If who've known or followed me for more than a week or two you know I have ADHD. For those of you new here, hi! I'm either sane and capable of doing my life - or I'm a mess who can't remember what I'm doing in this room, unaware of the passage of time, anxious and depressed, seemingly incapable of getting started at something, and barely able to keep myself alive (much less our child).
The symptoms these things correlate to include memory issues, "time blindness," a tendency to suffer from anxiety and depression, chaos-brain (I made that one up - what's the official term? I think it's "inattentive," but I disagree with that language; more in a moment), and "executive dysfunction." among a lot of other symptoms and sufferings.
The main difference between the bad stuff in Paragraph 1 and the good stuff in Paragraph 2 is medication. Also years of therapy and personal work, but without medication it's a constant fight to maintain even part of P2 for any length of time. It doesn't go away. You learn to live with it, or you suffer from what can be debilitating symptoms.
Yet I don't like the "D" in the ADHD diagnosis: it stands for "disorder."
I get it: living with ADHD is a constant battle just to be safe, sane, and capable of getting shit done. Lots of people with ADHD suffer from constant anxiety about what we're forgetting to do and needing to do but unable to do and on and on.
Lots of us have even more symptoms, such as dyslexia (something I only learned in my 40s - I'm an author, educator, editor, awards juror, and other things that require tons of reading and reading comprehension, so that's been fun even if I wasn't aware I was fighting it), "rejection-sensitive dysphoria," and other challenging stuff that puts up barriers between us and happiness, enduring love, stable jobs, and all the rest that makes life worth living.
ADHD is in every sense a disability. It might be an invisible one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't prevent us from living our lives the way we desperately want. A person with ADHD drags behind them a wagonload of skeletons over broken terrain surrounded by a cloud of flying monkeys constantly grabbing and biting us at the most inopportune moments.
So I get it that ADHD is called a "disorder." I just don't like that, in the same way I don't like the "D" in "PTSD" (that's a different post, but definitely related, as many ADHDers also suffer CPTSD from constantly dealing with this barrage of chaos; stress is just a natural and healthy response to trauma, so not a disorder).
Like PTSD, ADHD creates disability in their havers, and that can lead to disordered thought, emotion, and living. so, sure, Disorder as a clinical term certainly applies.
But my brain is my whole me! If ADHD is the core language of my brain, part of my whole physical being, then by definition I am disordered, no?
Thinking about it that way only makes things worse.
Let's think about ADHD as the Momentum Condition. "ADHM," if you will. Or just "the Momentum Condition."
Momentum is a state of being: An object in motion tends to stay in motion, while one at rest tends to stay at rest. This accurately describes a person with ADHD's lived experience; it just needs a few clarifications:
Getting out of bed or off the couch or out of the house or so on, and getting started at something are the same kind of challenges as having to move a 100-ton boulder at rest on the highway at the base of a mountain. You need additional energy from outside to move that huge thing, or a really big lever, or help from a whole lotta friends (executive dysfunction, anxiety, depression, and other "can't get going" symptoms).
In that same vein, getting off the keyboard in the middle of a writing session that's going really well is like trying to stop that boulder from rolling down the mountainside in the first place. Same for changing gears to something with higher priority in the middle of anything else, keeping track of time, remembering something unrelated to what you're doing or thinking about right now, and so on (hyperfocus, memory problems, inattention, and other "can't stop" symptoms).
(Ironically, while I was editing this, Baby Harvey woke up and wanted to come downstairs, so I was contending with wanting to pay attention to him and Lauren, play with Harvey, and kiss my darling wife while also fighting losing my thoughts about what I wanted to add or reword and get this posted before baby fingers deleted my work. Excellent timing for a moment of self-reflecting about this very kind of life experience.)
Thoughts in the past tend to stay in the past, the concept of "the future" can be impossible to grasp until it's literally all around us, and "the now" tends to overwhelm all other times. Which can be great for the positive effects of hyperfocus, enjoying the moment, and getting something done no matter how big or complex it is, but not so great for the other complex demands of life, love, career, hobbies, family, and all the rest of what makes up the human experience outside this moment in the environment of our own mind.
Thinking of our lived experince as the Momentum Condition rather than limiting who we are by defintion is so much more positive and useful (I have an Attention Deficit? I'm "Hyperactive? I'm Disordered? eat my shorts).
Thinking like this also clarifies things, because not only do I hate being nothing but a demonstration of a clinical condition, the rest of those acronymal letters all refer to others' perceptions of my existence. It sucks to know that everyone in my life might see me experiencing symptoms and reduce me to jargon designed only to help non-ADHDers cope with their frustrations arising from being around us while we're simply existing.
If, instead, folks around us think about our emotional and mental momentum (unable to go, can't stop going, can't get out of the moment, caught in a rut, and so on), that'll help them understand what's going on for us.
That's love. That's friendship. That's considering everyone in your family, cohort, workplace, and life as full-on people whose mental landscapes might feel alien from yours instead of only considering how our actions affect them. Or reducing us to Disordered, Disabled, and Deficient. It gets people to try to imagine what it's like being us at this moment, and why, and how they might be able to help us change our momentum, if they would like to have a better relationship with us or just want to be kind.
That's empathy, my friends.
And if there's anything this world needs more of, it's empathy.
So please start thinking of people (including yourself, if it applies) with ADHD not just as a set of symptoms perceived by others and jargoned into clinical terms.
Start thinking of us as people deeply affected - sometimes assisted and sometimes disabled - by the most powerful internal forces of momentum you can imagine.
(this is also one of my free Patreon posts)
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