My Experience with 2e (AHDH+HIGH IQ>145)

AA

ADHD

• Executive Dysfunction — Contrary to normal ADHD, I have an exceptional ability to design complex, rigorous, holistic, high-level plans (training regimens, systems, etc.) its just that I have trouble implementing them. I require systems to keep my mind on the core tasks.
• Extreme Short- and Long-Term Time Blindness —
• Intense Internal Restlessness/Need For Stimulation — I don’t show too many external signs of hyperactivity. However, to be fair, I have trained physically for 2-3 hours a day for my whole life in all manner of athletics at a high level. My legs can also shake on command. I essentially use my physical body to its maximum, and have a great deal of self-control so, physical restlessness and hyperactivity could very well be manifested (and thereby masked) by my very active Lifestyle Design.
• Hyperfocus
• Zero-Multitasking Ability
• Trouble Task-Switching —
• Disorganization — This is true especially in my physical environment. However, I always liked Robert M. Persig’s analogy in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance of different types of mechanics: one who has a place for everything, and another who has everything laid all over the place and knows where everything is. (I am the latter.) In my mind I am capable of complex paradoxical thinking, and can think along numerous completely isolated strains of thought simultaneously. Yet while it appears disorganized on the surface, I still feel I have a very high level of organization, it’s just that I am juggling 10,000 variables not the 10 most people are organizing.
• Emotional Dysregulation — I have excellent self-control (physically, emotionally, mentally over my thoughts in particular and what I am doing) however I believe emotional dysregulation is when you cannot shake a mental-emotional-thought complex. I can hold onto things for years, and they will persist inside of me.

High IQ

• I understand things.
• Me smart.

Masking

IQ Tests and ADHD Masking HIGH IQ

The perfect (almost stereotypical) example of masking in my life began when I was around 7-8 years old, in elementary school when I was in Grade 3. In that year we had began working on algebra (solving for x and manipulating equations, which I remember distinctly for whatever reason, probably because that was the first thing that was mildly interesting to me).

There were four of us in my class who were randomly one day brought into a tiny little room of the main hallway of our school, and were given a strange test. It was only years later (quite literally about 11-12 years later) when I met another kid who was in there with me.

The entire time we were supposed to be doing this weird test with weird questions, I was constantly rubber-necking around and looking at the man in a suit that was overseeing us do the test. I remember him being rather tall (but I was 7-8 years old … so most adults were tall) and rather thin. I won’t describe his appearance, since I so much time has passed, I could project anything onto his face. I will say he was slim, most definitely white. I also want to say glasses, short hair with some grey in it.

I was so concerned with just who the heck this man was, what he was doing here, and what this strange test was. I was even preoccupied with the environment, since this was a little room off the main hallway that we had walked by for four years since we were in kindergarten. None of us had been in here for any reason, so even the room itself was novel. A little dark, with light streaming in through highish windows on the eastern wall.

Aside from stolen exertions into this room to take a quick peek without getting caught (since it felt like we were not allowed in this room) the only time I had spent any time in here was because my parents forgot me at school one day. So I was here for hours after school, and, if I remember correctly (I was quite young) I think I spent my time in this room.

If I remember correctly, there was a refridgerator in this room.

It wasn’t until years later that I found out that this was an IQ test, and years after that I learned that IQ tests had to be timed — and that time matters. (Before we proceed, we really should abolish time on formal IQ tests, because it doesn’t matter how fast you process, but if you can process the information, and, even more importantly, how deeply you can process the information.)

While I don’t regret too much in my life, because I genuinely feel that everything that has happened to me in my life, has happened for a reason. Everything. (I mean, literally everything. All the pain, suffering, violence, trauma, challenges, setbacks, losses all crafted me into the person that I am.)

