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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Parul Singh on late AuDHD diagnosis, empathy, and self-advocacy
- Parul Singh describes first recognizing ADHD traits during high school when inconsistent performance and boredom-driven disengagement began affecting school reports.
- She explains that a later autism diagnosis (about three years after ADHD) clarified long-standing social struggles, identity confusion, and friendship breakdowns that ADHD alone didn’t explain.
- She discusses how alexithymia makes it hard to verbalize nuanced emotions, complicating conflict resolution and making her rely on time, space, and external tools (like emotion wheels) to process feelings.
- She reframes empathy and connection as often being expressed differently in autism/ADHD, introducing “pebbling” as a way autistic people show care through objects or information rather than typical emotional cues.
- She contrasts meltdowns and shutdowns and shares a travel incident where recognizing a meltdown enabled her to exit an overwhelming situation and prioritize her needs.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasHer first clear ADHD signs showed up when school demands changed and boredom increased.
She said she suspected ADHD most clearly in high school when academic impact started showing up, especially in subjects she found boring, alongside common report themes like “bright but doesn’t apply themselves” and inconsistency.
The autism diagnosis explained social and identity struggles that ADHD alone didn’t account for.
She described her autism diagnosis as answering questions that remained after her ADHD diagnosis, and said it especially reframed painful patterns around friendships, misunderstandings, and being labeled “self-centered,” “controlling,” or “demanding.”
Her diagnoses changed family dynamics by giving everyone a clearer framework for understanding behavior.
She said she and her family became more open and compassionate after her diagnoses, including a cathartic conversation where she told her dad she believed he was autistic and connected it to specific examples like “sense of justice” and social cue challenges.
Difficulty naming emotions can look like refusal or stonewalling, even when it’s not intentional.
She described alexithymia as a major barrier: she struggles to identify emotions beyond “good,” “bad,” and “neutral,” which can create relationship friction because something feels wrong but she can’t immediately explain what it is.
She shows affection through “pebbling”—thoughtful objects or information—more than conventional emotional signaling.
She explained “pebbling” as an autistic love language: giving small items or curated information (like links or recommendations) to show care, comparing it to penguins giving pebbles.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesI spend 95% of my waking time accommodating and adapting to the people around me, and doing things like their way or saying things that they want to do, and just really overthinking things.
— Parul Singh
The thing which really hit me hard with that one is my difficulty with friendships and retaining friendships.
— Parul Singh
My whole identity and personality was a patchwork blanket of all the people I'd interacted with, down to my, like, dialect, like, my tone, my mannerisms, everything.
— Parul Singh
You become so attached to the masking because it's allowed your survival for so long.
— Parul Singh
Sometimes can be misinterpreted as abusive, because if somebody's constantly stonewalling, but then they're actually having a shutdown and they have no option but to freeze you out because they are frozen, they don't have any control over that.
— Parul Singh
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SPEAKERS
Parul Singh
guestFounder of Parallel Minds (a neurodiversity consultancy) and a tech professional/public speaker who discusses her late AuDHD diagnosis.
Alex Partridge
hostHost of the podcast ADHD Chatter, interviewing guests about ADHD and related neurodiversity topics.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
