The Thoughty or Tea Podcast So, bit of an interesting story around it. It was when Covid had just started. I was working at Ashworth High Security Mental Health Hospital in Liverpool. Yeah, so it's a very different environment. But I remember a manager I had at the time, she just turned to me one day and she's like, she said, you know, you're a good clinician, she said, but you're a little bit different. And I was like, yes, that's correct. And my son had already been diagnosed and I told her and she's like, just come and have a conversation with somebody. So anyway, one thing led to another. And I was diagnosed with autism when I was like 36, something like that. But I mean, when I got a formal diagnosis, I wasn't really shocked because I guess it's common to all people with neurodiversity. You always kind of know and she told me and then ADHD, it was one of my patients. He was a consultant psychiatrist, he also used to work at Ashworth. And I was treating it one day and he just kind of turned around to me and he's like, you know, you've got ADHD, don't you? And I was like, yeah, I know. And he said, wait, I'm going for an assessment. So I'm going for an assessment and then I got diagnosed with that as well. So and I think, I know, I actually said to him, I said, one thing that confuses me is I don't know where autism starts and finishes or ADHD starts and finishes and he said to me, do you need to? He says, I don't. He said, I just call it neurodiversity and people have different mixes and combinations of different traits and attributes. He said, you're an individual has most people with neurodiversity and he is a consultant psychiatrist who he actually runs a private company in Manchester called Sanctum Health and they do private assessments for people that want to go down that route. Sure. Sure. I think that's quite a common sort of feeling, especially for people who have like a dual diagnosis, call them ordhds, so a you, yeah, the HD. And I find it really interesting whenever I've talked to anyone with that sort of dual diagnosis because it's it, it, it, there can be very caught contrary in their like signs of each. So like with ADHD, you have the aspect of sort of chasing that, that sort of novelty and excitement and interest and quite often that sometimes leads to being quite impulsive and wanting to, to make changes and wanting to continuously kind of adjust things. But then you've got like the the autism side, which is, you know, thrives in terms of mental health when we have like a stable routine, we know what we're going to be doing each day, each week, to some degree. So it's like a what point are you more autistic or ADHD kind of, you know, that sort of push and pull kind of dynamic. It's it's it's really quite complex, I think. I don't know what your experience was the tumble. I definitely felt like I'm more autistic than ADHD. So if you, you know, you read through diagnostic criteria, if you look at the DSM5, you can see that I've come treat this definitely some ADHD there, but I definitely felt like I'm more autistic and by virtue of that fact, it was the benefits that came with autism that allowed me to attain the level I have in different areas that attention to detail and being able to consume, you know, like large amounts of information and get that deeper level of learning on a subject area, it was that autistic, there was autistic traits that allowed me to excel. I feel anyway. I think it's it's it's it's hard isn't it because I mean obviously I I and many other people when we do our advocacy where I want me to talk about experiences in generality. It's you know, it's the thing is is that you can't you can't know exactly how each individual is and how they think and how they live the lives and everyone has their own sort of personal experiences. I had a podcast with Dr Megan Neff which I brought quite a few times just because it was such an insightful podcast for me. She was talking about, no, there were a few insights if you want to look her up, but she was talking about the being ADHD or autism dominant in terms of sort of presentation. And I think for a lot of people some some people might be put off by sort of I guess putting levels of autism and ADHD kind of as a comparison, but I think it is quite useful in terms of understanding how you live your life, how you work because as I said like it's not you know, autism is and ADHD are that the psychological diagnosis is so they're they're based on outward signs and it's not always clear exactly you know from the scientific literature that there's these designated split categories and like biological markers for knowing if someone's autistic or ADHD because we don't have that because it's not based on on that. It's just you know we do some people do studies they look into their trends, the biological trends for someone with that diagnosis, but it's always from that sort of psychological basis. So it's I really enjoyed that podcast. I know the one you said you're talking about. Yeah, I watched it. It was really good. What I can say is that having worked with a lot of consultant psychiatrist is that when you look at human behaviour you're talking about shades of grey and there is nothing that's clipped in order to objectify what they do. They have to have diagnostic criteria in order to be able to diagnose somebody with something. So in the ICD10 or the DSF5 if you look at it it will have these traits but I remember one thing that somebody said to me he said all these things are labels and when you strip the labels back you're just looking at behaviours, traits, you know common patterns and really when you give somebody that diagnosis you're describing a certain sort of psychological, like the psychodynamics that underpins it and that goes for a lot of mental health conditions. The label is probably less important. It's understanding the behaviours and why they do them that is more important. One for the clinician and two for the individual so they know how best to manage the world that we live in. Yeah definitely. I think I think that another sort of grey area comes in when we think about the idea of sort of identity as well because you know the medical system as you said it's it's it's set up to box you into different categories to label you and to provide systems of support or ways of improving on yourself that are applicable to that to that label. But when it comes to like things like identity you know it's it's something that's sort of very intrinsic for a lot of people and it's not always the case that every person who has who could be considered to be autistic an ADHD I were able or want to go for a diagnosis because it's always based on that sort of model of what's wrong and how can we help and if you don't see anything wrong they're not going to really see the the point in giving you a label and sort of helping out unless it's to do is sort of validation of your like self-identity which is so it's an interesting sort of area.