ADHD curse lies in damage prevention, the brain’s attempt to prevent failure. Anxiety and failure mode predictions for preventions take up a lot of headspace and capacity.
Solution: fail or do small mistakes on purpose right away to free up the resources in the brain trying to prevent failure (Cult of Done). If failure state is achieved, there is nothing to prevent. Failing, making mistakes usually is not a bad thing, does not lead to catastrophes.
ADHD blessing lies in damage control. Do the opposite to that of the neurotypical way and create chaotic environments to leverage inherent ADHD firefighting advantages.
However creating chaos and failing from the get go impairs the brains ability to build habits. The brain is a little too efficient and will probably turn it into “if I will fail anyway, I will stop trying.” But paradoxically, habit building is essential in balancing chaos. Reframing “failure is inevitable” into “failure can be delayed” is a hack that can be used. The other way is to try and fail when you recognize that the failure prevention is overwhelming.
John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down perfectly captured this when he noticed that schools, another place where authority figures hang out, ruthlessly disciplined any child who tried to assert individuality.
There has been an interesting result recently, which was discussed here . In an online game where participants had to forage for resources, people with attention deficits scored higher, because they preferred exploration to exploitation.
I commented back then that ADHD may be understood as introducing chaos into life to avoid being trapped in local optima.
Having ADHD is then of course a major disadvantage in environments where there is only one global optimum. Examples include highly regulated and deterministic academic environments (school, undergraduate studies) or corporate environments.
But in human history, environments with a single global optimum have been the exception, not the rule.
People with ADHD - and their parents and teachers - should therefore embrace their individuality as a kind of reservoir talent in the human gene pool. We need these individuals in the future.
Wheelchairs don’t help paraplegic people learn to use their legs. If you take away their wheelchair, they can’t get around anymore.
Yes. That’s how medication works. When you stop taking it, you stop getting the benefits. Countless studies and general cultural awareness has made it beyond clear that we cannot simply shame away obesity. It. Doesn’t. Work.
In theory if you could just convince someone to ignore their biology, their culture, their environment, and all the other factors that lead to their food habits then sure, we’d be golden. But that’s basically saying “if people just cared less what other people thought we wouldn’t have an anxiety epidemic, and treating their anxiety isn’t going to teach them how they could be less anxious without treatment”.
Resources:
- ADHD: Essential Ideas for Parents - Dr. Russell Barkely
- Autism