The Emotional Toll Of Undiagnosed AuDHD (Explained by No.1 AuDHD Expert)

1. APAlex Partridge0:00

   What is the emotional toll perhaps of someone who has AuDHD but never figures it out?

2. KSDr. Khurram Sadiq0:07

   Th- this reminds me of a, um, of something that happened recently. Somebody, um, a mother, um, contacted me from, um, from Canada. She emailed me, and she said that she has read my book. She had, she had seen our, um, our, our previous podcast, and for a very long time she was in grief because her son died a year ago. Um, his name was Adam. Um, he was a musician. Um, he was a- at the age of 13 years, he was selected as one of the BBC Musicians of the Year. Um, gifted, he saw music on the piano. He learned, he mastered the music in two months after he learned the basics of it, to the extent that people said that he is unteachable now. People could not train him because he was at that very level. He died a year ago of overdose, fentanyl overdose, and the mother could not f-forgive him or forgive herself, had not looked at the picture for a year. And when she sent me the story and sent me the email, I cried for five minutes, just, just l- just listening and just l- listening to the voice note and, and looking at the story that she had sent, the pictures of the person. From the very onset, like again, he was, he was brilliant, but he used to forget things. He, he ended up one day with just one shoe in school. Um, he was, he was not a typical, um, ADHDer, and when mother raised concerns with, uh, with, with the school teacher, with, with, with the school nurse, and she laughingly said, "Oh, somebody who can memorize a 40-page, um, sonata cannot have any learning difficulty." So it was completely dismissed. And then there was another side to him who was very preoccupied with things, with special interests. He would not meet people. Um, he would not mingle with people. He was, uh, taught in one of the best mus- musical sc- music schools in the, in, in the world. Like he was in Manchester. Uh, then he went to the Hamburg, uh, Conservatory, which is one of the leading institutes, and he played all over Europe, but again, not socializing with people. The defining factor was, in his life, was the pandemic, and that broke him. He was devastated. He was locked in the, in the dorm, not able to get out. Mother had to fly all, all the way from Canada because he had lost yet another passport, his sixth in a year, and the authorities won't issue him the passport. And mother had no alternative but to take him back because he was not able to sustain himself in Europe. Um, and with that, his dreams shattered to be a musician. Um, he was diagnosed eventually with ADHD but was never medicated. He could not hold a job. Um, he started self-medicating. He then it went into using hard drugs and, uh, eventually became homeless and, and, and, and the world saw him as an addict. He could not go past, beyond that addiction phase of his. Like he became invisible from a music- musical prodigy to, to being a homeless person on the streets. And according to mother, his whole life was a contradiction. He was perfectionistic, yet very chaotic, and he, he feared life more than death. When, when his mother asked him, and again, that gave me goosebumps, Dan. The mother said, "Adam, why do you take drugs?" And he says, "Mother, normal people, they fear death. People like me, they use drugs because we fear life." That's such a strong statement, and it actually shows his insight into his life and how he was misunderstood and not seen. And he eventually one day died of a fentanyl overdose. His mo- parents were in another city. Mother received a call, the doctor, that, "Your son is on ventilator. What should we do?" This is what a missed AuDHD can look like. It, it's one of the most heartbreaking examples, but people like Adam, they just go unnoticed in this world. They became in- invisible, despite of being brilliant. And, like, the story has, has stayed with me. It doesn't go away, 'cause every, every time I think of AuDHD, I think of Adam.

3. APAlex Partridge5:19

   S- such a heartbreaking story, Khurram, and thank you for sharing it. I think it's a tribute to Adam, and it shines such a bright spotlight on the importance of the work that yourself and many people are doing to raise awareness. I think I, I'm certainly thinking of someone. I'm sure many of the listeners and viewers are thinking of someone that they know as well, their own version of Adam, who is deeply struggling, who perhaps it's themselves, who feels deeply un- misunderstood. What can undiagnosed AuDHD look like?

4. KSDr. Khurram Sadiq5:56

   The contradictions, they will live in contradictions. People have come to me that they have, they have said to me that-They were not sure whether they were autistic or ADHD for a very long time. They were too organized to be, um, to be ADHDers, and they are too disorganized to be, to be autistic. But at the same time, they-- things that they tried, there was a push-and-pull factor. They would not be able to achieve the full potential. Um, something stops them, and they don't understand what's stopping them. The disparity, the contradictions that we spoke about, for example, wanting something but unable to achieve it, having the attention span and the concentration but not able to sustain it for a very lo- long period of time unless they go into a phase of hyperfocus where there's, where there's, where there's a consequence attached to it. A lot of these people, they work in very stressful environments because the stress is leading the way, and stress is helping them achieve or finish things. You take away that stress, and if you put them in a very boring environment where there's no consequence, their work will be a very s- substandard level because there's nothing enticing them. There's nothing stimulating them towards it. And for an AuDHD, it's, it will be a story of shattered dreams, broken hearts, complicated interpersonal relationships, um, losing friend constantly without knowing it, sewing-- showing passion and aversiveness both at the same time towards their partners and towards friends and towards family. And people who cannot understand it and people who do not have the lens to understand these patterns will all of a sudden, they will move away from them, and they feel themselves to be lonely.

5. APAlex Partridge7:47

   Do you think having AuDHD is generally a lonely experience? In other words, is it hard to maintain conne- connections, friendships, relationships when in order to do that, you need to put a true version of yourself forward?

6. KSDr. Khurram Sadiq8:00

   Yeah.

7. APAlex Partridge8:00

   And it sounds like many people with AuDHD don't have a good understanding of who they really are.

8. KSDr. Khurram Sadiq8:04

   Yeah. And, and they m-- they start masking it, and masking takes a lot of energy, and masking l- lead them to be what they're not. The, the burden of carrying that mask in those relationship can be intense, and they can be volcanic eruptions from time to time because they're unable to sustain it for a period, or they could be burnouts because they're unable to have that energy to sustain that mask for a very long time.

9. APAlex Partridge8:30

   What emotions crop up when someone discovers they have AuDHD?

10. KSDr. Khurram Sadiq8:36

    It's a spectrum of emotions, a spec- spectrum of responses that you would get from people. Um, some people who have been-- who did not come on their own volition, but again, their partners or their, their friends kind of urged them to come. They can go through a state of denial, um, and then from there, they, they would like to learn more about themselves and eventually embracing, but it takes a lot of time. Some people get very emotional. Um, they, they cry, they grieve, and they grieve because they look at the missed opportunities. They look at the parents. Why were not pa- parents able to pick those up? And I always use this analogy. I said, "Eyes can't see what the mind does not know." Like, if the professions are missing so much on, on these diagnoses or these conditions, how can you expect somebody else who is not a professional, who have not been taught, who have not been educated about it, to be able to understand that? So that helps them to, to kind of ease their pain. Some cry with joy and satisfaction and said that, "We always wanted that, but I wanted it to be rubber-stamped. I'm satisfied. I'm-- I f- I feel that I'm whole now. I feel that I'm able to think from that very perspective." One of the most common thing is when people cry, cry with joy because they now know that the things that they're looking for, they found it now. Because they were kind of throwing arrows in the dark, shooting arrows in the dark. They did not know what it was. And if you don't know what it was, how are you gonna manage it?

Episode duration: 10:15