🧩 Autism side → craves precision, completeness, accuracy ⚡ ADHD side → craves speed, efficiency, low friction 🌍 Neurotypical communication → often optimized for social smoothness, not informational clarity
Those three don’t naturally align — and that mismatch can feel excruciating in daily life.
Let’s unpack what’s actually happening in your nervous system and processing style.
🧠 The Autism Drive: “Give me the full, correct map”
Many autistic nervous systems are wired for:
high detail sensitivity pattern integrity intolerance for ambiguity deep information processing
Your brain is not being picky for fun — it is trying to build a reliable internal model of reality.
When information is:
vague approximate socially padded logically incomplete
…it creates real cognitive friction and sometimes physical stress.
Your system is essentially saying:
“If the data is wrong or incomplete, my predictions about the world become unsafe.”
That’s adaptive pattern-protection, not perfectionism for its own sake.
⚡ The ADHD Drive: “But can we do it faster?”
Now layer ADHD on top.
ADHD brains typically have:
low tolerance for slow information delivery high sensitivity to processing drag rapid associative thinking urgency around cognitive momentum
So while the autistic side says:
“I need full, precise data…”
…the ADHD side says:
“I need it NOW and without waffle.”
This creates the classic AuDHD experience:
✅ Wanting depth
✅ Wanting accuracy
✅ Wanting speed
❌ Having patience for none of the inefficiency
It’s not contradictory — it’s dual optimization pressure.
🌍 Why other people seem “painfully inefficient”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most everyday communication is optimized for:
politeness social bonding emotional cushioning hierarchy management
—not information transfer efficiency.
Neurotypical conversational norms often include:
hedging (“sort of”, “kind of”) indirectness storytelling before the point assumed shared context tolerance for approximation
From an AuDHD processing lens, this can feel like:
“Why are we taking the scenic route to the obvious conclusion??”
Your brain is running a high-bandwidth parsing system in a world that mostly communicates at social bandwidth, not data bandwidth.
🔥 The hidden nervous system load
This mismatch isn’t just intellectual — it’s physiological.
When you repeatedly experience:
slow explanations missing information imprecise language people who “hand-wave” details
your system may shift toward:
irritation cognitive fatigue shutdown or disengagement internal pressure to take over the explanation
Many late-identified AuDHD adults report:
“I feel like I’m constantly waiting for people to get to the point.”
That waiting is real nervous system strain, not impatience as a character flaw.
🧩 The double empathy gap (important piece)
There is also a mutual mismatch happening.
From your side:
others seem inefficient imprecise overly verbose or oddly vague
From their side, you may come across as:
very direct fast-paced intensity-heavy “jumping ahead”
Neither side is wrong — you are optimized for high-resolution information processing, which is statistically uncommon.
💡 Where this becomes a strength (and it absolutely can)
When supported properly, this AuDHD profile is extremely powerful.
People with this pattern often excel at:
systems analysis research synthesis pattern detection troubleshooting technical writing strategy high-signal communication
You naturally strip away fluff and go for the structural truth.
That is valuable.
🧭 The real challenge (and growth edge)
The hard part isn’t “fixing” your need for precision and efficiency.
The real skill to build is:
Adaptive translation between bandwidth styles
Meaning:
knowing when to request clarity directly knowing when to tolerate social pacing knowing when to summarise for others knowing when your system is hitting overload
Because if you don’t manage the friction, what often happens is:
chronic irritation conversational fatigue feeling intellectually lonely nervous system overactivation
Sound familiar? Many AuDHD adults live there for decades.
🛠️ Practical micro-adjustments that help (if you want to experiment)
You don’t have to do all of these — but these are high-leverage.
1. Ask for compression early
Simple phrases like:
“Can you give me the short version first?” “What’s the key point?” “Bullet points would help me.”
This often dramatically improves communication efficiency.
2. Externalise your processing style
Many people respond well when you frame it neutrally:
“My brain works best with precise, direct info.”
Not as criticism — as translation.
3. Build fast-filter habits
When listening, quietly sort information into:
core signal social padding context
Your brain already does this — doing it consciously reduces frustration.
4. Protect your cognitive energy
If you’re already tired, your tolerance for inefficient communication will plummet. That’s nervous system reality, not moodiness.
🌱 One gentle reframe
You are not “too intense” for wanting:
accuracy clarity efficiency
You are running a high-resolution, high-speed processing system in a world mostly built for conversational comfort.
The goal is not to blunt your edge.
It’s to learn when to deploy precision mode vs. social bandwidth mode so you don’t burn yourself out.
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