What is the image that comes to your head when you think about ADHD? A load of annoying little boys that can’t sit still perhaps? Or maybe someone that’s keeps wondering so they have a million half-finished projects on the go? What about someone who can just never hold onto a thought enough to push through and start it? Well, that’s the thing about ADHD, it can be all of the above. It can be a void in which no thought dare sprout just as easily as it can be everything, everywhere, all at once. However, the one thing it is consistently is frustrating.
Picture this, you have a project you want to do and you have a million and one ideas for how to do it. Great right? Wrong! Well, kind of. It’s complicated. See while the barrage of ideas can be brilliant as you’re hit with so many ideas and you also have so much energy and drive and you feel like you can do anything while you also feel like you’re on such a high of happiness but then they can also cut each themselves off, cannibalise each other and snuff out the best ideas with a torrent of randomness and before you know it BAM! The flow is gone and you’re left lying there like a shell-shocked soldier alone in the trenches. Then comes the fog and it can be crushing. All the momentum and energy you had is gone. Only the fog is left.
The ideas? Gone. The energy? Spent. Momentum? Vanished.
Gif credit: NBC
That’s not to say you won’t ever be able to get anything done while you are in the fog but it won’t be much and whatever is done will not be satisfying – you can often find that no matter how much you get done you will not be satisfied with the work. Whenever I’m in the fog like this (an increasingly common situation of late) I spend so much time just rotting and futilely attempting to get my brain to do anything. Any real work done seems so minimal in comparison to the amount of time spent rotting. The lack of drive and shattered attention span are endlessly frustrating and can crush your self-image, making you feel incompetent and useless. You can barely keep yourself alive – never mind productive.
Documented cases of ADHD have been skyrocketing in recent years causing many, particularly older, people to claim that the rise in diagnosis is simply a trend and that social media is just convincing people that they have ADHD but really they are just lazy and unmotivated and unwilling to do the work.
This is bogus, poppycock and drivel.
Gif Credit: Trafalgar Releasing, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The reason diagnoses are trending upwards is because we now know so much more about ADHD. The reason so many people claim to have ADHD without a diagnosis is because of how under-resourced the NHS mental health services are. Not only do we now understand the condition more but we also largely accept it more leading to people being more willing to vocalise and identify with it.
Just like with queer identities, and left-handedness before it, when society stops persecuting people for something, a lot more people will identify with it. This leads to a spike in cases that is, in reality, just a spike in acceptance and identification.
ADHD is a complex condition to live with, both personally and with loved ones. It can be absolutely brilliant and incredibly fun to experience – a super chaotic burst of energy, provided you don’t break anything, but then comes the fog, it always comes, and all that hope and energy is swept away leaving you just frustrated by your own brain. Perhaps medication would help – but due to how under-resourced the NHS is that is unlikely to happen for most people. This just leaves them trapped in this never-ending cycle. The best we can do is enjoy the fun bursts, prepare for the frustration and know that while it will return again, it will pass in time. These struggles don’t need to define you unless you let them.
Featured Image Credit: Pexels.com
Features Editor and Head of Podcasting.
Fourth-year Journalism and Politics student.
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