> And the rest of your comment is pretty much the story of my life give or take a few degrees.

It's always a small relief to know other people who have/had the same challenges. Thank you.

It was so much a relief to me too, and I’m glad I could help in that way. I’ll also tell you it saved my life. I had coped pretty well for years, but for a variety of reasons it deteriorated. I was in such bad shape before I sought diagnosis/treatment. Not saying that’s where you’re at but just validating that it can be seriously debilitating. Please feel free to reach out (same handle everywhere, personal site link in my profile, contact easy to find from there) if you want to talk more or any kind of direction on resources.

Edit: also if you do want to reach out and it feels daunting in any way, you can literally just say “HN” or any other recognizable thing and I’ll understand.

> also if you do want to reach out and it feels daunting in any way, you can literally just say “HN” or any other recognizable thing

Talk about empathy in action. That was a really caring touch.

Someone I like in the ASD domain is Max Derrat. He's a gaming streamer (which I have no interest in) but he has a lot of candid observations on his own struggles with autism. His experiences seemed to resonate strongly with a lot of people (myself included), and he's built a bit of a community around it.

Thank you very much for the offer. I feel like I'm on the other side of the worst of my troubles, but it has been a long road.

Cheers to the other side! The offer stands, if you ever want it.

Do you have any tips on dealing with these issues as an adult? I saw meditation mentioned at least.

If you have trouble concentrating while reading, consider reading while exercising lightly. Pre-covid I would read while on the elliptical at the gym and I could go for 90 minutes or so totally engrossed in the book, which was pretty much unheard of for me before.

Meditation is great if it suits you. Also know no one owns the source code, which is to say you’re entirely free to pause, calm yourself, get grounded however you prefer. No one is in charge but you.

I find nominal meditation practices exhausting. I find meditative practices that don’t claim to be universal much more accessible.

Navigating the actual difficulties: I’m benefitting from a diagnosis and medicine. Before that it was basically chance and very specific life tools/adaptations.

Do you have the attention span to meditate? I mean maybe it could help ADHD if you are super interested in it so you hyper focus on it but otherwise it would be a chore.

I identify with a lot of ADHD symptoms, and I think it's easier to find a "fun" meditation. For me that means walking-in-circle meditation, repetitious chants, and metta, and also a "some is better than none" mindset. Even 1 iteration of a chant is better than none, and takes less than a minute.

I struggle with breath meditation as a "chore".

Meditation can be a chore, I think. I only persevere with it because I find that when I lapse, my life is just worse in so many ways. The least worse path I can take at the moment is meditate 2 hours a day. Though I have lapsed for weeks at a time during 'low moods'.

I only reached the discipline for a 2-hour daily habit after immersing myself in 2 vipassana courses. This is probably not suitable for many people, but I was at the end of my tether and I had no choice but to succeed.