Posted on by Nathan Payne

Finding Your Focus, Tuning Your ADHD Mind to Work For You

Coming to Terms

Every individual, ADHD or not, has a unique mind. One conditioned by years of environmental and social experience; as the saying goes, no two people are alike. This phrase, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt; everyone is alike somehow, but we are also infinitely different. What works for me will not necessarily work for you. That said, there is a lot of value in hearing about other peoples’ experiences.

You can glean kernels of truth through extrapolation and context, and so it is with that in mind that I have decided to share my ADHD experiences. I hope to help others, whether they are diagnosed, or not, whether they have the condition, or not, and for any other reason anyone might ever decide my decision to do so is valuable.

In that vein, now I will highlight some of the activities I have discovered as being infinitely helpful in dealing with my ADHD. I am a father of three children, a happily married husband, and a rather upstanding citizen who tries to do his best despite his differences. These statements were not always true. On the contrary, I have, at times, been the complete opposite of these. I was not born a father, my marriage has been on the rocks, and I have not always been an upstanding citizen.

I say all of this because there are healthy ways of managing ADHD, and there are harmful ways of contending with ADHD. How you choose to handle yourself in regards to ADHD will largely determine how you define the experience as well as how you define your life.

For me, living without a diagnosis was torturous. I didn’t know it, of course, but the truth is still there. Had I received a diagnosis sooner, perhaps I could have avoided a lot of the pain in my life.

So, sooner rather than later, I suggest you come to terms with what it means to be an individual with ADHD. Read up on it, get a diagnosis, tell others. All in all, do whatever you can to understand it and how it relates to you.

  • Find Your Niche.

For me, writing and the creative process of creating beautiful photos is more rewarding than the act of making money; it engages my brain on a variety of levels that allow it to run rampant and yet focus in on small details when and where they matter.

I also enjoy people and intelligent discussions on a variety of topics that appeal to me and others. I am a debater at heart, and I will discuss a subject that interests me ad infinitum. This trait also lends itself to my next niche.

I want to help people, but not in the same sense as everyone else; I like to help people “see” things in a new light, and I will go to great lengths to do this for anyone in my life who has shown me an ounce of kindness.

I also love learning. Reading up on subjects that help me comprehend the world around me or provide tools to make me a more competent and well-rounded individual is an endeavor worth doing from sun up until sundown and into the wee hours of the night.

  • Be Flexible.

Having ADHD requires a unique outlook on life. Conforming to traditional metrics of success is not going to work, nor is adhering to standard definitions of what it means to be a productive member of society. Holding this perspective does not mean living a life of half-measures, and unhappiness, instead, it means living a fruitful life according to your sense of values.

Being flexible also means understanding that your brain works differently than other peoples and adjusting accordingly. If you’re struggling in one area of your life, and that area of your life is truly important to you, i.e., it is a part of YOUR value system, then you need to discover a new way of integrating that part of your life into the perceptions and beliefs you have been holding onto. It is not that you are failing at a particular task; it is that you are going about it the wrong way, or perhaps you are, in some way, misplacing your values.

  • Set Boundaries.

This is an intriguing subject that I have struggled with over the years, and I am only now coming to terms with it. A couple of ideas come together in this simple concept.

One, don’t be a Yes Man. Two, don’t let your thoughts walk all over you. Both aspects of this concept can, in a way, fall under the category of “Coming to Terms,” but it deserves its own space.

Being the outsiders that we are, we have often contended with attempting to conform to society’s expectations. We genuinely want to “fit in,” and this puts us at a disadvantage as we try to meet everyone else’s expectations; we assume too much responsibility and exacerbate our problems by straining our minds.

Setting boundaries with others is critical, and it requires self-awareness to do this properly. We also need to set boundaries for ourselves; understanding our unique nature, and the negative aspects that can come with it, if not properly managed, is a balancing act we must all perform.

The system you use to create personal boundaries will broadly be determined by your individual experience, thought processes, and circumstances. I can’t assume what boundaries are essential to you, and I can’t tell you how to enforce them. Living as an individual with ADHD is a profoundly personal experience that no one can explain how to do. They can only give you guidelines; the rest is up to you.

  • Roll With The Punches.

Especially if you’re just discovering what it means to be an individual with ADHD, understand that various obstacles are going to present themselves. Difficulties will arise. Keeping a level head and tackling these obstacles with a new sense of self and creative flexibility will open new doors for you.

  • Explore Your Shadow-Self.

Having ADHD means having a world of experiences that few people understand. Grappling with the darker sides of life, such as fear and shame, will often show you where you’ve been struggling and, with a little creative reasoning, can help you explain why, e.g., unveiling a more accurate sense of self.

  • Celebrate Your Differences.

Having ADHD is not an affliction, not if you don’t want it to be. ADHD provides many benefits that can, and will, set you apart from your peers. In a world with so much noise, and so much competition, having a few characteristics that help identify you isn’t something to be afraid of; it is something to be celebrated.

Once you can let go of the deepest parts of you that have wanted to “be included,” you’ll have a better understanding of the forest for the trees, you’ll be able to step outside of yourself, and a make a greater impact than you ever imagined.

  • Take Charge of Your Life.

So, what are you waiting for? The choice is yours. It always has been. You were just too busy fighting yourself and trying to conform to a value system that you don’t abide by. Now is the time to make a difference. Now is the time to step outside of your comfort zone and apply a new way of thinking, quite literally, to the world around you. Never give up. Never stop trying, only now…do it your way.

Best Regards,

The Uncreative Ghost

Posted on by Nathan Payne

The Need To Perform, ADHD and its Byproduct RSD

ADHD comes with a slew of tendencies, traits, and characteristics that can be hard to manage, especially when you don’t know that you have ADHD. Most of all, though, is the feeling that you are an outsider. While growing up, it is easy to see that you are different; a lot of people in your life will tell you so in a variety of ways. Other people often do not understand, and they can’t see past our perceived “deficiencies.” We are distracted, at times irritable, restless, and anything but punctual. We don’t conform, we’re wild at heart, and we have radical ideas that do not make sense to them.

No wonder why this has been labeled a mental illness. Can anyone else see that ADHD is not an “illness” or a “condition?” That it is a way of being. A truism, even if others can’t see it.

Today I want to discuss the difficulties that ADHD individuals experience in trying to adhere to traditional ways of life because it is my opinion that having ADHD is not a problem. The root cause of our problems as individuals with ADHD is in how society is structured and the limited view it takes when looking at us.

Let me explain with an anecdote from my own experience.

Growing up, I always felt different; like an outsider, but the environment that I grew up in lent to this feeling. Having a broken family at two years of age, I moved around a lot; new schools, new friends, and even different family dynamics depending upon which family I was with were all a part of my experience. This added to the sense of feeling like an outsider, and so I continued on in my life not questioning why I felt this way. The feeling had a rationale behind it, a reason for being.

Moving around also meant very few people in my life had the opportunity to observe me in various environments,i.e., everyone got a “piece” of me, not the whole me.

As you can see, this lent itself to flying under the radar and maintaining a certain degree of isolation. I became independent; doing everything I could to maintain balance and perform to the tasks that were set before me. I rarely looked to others for a sense of security, and yet, at the same time, I desperately wanted to understand and be understood.

I could float through any social circle, but I also remained distant. I kept pieces of myself close to heart.

Why did I remain distant? Why did I continue to hold back?

Because I felt shame. I was different, and I knew it. Most everyone around me could accomplish simple tasks like stay focused, get started early enough that they didn’t have to rush, remember dates, times, and important events. They were rewarded for adhering to the social constructs that existed all around me, while I was labeled (in a variety of ways) as being a lazy procrastinator who wasn’t living up to his potential.

What child who already feels like an outsider is ever going to step forward and confess his deepest pains when everyone around him viewed him so negatively?

I don’t want to gloss over the small moments where people would congratulate me on something. I did receive praise, but it was inconsistent, and it sometimes came with a caveat,i.e., side comments that implied, even with my best efforts, I wasn’t enough.

All of this leads to what is now called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD.

What I needed was for someone to not only accept me but also to understand there was something positively different about me. I’m not special, not in the negative sense of the word, and definitely not any more than anyone else; I was just different. I am different.

The point of all of this is that I feel RSD is an illness. It is a condition forced on people with, or without, ADHD via the pressure to adhere to social norms. No one person is to blame for this, though each person walking through life can certainly try to be more aware and more accommodating. Having an understanding that not everyone is designed the same is essential to a healthy way of life for everyone, and having that awareness, that ability to see should then inform anyone with it that they need to pay attention to the people who are different. These people feel alone, hurt, and misunderstood. They feel like they can’t achieve the same success as everyone else, and they deserve to have support.

I know I feel a lot better for understanding why I am the way I am. ADHD is not a condition, nor is it an illness, but RSD is, and it can be cured through proper understanding and support on all sides of the equation.

If you are out there struggling or know someone who is, if you think ADHD or another definition for existing might apply, then I pray you will do what you can for this individual. They may not be ready to hear it, they may not want to address the pain just yet, but it is vitally important that they feel understood.

The best way to do this? Ask engaging questions that offer them a chance to show you their world. Don’t strive to impress your world on them, but ask relevant questions that will tease new understanding out of them and for you. Be the person you’ve always known you could be, and then go out in the world and do some amazing shit.

Best Regards Everyone,

The Uncreative Ghost

Posted on by Nathan Payne

Impulse Control, An Inside Look at ADHD

In my last post, I discussed the Executive Functions and how they relate to my personal experience with ADHD. I demonstrated the interconnected matrix of how I view this entanglement that the executive functions can create through ADHD, but I didn’t cover every aspect of those executive functions.

In this post, I want to discuss in detail the effects that ADHD has on our ability to control our impulses. There are positive and negative aspects of this characteristic, and my personal understanding may not thoroughly demonstrate what other ADHD individuals experience. This is my experience.

I remember my first taste of freedom. I lived on a rural country road on the Western side of Vermont. This particular area of Vermont is dominated by rather flat tracts of land that lend themselves to farming. The street I lived on extended for several miles in a fairly linear fashion. This street is where I first started riding my bicycle and, as is typical, I didn’t start doing it when other kids did. Where other kids around me were learning at about five years of age, I didn’t learn to ride until I was eight. It just didn’t matter to me until then, but when it did, I came alive.

I rode that street back and forth, day in and day out. Once I tasted the freedom, I couldn’t let it go. My bicycle became my “escape.” Whenever the pressures of life became too much, when I experienced boredom or restlessness, I would jump on my bike and ride off. This soothed the innermost parts of my mind and helped me cope with the doldrums of my life.

Without knowing it, I was self-medicating.

This behavior continued throughout my life. Everything became a game for me. If I couldn’t make something fun, I didn’t want to engage in it. The better I could apply a sense of fun, i.e., a stimulus-response that excited my neural pathways, I became restless, fidgety, and distracted.

This restlessness had its place, and it benefitted me in many ways, but it readily became overwhelming. Too much mental noise and I would need to compensate.

As I grew older and learned what behaviors excited me, I turned toward these behaviors, and they took on new meanings as I developed new skill sets such as playing video games, driving cars, climbing trees, and jumping off cliffs. Adrenaline played a significant role in how my brain reacted to situations. If I wasn’t engaged with an activity, i.e., felt little to no stimulation from said action, then my distractibility would come, but when I felt said stimulation, I would hone in on tasks with a tenacity few others could apply.

Life became a balancing act of moderating these two extremes. For me, I became an adrenaline junky of sorts. I couldn’t live the cliff jumping, parachuting, bungee jumping sort of lifestyle, but I could drive fast, take risks, and otherwise engage in what others considered “risky” behaviors.

I’ll never deny that my behaviors were riskier than what many of my peers seemed to engage in, and I certainly could have made mistakes the same as anyone else, but what people on the outside couldn’t see was that I had an ability other people didn’t seem to have. I could process considerable amounts of information; in any given situation, I would weigh the risks (as best as any human can), and come up with a conclusion that was right for me. I didn’t know how I did it, or why. I didn’t even know if others could do it, all I knew was that I could and that I felt a need to do so; that it “improved” my brain’s capabilities, cut out the noise, and allowed me to feel accomplished. What I could do, others rarely could.

I’ll give you an example.

One day a friend of mine and I were driving to school, but we weren’t doing it in the “normal” fashion; no, we were racing down the road at eighty plus miles an hour and faster. As we approached a railroad crossing, with me in the lead, I quickly analyzed the following scenario.

The train was already across the intersection, there were two civilian vehicles and a log truck on the side of the road I could observe. On the other side? I didn’t know, but I did know where these vehicles were most likely to be located,.i.e., I considered the probabilities and understood that there existed a more-than-likely chance everything on that side of the intersection would be right where it was supposed to be.

I measured the gap between me and the intersection, my rate of speed, the distance needed for the train to clear the tracks, and the train’s visible speed. I did all of this in a split-second and understood that I could, at the rate of speed I was traveling, squeeze my vehicle through all of these obstacles, negotiate the small chicane of the roadway, and come out the other side, in my lane, with minimal risk. Because I was familiar with the road, I knew my car would lose the smallest amount of traction across the railroad, and I knew how I wanted to compensate.

I could measure and feel all of these things in a matter of moments without understanding how I knew all of it. To me, it was a simple math problem written out in word format; if a train is traveling at x miles per hour, and has y distance to travel, can a vehicle traveling at eighty-five miles an hour negotiate this intersection. For me, the answer was quite simply a resounding yes. The only variable that created risk was that I didn’t actually know what was on the other side of the train.

This is just one example of many that I have in my life where I could “see” what other people could not. I could observe and measure situations other people couldn’t. They didn’t seem to have the capacity or desire. Where I wanted to move fast, make connections, and process information with an intense curiosity, others were content to wait, think linearly, and be fed information.

I tell you all of this to better understand why it is that ADHD individuals can seem impulsive. In a way, we are, but some of us are vastly intuitive and calculating. We process information differently, and so for us, it doesn’t feel impulsive. For us, it is an extension of who we are and what it means to have a brain that functions differently than everyone else’s.

With all of that said, I do want to indicate that I do not condone this type of behavior; driving fast and taking risks should be done in a closed environment with proper safety measures. Although I engaged in these behaviors and survived, I am sure others did not. I understand the risks I took, and I understand the consequences those risks could have led to; I could have hurt myself and others.

What I needed was an outlet. I needed for someone to understand who I was, what I was doing, and why. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that, and so I “acted out.”

Perhaps in another ten, twenty, or thirty years, society will better understand what it means to be ADHD, identify it sooner, and provide a better support system for dealing with it. Medication and behavioral therapy is one approach, but what if we lived in a world where ADHD individuals had “playgrounds” that catered to their tendencies and understanding of the world? What if we got more creative and stopped trying to push them into a way of life that causes them, and everyone around them, pain and frustration. What if we applied our efforts and resources to another means of living for these people?

In my mind, it makes sense.

Posted on by Nathan Payne

Executive Function Imbalance, The ADHD Mind

I am currently sitting at the computer, yet again engaging in an activity that is one hundred percent inspired by my ADHD. How do I know this? Because ADHD is my life. It has existed since I can remember, and it permeates everything I do. I may only have been diagnosed in the last thirty days, but the diagnosis is simply a confirmation and label. I am intimately aware of the processes my brain has always followed. Now, I have a new language to describe it.

Everyone is different, obviously, but my different affects a rather small portion of the population, therefore, it is a more pronounced version of different. As I said in my earlier post, I am an outlier.

Why do I tell you all of this? Because I am exploring this newfound definition of my life and trying to gain insight into what it all means, and how I can better manage my life. I am investigating something I have never explored before, and so my ADHD brain readily goes into ‘hyperfocus;’ the remarkably valuable part of ADHD that allows me to accomplish things I otherwise have a hard time doing.

Hyperfocus is one aspect of my ADHD, and it speaks to how my brain’s Executive Functions are imbalanced. There are eight Executive Functions, according to resources I have started researching. They are Impulse Control, Emotion Control, Flexible Thinking, Work Memory, Self-Monitoring, Planning & Prioritizing, Task Initiation, and Organization.

It is believed that each of these skills needs to be “developed” to have a well-adapted individual who can navigate the various aspects of the human experience, especially in regards to meeting and exceeding social expectations.

As I understand it, these functions operate in one of two ways for ADHD individuals. We seriously lack in a particular executive function and remain that way for the better parts of our life, or we forever vacillate across a broad spectrum of near-polar opposites and seldom exist in the standard understanding of what it means to be “in balance.” Each mode of operation, and the particular “balance” that exists between each executive function during any singular moment, largely determines what form of ADHD a person can exhibit.

For me, Organizing is a near impossible task. I would say that this function is “underdeveloped,” and it has been that way my entire life. I have struggled at every turn to remain organized. Every attempt has failed. I could not maintain any system for any discernible length of time that I, or anyone else, would ever consider a success.

This lack of organization is visibly recognizable by the physical disorder surrounding me. I have difficulty keeping any area tidy, and I commit my life to a chaotic conglomeration of stacks that mean little to anyone except me. It also has an effect on my ability to Plan and Prioritize. The mental disorder, i.e., the inability to organize my thoughts, is easily recognized through my failure to plan ahead and prioritize critical tasks.

To compensate, I became extremely adept at utilizing the Flexible Thinking executive function, i.e., this function became “overdeveloped.” Lightning fast thoughts that could critically analyze tremendous amounts of data, and stretch across a broad spectrum of topics, became essential. I could, under pressure and with sufficient interest, bring to bear an extraordinary amount of processing power to any problem I deemed worthy of such effort.

This overdevelopment, however, created another side effect; those lightning-fast thoughts? They occurred without cessation and came with an extreme need to follow those thoughts. What is the point of having all this information in your head if you’re not going to make connections, and follow them to their logical conclusions?

With all of that going on, my brain needed to establish a framework to work from. I began devouring information. I consumed so much data at such a tremendous rate of speed that I needed to create a system for retaining, and processing, all of it. In comes Work Memory.

I have Work Memory in gobs. It doesn’t always operate the way I want, but it exists there on the surface seizing, holding onto, and repeating information at a moments notice.

As you can probably see, this characteristic of regurgitating information feeds back into the Flexible Thinking trait I overdeveloped. One thought spurs another, and then another, which then connects to yet another. These thoughts can span space, time, disciplines, theories, and generally anything I’ve ever come across and considered noteworthy. Work Memory, for me, is another function that is “overdeveloped.” From here, we continue on with the Executive Function of Self-Monitoring.

My particular circumstances may have had a unique effect on how this function developed. Early divorce within my family caused me to move around a lot as a child, and I had to adapt to new environments quickly; each with a new set of interpersonal dynamics. By quickly interpreting what others thought, how they felt, and how I was perceived, I readily understood the metrics each community utilized to measure value, and so I often sought to adapt to the various expectations of these communities in an attempt to “fit in,” but the quandaries ADHD brings with it were already established.

I readily surpassed many of my peers in a variety of subjects, and I continually demonstrated what most would consider an above average intelligence. My way of life worked, for me.

All of these components to my being leads to, in a fashion, Task Initiation. I didn’t know how to submit to the regular constructs of time and space that everyone else seemed so ready to grasp and attempts to do so met varying degrees of failure. I would fidget, become distracted, and otherwise let my mind and body do what it knew how to do. When allowed, I regularly delivered an end result I believed was the foregone conclusion to what everyone wanted; they desired an individual of intelligence, and I demonstrated this repeatedly. My methodologies simply didn’t produce what others deemed necessary; they wanted me to sit, stay attentive, do homework, and otherwise conform to these established systems and metrics of performance that felt irrelevant to me.

My teachers wanted me to follow a process that was inordinately difficult for me, and yet, doing it my way, I came up with the same and often better results than my peers. I excelled at gathering information, comprehending it, and I could articulate my findings through in-class engagement and evaluative testing designed to measure all the above. I had all of it. I just couldn’t sit still, stay focused, or perform menial tasks I saw little to no value in.

Then, social expectations started to increase. I was regularly criticized for my inability to stay organized, plan, and prioritize. If I didn’t jump to a task others thought was necessary for me to do, I was called lazy, told I procrastinated, and that I was not “living up to ‘my potential.'”

From here, my Emotion Control function started to deteriorate. I had regular mood swings that went from happy to sad, and then to angry, and back around again.

I became ashamed of this cyclical nature I couldn’t break. I wanted to exceed in everyone’s eyes. I wanted to be the person that everyone seemed to think I needed to be. I wanted to be the same as everyone else because they didn’t have the same problems I had. They at least were understood, or so it seemed from the viewpoint of an adolescent who always felt like an outsider.

This cycle continued for thirty-five years, and then everything started to fall apart. By continuously using my energies toward the goal of conforming, the emotional accumulation of so many failures became too numerous. The anxiety of “trying to do it all,” reached a critical mass. I couldn’t do it anymore.

The notions of “Be yourself,” when you have ADHD, means to step outside of social norms, accept the differences, and try to live a happy life despite all of it. I will never fit the mold of society, and I have to understand that. The world may not ever understand, and that is okay too.

Yes, I can be more aware of, and improve, some of my executive functions, but forcing myself to reprioritize all of them to conform to others’ expectations of me? That notion has died.

Life is always going to be difficult, and I can’t change what has come. I can only prepare for what is ahead, and try to do the best for me and mine. With this new perspective that my diagnosis has given me, I am better prepared to handle all that is ahead of me.

If anyone reading this can relate, and still feels as though they are trying to “fit in,” I highly suggest giving up on this idea. ADHD individuals and non-ADHD individuals alike need to give up on this idea, but individuals with ADHD even more so. Our development is wildly different from that of many other people. It is currently estimated that we represent less than ten percent of the population and as little as five percent.

The way we live has its drawbacks, but it also has its benefits. A lot of what we do other people struggle with. Our problems arise because we are outsiders. Our brains provide a worldview others rarely see, and although we can often see from their point-of-view, we cannot exist there; not wholly.

Recognizing that early on allows us to live a healthier and more robust life that fits our needs instead of other peoples’ needs.

Posted on by Nathan Payne

ADHD, In a Nutshell

It’s not as if one person made any grievous errors that defined my life. I am not the byproduct of a traumatic event or an abusive relationship.

Instead, I am the result of a genetic anomaly and the repetitive misunderstandings that derived from that anomaly. I experience what society labels Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a believed disorder of the human brain.

On a matter of principle, I refuse to admit that this experience I coexist with is a disorder. It may be an abnormality, but this infers a normal, and I rarely agree with any notion of normalcy. Defining normalcy is a fallacy generated by society-at-large to better understand the human condition and the definition changes with each new attempt. “Normal,” by definition, indicates a standard of what is supposed to be, and anything falling outside of that is abnormal; an outlier.

And that is what I am, I am an outlier.

It is not that I am unique. Others like me exist, hence our ability to acknowledge and classify my “abnormality.” I just don’t fit the standard, and typical patterns of associating with me do not necessarily apply. I excel and struggle in a manner that is not traditional. What I see, hear, sense, think, and feel, just does not compute in conjunction with this standard definition of what it means to exist.

For me, the thoughts in my head are a quagmire of turbulent thoughts that are at once extreme, wondrous, and terrifying. I am capable of immense focus, rushing through massive amounts of nuanced information and technical data, making cross-discipline leaps of logic that often go ignored by others. I am, at times, also utterly incapable of tracking the simple and mundane details of life that hold little to no concern to the vagaries of the incomprehensible noise that is everything else in my brain.

That sentence alone should indicate the intricacy with which my brain cobbles together concepts, notions, and ideas. Few people would construct a sentence, as my father would say, “with so many one dollar words where ten cents would do.”

By ten years old, I was testing at college levels of reading comprehension. My father, curious to see if I could accomplish a feat, tested my ability to read upside down. I don’t recall how old I was, but I was young. Upon proving my ability, he took it a step further. Have you ever tried reading a book upside down in the reflection of a mirror? I have, and I was able to do so with minimal effort.

In algebra class, I could process multi-variable equations, in my head, without fail. In science, I could fathom the minutiae of microscopic bacteria as quickly as the vastness of space. The greatest philosophers in history spoke to me with humanity’s most profound questions. The more abstract a concept, the easier it was for me to comprehend its implications.

I tell you this to paint a picture; to demonstrate the positive aspects that come with my abnormality. It gave me what felt like superhuman abilities. It made me different, in the highest sense of the word. I know this based on years of experience.

No matter where I went, no matter who I interacted with, I felt alone. I required constant stimulation. My brain ran a hundred miles a minute and wouldn’t shut up. Mostly, it thought about these abstract concepts, connecting dots and enlightening me to the world around me. It helped me conceptualize my existence, the meaning of it all, and how the world worked.

