Neurodivergence

Nonverbal learning disorder, that is. It's a rarely diagnosed visual/spatial reasoning disorder. I didn't know it even existed, let alone that I had it, until 4-5 years ago.

NVLD's symptoms include poor visual memory, difficulty in social situations due to trouble reading body language, problems with disorganization, issues with math and/or reading comprehension, poor motor skills, etc. People with NVLD often develop strong auditory memories to compensate for these deficits. For example, I can easily repeat a phone number that was said aloud to me, but can't remember one I saw written.

Children with NVLD often have big vocabularies and excellent verbal skills, which can lead to them "talking like adults" at a young age. This, among other things, can sometimes lead to NVLD being confused for autism. ADHD is also a common mixup, though of course there's no reason you can't have two or even all three.

Here's an article about it: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/nonverbal-learning-disorder

Examples of my NVLD-related traits:

-I'm easily overstimulated by too much noise. Stick me in a loud crowded room without my ADHD meds, and I'll quickly need to put in earbuds to cope. Visual stimuli don't really have the same effect on me.

-When I see a wall of text, my brain just shuts down and refuses to process it. Highlighting random bits of text to break it up helps.

-I love podcasts and prefer audiobooks to regular books.

-When I'm using Google Maps, I always have it on the directions view rather than the map view. I can't read a map nearly as well as I can follow written directions.

-I can tell people's moods better from their voices than their faces.

-I once drove around a gas pump at least twice trying to make my gas port (is that the term?) line up with the nozzle. (In my defense, my brain was fried that day. It's not usually that bad.)

-No amount of playing first-person shooters has made my aim improve past mediocre, and that's being generous.

-I suck at math lol