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neurodivergent_insights

Research-informed AuDHD, autism & ADHD resources, grounded in clinical insight and lived experience. Not medical advice. Run by MA's team.

I create mental health and wellness resources for the neurodivergent (ADHD and Autistic) person in mind. You can find my workbooks, fillable worksheets, and more on my shop https://neurodivergentinsights.com/neurodivergentstore)

Or join my Patreon for access to monthly workbooks https://www.patreon.com/neurodivergent_insights

09/03/2026

Diagnostic overshadowing is one of the main reasons that so many Autistic and ADHD adults are missed for so long, often after a long string of other diagnoses.

Once something is on the chart, what follows tends to get read through it. For example, sensory overload can be interpreted as anxiety, restlessness as trauma, impulsivity as a mood disorder, and the second (or third) explanation never gets assessed. In AuDHD this can also happen between the two neurotypes, where the more visible one absorbs the clinical attention and the other stays in the background for years.

We can also misattribute mental health conditions to our neurodivergence, for example mistaking hypomania for ADHD traits, so it can go the other way too, where we miss mental health conditions.

For me, learning to tease apart my own experience (what is ADHD, what is autism, what is OCD, what is bipolar, what is anxiety) has been one of the more useful things I've done. The threads certainly still braid together and influence one another, and some days I can't tell which is which, but having the language for each one changes how I work with it. I respond differently to sensory overload than I do my anxiety. OCD checking gets a different response than ADHD checking and so on.

For more on diagnostic overshadowing and other core concepts, you can find the full NDI glossary up on our website (linked in comments).

08/26/2026

The Double Empathy Problem is one of the concepts that has helped shift Autistic communication out of a deficit framing. Damian Milton introduced the concept in 2012 as a response to "mind-blindness" and the long-standing claim that Autistic people simply lack empathy. His framing drew on his background as a sociologist and reflects the idea that communication breaks down in the reciprocity between two people who experience the world differently, where neither one is the broken party.

The concept has also been criticized. I find some of the critique fair, and some of it two theories talking past one another. A 2025 paper in Psychological Review argues the research base is thinner than the concept's popularity suggests. For example, the studies tend to measure rapport or mutual understanding rather than empathy itself. And research looking at cross-neurotype communication so far comes mostly from speaking Autistic adults in Western samples, and sometimes the concept has even been misunderstood to mean "the deficit is really on the non-autistic side," which isn't what Milton was claiming and slides into aspie supremacy and otherism rhetoric.

Where I think the critique misses Milton's work is that it applies the psychological construct of empathy to a sociological paper. I assume Milton chose that word to challenge the "mind-blindness" and "lack of empathy" framework he was pushing back against, rather than to make a psychological argument about empathy as a measurable trait.

The substance of the concept, as Milton put it forward, is about reciprocity, and on that point I think the framework still holds value. I also agree that the word "empathy" creates unnecessary confusion, which is part of why I appreciate the language of neurological humility and cross-neurotype communication, and appreciate that this framework and the language we use to talk about this concept is still very much evolving.

📌 For more core concepts and definitions, you can find the full NDI glossary on our website.

08/24/2026

When I first learned about the interest-based nervous system, I had what felt like a dozen aha moments. Most of my excitement was on the practical side: how to use this framework to help me get engaged when I'm struggling.

Then I heard Dr. Dodson, in one of his webinars, describe the shadow side of an interest-based nervous system. The restlessness and dysphoria that boredom brings, and all the creative (and not always helpful) workarounds we find to get out from under it.

When I think back on a lot of the unhelpful coping I've leaned on over the years, much of it traces back to this. The relentless, almost existential ache of being understimulated, and the way I scramble toward unhelpful things just to make it stop.

I find this framework helpful in a couple of ways: On one hand it helps to de-shame a lot of past or unfortunate coping. And it helps me plan ahead for the moments when I get what I've come to call the “dopamine itch”, so I'm not making decisions from bored mind.

If you want to go deeper into this framework, the Interest-Based Nervous System Workbook is linked in our bio. Additionally, we also have several free articles and visual guides available on the website.

