ADHD is Not a Superpower

When you’re working on a big project, it’s a good idea to take regular breaks. I’ve been making this cross-stitch piece for my sister – it’s a picture of her border collie – and the whole piece is about 20k stitches. I’m about 5.5k into it, which is excellent progress, but I’ve been working in long stretches without breaks and it’s been really hurting my shoulder. 

Attention is complicated when you’re ADHD. Normally I struggle to focus on projects for very long. Whether that’s because I find them uninteresting, I have another thing I would rather be doing, or I’m over/under stimulated; it makes long-term goals difficult to meet.

ADHD is largely an issue with dopamine. A brain with less than ideal levels of dopamine will seek out any sort of stimulus that will release dopamine. That’s why ADHD kids can struggle to do thirty minutes of math homework but will play video games for hours without stopping. We’re craving dopamine. 

The opposite of not being able to focus on boring projects is called hyper focus. When an ADHD person finds something interesting and it’s giving them a good supply of dopamine, they can work at it for hours and hours without stopping. At first glance, this may seem great. You may think, “oh! You can get so much work done if you just make it interesting! What a superpower!” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I don’t choose what my brain finds interesting. Worse yet, coming out of hyper focus is like coming out of a haze. I pick up my embroidery at 10 pm thinking I’ll get an hour or two of sewing done, then suddenly I look up and it’s 7 am, I have to pee so bad I’m shaking, and I’m incredibly hungry and thirsty. During hyper focus, literally nothing exists in my mind besides my project. 

There are ways to work around this. Setting alarms, having someone remind you to take bathroom breaks and eat something, or teaching a pet to come find you at certain times (e.g. meal times) are great ways to interrupt hyper focus.

The thing is, symptoms of disabilities aren’t superpowers. They’re disabling. Sure, if I get a job I love, maybe I can hyper focus on my work and get a ton of stuff done. But if I were to hyper focus on my embroidery that night, I might be too tired to work effectively the next day.

Disability is not a bad thing. It’s just different. We don’t have to pretend that symptoms are superpowers in order to make disabled people worthy of acceptance. We already are.