*If these experiences resonate for you, don’t forget to check out our Thrive Circle — The ADHD Experience for Women in Midlife.*
Take a moment right now and notice what you first picture when you hear the term ADHD.
Even those of us who have the condition or have partners or children who do will usually first imagine some image of a young, rambunctious child – usually a boy – jumping out of his seat, interrupting, and looking everywhere but where he’s meant to. Even when our lived experience offers much more nuance, or at least awareness that there is nuance, our brains are wired strongly for stereotypes.
The ADHD stereotypes run deep, and we come by them honestly after decades of us being fed a narrow picture of both youth and dysfunction. The ripple effects of that narrowing are multiple. One is that we clearly miss the presence of neurodivergence in many people who could benefit from it as an understanding of themselves. Another is that even when someone claims an ADHD identity, they still might not have a comprehensive understanding of how that manifests in their lives and work.
Today let’s talk about a handful of the traits or experiences of people with ADHD that don’t get as much airtime. They go beyond the idea of always misplacing things or being late, though they actually do help give context for some of those behaviors. These are aspects of the ADHD experience that are often missed or misunderstood, but they often result in a lot of challenge – and sometimes even grief – for those who live with them.
It’s always an important reminder too that when we talk about neurocomplexity, it’s just that – complex. Not every person with ADHD will have their brain organized in this way. And even some who do may not identify with these experiences because they’ve masked or been able to accommodate for them so significantly. Bottom line – everyone is different and this isn’t a diagnostic checklist.
The Experience: Out of sight, out of mind.
What it is: While “attention deficit” is in the name of the disorder, the reality is that people with ADHD don’t necessarily lack attention, but rather struggle with regulating it. Many researchers would say that ADHDers actually have an excess of attention, but it’s for the things that are novel, interesting, and – importantly – present. ADHDers often struggle significantly to hold things in their minds when lacking some kind of cue. It’s not exactly “forgetfulness,” but rather more similar to a problem with object permanence – the ability to remember that something exists when not visually cued. What it’s most certainly not is a signal of how much the person cares about what’s disappeared for them. Most people with ADHD would say they very much want to hold what’s been lost, and they feel frustrated and embarrassed when they realize this has happened again.
How it impacts the person and others: There are some obvious ways that this phenomenon impacts people with ADHD, including that the seeming “forgetfulness” can make someone look careless or disorganized. You might not grab your lunch for the day if it’s in the refrigerator rather than in your line of sight on the counter, for instance. But there are more relational and potentially more impactful ways that this plays out as well. An ADHDer might struggle to leave work on time because, beyond the infamous “time blindness,” they aren’t picturing their family waiting at home for them; they are fully where they are. An ADHDer might struggle in friendships because they don’t keep up with those whom they aren’t seeing regularly, leading friends to feel ignored or unimportant.
Strategies that might help: The most direct way to address the out of sight, out of mind experience is to make as much as possible in sight. This might mean creating visual cues for one’s self, such as leaving items or pictures of things that need done readily visible. An ADHDer may benefit from setting up many more reminder systems for themselves as well, recognizing that their brain might not ping them more naturally. This might look like alarms to leave work and reminders on one’s phone to text a friend in another state to check in.
The Experience: Everything gets more complicated than it needs to be.
What it is: By the time I sit down to write an essay or even just a social media post, I might have pages and pages of notes collected over weeks or months. Wherever the topic started in my mind, it’s meandered through at least twenty other detours that included at least forty rabbit holes. I often get to the point where I feel like I can’t write what I had planned because it’s just too darn complicated. Or, I’ve just lost the thread and can’t even get back. Moreover, I start to avoid writing because I know it means delving back into my messy yarn ball and that feels too overwhelming. Ugh. People with ADHD can do this with almost anything – turning what may seem to a neurotypical to be a straightforward task into a complex web.
The science: ADHDers have been shown to have an over-connectivity in the brain regions. We all have loops of circuits in the brain that connect our frontal cortex, responsible for planning and executing, with our deeper brain regions, responsible for movement, reward, and emotion. Researchers used fMRI to discover that ADHDers brains had extra neural connections. While more connectivity seems like it would be positive, the heightened connectivity can have a flooding effect on the ADHD mind. Too many synapses firing means that there becomes too much data and information to parse through.
How it impacts people: People with ADHD can end up getting overwhelmed and burnt out by the degree of connectivity. They may be told they make things too complex or are inefficient, and that can lead to feeling ineffective or burdensome. Others might find trying to follow their web frustrating and wish they could just stay on one track.
Strategies that might help: For someone with the tendency to make things too complex, setting up guardrails at the start of a task or project can be really help. Defining, for instance, that one’s goal is to create a checklist for the onboarding process, to create an entirely new system (as much as our brain tells us that would be better), will help keep things more streamlined. One can also start out by defining what “done” looks like so that they know it when they see it. Finally, it can be useful to check in with a trusted friend or colleague who will give honest feedback about whether something’s gotten too complicated.
Experience: Picturing the future is hard.
What it is: Dr. Russell Barkley, one of the world’s foremost experts on ADHD, has said that people with ADHD have two times: now and not now. While this is, of course, overly binary, the experience of many ADHDers is of being rooted in the present, even when future tasks, decisions, and or consequences might be right up ahead. It’s not that ADHDers don’t care about the future – or worse, as they are often stereotyped, lazy or selfish – it’s that they have actual differences in the ability to visualize a future state. So while those without ADHD might imagine how they will feel the next day after staying up late and so get to bed sooner, difficulty “seeing” that future state means that ADHDers can end up making present-oriented choices to the detriment of their future selves.