08/17/2026

Most productivity advice assumes an importance-based brain: do the thing because it matters, because there are consequences. For a lot of ADHD folks, that's just not how motivation works.

The interest-based nervous system, a term from Dr. William Dodson, describes what does tend to get us moving: things like interest, novelty, play, a bit of competition, and the pull of urgency.

Getting curious about my drivers and then finding ways to bake them into my life organically has been one of the things that's helped me when I'm struggling to get engaged with a project I want to be able to do. It looks different for every ADHDer, and especially for AuDHDers (for example, hurry needs to be adapted for autism and for PDA), which is why it's worth experimenting like a self-scientist.

The full Interest-Based Nervous System Workbook is linked in comments.

08/14/2026

For a long time, dissociation was something that just happened to me. I'd fog out in a middle of a loud or intense moment, often without words for it until much later.

Understanding what was happening (last week's post covered the dissociation spectrum) has slowly shifted my relationship to it. I've slowly been growing more agency in working with it, especially when it comes from sensory overload and emotional overwhelm.

This week's slides pick up on that thread: matching the support to the type of dissociation.

The full article is linked in our bio.

08/12/2026

Before I knew I was ADHD, I used to joke that I had a broken dopamine faucet. It was so hard to turn on. And then once it got going I couldn't shut the thing off.

Apparently my joke wasn't totally off. Researchers are moving away from the idea that dopamine in ADHD is simply "low." It looks more like it's dysregulated.

Dopamine is our word of the week. There's still a lot we don't know about how dopamine works in ADHD, Autistic, and AuDHD brains, so we want to hold this research loosely. The slides walk through some of what the research tentatively suggests.

I'm curious: what's something that reliably turns your dopamine faucet on?

You can find more terms like this in the NDI Glossary of Terms and Core Concepts (link in bio).

08/10/2026

If "just do it" has never really worked on your brain, this may be part of why. ADHD motivation tends to run on interest, not importance.

PINCH is a handy way to remember the kinds of things that help get us moving. Most of us lean on some of these more than others.

It can be helpful to notice which ones light you up, and building tasks around them where you can.
Curious which is your strongest driver?

08/07/2026

Wednesday’s glossary entry covered dissociation. I wanted to go a bit deeper into this concept, because for Autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD people there are some extra pathways into dissociative experiences, ones that often confuse us and perhaps confuse our therapists.

For most of my life I didn’t know what to make of my foggy, dreamlike state that I seemed to perpetually be in. Learning what they actually were (in my case often how my body responds to sensory overload), has opened up so much understanding (and support).

This carousel is the condensed version. The full article goes deeper into the research, the nuances, and what the emerging science is saying. Linked in bio and comments.

08/05/2026

Dissociation is one of the ways our body's protects us when things become too much. It usually makes sense in context. When other ways of coping aren't available, the body does what it can to get us through. If it's happening a lot, that's worth paying attention to. It often means something needs more support.

For more glossary terms and core concepts you can see our full glossary. Linked in comments.

07/29/2026

Dynamic disability is a term that gave me language for something I had been living without a good way to describe.

A dynamic disability is a disability where symptoms/needs shift and with it capacity and ability fluctuates.

Earlier this year I tearfully purchased my first cane. Tearfully because it represented how much my pain and mobility had declined in six months (after thirteen years of living with it). My chronic hip and pelvic pain had reached a point where standing unassisted and walking steadily were no longer accessible to me. That brought a wave of ableism I had not had to contend with when my disability was invisible, and a grief about my body and my mobility that I am still working through.

I had a medical procedure, and I can currently walk comfortably as long as I keep spending two hours a week on rehab. And with every pain flare or wrong movement I'm acutely aware that I'm a flare-up away from pulling it back out of my closet.

That is the most visible form dynamic disability takes in my life. Most of it is less visible. Brain fog, energy that plummets, shifting sensory limits, executive functioning and impulsivity that fluctuate. Mood episodes that cycle with a mind of their own.

Disability is still a word I feel like an imposter owning. The language of dynamic disability has helped me hold that complexity with a bit less apology.

For more core concepts and definitions, you can find the full NDI glossary on our website.

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