I am AuDHD and this is 80% my experience. I saw this post in the morning pondering if I call in sick or work because of insomnia and being unable to have the energy.

I commute to work by train and even though I have great headphones and listen to music on Spotify some mornings it just crackles in my ears. The audio is fine, but I'm extra sensitive sometimes.

At the office people are sometimes very loud. They are excited and having fun but when it goes over my sensory limit (which varies a lot) I become unable to do anything. Ears crackling with headphones means I can't shut their noise out either. And we're supposed to be social at the office but they talk about stuff I don't know what to say about.

When I get home I am beyond exhausted. Can't sleep because of anxiety or adrenaline or something. I just zombie out streaming series or movies while reading Hacker News, Reddit or Bluesky. I promise myself I'll go to sleep early but if I do I can't fall asleep until 2-4am. If I stay up until 1am I have better chance of falling asleep faster.

Weekends are spent catching up with sleep, wanting to tidy up and do side projects as well as gaming but most times I spend half the day in bed and then stay up gaming or something because it is my time and I want to do the fun stuff. Rince and repeat unless I get lucky and catch 10 to 12 hours of sleep.

I'm a 47 year old female principal engineer. I feel like I'm just drifting through the days and months. But I do live my work, the people and challenges. I just wish I could deal with everything better.

Thanks for making this game.

I know you're not asking for it, but as someone that has a really hard time with anxiety and sleep: quit caffeine and exercise more.

The quitting caffeine is tough. It's 3 days of really bad headaches that no pain killer will touch, because those painkillers act on a different biochemistry. But, after I did that, my anxiety went way down and I was able to sleep a lot better.

Exercise is a bit harder, as it's a schedule problem. Even just a little bit will help though and increase the sleep 'pressure' or so I have found with myself.

Again, not trying to be a jerk here, just trying to help out however I can. My bad if this is not the place.

Best of luck in the struggle!

Thank you so much for writing this. I have a feeling there's way more of us that we realize.

I have lived very similar to what you're describing during a few periods in my career.

> it goes over my sensory limit (which varies a lot)

This line hit home. Some days I feel randomly very "thin" for no apparent reason.

> When I get home I am beyond exhausted. Can't sleep because of anxiety or adrenaline or something.

This is the worst and it doesn't make any sense so nobody understands when you explain it to them. With anything else autism related ymmv but CBT-I is the best tool I found for this. It didn't totally unfuck my sleep but it at least made it a tenable balance.

I didn't really have a point in writing this I just found your story touching and my heart goes out to you.

I'd love to interview you (anonymously or by name) for my blog if you'd be open to that. You can contact me at d+rjoshcs+immons@+gm+ail+.com (remove the + signs, my crappy attempt at bot-defeat)

Why spend the energy masking in the first place?

I have a child with AuDHD who has trouble masking consistently. That coupled with impulse control issues and an inability to regulate between the two just looks like chronic deception, lying for the sake of lying. It is exhausting for him and it never works in his favor. We spend a lot of effort coaching him to not mask and to not seek unearned attention, and its a huge challenge.

On overstimulation: there is something about office conversations that I find overwhelming now, and it's that, since COVID, people seem to have lost their inside voices and are talking at volumes that seem quite a bit louder than usual.

Because of this the 'pub conversation' effect comes into play, where multiple conversations take place in the same room and the different groups compete on volume in order to remain heard.

I pretty much shut down at that point, especially if someone is also trying to talk to me at the same time. I can't stand it just the same as I can't stand it in a loud pub.

Never use to happen before 2020. Or it did and I wasn't nearly as sensitive to it as I am now.

In fact, it happens when people are on their phones in otherwise silent places too. If I can hear you with almost perfect clarity when you should otherwise be out of earshot, then it is too loud.

I don't know if this is useful for you, but getting my MTHFR and COMT genes sequenced has been incredibly helpful for managing my own mental health. Since getting these results, I've been able to understand my own neurology better.

I'm sorry to hear about your issues with sleep - and can relate to them. In particular, my slow COMT means that my baseline cortisol is higher than most. Taking phosphatidyl serine before bed helps me a lot, and lets me sleep through the night.

Best of luck.

Everything after (and including) "When I get home I am beyond exhausted" is me. Although, I don't think I'm on a spectrum. Could that just be the insomnia, independently?

Anti-anxiety medication can help, there are plenty of people online that will tell you it's terrible or does nothing, but think about talking to your doctor about it.

The part about the headphones crackling even when the sound is technically fine really resonated; it's such a vivid way to describe sensory overwhelm that most people might never even think about

are you me? are we definitely autistic together? should I go see a shrink?

Get heavy duty ear protection from home Depot like they wear on construction sites to protect workers from the noise of heavy machinery, and wear airpods/in-ear wireless headphones under them. ymmv, but they saved me.

based on my experience im going to assume you don’t keep the strict 8 hours maximum and also work at home. you need more boundaries, that helped me a bit