#adhd bitty

Now, i might be projecting but I've always seen a lot of myself in Eric, which is why one of my favorite omgcp headcanons is ADHD!Bitty.

So, here they are

Please add to them if you have some as well!

Eric got diagnosed fairly early, but still late enough that his early school years sucked

And even when he did get diagnosed his teachers either didn't care or had no idea of how to help him

And trying meds only led to really bad side effects so he quickly stopped

Safe to say he struggled a bit (and the bullying didn't help that issue either, together with the whole internalized homophobia thing and good lord, someone get this boy to therapy-)

However, as he got older he kept researching and eventually figured out where he struggled and how he could help himself deal

This is also how he got into vlogging because he saw this one youtuber with ADHD who helped him a bunch but that's a different story

Now to his ADHD

Eric has the more discreet kind of ADHD which means he's constantly in fear of people think he's faking it and doing things for attention because he passes as neurotypical most of the time

This also results in a lot of masking, to the point of where he doesn't even know he's doing it or how to stop it.

(Shitty helps him a lot with this by studying with him in either of their rooms and letting him experiment with unmasking and what unmasking actually looks like for Eric.)

(its a fun journey and he discovers that he actually stims quite a lot)

Eric is also one of those nd people who actually thrive listening to loud music

It helps him focus and he can't study without it

It also allows him to take a break from stimming which helps with doing assignment because more often than not his stims involve his hands (and you can't really write an assignment when you keep snapping your fingers and rotating your wrists in all possible directions)

Speaking of assignments

Executive dysfunction

There it is

The Big Bad gateway to self hatred and bad work ethics

Finishing assignments actually became such a struggle after his freshmen year that Eric decided to try meds again

Luckily for him, this time the side effects were much milder and they actually worked quite well for him

(The first day he took Adderal Ransom and Holster walked in on him crying while cleaning his room. It wasn't sad crying. It was oh-my-god-I-finished-my-assignment-baked-three-pies-AND-I-am-now-cleaning-my-room-I-have-never-been-this-productive-in-my-life-someone-hug-me type of crying)

Of course, the meds don't solve his problems, but they do help his overall regulation of his emotions and, for the most part, helps him keep deadlines

Now, he's still a very emotional person but at least now he doesn't have a burnout once every week

And his Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is still thriving as always

(his first year was really tough because of this. Jack meant well but it was a lot for Eric)

His hyperfixations include baking (obviously), Beyonce (also obviously), figure skating (he still keeps up with his favorites) and, funnily enough, history (His thesis was picked very carefully)

As mentioned before, Eric enjoys loud music and he's fairly okay with sounds (he thrives in the locker room and on the ice, as well as in the Haus where its never quiet), but textures both in food and fabrics are a Big Deal to him

Velvet blankets? Get that cursed witchcraft away from him

Mushrooms? He can and will spit them out

Chalk? Absolutely the fuck not

However, he's weirdly okay with touching styrofoam? And doesn't hate the sound of it rubbing together?

He likes it a lot when Chowder comes around

Chowder, his sweet handsome son, has absolutely raging ADHD, to the point where taking his daily meds is absolutely essential

Eric doesn't really have that problem, he can skip a day or two and still be fairly functioning

Chowder however-

Lets just say that him moving into the Haus was a very good thing because of supervision and people reminding him to take his meds

They bond a lot over their shared struggles, and Eric helps Chowder navigate school and hockey at the same time

This is getting off track, I can talk about ADHD!Chowder all day long

anyway

Shitty was the first person Eric told

The next day Shitty got him a stim toy and a t-shirt that had a picture of Raven from that's so Raven and text at the bottom that said "that's so ADHD"

Eric still wears it to sleep

The rest of the team reacted exactly the way Shitty told him they would, totally accepting

A few days after he told them Shitty came into his room with Jack in tow and smiled so wide while Jack said he was autistic himself so if Eric needed it he could borrow Jack's weighted blanket

After that day their relationship started to look like a friendship

And later when they finally began dating Eric got really good at revising his recipes while lying on top of Jack when he was having sensory overload, and Jack got really good at letting Eric stim with his fingers when he forgot his fidget cube

Okay I'm gonna stop

But I might add to it later

Please add something yourself if you want to!

Jack has no pitch control while Bitty has one settings and it’s loud. 

Jack likes the vibrations off Bitty’s chest when he sings. 

As a child, Bitty would sit on the counter and shove his hand into any bowl near him. 

Jack helps with the dry ingredients and then keeps his hands firmly on Bitty’s hip bones. 

Bitty won Jack a giant rabbit that is easily 4-5 feet tall and SO soft on their first public date after coming out, and Jack has no shame in cuddling it every night they’re apart. 

Bitty’s first special interest was bunnies actually! To this day he can talk for hours (And has especially during a lull in a kegster) about all the facts he has collected about them. 

Baking of course was his second. 

Jack’s first special interest was hockey and there’s a photo of him flapping while at his first game.

• he’s super reluctant to take meds at first, because he thinks he should just try harder. its until his sophomore year of high school that he finally agrees and even then he only finds one that works in his senior year

• he’s afraid to tell the team he takes meds, because he knows they probably won’t do anything but even if it isn’t adderall, the kind he takes is pretty much the same and some of his friends in high school stole some for a party and bitty is terrified that it will happen again. not on purpose of course but things happen when a bunch of frat boys get drunk

• studying is the worst for him. maybe it’s cliche, but bitty struggles with studying like nothing else even with meds. he’s tried a lot of study methods and his mom even took him to a cognitive behavior study therapist once but he never does as well as when he crams it into his head like five minutes before an exam

• baking is his Thing. he hyperfixates on it from a young age and it’s one of the only things he can focus on for extended amounts of time and remember almost everything about. Beyoncé is another and so is figure skating

• bits loves even just watching hockey because there’s so much going on and it’s so fast paced and nonstop that he doesn’t get bored or distracted. playing it is even better, because being hyperaware is beneficial on the ice

• he’s suuuuuper sensitive to stimuli. on his bad days, anything but old, quiet music from his childhood and one of his dad’s college t-shirts and senor bun is too much for him to handle

• jack gets this. when bitty stays with him, jack makes sure to do whatever he can to help bitty out even if means he won’t get any conversation out of him that day.

• bitty is super tactile though. touching other people grounds him but because of the bullying he doesn’t let anyone he doesn’t trust absolutely to touch him. the smh, who he trusts so much, is sometimes not up to par and it takes jack so, so long to earn that trust. it isn’t a personal thing. bitty is just afraid to give anyone that power over him anymore

• lbr bits has anxiety too but that’s a whole other post. his anxiety and his ADHD combine in the worst way sometimes when they’re both really bad and holy shit the fall out. it’s impossible to explain but an extended anxiety attack combined with really really bad ADHD is one of the worst feelings in the world