I am now diagnosed with ADHD (28m) and it’s something I’ve always thought I had because of the obvious telltales - the “typical” things people look for like fidgeting, speaking out of turn, organisation, timekeeping etc. I was also confident that these things were because I was on the spectrum in some way and that made it alright to me that I’d struggle with these things because clearly so many other people faced a similar struggle, diagnosed or not.

Aside from this I’ve always felt a deep sort of shame or almost self fearing of myself as I’ve always, from a very young age, been able to find what makes people tick. In a short space of time I can figure out what will make most people laugh, smile or counter intuitively horribly upset (weak points etc). I now work a job in sales which I achieve in and everybody tells me this is because I’m a nice honest friendly person but I’ve always hated myself because I think / tell myself (not sure if rightly or wrongly at this point) that people only like me because I manipulated them to like me, people only trust me because I know what would cause it.

Because of this constant thought I can’t seem to allow myself to feel like I deserve anything because I intrinsically tell myself that if I won I had to fuck someone else over.

For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea that I’m a sociopath or have some kind of disorder that will ultimately always make me think everything is a game or that everything in life is calculated.

Since diagnosis and joining adhd communities I’ve found a lot of similarly afflicted people seem to be able to immediately recognise others and their pattern recognition seems to be higher and thus gives me hope.

I guess my question is does this strike a chord with anybody? Am I just overthinking and notice things or am I a lunatic and maybe look into it medically rather than with Reddit?

I’m exhausted constantly telling myself I’m Patrick Bateman