Deficit
In What’s the Point? I mentioned neurodiversity and the different ways we process the world, the different ways it might feel to be us, and alluded to the fact that I felt that my way was not the “typical” way (whatever that means). This was not just a version of “I’m not like other girls” even though I can’t fully discount the possibility that wanting to be different or special lies somewhere beneath the desire to talk about it. But luckily, my ADHD gives me something concrete to point to and talk about first.
Having ADHD, undiagnosed and unmedicated until 6 years ago, has had a profound impact on my life and feels like a central part of my story, one that I’m still figuring out. There was the lesson learned too well as a child, that I was a bad kid who was out of control and not “living up to his potential”. The coping mechanism of procrastination that ran my life for decades, where the only thing that could finally force me to focus was the fear of failure. The moment when I first took medication and found myself in a new mode and thought, Holy shit! Is this how normal people feel all the time?!?!
But today I want to focus on the good parts of it, the superpowers it gives me. For that’s as much a part of the story as the rest and it’s the whole package that makes it what it’s like to be me.
The first D in ADHD, of course, is for Deficit. But for me that has never really been the case. There is no shortage of attention, there is just a shortage of control over where I put it (which may explain the reminder I came up with to try to be more mindful of it). Especially when “where I should put it” is being dictated by other people.
My attention, at least unmedicated, is not something I can easily give instructions to: “Pay attention to this for the next 10 minutes. Now pay attention to this. Listen closely, this is important. Don’t forget to do this.” It does not matter how nicely I ask, it does not feel amenable to my willpower any more than your attention does. I can try to interest it (just like I can try to interest you) but it is not mine to command, or even beg or cajole for long.
Instead, I tend to exist in one of two modes: flitting or fixating. When flitting, my attention darts from thing to thing, seemingly of its own accord. It’s not that there is no focus – it shines at full wattage on each thing it points at – it’s just that it might not stay there very long. Sometimes it chases the shiny thing, the distraction, but sometimes it bounces back and forth between two, or three, or seven things, looking at each from different angles. When fixating, I am hyper-focused and my attention will not budge. It stays locked on the thing in front of it, sometimes for hours at a time, and nothing else can break through. I don’t notice hunger or any number of other things that might break one’s reverie over the course of the day. And being pulled out of it unexpectedly is jarring and exhausting.
But wait, I hear you say, I thought you were going to talk about the good parts? Those sound kind of miserable. But while they certainly can be in a world that is not set up to accommodate them, they are also, I believe, the source of some superpowers I feel that I have.
When flitting, and not simply chasing something shiny, my attention tends to jump laterally to the things it notices are related in some way: the analogous thing in another subject, the generalization of the idea, one of its component ideas, its opposite, an abstract or concrete version of it, something equivalent in certain circumstances, its metaphorical or literal realization, etc. It bounces from node to node in a graph of ideas where each edge is a relation.
And the superpower this brings, at the cost of not sitting still, is the ability to draw connections, to see the ways that different things are the same and similar things are different, to pull solutions from one domain to another, to recognize patterns and see the interconnectedness of things.
When fixating, on the other hand, I bear down on the problem for as long as it takes, I don’t get bored, I don’t get distracted, I don’t get tired, I don’t give up. This is particularly useful when programming or writing or solving a problem. At the cost of neglecting everything else, I can be fully engaged for hours without noticing the passage of time.
These both can truly be superpowers and my successes in life owe a lot to them. They make me who I am.
And the good news is that on Vyvanse, the medication I now take, I don’t have to give them up. I get control over my attention and shift into a productive mode that is better aligned with the day-to-day demands of life, but if I choose to, I can still let it off the leash to flit or fixate as it chooses. And it’s good that I can, because I don’t know if I would give that up simply for the benefit of being able to better conform to the expectations of a world not built for me. It would not feel like being me.