Which Is the Actual Me?
In This Article
- When the Present Feels Like Forever
- Emotional Weather Can Start Feeling Like Identity
- “Why Do I Keep Doing This?”
- ADHD Wants Expansion. Autism Wants Protection.
- I Don’t Need to Pick a Side
- Energy Levels and AuDHD: Next Steps
Some days I am unstoppable. Other days I cancel everything.
In the moment, both energy and overwhelm feel like permanent states.
On a good day, I can write an article, book a Pilates class, make plans with friends, apply for an opportunity I probably have no business applying for, reorganize half my house and decide that this is it: I’ve cracked life. This is who I am now and forevermore, how could it ever be another way?
Then another version of me wakes up.
Everything is heavy. The social plans I enthusiastically made feel impossible. The project I couldn’t stop thinking about sits untouched. Noise is louder… so much louder. People are more exhausting and my motivation has disappeared. I look at the calendar the other version of me created and think: What the hell was she thinking?
This version feels permanent too. I could never do all of that.
For years, living in these two states made me feel like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I couldn’t understand which version was actually me.
It turns out the answer is both.
[Read: “A Living Contradiction” — The AuDHD Experience]
When the Present Feels Like Forever
As a late-diagnosed woman with both ADHD and autism, one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is that I cannot always trust my current state to predict my future one. Truth be told, most of the time I can’t trust a mood, a thought, or a reaction until I’ve had time to reflect.
ADHD already complicates my relationship with time. There is now, and then there is some vague fictional land called later. Hyperfocus makes this even more obvious.
I can tell myself I’ll write one sentence before I leave the house. I have an hour before school pick-up. Loads of time.
One sentence becomes a paragraph. The paragraph becomes a page. Suddenly I have five minutes to leave.
And now my autistic side is furious.
[Read: “I Thought My AuDHD Made Me Unique. Then I Went on TikTok”]
Because leaving late doesn’t just mean leaving late. It means I might not get my usual parking space. There might be more people there. I don’t have the extra 10 minutes I need to regulate myself and mentally prepare. The predictable plan has changed. Everything feels ruined and overwhelmed. Why do I always do this to myself?
The infuriating part is that I knew this would happen. I know exactly how flustered I’ll become. Yet an hour earlier, absorbed in what I was doing, that future version of me didn’t feel quite real enough to influence present me.
That’s one of the strange contradictions I’ve found in AuDHD: The part of me that craves stimulation and novelty can create the exact circumstances that overwhelm the part of me that craves predictability.
Emotional Weather Can Start Feeling Like Identity
When I’m low, I struggle to remember emotionally what it feels like not to be low.
When I’m burned out, overstimulated, or depleted, I look at goals I set when I was energized and genuinely wonder who on Earth thought I was capable of them.
The opposite happens, too. When the dopamine is flowing and I’m hyperfocused, the state feels like forever. Suddenly, I should join a new Pilates class. Actually, I should join several. Obviously, I need the outfit. And a water bottle. And probably a new gym bag. Maybe I’ll become an instructor.
Present-me is delighted. Future-me then has to walk into an unfamiliar building full of strangers wondering why present-me has once again signed us up for a new personality.
“Why Do I Keep Doing This?”
The damage came in treating every state as evidence of my character.
When I was productive: See? You’re finally getting your life together.
When I struggled: See? You never really change.
When I wanted people: You’re an extrovert.
When I wanted silence: You’ve become antisocial.
When I was ambitious: This is the real you.
When I burned out: No, this is.
It was exhausting. I kept treating temporary states as permanent identities.
And because each version of me made decisions the next version had to live with, they started to feel like enemies. The superhero and antihero/villain of my own story.
ADHD Wants Expansion. Autism Wants Protection.
This is an oversimplification of two neurodevelopmental conditions, but it is one of the easiest ways I’ve found to understand my own AuDHD.
My ADHD often pulls me toward expansion. New things. New people. Big ideas. Freedom. Creativity. Novelty. Let’s see what happens.
My autism often pulls me toward protection. Preparation. Familiarity. Predictability. Recovery. Knowing where I’m going, what will happen, and preferably where I’m parking when I get there. Let’s play it safe.
Neither is wrong.
The problem comes when I build my entire life around the needs of whichever one is shouting loudest today.
If I satisfy every expansive impulse, eventually my nervous system demands payment.
If I build my entire life around avoiding unpredictability and overstimulation, another part of me becomes restless and miserable.
For years I thought the solution was figuring out which version was the “real” one and becoming her permanently. But I now know that that was the wrong approach.
I Don’t Need to Pick a Side
There aren’t actually two of me. There is one person whose needs and capacity change.
That sounds painfully obvious written down. But recognizing it took years. The two things that have helped me most aren’t particularly glamorous: discipline and forgiveness.
Discipline used to sound like punishment. Now I think discipline creates freedom. I use alarms because hyperfocused me cannot be trusted to accurately judge when we should leave. I try not to let an energetic version of myself completely fill the calendar of a future version whose energy I cannot predict.
I deliberately leave room for spontaneity because too much structure eventually makes my ADHD want to blow up the whole system.
Instead of choosing between structure and freedom, I try to accommodate both.
But none of that works without forgiveness. Because I will still get it wrong. I’ll forget the alarm. I’ll overbook myself. I’ll retreat too far into safety. I’ll start something I don’t finish. The difference now is that I try not to turn either state into a verdict on who I am.
Some days I am expansive, energetic, social, and convinced I can do anything.
Other days I need routine, quiet, familiarity, and considerably fewer humans.
Neither version is the real me.
They’re both me.
Energy Levels and AuDHD: Next Steps
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