Scientists refer to planets where water is liquid and life could potentially be sustained as being in the Goldilocks zone. As people with ADHD, we have our own Goldilocks zone. As I am pretty sure I mentioned in last weeks post, boredom is our kryptonite. It’s difficult to even explain to neurotypical people how we experience boredom. On a neurochemical level our brain shuts off. Behaviorally that may make it look like we’re not trying, we gave up, we refused to persevere, we’re not interested in achieving our potential, we’re lazy, or generally have some sort of inherent character flaw. Our brains clearly do not respond to a cold lumpy bullet porridge. On the other hand, how many of us are prone to being overwhelmed, overstimulated, and get freaked out in someway when everything just seems like too much. Much like boredom, this is part of the human condition. I know ADHD people experience boredom on a whole other level. Honestly I’m not sure if our tendency to get overwhelmed and the severity of it is worse than it is with your average human. The reason it’s hard to tell is that getting overwhelmed is the perfect intersection of ADHD and anxiety. So it’s hard to isolate the overwhelm factor as it relates to ADHD as a standalone. Not to mention there are sensory processing issues and executive dysfunction to throw into this delicious stew. Regardless of whether it’s just ADD or a delightful gumbo of convergent neurodiversities, it’s clear that the ADHD is a major contributing factor. But, again this aspect of how we respond to the world can be tremendously counterintuitive to the untrained eye. Because our brains are particularly wired to activate when we are interested, passionate, or particularly in our element and area of expertise, we…

I don’t I think we have an understanding of what ADHD is as a culture. It is the rare disorder that is named by its symptoms. I believe this falsely leads people to believe that its name encompasses all of its symptoms. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Or, perhaps, we just need to have a broader sense of what attention is. I find that most people think of attention as sitting still and paying attention to a lecture in school or getting through a meeting at work. But it is so much more complex than that. If you take into account the neurobiological underpinnings of ADHD, we could redefine it as a disorder of under stimulation. We are constantly at war with our intentions. We often lack the ability to execute on those intentions because of our lack of ability to focus on what we call non-preferred tasks. In other words, being bored is our kryptonite. it is hard to even explain to neurotypical people what boredom is like for the ADHD brain. Frankly, it is not unlike trying to explain what it is like to be chronically inattentive. Both of these facets of ADHD are also parts of the human condition. But there is a clinical and practical difference between how we as ADHD people experience them and what they’re like for the general population. Literally, when we are not stimulated, our brains shut off in certain meaningful ways. it can be a Herculean effort to simply do the normal everyday things that we find boring but neurotypical people take for granted. And that can significantly deplete our resources for the rest of life. so, as ADHD people, and for ADHD clinicians, I would suggest that a good metric for the severity of a person’s ADHD as…

This is going to be a weird post, so buckle up. On the upside, I’m not sure anybody reads this after I switch platforms. So perhaps I’m just yelling into the void. I had a very interesting session with a younger client today. She’s a rising senior at a very prestigious university. One that I did not get into, I might add. She’s at somewhat of a crossroads in terms of trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. In order to protect your privacy I won’t go into details. But I’ll say that she was planning to go into a certain profession. And I’m recently sure she’d be good at that profession. But I’m not sure she could survive all of the school necessary to get to the end result of being in that profession. the reason I bring this up is that it touched on a nerve for me. I don’t want to sound self-important or egotistical. But I have several rounds of neuropsych testing to prove how smart I am. And I’m considerably smarter than the average bear. But what does smart mean, if school is really hard? What does it mean if sitting still is not what you’re good at? What does it mean to understand things at a high level if you can’t produce the amount of work that’s expected of intellectually advanced students? What good is it to get a political science degree if you don’t want to sit behind a desk? Coincidentally, that last question is part of why I freaked out when I was at UMass many moons ago. And that’s also why I ended up pursuing culinary arts. Not that there’s anything wrong with pursuing that. And one could argue it was right for me at the…

whether consciously or unconsciously, many of us identify pretty early in our lives some of the ADHD trades that we would like to minimize or eliminate. It might be impulsivity, disorganization, being late, or any number of other things. Of course, there are trades that we can’t control. Otherwise ADHD wouldn’t be a legitimate diagnosis and we could just “try harder.” but there are usually some things about ourselves which, through sheer force of our will or because of overwhelming anxiety, we can work very hard to get better at. But I think we often overcompensate. It can be helpful to recognize that it can be healthy to realize our achievements and our progress and come back to a constructive middle ground. in an effort to be less esoteric, I’ll give you a couple examples. A prime example in the area of impulsivity is spending money. I think many of us have had issues with impulsive spending at some point in our lives. My dad used to tell me that money would burn a hole in my pocket when I was a kid. Not that I couldn’t delay gratification and save up for something if it was really important. But most of the time I’d spend it as soon as I got it. as I got diagnosed in medicated, as I got older and more mature, as I recognized what I wanted to improve about myself, I worked hard to be less impulsive with my spending habits. I worked to delay gratification. I worked differentiate between want and need. But all that’s easier said than done. And to a certain extent, I developed a lot of anxiety about spending money. Of course this was some time ago when I realized it was an issue. I’m not sure we were fully…