Whenever I see the symptoms of autism and adhd, I keep thinking to myself, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY COMORBID SYMPTOMS!!! E.g. stimming, sensory issues, black and white thinking, infodumping styles of communication, etc. Both my parents are adhd, my dad VERY hyperactive whilst my mother is very inattentive. I have an extremely strong suspicion that the combination of growing up with ethnic parents and the trauma of being ethnic in a white majority country and schooling system had lead to a drastic suppression of my natural hyperactive nature as a child, transforming it into an inattentive type of ADHD. Every family member has complained about why I am so different now to how extremely hyper I was during childhood.

Constant rejections by classmates, called fat, ugly, brown, "no one likes you", etc. followed by coming home to your parents slapping you for acting crazy and energetic and for not performing well in school has absolutely contributed to me becoming an introvert. And this CPTSD that I have experienced caused me to socially isolate heavily. I avoided social encounters rather than impulsively jumping into them. And without those essential thousands of hours of social experience, I have a suspicion that there is a strong possibility that you can develop autistic symptoms. E.g. the common autistic symptom of desiring comfort from routines might just be a trauma response to unpredictable social encounters as a child, leading to you desiring comfort from familiarity and predictableness. Failing to intuitively understand non-verbal communication cues could just be a sign of a lack of socialisation exposure, rather than a brain developmental issue.

So yeah. I have a theory that my "autistic" symptoms might actually be a result of poor socialisation due to growing up ethnic whilst having inattentive adhd.

Does anyone else share a similar story or suspicion about themselves?