Joanna Weber
2 min readOct 21, 2024

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In ADHD, the struggles with social cues tend to be around wanting a deeper relationship more quickly than the other person (instant best friends = very intense) or simply overwhelming the other person with exuberant chatter.

In later life, you get used to reading those social cues so carefully that you can over-think and misinterpret ("are they mad at me?") - but that is also common for autistic people.

In ADHD, picky eating is having the same food every day for a month and then suddenly deciding you don't want to eat it again for at least a year.

Interoception is as common to ADHD as it is to autism, but in ADHD's case, it's because your brain has a traffic jam of competing signals: when you're trying to pay attention to everything, you don't notice hunger and thirst.

In ADHD, you struggle to hide your facial expressions, which can be amusing or troublesome in video meetings at work.

In ADHD, emotional dysregulation is having overwhelming and conflicting emotions. You might feel two different ways simultaneously, or lurch quickly from one to the other: "THIS IS THE WORST DAY EV- oh look! Coach has a sale on! I love those shoes!"

ADHDers need routine or nothing would get done! We're pretty chill if that routine is disrupted, but we'll probably forget to do whatever it was we were supposed to do.

ADHDers communicate in quotes, too, but our enhanced episodic memory means that we're more likely to use the exact words and intonations of the original quote - I'm replaying the episode of watching Mean Girls and can see and hear the movie clip in my mind.

Autistic people are more likely to have impairments to episodic memory and aphantasia - not having a 'visual' imagination - is more common, so quotes are more likely to be learned by rote.

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Joanna Weber
Joanna Weber

Written by Joanna Weber

UX research and product development | author of Last Mile

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