Owning ADHD and Coping With It: In Comics
I rarely read books, but when I do, it’s because I want to write one.
ADHD CHRONICLES
I rarely read books, but when I do, it’s because I want to write one.
“Just to be clear, I have ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)”, I feel like I tell this to everyone I meet. Why would I share such personal information with everyone? you might ask. Well, ADHD leads to some pretty quirky behaviors, which I feel the need to justify to others. But you know what? Let’s own this ADHD quirkiness and see which behaviors should be owned and which should be treated.
Keep in mind that this advice is not an exhaustive list of things to do when you have or think you have ADHD. This is just a list of several funny and not-so-funny aspects of ADHD that I remembered to write about. I mention more of them in my previous post on ADHD:
Living With Adult ADHD: Explained In Comics
Chasing a life where everything is exciting and nothing is boringmedium.com
The second thing to keep in mind is that this advice is based on my personal experience and it might not work for you. Everyone’s mental experience is unique (thanks to our evolved brains, yay) and most mental health stuff is just trial and error in an uphill battle (is that rhyme?). If you think you might have ADHD or if you are struggling with mental health, please see a psychiatrist or a therapist.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about 4 ADHD behaviors carefully selected to represent…no, sorry, it’s 4 random ADHD behaviors. If there is any selection process going on, it’s choosing behaviors that have not become ADHD clichés yet. I will also attribute my score to each behavior, either “own it” or “treat it”.
Part I. Only production and achievement can motivate us.
1. Whatever I consume, I immediately want to produce myself. My score: Own it!
After watching a movie, I want a be a director. After reading a magazine, I want to be a magazine editor. After going to a concert, I want to be a musician, and so on…(did you notice I always want to be the person in charge?) And it also works the other way around: I only consume things I want to make myself.
The most ridiculous thing about this is that it’s 100% true. I never read because I just can’t focus on written text for longer than 5 minutes, as I explain here, but…I have recently experienced the triumph of finishing a book (yay!). And I have to say, I was very confused and I thought to myself “Wait, how did this happen? Even when I start reading, I never ever finish a book.”
The answer is: I want to write a book! This is ludicrous because I will most likely not end up writing a book. I will be lucky if I finish my 10-page comic that is in a perpetual limbo of “being sketched out”. Ok, so why do I own this behavior?
In the end, the consequences of this behavior are not negative for me. Wanting to write a book makes me read one, which was something I was unable to do before, and I learned something. And watching movies makes me want to make movies, great! Maybe I’ll learn something from endless film analysis videos on YouTube and finally make my short film.
You see where I’m going with this, this kind of enthusiasm usually results in art and something productive, so let’s just own it as something positive.
2. ADHDers don’t enjoy the process, they want to start achieving right now. My score: Own it (by achieving on a smaller scale)!
I can never do things just for practice because I rarely enjoy the process of learning something without a clear endpoint in sight. Again, this is a paradox because I do enjoy knowledge, (I have a PhD!), but I always want to be at the finish line where exciting things happen right away. And that is why I am publishing this article now, way earlier than planned.
My comic journey is a great example. Many people ask me how I’m learning to draw. Well, I’m not! I cannot just sit and learn how to draw because that would be too boring. Every drawing I make has to be a comic to be published on my social media. This way, I am turning the process (less exciting) into production (way more exciting!).
This is an example of a comic that was supposed to be just a sequence of drawings for practice. Curiously, it kind of ended up being about ADHD, my subconscious led me there I guess.
For ADHDers, it’s almost impossible to make ourselves enjoy a long tedious process. But what we can do is turn that process into a series of achievement units. This sounds like that advice we always hear: “Set smaller goals before you reach the big one”. But please don’t call it that or I’ll run away at the first utterance of the word “goal”.
You see, small goals are abstract, they are just a construct you set for yourself and you know it’s fake, that will never work! Instead, you need to physically produce something, achieve something tangible: publish a story online, draw a comic and post it, give your creation as a gift to someone, anything that will actually feel like an achievement.
Part II. Our enthusiasm is easily gained and easily lost.
3. ADHDers get into obsessions and fandom, but also easily lose interest. My score: Own it!
I’m almost always going through a phase of obsession usually with some product or a piece of media until I switch to the next one. When something is new and shiny, our dopamine-hungry brains can’t wait to play with it…until we get bored of it course.
My obsessions usually last for a few months and then almost entirely disappear. In the last few years I had my LEGO phase, then Baby Yoda and Star Wars, followed by film analysis, and more recently a Heartstopper obsession. My social media feed is often an accurate representation of what I’m obsessing about.
As long as your obsessions are not harmful, own them. My obsessions generally make me progress in some way, because I am planting small seeds here and there, and even if I don’t persevere in each skill, I can always come back and continue where I left off. As a teenager, I used to draw, and now that I’m coming back to it, I’m not starting from zero, although it might look like that sometimes.
In the best-case scenario, you can actually find a common thread to all your obsessions and make something great out of it — still hoping this will happen to me. You know, just call me out in the comments if you think this one deserves some treatment. Maybe my love for my obsessions has blinded me here.
4. Emotional dysregulation. My score: Treat it!
We have finally reached the not-so-funny side of ADHD. One of the common consequences of ADHD is emotional dysregulation. We can go from extremely energized and happy to extremely unmotivated and sad in a second.* This is usually caused by ADHD triggers. For example, the enthusiastic state can be induced by seeing something motivating, like an email that makes us think about something and sets us off on a creative spur that we wish could last forever. The mood decrease can be caused by needing to do a task I don’t feel like doing, then failing to do it, feeling bad for not having done it, and then feeling bad for hating boring tasks and being who I am.
*How to know this is not caused by bipolar disorder or something else: First of all, only a mental health professional can determine this, so go see them. Second, in my case, ADHD mood swings are directly tied to the inability to deal with the ADHD symptoms described above. Another hint that ADHD is the culprit is having a lot of different disorders either at a clinical or a subclinical level, like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or OCD-like behaviors (misdiagnoses of adult ADHD are very common!). There is also a close connection between ADHD, autism, and OCD.
Emotional dysregulation can be truly devastating and it’s one of the most function-impairing consequences of ADHD. This requires treatment with medication or therapy, or ideally both. I also found that yoga and mindfulness help with mood regulation, but when you are really down, it can be hard to initiate an action to do exercise.
For these cases, surround yourself with friends and family who can help. I also found these YouTube channels very helpful: HealthyGamerGG and How to ADHD. I won’t go into more details on treatment here, psychiatrists and therapists are there for that!
And my final tip: Use your experience as inspiration for creativity and humor!
I developed several mental health techniques based on creativity and humor:
Comic Journaling for Mental Health
Did you know that making comics can make you feel better?medium.com
A Comic Journaling Exercise to Kickstart Your Day
Try this simple journaling technique for mental healthforge.medium.com
Try This Creative Exercise to Pick Yourself up From Low Mood
Expressing and sharing your struggle gives it meaning and shows you that your experience can have an impact on the…medium.com
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