Neurodiverse Sexuality and Common Challenges
The Fundamentals of Sex
Take our Sexual Satisfaction Test
Find a sex therapist near me
Many more people are being diagnosed with ADHD and autism than in past generations.
Neurodiverse folks often share similar sexual challenges, like impulsivity or sensory stimulation challenges.
Using communication and planning, neurodiverse people and their partners can enjoy a delightful sex life.
An increasing number of people are being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), sometimes both at the same time (AuDHD). This has become so common that people who are trying to destigmatize such neurodiversity have crafted new words to describe the population of folks with varied thought and processing differences. Rather than disabled or disordered, some people prefer to refer to others and themselves as neurospicy.
This rise in diagnosis does not necessarily mean that more people have autism or ADHD today than in years past. Instead, lack of awareness in previous decades meant that this range of diversity went undiagnosed for many people, especially women. Increasing knowledge has led to a significant uptick in diagnosis among adults, and especially Millennials and Gen Z. Sometimes adults who bring in their children for diagnosis also find themselves matching many of the diagnostic criteria and realize later in life that they too have autism, ADHD, or sometimes both.
Neurospicy folks share some common traits when it comes to sexuality and gender, some of which I explored in a blog on BDSM and neurospicy folks. Many people with ADHD and/or autism find the intricacies of social rules and expectations to be confounding rather than obvious or commonsensical. Exposing conventional expectations as socially constructed means that many neurospicy folks feel less bound by these apparently random rules that masquerade as inevitable but are in fact made........