Other times, it became the villain, and this is where the “disorder” component seems like a natural definition for society-at-large but, as with all matters, there is more to the story. When my inner thoughts became villainous, it was in direct correlation to how little I felt understood. The more alone I felt, the more my voice turned against me.

The messages I received from the people around me regularly implied my failure. The comprehension gap between us regularly located me on one side of an equation where the greater-than symbol pointed away from me. And here’s the crucial element to all of this; for people without ADHD to follow my train of thought can, at times, take countless hours of hashing and rehashing concepts that I comprehend in the span of two heartbeats.

To be honest, I am not smarter than anyone. I am, and I have always tried to be, humble in this. The bricklayers, auto mechanics, physicists, and financial analysts all have their niche. Each unquantifiably smarter than another in their chosen field. They have, for the most part, lived a focused and directed life, and that is another difference.

Because of the whimsical nature of my thoughts and the voraciousness with which I devour information, I have lived a chaotic and undirected life. One day, I am an auto mechanic, another, a car salesman. I have been a banker, a financial consultant, a janitor, a line cook, a maintenance man. I have washed dishes, operated a register, delivered pizza, learned the many intricacies of photography, and written a novel.

All of this is a symptom of my abnormality. It is the physical and mental manifestation of everything that makes me who I am. It is also a telling tale of why I fail, and why the voice inside my head has evolved into the naysayer that it is today. It continues to tell me that I am not good enough and that I never will be. I hear it in my head, and I see it in the way people perceive my failings. They don’t understand.

Few people ever do, and that is why ADHD is considered a “disorder.” Society-at-large expects us to fit a mold, and there are few outlets for us to be who we really are. When relating to other people, especially groups of people, becomes necessary, I can promise the ADHD individual is fighting a battle inside their head. They are, consciously or not, simultaneously agonizing over every nuance of every interaction in conjunction with unquantifiable amounts of historical data they’ve accumulated over years of experience wherein they were not understood and subsequently undervalued on that basis, and they do all of this while also contemplating, at lightning speed, a myriad of topics that spark their interest. Metaphorical rabbit holes come to mind, but the metaphor works better here with the twisting paths of an ant “super colony.” If you’re not familiar with this, I suggest you do a google search, it’ll put things into perspective when compared with a rabbit hole.

Even after all of this, I feel I haven’t sufficiently described what it means to be ADHD. I feel as though the topic has many layers and nuances that I am only just discovering, and it is further obscured by the fact that, to some degree, everyone has these problems. Only, it is the individual with ADHD that has these problems from the moment they wake to the moment they fall asleep. It keeps them awake, and it awakens them in the middle of the night. It disturbs them when they are resting, when they are active, and when they are striving to focus. The only time an ADHD individual gets to rest from the chaos in their mind is when they achieve what is described as hyperfocus. This state of being is a treasured affair of individuals with ADHD because of the tranquility they can obtain in these moments that is not offered anywhere else.

If you can envision yourself aboard the film-based Andrea Gail, of “The Perfect Storm,” during its final voyage, and comprehend the power of the storm depicted in that movie, and then imagine five storms raging all at once and always, then perhaps you will have an idea of what it is like inside the head of an ADHD individual.

With my diagnosis, I am learning how better to cope with this aspect of my personality. If for no other reason, I am glad to have the diagnosis; it explains my life and, over time, will help me define my future. ADHD is not an affliction, it is instead a dynamic character trait that is at times difficult to fathom and control, but it is me, and I am it. It has granted me many gifts while also extracting its toll.

For anyone who has known me, if you just couldn’t understand me, if you felt any anger toward me, or perhaps felt belittled because of what I said, ADHD is not an excuse, but it may have been the reason. My challenges have certainly had an effect on my life, and I am only just now coming to understand to what extent they have affected others. For the hurt I have caused, I am sorry, for the friends I have lost, I am sorry, and for the family kept at arm’s length, I am sorry. Sometimes I wish this wasn’t my life, but then I remember everything I love about myself and how fascinating the journey has been.

I wouldn’t change it for the world, no matter how much it hurts.