Dealing With Adult ADHD Through Humor

Learn how to make jokes and draw comics for mental health. This is the (funny) written version of my Medium Day talk

Dear readers,

I usually publish short ADHD-friendly pieces here on Substack, but as I was finishing the written version of my talk “Dealing With Adult ADHD Through Humor” (YouTube video announced in the last post), I thought it deserves to be published here. Especially because most comics in Ana’s comics have been created through the comic journaling method described here.

I’m happy with how the written version has turned out, I think it’s funnier than the talk itself :) Also, if you go to the end of this post, you will get a treat: Name reveal of my next longer comic! Happy reading!

This piece is also published on Medium. If you are a Medium member, I would love to get a bit of your reading time, thank you!! :)

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This day has finally come! Despite my ADHD procrastination, I have sat down to write a summary of my Medium Day talk. The ADHD devil in my head was telling me it might not be worth it, but my creative angel won the argument because I think my talk deserves existing as a written piece. But you can also watch the recorded video version above, where you have the added benefit of seeing me struggle with technology and trying not to sound too academic (but failing at it, I am way more fun in writing).

As per typical ADHD fashion, I did not copy paste audience’s questions correctly, and I regret to inform you I have lost all the questions I didn’t get a chance to answer. The good news is I will try to compensate for it by making this written piece even more fun and informative than the talk itself. Let’s go!

What is ADHD?

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) keeps trending on social media and it is clear why. Many of us, regardless of whether we have a clinical diagnosis of ADHD like me or not, relate to this feeling of constant need to feel stimulated and excited. It’s almost like the life we are encouraged to live (with all its jobs and tasks) has become a bit too boring. If you have ever felt like this, then you are in the right place, because this article is all about making our lives more fun and dopamine-full in a healthy way.

How has ADHD impacted my life?

Glad you asked. On the outside, my life often looks like I’m doing amazing. In fact, many people don’t even believe I have ADHD, because I was always a good student and I even finished a PhD in linguistics! When I tell people I lack motivation, they point out that besides my academic job, I also write on Medium and Substack, and create comics for social media. What they don’t see is the behind-the-scenes.

I create comics and I write because I need to stimulate myself beyond my job, even though I know I might get bored of these hobbies tomorrow. What others don’t see is that I did my PhD while overworking and obsessing over projects just to abandon them when more work needs to be put into them. They don’t see all the emotional outbursts or feelings of shame around my daily lack of productivity.

Because of this ADHD need for stimulation, I have many different (fleeting) interests that become the only thing that can motivate me to do pretty much anything. On the other hand, the tasks that I perceive as boring are a no-go zone. I avoid them at all costs. Unfortunately, many of them, like cleaning or taking care of bureaucracy are considered to be a normal part of adult life. You can see how this can lead to problems.

How can we make ourselves do the boring tasks?

When you have ADHD, what ends up happening is that important (boring) things don’t get done on time. And as a result, you feel bad about yourself. These feelings of guilt and inadequacy are only heightened by the emotional dysregulation and other comorbid mental health conditions that often come with ADHD. We get lost in this rumination and that only leads to more procrastination.

Is there a way to break this cycle? Well, yes! You can make fun of your experience by creating comic strips about it. Let’s break this down.

When you use humor to laugh at yourself, you take the power away from the guilt and shame around your procrastination, which makes it more likely you will eventually complete the task. When the boring task becomes something to laugh at, it doesn’t seem so scary anymore. If you have at any point seen Harry Potter, the spell Riddikulus works in a similar way, by making fun of what we are afraid of, the fear disappears.

Creativity is the last nail in the coffin of our procrastination. When we create funny comics about our experiences, we feel more productive because we created something new. No one can feel bad about that!

How does comic journaling work?

Comic journaling means documenting your everyday life and struggles in comics, through a lens of humor of course. It is a cool way to keep yourself sane, be creative, have fun, and get that sweet sweet stimulation.

How does it work? I create short comic strips in which I make fun of a specific struggle that I’m going through, for example a specific boring task I need to do. Creating a comic usually miraculously leads to the completion of that task. Here is an example of one of my comics that broke my cycle of procrastination.

