I consider myself an autonomous person, and it’s something I value greatly and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I wouldn’t want anybody else making my decisions for me. However, that doesn’t automatically translate to decision making being a straightforward process for myself as my neurodivergence can make this more complicated. Let me give you an example.
I love waking up on days where nothing is planned , the freedom that anything is possible, and I can do whatever I want whenever I want with no limitations (…well I don’t have unlimited finances and I can’t exactly travel to the moon just because ‘I feel like it’ but you know what I mean!). My hyperactive mind then bounces around many possibilities of what I can do and jumps from one thing to another, as my mind is going round at a million miles an hour. At first it seems exciting. I have a number of possibilities.
However, after that first burst of initial excitement, it can be difficult to pin one idea down and choose how to spend my time. At this point, it can become stressful because I want to do everything all at once, but I know that’s not possible. Also, after that impulsive excitement, which can bring so much joy until I realise the planning and steps involved to do the activity, can be overwhelming. Especially if we have difficulties with executive functioning (which I do), it can make putting plans into action incredibly difficult, including the things we really want to do.
As you can see, there’s a lot of thinking (well… overthinking) that can go into deciding how we want to spend our time and actually spending our time doing the things you want to do and enjoy. As a result, what initially started off as a day of possibilities of freedom to do what we want can turn into a situation where we get so overwhelmed, we can’t actually make a decision about what we want to do. I’ve seen the term ‘decision paralysis’ to describe this experience, which feels accurate to me.
On the other side of the coin, impulsiveness can mean going head first into something. This can be great and lead to happy memories being made, but it doesn’t occur that it may be too much or too overwhelming until we are in the middle of doing something and it’s too late to back out. This is where the autistic side comes in and the potential sensory overload and too much socialising can be disabling. But ADHD means we can go head first into these things without anticipating how certain things may be disabling for ourselves as autistic people.
It’s a really hard balance, because sometimes going into things impulsively has turned out really well for myself, and a lot of positive moments of my life come from this, so it’s something that I don’t want to stop or not do anymore. However, it does suck when I do something exciting, but then half way through it turns out it is something I can’t manage or is disabling for me. Especially when it is things I want to do. I can’t do a lot of things I want to because of how much energy it takes out of me. I need a lot more down time compared to most other people, so this can be restrictive in terms of having enough time for doing things I enjoy.
Although I have talked about decision making in the context of doing activities we enjoy, this can certainly apply to many aspects of our lives, from daily tasks like deciding what we are going to eat or wear, to bigger decisions such as applying for jobs or choosing a course to study.
Bit of shameless self-promotion here! (hey it’s my blog), but I write about different possible ways to support decision making for AuDHDers in my Book ‘Young, Autistic and ADHD, moving into adulthood when you’re multiply-neurodivergent’ So please do pick up a copy if this is something you are looking to better understand for yourself or somebody else you know.
If you’re an AuDHDer, do you have the same experiences with decision making? Or are there some differences? Please let me know in the comments below.
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