present known as AuDHD. First used in 2022 online by people with the co-occurring conditions it is now being used by some researchers as well. Who are saying that just as blue and yellow combine to create a new colour, green, so ASD and ADHD combine to form something new.
The effect can be negative: It’s perplexing when you are craving both routine (ASD) and novelty (ADHD) at the same time. But then there’s that wonderful moment when the two combine when you are hyperfocussing on one thing that allows you to easily switch to concentrating on another. I don’t do multitasking, unless they are very simple tasks. But I can usually task switch. Just don’t ask me about the previous task, I’ve switched my focus completely.
So what do you call someone with both autism and ADHD? There is no official name, but call me an AuDHDer.
Making an ass of myself 
Hello, I am AuDHD I was a late diagnosis less than a year ago right before turning 45. The being able to lose focus right in the middle of my Hyperfixations is quite frustrating. I have been working hard in my life to learn and navigate through both of these diagnosis, even though I hadn’t had them officially. Learning how to deal with the way your individual mind works and grow with what works for you is the only way to make it day to day.
Thankyou for taking time to reply.
I don’t think of them as two conditions a lot of the time, as what they both add up to is me. How the interaction that adds up to you works could be very different. Very little on the interraction seems to be known by psychologists on the ground.
SteveP
When I read your post I couldn’t help myself thinking of how to pronounce AuDHDer, and I thought of a latin term I’d run across… just for your amusement.
audere, –
verb
Definitions:
pronounced by some as oww-deer-eh
A little better than odder. hahaha Happy trails and keep posting.
your fellow sufffering-servant,
gregory