Living in the Overlap of Autism + ADHD

Turns out, my procrastination wasn’t a personal failing—it was thanks to a neurotype… or two.

I have a complicated relationship with procrastination.

On one hand, backing myself into a corner and allowing myself barely enough time to get something done stresses me the hell out and often causes an existential panic. On the other hand, I’m really effing good at getting stuff done last minute and have never faced the consequences of my actions.

As a student in middle and high school, I’d often wait until the night before to start a project or paper I’d known was due for months.

In college and grad school, I rarely missed class but always had a hard time focusing during lectures, so I’d attempt to teach myself a semester’s worth of material in the hours leading up to the final exam.

As an entrepreneur, I generally don’t begin to build my decks until the week of my workshop, and usually find myself putting the finishing touches on it as attendees are joining the Zoom room.

This strategy has literally never failed me. In fact, I was an A student throughout school, and I’ve only ever received stellar feedback from workshop attendees on my presentations.

It’s the same reason I’ve never had a consistent writing practice—I’ve convinced myself that anything that comes out when I force myself to sit down and write without feeling the insatiable need to write will be crap, which has led to me only ever writing when I feel called to do so. Needless to say, that belief has kept me from writing a single one of the MANY books I know are in me, and it’s made my newsletters inconsistent as hell.

(Side note – the only reason I’ve been publishing consistently for the last few months is because in November I joined the Writer’s Cottage, a twice-a-week writing group that my friend Mikael runs. If you’re a writer who doesn’t make time to actually write, I highly recommend joining.)

"Thriving Under Pressure" Is a Lie I Believed

Does the pressure that comes from procrastination help me do great work in less time? Yes. But do I thrive under pressure? No. Absolutely not. Would I rather be someone who avoids procrastination and gets things done well before they’re due? I mean, sure, that sounds great—but I’ve always believed that simply wasn’t an option for me.

For years I’ve told myself that the pressure is what squeezes the best work from me, and that the stress that comes alongside that last-minute brilliance is worth every heart palpitation. But as I’ve begun to untangle the decades of identification as an overachieving perfectionist gold star seeker, a little voice started nudging me to investigate this belief too.

Turns out, it’s less of a belief and more of a neurotype… or two neurotypes in my case.

The AuDHD Realization

Back in December, I was evaluated for Autism and received my diagnosis confirming my suspicions the week before Christmas. As I’ve written about in excess (here, here, here, here, here, and here), November through mid-March was an extremely overwhelming and dark time for me, so I didn’t really begin to process my diagnosis until I began seeing a therapist in early February. Within two sessions, she gently suggested that perhaps my Autism had been acting in tandem with ADHD.

After many conversations with her, ample deep dives and rabbit holes on my own, and an official evaluation with a psychiatrist, I received my acceptance letter into the late-diagnosed AuDHD (Autism + ADHD) club three weeks ago.

It’s not lost on me that, once again, I find myself seeking the overlap—this time between two neurotypes that often mask one another, especially in women:

My particular flavor of AuDHD

Rewriting the Story

My entire life I’ve told myself that procrastination is just the way I have to operate, even though it feels terrible every single time. I’ve also been mentally beating the crap out of myself for decades feeling like I have so much potential—if only I could focus, choose a lane, and stick with it. I assumed something was wrong with me since other people could seemingly choose a career/ideal client/offer/fill in the blank, yet I couldn’t seem to stop my curiosity from running the show and keeping me from reaching the level of success I feel like I should have reached by now.

In my best Carrie Bradshaw voice: I can’t help but wonder—what if the stories we tell ourselves don’t have to be our story forever?

How many times have you stopped yourself from doing something or felt like a failure because of one of your deeply held beliefs about yourself?

Now that I can look at a list of ADHD + Autism traits and see myself in practically all of them, I realize the story I was telling myself was only partially true. Yes, this is how my brain is wired—but there are tons of things I can do to work with my neurotype instead of fighting against it.

Medication is already helping, as is beginning to find my fellow AuDHDers on Threads to learn from their strategies and commiserate with our shared experiences.

What It Means Now

I’m still very much in the discovery/what-does-it-all-mean phase of these diagnoses, but I’m sharing them with you today because I know many of you are also eyeballs deep in self-discovery and detachment from the stories we’ve been telling ourselves on repeat for decades on end.

For me, it wasn’t about figuring out what was “wrong” with me so I could fix it—it was about understanding the previously unknown variables at play so I could better support myself.

Only time will tell whether this newfound knowledge and the strategies I’ll implement will change my behavior, but I’m excited for the experiment.

I now have the opportunity to get reacquainted with myself, which will also require me to reintroduce myself to my nearest and dearest. I’m the same exact person I’ve always been—just with a more comprehensive instruction manual that better explains why I am the way that I am.

Not gonna lie—I kind of love the fact that at 40 years old I’m still discovering things about myself, and it makes me wonder what else I’ll learn in the years to come.

Evolving Together

Let this be a reminder that in all of our relationships—whether it’s with ourselves, our loved ones, or the humans in our community—people will continue to change and evolve. It’s important to continue to get to know ourselves and one another as we age, because even if you’re not on a mission of self-discovery, change comes for us all.

It’s in all of our best interests to stay current on who we are today, not who we used to be.

Until next time, have a great weekend and happy connecting!

Baily Hancock is a Connection Strategist, Keynote Speaker, and Host of the “Seeking the Overlap” Podcast. She helps ambitious professionals go from overachievers to Overlap-Seekers, finding the people and partnerships that make success sustainable and burnout a thing of the past. Learn more at OverlapCollective.com and connect with her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads.