Developmental Disorders (Co-occurring ASD & ADHD) and Fatigue
I have developmental disabilities, specifically a combination of ASD and ADHD. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, what makes things tough is that I just get tired easily.
I vaguely remember starting to realize within myself around age 16 that maybe I just had a “constitution” that got tired easily. Days went by where I couldn’t keep up at all with club practice, which made relationships difficult and ultimately became a contributing factor to my dropping out of high school.
This “easily fatigued” trait has functioned as a constraint in my life ever since. Because of this constraint, my life has constantly been limited by feelings like, “Can I really manage this much today…?”, or “If I push this far, I’ll probably be unable to function tomorrow…”. If I were to deliberately put these feelings into words, it’s a sense of “self-doubt” – an uncertainty about how much I can actually accomplish.
Compounding this innate developmental disorder, I also live with bipolar disorder, a secondary condition stemming from my developmental challenges. This makes the difficulty of this “self-doubt” even more twisted and troublesome.
To put it into simpler terms, let me compare it to a game like a classic turn-based RPG. Imagine if there were a game like this…
- Your maximum HP isn’t displayed
- Your current HP isn’t displayed
- Random elements where you don’t know what events will reduce your HP
- One day, your HP and level suddenly skyrocket for no reason (not shown numerically)
- One day, your HP and level suddenly drop to zero for no reason (with penalties like losing money or experience points)
- Save points can’t be trusted (loading changes your status)
- Commands during battle randomly gray out and become unselectable
If such a game actually existed, imagine the reactions players would have. To put it bluntly, wouldn’t this game undoubtedly be labeled a “crap game”? That’s what I think.
Enough with the game analogy. Let’s move on to the main point. But first, I want to put into words what I personally feel about bipolar disorder. This is my personal perspective as someone living with it; experts may have different views.
I believe the high suicide rate among those with bipolar disorder is a widely acknowledged fact. As someone living with it, I wonder why this happens. One factor, I suspect, is that the “gains” and ‘losses’ I likened to a game earlier occur relentlessly and alternately—not by the individual’s will, but due to the disease itself. From the sufferer’s subjective perspective, this feels like an “external force” imposing these changes.
People feel more intense anger when something they possess is taken away than when they fail to obtain something they don’t have.
This is a concept frequently used in philosophy and literature, and when you look at human history, it’s a perspective compelling enough to make you think, “Indeed, that makes sense.”
Aging and Weakening
By putting these thoughts into words, you may now grasp some of the difficulties I’ve felt and continue to feel. But what I want to express next is this perspective: “This is tough, but isn’t it also not all bad?”
There’s a theory that as we age, the decline in our mental and physical abilities triggers a crisis of personal identity.
Personally, I’ve been lifting weights for years, so aging is brutally, starkly revealed to me through “numbers.” The barbell I could lift 100kg with in my youth gradually shows lower numbers. Fatigue lingers longer, and my daily training time, which was 90 minutes in my thirties, inevitably has to get shorter.
Other common examples include:
Memory decline,
Decreased stamina,
Knee pain the next morning after just a short jog,
Receiving various health concerns during checkups,
Declining sexual function.
As these things accumulate, one is forced to confront the gap between “the younger self who could push recklessly” and “the aging, weakening self.” This is actually incredibly painful. From a young person’s perspective, the seemingly incomprehensible behavior of ”middle-aged men comparing ailments” might be understandable when viewed from this angle. Everyone is anxious. They want companionship, they want connection.
Looking around at the people in my life, I suspect that these physical and mental changes are a significant cause of depression in middle age and beyond.
I’ve always been fascinated by human existence. So, I can “know” about this kind of suffering. But that’s not quite the same as “understanding” it. For my thoughts on the difference between ‘knowing’ and “understanding,” please read this article.
This brings us back to the point I made at the beginning of this section: “Getting incredibly tired easily—but maybe that’s not all bad?”
In my case, I haven’t felt any major difficulties associated with aging so far. I think that’s because I’ve had “constraints” since I was young.
I had to stop and rest or think things through constantly. While everyone else was running, I couldn’t run and could only walk. Of course, that was undoubtedly tough. There were more than a few times when these “constraints” forced me into major setbacks or abandoning things.
To give a concrete example: I entered university in my mid-thirties, but due to deteriorating health, I ultimately had to drop out. This chapter of my life, likely labeled a “setback” or “failure,” exists within my story.
Such experiences are, of course, extremely tough mentally. But compared to the inescapable realities of aging and frailty that all humans face—though comparing them isn’t really meaningful—I sometimes think I might have been doing a kind of “dress rehearsal.”
Because of this, I’ve come to believe that this “constraint” of getting incredibly tired easily,
at least for me,
might not have been entirely negative.
That’s how I see it.
When I think about these things, I recall Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
The old man battles a giant fish at sea.
He returns to port, exhausted.
Yet the fish he fought so hard to claim is lost.
Still, something beyond winning or losing remains as a tangible feeling.
Perhaps facing old age means finding richness and meaning in this “something” that we could never see in our youth.
Modern society often seems designed to forbid us from walking slowly.
We live under constant pressure from society:
“Keep running, or you’ll become a miserable failure,”
“Keep winning, or you’ll be left behind.”
That’s how I feel.
If the words I leave behind today
become a catalyst for someone,
that alone would satisfy me.
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