Wednesday’s Child: ADHD

Yup, I’m finally admitting it: I have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. I figure you don’t need a professional diagnosis if you’re willing to admit it 😉

Kidding, obviously: please do go get a professional diagnosis if you’re struggling with focus, attention, and anxiety issues. I’m just lucky to have a pretty mild case and to have picked a career that supports a lot of my weak spots; and, over the years, I’ve taught myself to cope with (and even benefit from!) my symptoms.

Why didn’t I ever get diagnosed? Well, it wasn’t really a thing in the 70s and 80s when I was in elementary school, first of all—I think only the kids who really were out of their seats all day got diagnosed (and I’m glad I didn’t—the pharmaceutical solutions up through the 1990s at least were horrendous—I know this b/c I saw the side-effects first-hand teaching 4 sixth-grade boys with ADHD in the 90s). Anyway, I was capable of long periods of task-specific hyperfocus, so no teacher on the planet was going to flag me for testing.

Academia caters to people who hyperfocus; at the same time, it’s no accident that we have the stereotype of the “absent-minded professor,” who can sit in their office for 10 hours reading boring scholarly articles and then almost get hit by a bus crossing the street on their way home because they forgot to look both ways…. That’s a lot of us (though I’m more the “left my phone in my office” type than the “watch out for that bus!” type).

Overall, I would say the upsides of my ADHD are as follows:

• My eidetic memory is insane. If I attend to something, my brain takes a snapshot of it, and it stays in long-term memory for a ridiculously long time. I still remember, 40 years later, a random 14-digit number that a 9th-grade psychology text said I wouldn’t be able to remember: 10009642301001. Since we all have smartphones now, this isn’t as useful a skill as it used to be, but it’s still helpful in an academic setting when you need to remember a new student’s name, or where in an old book you saw a quote you want to use in an article.
• As mentioned above, I’m capable of concentrating on long, arduous, and complex tasks until they’re finished. This is actually atypical of ADHD in a lot of people, but for me my hyperfocus and some kind of compulsion to complete tasks seem to sync up to make me a Finisher.
• Continuing on that theme, I seem to find people and hobbies continually interesting and tend to stick with them for years—I think because they’re dynamic and evolving but also because I REALLY don’t like being a quitter. This is honestly the only reason I’m still progressing in aikido or climbing: I’m not gifted at either, but I’m a “fall down 7 times, get up 8” kinda girl—good thing as both these activities involve a lot of falling!

There are however, ahem, downsides to my ADHD:

• I have absolutely abysmal procedural and temporal memory. I have to keep looking back at recipes I’m making because I can’t remember multiple steps no matter how many times I look at them. Learning routines in aikido (paired weapons practices, mostly) is like pulling teeth. My climbing partners at the gym joke that I have “route amnesia”: I never remember if I’ve done a climb or not—zero recollection unless I look up and see a particular hold that’s familiar. I can’t remember turns on a hike or a driving route. There’s just nothing there. It used to drive me crazy, but I’ve just accepted it and use various prostheses (Google Maps, stories, or note-taking) to remember important procedures. Now, once they’re rote, I’m fine—but the minute I fall out of practice, they’re gone as if I never learned them.
• Relatedly, I’m forgetful of tasks and appointments. I have to use calendars and reminders to keep myself on track—even when I’ve reviewed my calendar in the morning, I can forget what’s on it by the afternoon.
• And, I just hate routines in general. If I know what to expect from an upcoming routine, like commuting home, walking the dogs on the same route, or flossing my teeth, I feel a deep, anxious antipathy toward it that’s hard to describe. It’s like a cross between an itching/burning sensation in my brain and an intense feeling of claustrophobia. Even if the activity was originally pleasurable, if I have to repeat it, it loses all appeal. This is obviously a big problem for anyone attempting to function as an adult, because many healthy and necessary things have to be repeated, so I’ve had to adopt various coping strategies which amount to training myself like a dog—either with distractions or rewards: I listen to a new audiobook when I run the same training route; I reward myself with dollars toward a future shopping spree for sticking to a diet.
• When I’m hyperfocused, which is often, I can be heedless toward everything around me, including other people’s feelings or needs, because I don’t switch attention tracks easily or well. Honestly this is probably my weakest area. I’ve learned a couple of breathing practices through therapy and aikido to snap out of hyperfocus and attend to what’s around me in time and space; that’s helping. But this is DEFINITELY my Achilles heel.
• I have to be careful not to add too many new things to my plate. I’ve gotten better about this over the years because I don’t like the anxiety that comes from not being able to take care of everything I’ve said “yes” to. I’m more comfortable saying “no” now, even to opportunities that sound fun, intriguing, or noble, because it’s more important to me to be a good steward of what I’ve taken responsibility for.

What does this all have to do with a basket of vegetables and eggs? Well, you might be able to guess that gardening and animal husbandry are two activities that fall right in my ADHD gaps. Hey, it’s great planting new things—very novel and fun. But I have a tendency to plop vegetable plants in the ground, point at them, and say, “When I come back in 3 months, I expect tomatoes.” That’s…not how you garden. Same with my chickens: I’ve had to put notes in my calendar to check their food and water levels on a regular schedule because otherwise I would just forget they were out there until I randomly remembered a week later and they were all dead. So, this little basket is actually a big accomplishment.

I think I’ll make a frittata with a side of cucumber-basil salad to celebrate…if I remember to stop at the store on the way home from the climbing gym to get feta. If I remember to make it to the climbing gym at all this morning…. Wish me luck!