If you're an adult with ADHD you'll be familiar with the following:
Adults don't have ADHD
ADHD doesn't exist
You're just attention-seeking
You just need to talk slower
You just need to concentrate
You have too many interests
And so on and yada yada yada.....
What a tragically misnamed diagnosis!
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, without researching the origins exactly I'm still fairly confident the person who named ADHD didn't have ADHD.
Our attention can be laser sharp or non existent - It's content and interest specific
If the topic is as boring as batshit, you'll find us disengaged
If the topic is relevant, engaging, informative, creative, and intriguing, you won't break our focus with a chainsaw
It's all fairly subjective
For every strength, talent, kernel of knowledge, and skill belonging to a person with ADHD
The presence or absence of those exact traits in a non-ADHD person must also be a disorder? All neurotypes have strengths and weaknesses, but because those who fall outside the standard ranges of considered neurotypicality are not as numerous as those who do, somehow it's framed as a disorder and stigmatised negatively due to that misleading label? (This blog does not suggest that people with ADHD do not have challenges or difficulties, however, as with all neurotypes there are a range of strengths and challenges. The inclusion of the word disorder in the diagnostic name leads to incorrect assumptions and stereotypes of people with ADHD causing exclusion and misunderstanding).
ADHD definitely has challenges, but I'd argue so those not diagnosed with ADHD.
Have you ever tried to understand the slow as a wet week pace of delivery of a set of very simple instructions from a non-ADHDer? Or waited without falling asleep for them to get to the point of a basic description that should have taken 6 seconds to unpack, which they have somehow extended into 6 minutes without making it exciting, creative, or engaging??
Sounds harsh? But this is the exact equivalent to a neurotypical vomiting "OMG, you speak too fast, you just need to slow down, take a breath, OMG, sheesh, chill out , what on earth did you just say?" In both of the above scenarios, each person has spoken in alignment with their inherent communication style.
When a neurotypical delivers their sentence in perceived super slow motion, an ADHD brain has completed the word, sentence, paragraph, context, and located the original source of information in 3 seconds. An ADHD brain then stops processing the sentence being delivered in real time as it has already comprehended the entire concept. At this point you'll often see the eyes of a person with ADHD glaze over and then ask the person what they are talking about, because it seems impossible the person could still be connecting the word 'and' to 'then' from several sentences prior to what the ADHD person has already moved on from. ADHD brains can also check-out and lose comprehension of meaning if the words in a sentence are delivered too slow. If the gaps are too lengthy, other thoughts will dominate between spoken words, leading to a loss of comprehension and an ADHDer asking "Sorry, what did you day, I missed it?" This sounds like satire. It's not.
ADHD doesn't disappear with age
ADHD does not equate to ineptness
ADHD can heigten creativity
ADHD can contribute to successful entrepreneurship
ADHD can impact time perception
ADHD can increase sensory differences and sensitivities
ADHD can impact mood states and emotional regulation
ADHD can affect all genders
I'm pretty sure one of my dogs has ADHD
ADHD still stigmatises people and misunderstanding of the challenges and strengths of ADHD leads to many unnecessary barriers and complications for those with a diagnosis
Some of the most successful businesspeople, artists, musicians, athletes, scientists, inventors and multi-skilled people are considered to have ADHD. This alone should be reason to eliminate negative perceptions of competencies.
With the challenges ADHD presents, many are due to trying to adapt to and exist in a world designed by the more numerous neurotypical population who haven't been able to visualise the world from any other perspective.
Get over the negative stereotypes and embrace the talents, strengths and idiosyncracies of those with ADHD.
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