Same, man I feel this. AuDHD here - masked so hard all throughout college and barely made it. Spent 4 years getting an associates degree at my community college because despite working my ass off I kept barely failing classes & having to retake them due to what I have since learned were undiagnosed / untreated ADHD (& commorbid) symptoms… all just so the credit would transfer to a “real” school for my bachelor’s. Then went to an online school for an IT degree in software development where I could work at my own pace / jump straight to the finals for most classes - never interacted with another student and completed the BA in 1 year.
Fast forward a few years, burnt out so hard at my job as a software engineer that I had to go on disability leave last summer because the crippling depression & anxiety were literally incapacitating… spent the whole summer and all of my savings on therapy & coaching. And still almost lost my job a couple months after coming back because I had fried my brain trying to work through everything and couldn’t handle a fraction of the workload that I had been able to a year before…
Being ND in a world designed for neurotypical brains fucking sucks :(
I recently learned about Pathological Demand Avoidance - it’s been helpful as a framework for me to understand some of my own frequent experiences in this area. Particularly in the instances when it’s all internal: a goal I’ve set or a promise I’ve made to myself can often become the one thing I will avoid at all costs for no apparent reason. Between PDA and just general executive dysfunction (yayy AuDHD), learning about these things helps me understand why it can be so unbelievably hard for me to get anything done sometimes. Still sucks, but it makes more sense :)