Skill Regression in Autism and/or ADHD: Understanding & Addressing This Painful Phenomenon
Including BONUS Download: 8 Strategies for Addressing Skill Regression
A number of years ago, I experienced my first in real time skill regression. [NOTE: I believe I’ve experienced multiple skill regression periods in my past, yet most of them were clouded by alcohol use and/or an overarching not giving a F*** about the system at large.] I found myself, seemingly overnight, unable to create or respond to written emails or texts with the same ease that I was accustomed to prior to this shift. Throughout the following weeks, piecing written words together became the single most difficult task I had to do each day [for context, I own two businesses, see clients, lead groups, do professional talks and raise two neurocomplex children].
The act of writing became so difficult, in fact, that I found myself beginning to feel a certain amount of dread when it came to the end of the day and I knew I had a list of emails, mostly simple communication in nature, that needed my written word attention. I started to panic about possibly having a cognitive decline and told myself that I would scheduled an appointment with my doctor if it continued in the coming months.
After a few months, this issue resolved yet a new executive functioning issue showed up in my ability to plan my timing for anything. Once able to get to things relatively on time, I was now somehow unable to account for travel and other factors of reality that take time and was chronically showing up unexpectedly late—even when I was intentionally making sure I was on time. How could this be!?
I know now…skill regression due to my Neurocomplex wiring encountering less masking and a burnout pace of output.