“What does having ADHD mean to you?” is a question I ask clients struggling with a diagnosed of ADHD. I also ask that question to clients thinking they might have ADHD due to impulsivity, racing thoughts, trouble at school, difficult relationships, difficulty finishing tasks, emotional outbursts or oppositional and defiant behaviours.
The most common answer they use to define ADHD is, “It means I can’t pay attention.” Then they describe all of their difficulties with focus, attention and impulsivity at school, home, work, chores, relationships, and other tasks required of them. They also discuss how their impulsivity creates relationship or emotional problems when they just blurt out comments, or get easily distracted when doing a task and then act defensively when their impulsivity is pointed out.
After listening to their struggles with impulsivity and attention, I ask, “Is there anything that you can focus on?”
“Yes, I can play video games for hours.” Or watch a movie, read a book, draw, play music, do sports and much more. I listen as they enthusiastically describe activities that they really like and get into, can focus on, and can ignore all of the usual distractions. Activities they passionately focus on and pay attention to.
Such ability to focus, and even hyper-focus on activities they enjoy and are passionate about is very common among individuals with ADHD. From my experience of working with 100’s of clients with ADHD, less than a handful did not have some special activity that they could successfully focus on. The few that did not had other significant mental health or relationships struggles that may have prevented them from ever experiencing or discovering any activity they enjoyed and were passionate about.
Full disclosure, I have ADHD. I was unofficially diagnosed in elementary school struggling to pay sustained attention and impulsively ran around. I struggled in college. Finally in adulthood, trying to complete the complicated task of writing and illustrating a children’s picture book, I went on medication for several years. It helped me slow down and focus. (yes, for those of you with ADHD reading this that are now distracted wondering… I did finish the book.)
Regarding ADHD, I have a personal understanding of what ADHD feels like. Being a mental health therapist, I have a professional understanding of ADHD. Together, these insights have helped me really experience, understand and clearly see what ADHD is and is not.
ADHD is not attention deficit.
In mental health, you will often hear, “ADHD is a common neurodevelopmental disorder marked by symptoms of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity.” Hearing this, drives me mad. The reason it drives me mad is that I pay way too much attention. My whole life I constantly notice almost everything going on around me. I hear when bugs fly into windows. Watch clouds float by and hear the wind ruffle the tree’s leaves. I listened to multiple conversations going on all around me. I hear the fluorescent lights hum overhead, chairs scraping on the floor, footsteps in the next room. Car’s honking, loud mufflers, fans blowing air, and the tick-tock of clocks. The house creaking and all the unimportant, miscellaneous noises that are constantly going on around us. Almost every ADHD client or friend I’ve ever talked to also pays too much attention to all that is going on around them. I’ve had many ADHD conversations about the distracting, overlooked and insignificant details that grab the attention of the ADHD individual. Distractions from paying too much attention are a constant in the life of an ADHD mind.
The problem is they struggle with knowing which sounds, sights, smells and sensations are important and which ones to ignore or let go. They struggle learning effective skills to distinguish focus from attention and managing each. Everything is so interesting and inviting as it grabs their attention. Then once distracted it is hard to get back on track to what their main focus was. They become overwhelmed with details and often shut down, crash, or burn out from an abundance of information coming in.
Our approach to ADHD is to teach a kid the skills to drive a car, without noticing they are trying to fly a helicopter. If they can adapt the skills and figure out how to harness the power of a helicopter, they fly. But if they can’t, they crash and burn. Then we blame them for lacking skills and abilities to manage their power.
ADHD is not attention deficit – it is information overload. Their brain and mind can and does pay attention, but does not know how to effectively filter out extraneous noises, sensations and thoughts. That is the way the ADHD brain is built. Even as I write this article, I am intentionally ignoring the many sounds, sights, sensations and thoughts that I am very aware of as they keep popping into my head.
Information overload leads to difficulties managing all of that information being taken in. Those difficulties look like inattention, but it is not. An individual with ADHD takes in so much useless and distracting information that they can easily get overwhelmed, impulsive and hyperactive. They often settle on a superficial overview of everything, without taking the necessary time to go deeper in understanding the core issues. Just too much info coming in too fast without effective filters.
The visual metaphor of mental processing focus and skills is not to judge or evaluate which neuro-functional development or approach is better or worse, because each has their own strengths, weakness and style. Rather it is to visually show the range of cognitive awareness and depth of perception for how different neuro-development brains process and take in info to see the world. And how our skills and abilities impact the balance of taking in too little, just right or too much information.
As the ADHD individual struggles with information overload and trying to learn skills for managing all of the info being processed, it is easy to start developing ineffective and dysfunctional habits to manage the distractions or adjust to new situations. They struggle to know where to focus their mind or energy. By focusing on all the details, big or small, they never learned how to know what is important, what to let go of, and how to get back to their main focus or task. They get lost with info overload.
Then, as they are struggling to develop skills and abilities to manage all of the info, they are told they need to pay more attention. Such feedback and direction doesn’t make sense, and they start getting frustrated and angry. Most individuals with ADHD act defiantly and have emotional outbursts, over 50% actually. But defiance and emotional outbursts are not ADHD symptoms, they are coping strategies to deal with circumscribed situations, or any situations that limit or restrict how they can manage all of their energy from their info overload. Sort of like instead of driving a car in downtown Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, London or New York, you are flying a helicopter and told you have to fly with the flow of the traffic. If you lack skills to be successful, you are blamed for not paying enough attention to the situation. Very frustrating experience. Frustrations from a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad attention deception.
But there is hope and many effective skills to harness the power of the ADHD info overload. Skills that start developing when you learn that focus and attention are very different things to your brain and mind.
Dane Jorento, MSW, LICSW is a speaker available for keynotes, seminars, and workshops on mental health, emotional well-being, trauma, ADHD, self-esteem, relationships, and sexual health. His expertise includes BCA Holistic Therapy, EMDR, and DBT approaches.
