The satisfaction I got from documenting my clean and messy room inspired me to create some form of informative piece geared towards raising awareness of the symptoms and struggles that ADHD causes, as well as to offer solutions for those with ADHD/ADD, and those that may know someone who has them.

I started out by writing down what I wish people knew, things that are personal struggles as well as external struggles. I have ADHD-PI which is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but is primarily the inattentive symptoms (hence the PI).

What I wish people knew is the speed that life feels like its moving at, as well as the separation between days, because I struggle to commit to tasks long term each day feels completely new, I also wish people knew about the impulsivity that ADHD brings. I often get categorized as a lazy person but usually, I’m just stuck inside my head and this stigma really affected me for the first 19 years of my life because I thought I was just bad at things. I would want to do something, id try to do it, and nothing would get done, so I started to develop self-hatred and a lot of self-doubts, this undermines you especially when all your behavior helps confirm it to yourself and to others.

I knew that ADHD displayed itself in a range of ways so decided to go on Reddit and ask people what they wish other people knew, and there were lots of touching replies, one user said they struggle with sleep as a result of their ADHD so waking up and being productive in the morning is very hard, they work in a group setting and many of their co-workers would have a go at them for being an unproductive zombie in the morning.

Another person spoke about how they struggle to listen and they have suffered socially as people think that they are uninterested but really their thoughts are so loud that it drowns out the person talking to them.

Organization was a common topic as many people, myself included, struggle to plan ahead, stick to a time table and feel like getting anything done is a mad scramble where half the battle is actually staying on task.

I recognized that this was all anecdotal evidence so decided to do more factual research

using the NHS’ website as well as the National Institute of Mental Health’s website I began to look into key symptoms as well as the different types of ADHD

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd/

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd/index.shtml

As you can see above I started trying to visually communicate these symptoms by doodling my thoughts as they came to me, I still felt like I was in danger of only representing my personal experiences so wanted to draw all these out in one session so I could let go of those ideas.

Hyper activity layered thoughts, too much information to understand anything, thinking about apples.

Sometimes I feel crazy, I get moments in the conversation where I lose my focus and start to daydream, then suddenly everyone’s staring at me and I don’t know why, it causes slight anxiety and makes me feel like I’ve jumped in time, I tried to communicate this in the two pages above.

I drew this on a day where I was very inattentive, I didn’t try to but I kept drawing the same line, I sat and allowed myself to be distracted, and made a mark whenever I was able to focus on the task at hand. The repetition of the same line is pretty telling because amongst the stopping and starting I often get caught in a loop of reading, doing, or thinking the same thing over and over.

 

On the left is a kind of mental self-portrait, the silver is where I felt pressure/ frustration building and the purple is this burst of thoughts and distractions that cloud my focus. The drawing on the right is how it feels to try and stay on task while these thoughts are pulling me up, I’m trying to grab on to something to stay focused but there is nothing holding my attention and the distractive forces whisk me away into a world of my own.

On the left are 2 short comic ideas I had, time standing still, and nothing happening while I’m off medication and the meds just fixing it. I know I’ve mentioned medication twice now in passing but starting to take meds as an adult blew my mind as I always felt incompetent and suddenly I was able to organize and arrange my thoughts in a way that allowed me to do something. The comic underneath is about something I mentioned earlier where someone will be talking to me and I will be lost in my head, realize that I’m distracted, try to focus on what they are saying again and suddenly I’m thrust into social disorientation where I don’t know what they’ve said or how long they’ve been talking.

The page on the right is an exchange I had with a teacher as a kid, it always haunted me because it made me feel really incompetent, a teacher called me out while I was daydreaming and asked me a question, I couldn’t answer and they said I’m not focusing and that id remember what they were talking about if I cared. This hit hard because I did care, and I was trying my best, but my best wasn’t good enough, and although I’m a pretty bright guy I never seemed to have anything to show for the work that I put into anything academic.

I think this example of a teacher picking on a distracted student is something that almost everyone has experienced but usually, they are voluntarily letting themself be distracted by not trying to focus and because of this its really good at illustrating just how distracted I can be, even when I’m trying my absolute best.