I have ADHD. It’s defined as a disorder, meaning my brain doesn’t work as normal. The initials stand for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and it’s a whole mixed blessing.
But, last week, I had dinner with an old school friend, who has the same, and the same-experiences flow was extraordinary.
So what does it do? Well, for a start, I have massive energy levels. I can work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and not really dip. But that’s not all good.
We are all born into the world with a slight expectation that all people are as we each are, and we get perplexed and even frustrated when they are not.
So I have had to learn that my working like that is the abnormality, rather than my ways being normal and wondering at others’ lower energy.
Then, it means I can hyper-focus, which in most ways is a gift. I can be editing a complex paper and it is me and I am it and there is no world anymore around me.
It’s great for the speed and quality of the editing, but terrible for my kids, as they can stand next to me and speak to me when I am editing like that and I will not hear them. I am ‘in’ my task wholly.
But then comes the bigger deficit. Like my friend, I have many times parked my car and then lost it, searching whole car parks and even streets for where I put it — because I wasn’t thinking about it when I parked it.
The same is true with keys, umbrellas, pens: I virtually never leave anywhere without leaving things behind. They are just not in my attention channel.
That doesn’t mean I can’t multitask. I can run a hundred simultaneous tasks — that I am focused on — with my hyperactive brain likened by a friend, early on, to a telephone exchange.
Black hole
My black hole is what are called executive skills, effecting any regular schedule of items, like taking medicines at prescribed times or running my diary so I haven’t double-booked. I have got better at these with what the psychiatrists call coping mechanisms, and the data revolution has helped too — thank you Google Calendar!
But my weird focus, which let me emphasise again is normal to me, kicks up social problems too. I really struggle to remember names— of people, books, films. I can’t count the times I have said ‘ you know that film where’…and gone on to the whole plot.
But people take it personally that I haven’t remembered their names. I may know every characteristic of their writing style, remember five conversations with them verbatim, know their voice instantly, but I am still having to look up their names still.
I have a nearly photographic memory for text, and yet with every article I write, I know I have to name-check everything and everyone I have named at the end — or be sure, it won’t be quite that name.
Worse still, I interrupt people. I have been cuffed so many times for disrespect in this, and truly it isn’t.
Something about this condition means I am very blunt, I just say what is in my head, with no filters (often offending people) and when it’s there in my head to say, I just say it. It has been a huge relief to get affirmation lately that this isn’t because I am a rude monster, but my in-house condition.
Complex dysfunctions
Yet, across all, this condition has made all my successes. It has enabled me to recognise complex dysfunctions and how to fix them.
ADHD generates great creativity too. But it has made me a lousy boss, chopping and changing instructions as I see an environmental change, and often struggling to understand the pace and thinking and behaviour of others, just as they do with me.
So, if I had one wish about this condition, it is that others who get this weird energy/ concentration mix might get more support early on in managing it. Because it’s a true blessing in many ways, if only we can manage the chaos of it.
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