My top three quirks about ADHD.
October is ADHD awareness month.
So to keep things light-hearted and fun, I thought it would be fun to share my top three quirks of having ADHD:
#1- The Graveyard of Hobbies
This is a real thing! Because of our impulsive and busy brains, we can gain sudden interest in activities and lose interest just as quickly. However, when we do gain interest in an activity, we tend to hyperfixate and throw ourselves into it. We need to buy all the things to run that activity, and we will participate for a few days or weeks, and then eventually the spark fizzles out, and we lose interest. It may be weeks or months later before we pick it up again. This is why it is called the graveyard of hobbies. They will pile up!
#2- Food Fixations
Coming up with meal ideas, having the mental energy to put a list together, going grocery shopping, and then cooking each day is tough. It’s a lot for us to think about, plan and prioritize. All things an ADHDer struggles with. Sometimes just deciding what you want to eat is the hardest part, so we revert to what we know; therefore, we can get stuck in a pattern of eating the same food or meal for days. Sometimes, we get caught up in loving a certain food or the ease of making a particular meal that we eat it for many days until we get sick of it.
#3- The Piles on the Bedroom Floor
I always ask my ADHD clients, ‘Where are the piles in your room?’, and they laugh. It is hard to explain why cleaning our bedroom is so hard and why it takes so much mental energy. To the outside person, it may seem simple to just put a sweater back in the drawer you took it from, but to an ADHDer, your brain is telling you, “nope I dont feel like folding it and putting it in the drawer”, so you drop it in a spot that you know you will have easy access to for next time. When I was in university, my spot was always the back of my computer chair. It would pile up until I got sick and tired of moving it back and forth from my bed to the chair, and eventually, I would just have enough “annoyed” energy that I would put it all away. The catch with that “annoyed” or “stressed” energy and cleaning is that for some people we won’t stop at the clothing pile and have the sudden energy to clean our entire room! It will feel great to put EVERYTHING away and organize all the spaces, but we probably won’t do that again for weeks.
So to my parents of ADHDers out there, be patient. Your version of clean is not their version. Create basic cleaning bedroom expectations, such as no food or food containers left in the bedroom and once a week, one area of the room needs to be reorganized. Also, sometimes your child or teen may just need help on where to start because starting can feel overwhelming.
These are just a few quirks about the ADHD mind! Any others you can relate to or have questions about?