With that being said, that IQ test as a child was the only time I could have gotten a ready that I could trust for my true IQ score. I took one later in life around 27, but I got a range of 140-150+ and required further, more thorough testing for a more accurate score. Neither are conclusive, and now I simply don’t care anymore. I like what Magnus Carlson sid about getting his IQ tested:

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For me now, I will let my work speak for itself — either it is brilliant, or it is not. We will see. I write this here not to lament my intellect, creativity, comprehension, cerebrality and innovativeness, but to illustrate clearly how ADHD masks IQ and the challenges of diagnosis. The man who oversaw that IQ test when I was a child could have had no idea that I spent 50% of the time and 50% of my brainpower suspiciously overthinking the whole scenario, rather than answering his strange questions.

I thought he was a doctor trying to institutionalize me, or some secret service person, or an alien. My mind was everywhere else. I also don’t respond well to authority, nor do I take instructions well unless I am clear on the purpose and value. I lifetime of social rejection and experience of volatile, turbulent, agressive words and actions beginning when I was a child also has not “maxxed-out” my trusting humans stats either (to use my interpretation of Gen Z colloquialisms).

HIGH IQ Masking ADHD

This part is just fascinating to me — I knew that I had ADHD but it never seemed to bother me. I only saw the positive sides, but did not ever see the negatives. I regard it to this day as a superpower, was you have reigned it in — either by building systems in place to direct it, use it, choosing the right profession, or with medication.

What still fascinates me is that I spent my entire 20s analyzing the problems that I faced in my learning, training, work, progress, interpersonal relationships, and just in my daily habits. As an extensive practice I built an extremely rigorous daily regimen, systems for learning and creativity, habits, and so on.

It turns out (as I found out in 2026 about 15 years after I began this journey) that I had employed about 20+ behavioural therapies used to deal with ADHD:

• Daily Meditation —
• Timers —
• External Visualization Tools — a “murder board” for my life, or projects.
• Strict Daily Schedule

In addition to these specifics, I had also addressed deeper issues too, less concrete:

• Finding Balance In My Day — I cannot just hyperfocus every day. I still need to eat and train physically, hike with my dogs,
• Learning How To Switch Tasks Effectively — It took me almost 10 years to train myself to do this. I literally thought I was just weak, since nobody else seemed to ave this problem.
• Diet — I also dialed in my dit, gravitating towards meats and fats, with minimal carbs (and of those carbs, either white rice which is healthier and better in every way, or bread, then beans, onions, carrots, spinach, and bccoli). It turns out the high-fat nd protein is good for ADHD. I just tested and found it worked.
• The Order of My Daily Ritual — Order matters. Especially with ADHD. I tried a thousand permutations and combinations of my daily schedule. There is a right time to eat, train, work, create, relax, and sleep for every person.
• In the end, I diagnosed myself with 2e, and finally went to see a psychiatrist — I always knew I had both ADHD and IQ. I studied psychotic and personality disorders of the DSM5. Eventually I found 2e, and realized for the first time the componding effects of one on the other. I finally understood why.

This is the perfect example of exactly how HIGH IQ masks ADHD. I was able to address my problems and solve them in such a way that I was seeing progress — I was improving, solving the challenges one at a time. I didn’t realize that the problems that I was trying to solve were beyond my ability to solve with those methods at that time, since they related to the very structure of my brain.

Self-medicating with nicotine, the cannabis, worked very well too. It stimulated dopamine production in a way that was reasonably sustainable. That is, until adverse effects of chronic cannabis use caused their own issues (gradual increases in symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, and paranoia would be my assessment) while also exacerbating ADHD symptoms.

Then when I got off cannabis, I couldn’t work at all, for weeks.

High-Functioning ADHD and the Challenges of Diagnosis

In my mind, this specific brand of 2e (ADHD+HIGH IQ) is high-functioning ADHD in practice — or else High IQ with an Executive Disability. Some say that ADHD is a learning disability, but I reject that. To this day, it is a superpower to me. Hypervigilance, empathy, divergent and lateral thinking are all traits that will make me great in my pursuits (from military, to scholarship and engineering).

My mind is able to understand all problems — those I face and those I have within — and develop complex systems, approaches, and habits for addressing them. Even my daily schedule looks like ADHD, but because I have a great deal of self-control, resilience, determination, will and tenacity, I can hold it together fairly well on the surface.