The science: This difficulty with future visualization is often tied to the experience called “time blindness,” which is the challenge some people have with being able to estimate and manage time. It’s associated with a distorted perception of time, and research has indicated that this is related to differences in the prefrontal cortex and default mode network for ADHDers. People with ADHD also seem to have different “time horizons,” which is the sense we each have of how close an event or deadline needs to be in front of us before it feels real. ADHDers tend to have short time horizons, meaning that until something is close in time, it doesn’t hit their mental radar. Sometimes that doesn’t happen until the deadline is almost or already passed.
How it impacts people: These problems visualizing the future end up resulting in all kinds of potential challenges. On a smaller scale (which can quickly become bigger), it can be hard to engage in self-care if we struggle to visualize how something will help or why it matters. We can find ourselves chronically late or missing deadlines, because when we can’t see far ahead, we struggle to work backwards to manage our time to work toward the goal. On a larger scale, ADHDers sometimes talk about finding it hard to find purpose or meaning or know what direction they want life to take when those future selves seem impossible to conceptualize.
Strategies that might help: Making the future as visible and tangible as possible can be helpful. ADHDers can work to build in intentional moments to pause and picture a future state, given that this may not happen as naturally. Practicing mindfulness techniques can help build this practice and skill. Further, ditching to-do lists and exchanging for time-based plans (i.e. putting a specific task on your calendar) can help in making things more real.
Experience: You’re totally overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start.
What it is: People with ADHD often get labeled as being over-functioners or under-functioners. Which category they land in relates to how they learn to respond to the flood of information hitting their brains at the same time. Because they struggle to filter their attention, tasks and opportunities feel like a barrage. ADHDers will often either try to pile their proverbial plate as high as possible or alternatively find themselves unable to start anything. I think about this as a problem of triaging, the ability to sort through what’s in front of us and decide what deserves our attention and in what order.
The science: Triaging actually requires a number of our brain functions and neurotransmitters, many of which can be different for those who are neurodivergent. Executive functioning is key here, as it relates to our ability to assess or organize a task, and this is a core area where ADHDers may feel challenged. In addition, dopamine is required to feel motivated to start a task and to feel rewarded by doing it. ADHDers may opt for tasks that seem stimulating or more rewarding (even when they are less important) because lower levels of dopamine mean they are more often seeking it.
How it impacts people: Problems in triaging mean that people may feel chronically overwhelmed and in a state of constant motion or perpetual freeze. Either state can lead to burnout, which is a common experience for people with ADHD. Others around them may feel frustrated by their challenges, wishing they would just stop trying to do it all or just finally get started.
Strategies that might help: You’re probably getting this by now, but making this concrete and visual is a core strategy for many ADHD experiences. One way to do that to support triaging is to use the Eisenhower Matrix, which is a fairly simple decision-making tool involving four quadrants based on a task’s urgency and importance. Using a tool like this helps us make clear where our attention should go. Other strategies like chunking tasks that are similar for efficiency can be helpful too, as can body doubling – the practice of working alongside another person.
Experience: Other people say you’re too much or are always talking about yourself.
What it is: Folks with ADHD can be incredible conversationalists – often being highly engaging and even entertaining. They can be fun to chat with at a party, full of anecdotes and stories and ideas and no lulls in the discussion. Some of this ability comes from the first experience described above, where connections between ideas come fast and easy. That flood of connections, however, can sometimes mean that ADHDers end up dominating a conversation, and specifically bringing it back frequently to themselves and their own experiences. This can read for some as self-focused or even get labeled as narcissistic. But it’s not a personality feature as much as a neurological one.
The science: One of the mechanisms that could produce an overly self-referential talking style for someone with ADHD is that their Default Mode Network tends to be highly active. You can learn much more about the DMN where I wrote about it here, but in short, it’s a network in the brain active for introspection and self-reflection. The reality is that many ADHDers are often thinking about themselves – not because they are selfish or bad people – but because they spend a lot of time with a lot of mental chatter. When they have the opportunity to engage with others, this may combine with their difficulty to manage impulses or to react quickly and they can find themselves interrupting or bringing the conversation back to themselves. Finally, challenges with working memory make some ADHDers worry that if they don’t get out what they want to say now, they won’t be able to come back to it.
How it impacts people: The intensity of this experience and someone’s self-awareness of it matters a lot in how it plays out relationally. When this style is significant, it can end up frustrating or alienating other people, a situation that can even be confusing or at least quite sad for an ADHDer.
Strategies that might help: Practicing mindfulness and self-awareness tools more generally can help us slow down and give the opportunity to notice how we might be engaging in our relationships and conversations. A handy in-the-moment tool is “WAIT” – an acronym that asks us to consider “Why am I talking?” Asking trusted others to offer feedback – both more globally about this and as this habit shows up – can help us build new patterns.
What I think about in reflecting on this handful of experiences is that living with ADHD can mean often feeling misunderstood, and trying to navigate a social and pragmatic world that can be extra tricky. There are tools and practices that can ease the challenge of the experience, but it’s important to at least acknowledge the additional labor required. Helping each other – whether we personally have ADHD or just care about someone who does – to recognize and now these challenges can help us all live with a little more easefully.