One day after work, I was hungry, but instead of getting something to eat, I kept scrolling on my phone. I simply couldn’t get the motivation to get up and make dinner. I thought this struggle was so ridiculous that I sat down and created this comic. And then the craziest thing happened.

I went ahead and made dinner! Making fun of this experience suddenly gave me the ability to do the task I had to do.

How the hell did that happen? My official theory is that humor takes away shame by associating your struggle with a new positive feeling, which leads to feeling good about stuff in general.

First of all, you feel good about yourself because you created a comic, you were somewhat productive after all, even if it’s only a comic. If you go one step further and publish it on social media, there is even more stimulation going your way because of all those likes!

Finally, we are in a good mood that can make us have those unexpected positive thoughts like “Well, maybe I can do the task, maybe it’s not so bad”. Whaaat? Did my brain say that? Oh yes, it does that every time after comic journaling, little bastard.

“But Ana, I’m not talented in making jokes nor drawing”, I hear you say, “Maybe comic journaling is not for me”? Maybe, or maybe you just need my full tutorial on how to make funny jokes and draw comics! Here it is:

How can we make a funny joke? Step by step

I overanalyze everything, so now we are going to break down how humor works. You heard it correctly, I will explain to you how to make jokes that are actually funny, from a creator’s perspective. Maybe you already know this, or maybe you don’t, either way, you might be surprised to know that there is a foolproof joke recipe out there.

The core of a joke is a contradiction. In the comic above, we have the
contradiction between wasted time and productive time. Culturally, we expect wasted time to be much shorter than productive time, but the opposite is the case here. This conflict between our expectations and our reality is a contradiction, and that’s what makes it funny.

“Okay, but how do we actually get to this step? I’m sure there are plenty of contradictions that are not so funny”, you might say. This is now the question of delivery.

Let us start with a simple contradiction, inspired by real-life ADHD events.

This contradiction is not a joke yet, it is only a statement. How can we turn it into a joke? The secret is to make it funnier by making it more implicit. Less is more!

In this example, I am substituting explicit statements with implicit ones and the last parts already contain the speech bubble and the facial expression that will only be indicated through drawing and not text. Show, don’t tell!

How do we draw it?

If you made it until here, you are a fellow artist, even if you don’t know it yet. Don’t be shy and take your pen, pencil, or tablet, and let’s draw comics together!

I always follow the principle of keeping my comics about ADHD very simple because that actually allows me to finish them, having ADHD and all that. The simplicity of my drawings makes it easier to relate because the readers can focus on what really matters: Facial expressions showing the emotions of our ADHD characters!

We will focus on heads because that’s where emotions are mostly expressed. Let us draw a very simple oval, add some hair, and then some eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows. Don’t worry, you can totally base this character on an abstraction of yourself.

Now that we have the face, we need to convey the emotions of our character. How do we do that? It’s simple. There are two main elements expressing emotions on the face: The eyebrows and the mouth. The eyes can also express emotion if you are feeling more advanced.

And that’s pretty much it. Now we can manipulate the eyebrows and the mouth in all sorts of shapes and create a range of emotions. By turning the shapes of happiness upside down, I can easily create sadness.

And if we want to ramp up our emotion expression potential, we can start changing the shape of the eyes, or adding sweat drops and other elements, just like what we see in emojis and comics.

How do we combine jokes and drawings into a comic?

Phew! We are almost done. Now we just need to combine our ADHD conference joke from the previous section with drawings. This is the final result:

Thank you very much for reading and/or paying or not paying attention! Given that I lost the Medium Day questions I was supposed to answer in this post, please type them here as comments, and I will answer them this time (I swear).

If you create any comics with this method, please share your work with me, I would love to see it!

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You made it to the end! My next longer comic will be called Brave Hearts!! It is already sketched out and the drawing starts soon. As soon as I have the first 2 pages ready, I will post them here.

What do you think Brave Hearts might be about? I would love to hear your theories, let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

Ana