Inside myself and the work itself however, nothing is clicking. The engine is running, but there is a problem with the transmission, which is not able to translate the power from the engine into forward motion and momentum.

I knew that I had ADHD and HIGH IQ, but it took me — ME, with complete access to all the data of my personal experience — 15 years to realize that they effect one another and create something new.

Intense Social-Isolation

I have experienced intense social isolation for my whole life. The concurrence of ADHD and HIGH IQ are compounding factors, which have made it more severe than if I had one or the other to the degree that I do.

Funnily enough, my search for understanding the reason’s behind my lifelong social-isolation was also masked as well (both by ADHD and by HIGH IQ). When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why it was hard for me to relate to people. I had friends, but I never really felt truly close to them. Never like we had anoything truly in common. There was always a wall.

Even with my friends in high-school (largely a continuation of the friend group I had in junior-high which was the one time I really felt true comradery, well, that and my teammates in athletics) I didn’t talk much. (I can talk peoples ears off if I have the mind, and feel comfortable, and acknowledged.)

I remember times sitting their in silent for hours while they chatted about random stuff. I mostly just listened. I truly loved those guys (and still do, their memory at least)>

When I got older I attributed it to intellect, knowledge, and differing interests. This was after high-school when I began to find out who I was, what I wanted to do with my life, what my interests, skills, and passions are, and — in point of fact — my Life Purpose.

Yet this is also where my extreme social isolation began. I lost contact with my friends (intentionally on my side.) I never went to parties, bars, or clubs in my twenties. Maybe once in my 20s did I go to a social gathering. (I never liked them in high school. Not my scene. I preferred hanging out with a few close friends, and would be perfectly content if that was the socialization I experienced for the rest of my life.)

At first I could talk to my younger sister, who still lived at home. However, over the next several years into my mid-to-late 20s, my relationship with my family began to deteriorate. ADHD empathy and hypervigilance, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD), Imposter Syndrome (radiating insecurities) all caused me to be acutely aware of slights, rejections, dismissals, misunderstandings, ulterior/unstated motives, misrepresentations and insults (in addition to general emotions, postures, mindsets, and attitudes that others approached me with) leading to a gradual breakdown of relations.

My response was to pull away. Intentionally, emotionally distancing while remaining in the same physical space (the same household). When I was 31 I stopped talking entirely for 2 full years.

My mother would nag and bitch every day, every chance she got. I got emotional (angry, annoyed, frustrated) enough that I responded with words. In those occaisons, while my tone often left something to be desired, the content of my words was generally positive. Although it can be hard to tell when someone is talking with a relatively heated tone, even if the words themselves show compassion, consideration, and caring.

My experience was that I behaved appropriately towards them 90% of the time. Even when I was silent, constant attacks over weeks. Small, verbal things. Eventually they would say something, and I would respond. Mostly just explaining things I had learned that hey were interested, in a relatively forceful, heated tone. I would often call them some derivation of stupid at some point, often masked. Then go back to non-verbal.

Except when my brothr physically assaulted me 5 times in two years. I am trained in martial arts, and very strong, physically fit, crazy endurance. I never responded physiclaly. Never in a heated tone. Except for the second to last time. Day one he had shoved me numerous times and slapped me and screamed in my face. I did nothing, even when my parents joined in on his side. The next day, started pushing me and kicked my legs. This time I did respond, held up up against the wall by his throat and said “If you touch me again I will end you, and tripped him to the gound. He tried to punch and kick me some more, hit me with a large stick. I laughed. Then when my parents joined in on his side, this time I did yell. I said mean things. I got very angry at the sheer misunderstanding.

Eventually I had enough.

I got kicked out and lived in the garage for over a year. Mostly nonverbal.

Social Isolation and Hyper-Sensitivity To Emotion, Rejection, and Empathetic Perceptions

Funnily enough I don’t really hold anything against my family — I really don’t since I expected nothing less from the cessation of verbal communication and emotional distancing under their own roof — except for believing the lies my brother told in his version.

