The Piercing Laser and the Satellite Dish: The Lived Experience of AuDHD

I’m sitting at my desk, laser-focused on finishing a grant proposal… when a bird’s call through the window scatters my attention like a satellite dish scanning the sky. The shift isn’t predictable; it’s as if my attention has a life of its own, swinging between extremes. This is what it feels like to live with both autism and ADHD: AuDHD. In this blog post, I want to share what these extremes mean in my everyday life—and perhaps offer a metaphor that might resonate with others as well.

I propose taking you on a ride with me into the rather uncharted territory of AuDHD. I will use my own experience of focusing while working as a starting point to provide a glimpse into the contradictions felt every second of every day, which constitute the very essence of AuDHD. These many contradictions can be reframed as phenomenological fragments, each representing a dynamic tension in my cognitive-emotional-embodied system. Take it as a first-person cartography of the AuDHD experience.

Piercing Laser vs. Satellite Dish

In this metaphor, the laser represents hyperfocus, intense selective attention, tunnel vision, and rigidity, which are hallmarks of the combination of ADHD hyperfocus and autistic detail orientation. The satellite dish impersonates the scanning, absorbing, distractibility, and openness to multisensory inputs, which are classic markers of ADHD distractibility and autistic sensory sensitivity. The laser and the satellite can each be positioned as dynamic poles, constantly nourishing a space of tension in between.

Laser Mode: When Concentration Becomes Fusion

When I work—usually at my computer—I focus so intensely that my body and mind seem to dissolve into the machine. Gradually, invisible fibres stretch from every part of me, anchoring themselves to the computer to form a singular space where I, the tool, and the work merge into one. After ten or fifteen minutes (though it’s impossible to tell for sure, because in those moments, time both contracts and dilates), I cease to exist in the room: I am elsewhere, far away, deeply submerged in an ocean of consciousness. My senses, overheated, turn inward. My mind hurtles forward like a hypersonic train gliding on electromagnetic rails. Inside, a deafening roar coexists with utter stillness. At the heart of this polarised tension lies the very essence of this oceanic state: an almost mystical flow, boundless and infinite.

But this state, as powerful as it is, is exquisitely unstable. Not fragile—unstable. The faintest click, hum, flicker of light, birdsong, or speck of dust can shatter everything. Picture a supersonic train crashing headlong into a wall. When someone speaks to me or interrupts this deep state, it feels as if my mind is being wrenched from another dimension. It’s a violent, tearing force, as if my limbs were being stretched to breaking point—an inner collapse. Everything spins, I plummet into a void (often to the left), and I scream silently in pain, rage, frustration, and terror.

Satellite Dish Mode: Hyperconnection and Dispersion

This total immersion—this almost mystical fusion—can be shattered in an instant by the slightest particle of dust. For just as I can dive into the depths, I can just as suddenly find myself in the opposite state: my mind scattering in all directions, like a high-definition satellite dish, tuned to every signal at once. Each sound, each movement, each stray thought becomes a beacon that pulls me off course. And so, I spiral into a chaotic dance of information, unable to regain my centre, as if the gentlest disturbance could suddenly and violently sweep me away.

“For just as I can dive into the depths, I can just as suddenly find myself in the opposite state: my mind scattering in all directions, like a high-definition satellite dish, tuned to every signal at once.”

In a forthcoming article, I will explore potential theoretical frameworks to try to conceptualise these neuro-poetic descriptions. Indeed, the hypothesis is that these two opposing yet co-existing states in the AuDHD profile—the laser and the satellite—are components of a neurologically distinct functioning that combines autism and ADHD, and whose interaction gives rise to emergent properties, rather than simply adding together the individual autistic and ADHD traits. Whatever theoretical lens one chooses, my aim in this approach is to evoke the beauty, the challenges, and the richness of this unique experience that is AuDHD.