That I was the aggressor, I was the attacker, that I assaulted him. That I had done anything to him at all in the two years since I had stopped talking to all of them. The answer I got was “That its just your presence” or “The air in the house”. One day I hope they realize that when you have a feeling inside of you, that yours — not mine.

The lies, manipulation, misunderstanding, machiavellianism, and lack of taking responsibility all bothered me. Attempted character assassination bothered me a little bit, but only because it was based on lies.

I am hypersensitive to misunderstanding, and the weird dynamics of truth, lies, and not taking responsibility. The thing that bothered me was being unfairly labelled as aggressive, violent, erratic, unbalanced, and volatile. Being called confrontational is fine, because I am confrontational. I have an incredibly long fuse when it comes to confrontation. I can turn the other cheek for days and weeks without it bothering me — and have proven this time and time again. When I do confront, it always has a purpose, and is (almost) always justified.

It is very hard for me to psychologically accept when people deny the cause, and twist events to suit their belief system or their preconceptions. For a person to address a period of insults and tactical behaviors to instigate a response, then when the person addresses it — regardles of how they do it or what they say — to then be accused of behaving inappropriately.

Absolutely, I have a very high capacity for violence. However in my entire life, after being in combative sports and trainings for 25 years — I have never gotten the chance to use them on another person. I have never come across a true “bad guy” who did something to me, or in my presence, to deserve it.

(I once saw a person slap his girlfriend on Whyte Ave. That was my only chance, and I failed to act at that time. Not a true “bad guy” based on that act alone, I didn’t know the situation either, and I was still young so I didn’t really know who I should respond — I knew how I wanted to respond, but not what was appropriate — but those are all excuse.

I was a coward in that moment. I admit it.

I’ve had one time where a gang member threatened to cut me, and I knew that he was a bad guy from the moment I saw him. Instinct. The way his two friends stood by the door ready to run while he was confronting me, they had seen him stab, rape, and probably kill before.

Little did he know, I was waiting for him to touch me. The most minor justification of assault was all I needed. I never let his hands leave my sight. By this time I was trained. And ready. But he did nothing.

(This is one reason I need to be in the military. I have never been tested. Do I have real courage? Power? A true warrior in the historical sense of the word? A hero? I have no idea. All I know is that I need to find out. And that I am a protector at heart. I want real bad guys. Sex Traffickers. Human Traffickers. Violent Criminals. Murderer. Torturers. Animal Abusers. Someone who deserves my full aggression — not people just fighting for their country, ordinary people like anywhere in the world.)

Much of the above is for a different thing I am wrting out, but it does highlight the factors in my social isolation nonetheless. Some of the things that drive me towards isolation, as a preference to having to waste energy navigating some of those social landmines. One of the ways I like to say it, is:

Extreme empathy makes people beautiful, and disgusting.

My Mental Response TO All Of This

Interestingly, all of what I experienced crafted a Warrior Mindset in me. Nor was it a fully conscious intention, but a result of living with the internal battle inside of me that arises from 2e (ADHD+HIGH IQ). Two parts of me at war with thhemselves, while I force them both to do my bidding as best I can, working (ideally) 8-16 hours a day. Failing regularly, living with extensive guilt and shame from the 2e experience, then picking myself back up off the ground and getting back to work as soon as I can.

I have always loved war — in concept. My favourite movies as a child (and to this day) were Gladiator, Braveheart, and Harry Potter. The only additions that I would add to this at 34 are Svaha, Arrival, and the Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars (the only Star Wars that truly matters if you want to understand the world, by which I mean Star Wars: Clone Wars of course. But I guess the main triogies and greater franchise are enough).

I used to watch Mission Impossible as a kid, jumping around on the couches, throwing kicks and tackling pillows. So there has always been an element of war, military, and combat to my personality and psychology.

However, over the last few years, I have been getting more interested in Special Forces Operators, and over this time, everything that I have learned about their mentality — I already know, practice, and have said to myself. Even when I found David Goggins when he wsa just becoming popular, I liked him not because I was a devotee, but because he agreed with my worldview.

This was refreshing.

Part of this came from my natural instincts, personality, and psychology and extensive experience in high-level competition. A great deal I was simply born with. However, in hindsight I realized that this was also practiced directly over 15 years of constantly pushing myself to work 8, 10, 12+ hours a day doing things that my ADHD brain is naturally resistant to: sitting and studying textbooks, taking extensive notes (for reasons that I don’t fully understand, since I don’t exactly need them), and doing the minutia of compiling notes, editing research articles and papers, and all those principles with music — these are the “mundane tasks” that ADHD people typically are poor at.

By contrast, I am fine at the zero-thinking mundane tasks. It is the mundane intellectual tasks (the work required for academic rigor, and to finish scholarly and creative projects) that I have special trouble with. This is probably how HIGH IQ shifts ADHD struggles. Mundane tasks are meditation. Routine. A release. Physical tasks are even better (mechanics, construction, landscaping, carpentry, metalworking, fabrication, hands-on engineering, electronics). Athletics, high-stress situations, and combat of any kind are the literal best thing in the world.

Yet I am also built for physics, mathematics, compsci, and engineering.

Now I understand that this challenge is a matter of brain chemistry that I don’t need to live with. I was constantly fighting a battle with my mind. For years I thought it was a lack of discipline, focus, or that I was on the wrong path. (Yet I love what I am trying to do, cannot possibly think of anything else to do since I am doing everything that moves me, and don’t want to do anything else with my life than what I am doing.)

Moreover, my Discipline, Resilience, Willpower, Work-Ethic, Determination, and Tenacity are off the charts. So it was hard for me to wrap my mind around the problem. Hyperfocus is my favourite state, and a natural superpower. (I had to learn how to balance my day, and switch tasks appropriately, and then learn how to dial it back and not over-switch tasks.) So I knew focus wasn’t my problem.

When I wasn’t able to work productively, I would sit and stare into space for 30 minutes, an hour, even longer. I have meditated for a long time.

Now I understand it was brain chemistry. My dopamine system is underactive and inconsistent. I don’t experience tasks with pleasure and reward, but with a prolonged gruelling effort — especially those that I need to get done.

So I greatly fosted and enhanced a mindset akin to Military/Special FOrces Warrior Mindset on a daily basis. Every day, day in and out, for most of my life. Through formal education, certainly. But my HIGH IQ made the work easy and boring, and I just wasn’t engaged in it. It wasn’t until my own work in advanced Physics, Mathematics, CompSci, Engineering, ANcient History, Anthropology, and World Mythology, and Composing/Producing/Writing music in particular that I began to feel this more acutely — and genuinely had to push myself through intense mental-emotional suffering on a daily basis just to make the progress I did.

Like swimming with an anchor tied to me foot, or running dragging a tractor tire.

I thought this was normal.

I thought this was just because what I was doing was very, very hard.

It wasn’t until I was 34 years old that I made a dangerous, risky decision — driven by prolonged stress, frustration, pressure, fear of the consequences of my impotence on the livelihood of family members and dependents, and probably some depression and anxiety too — that I made the active decision to attempt to self-medicate with something very hard (treating an ant-infestation with a nuclear bomb).

That was a wake-up call, as they say, and I decided immediately afterwards to seek professional psychiatric assistance to medicate properly.

It took a literal act of god on three separate occaisons to foster that choice in the first place, leading to that decision.

Regrets

As I said before, I really don’t have any regrets. There are a number of “what if?” moments — What if I had done this? What if I had stayed with this? What if that never happened to me — however, I don’t spend much time in those time loops. They simply aren’t valuable.

I have an intense and abiding sense that everything has a purpose. I fought for over a decade to get to where I am in my work, and that battle has given me extreme power. If medication works (as I know it will, because my attempts to self-medicate with nicotine, cannabis, exercise, and other substances on three occaisons (only one that I actively chose) all did more or less what I thought they would, so I have already tested my hypothesis, howevrrly sloppily it was the best I could do at the time) then my psychology is already primed for succes at all costs. And to deal with any and all challenges that I know are inherent in my work and career path.