Earlier in class today, true to form, I was thinking about things not class-related while the professor was lecturing, and I thought of this analogy for symptoms of ADHD--namely "not paying attention", and forgetfulness. Namely these analogies are for people who do not understand what it's like to ADHD, to help them understand, or to help you explain it to them.
Imagine you are sitting in class, minding your own business, listening to the lecture and taking notes, and suddenly you find yourself in the hallway outside the classroom.
You have no idea how you got there, or why. You have no memory of getting up and walking out the door, or leaving your pen and notebook behind you.
A little embarrassed, you rush back into the classroom and back into your seat. No one notices that you came or left, which is just as well. You pick up your pen and start taking notes again, but you realize you're completely lost. You have no idea what the professor is talking about--they've changed subjects, moved on, while you were out in the hallway. It could have been seconds or minutes, you have no way of telling. You're flustered and confused, but you pick up where your notes left off with what's currently going on.
Now, imagine this happening several times in an hour, every day of your life, no matter where you are or what's going on. In the car while someone is talking, you find yourself on the side of the road. Or at lunch, when people are speaking to you, you're suddenly outside the house, looking around. It happens so often, and you keep missing things people are saying, and people start getting mad at you for it. They demand to know why you keep getting up and walking out. They tell you to just stop it. They don't want to hear you explain that you can't help it. That it just happens.
No matter how studiously you take notes in class, you still find yourself out in the hallway. Sometimes you can remember why you got there, or how, and sometimes you even catch yourself in the middle of walking out. No matter how fast you get back to your seat, though, there are always things you missed.
You try to make up for it. Your parents and teachers are always telling you to ask friends in your classes if you missed something in class, right? And they ask you for help sometimes too. So you ask for help, which is only natural. And at first, your friends are always happy to help. After all, it's not like no one else ever finds themselves outside in the hallway. It happens to everyone.
It just doesn't happen to everyone as nearly as often as it happens to you. And your friends start to get frustrated. "Don't you ever pay attention?" they ask, ignoring the pages of notes in your notebooks, the written assignments in your schedule binder. "Don't you listen at all?" You try to tell them about ending up outside in the hallway. "That's no excuse," they scoff. "Everyone has to deal with that. You just have to deal with it more." "Yes!" you exclaim, thinking they understand, but they brush you off. "That's not an excuse," they say, waving you aside. "You just have to work harder to make up for it."
"But I do," you say quietly. But they don't hear that part. Or at least, they don't want to listen. They won't let you explain that no matter what you do, you can't help ending up in the hallway. You can't help not hearing what they said, or what the professor said.
It happens more and more often. "Pay attention!" they say, getting angry. "But it's not an excuse," you try over and over, frustrated. "It's a limitation. I'm dealing with it the best way I can. Part of dealing with it asking for help." And finally, it's too much work. It's not worth it getting a lecture every time you need to ask about a software technique, a homework assignment, a page in the text books. So you stop asking your friends. They'll assume you finally got your act together and started working hard, like a responsible student, adult, child, whatever. But really, it just hurts too much to ask them for help. It's not worth reaching out your hand for help if they slap you in the face while taking it.
And that's what it is, telling a person with ADHD that they aren't trying, that they need to work harder, that their condition is their fault for not putting enough effort into it. It's downright insulting.
Some people with ADHD try other things for dealing with it. Lots of people take medication for it. They need help not ending up out in the hallway, looking around helplessly and wondering how they got there. Some people find a great medication that keeps them securely weighed to their seat, and it works so well they don't even notice it. Other people have less luck. For some people, the medication is like a ball and chain that's so heavy that it's almost not worth it just to stay in their seat. They have to struggle so much just to lift it that they still miss things, or they miss out on other things they enjoy. So for them, it's best just not to use it. So they end up out in the hallway, and they rush back to their seat, and they stay after every class every day to ask the teacher about what they missed, until the teachers start getting frustrated. And their friends smile and nod, confident that their friend has stopped making excuses, has started working up to standard, has got their pesky little attention problem under control.
But you don't. You may never have it 'under control'. You just stopped talking about it. Because no one wants to listen.
Imagine, for a moment, that memories are slippery fish, and your mind is a net. It's easy enough to hold on to the fish by putting them in the net, which is what everyone does. But for some reason, your net has holes in it. Lots of holes. And the littler fish, the less important ones, end up wriggling out and getting away.
Sometimes, if you work hard enough, you can recapture them--but it's usually too late. You don't really even realize they're gone until someone asks you about them, and you reach for them, and they aren't there.
"Hang on a minute," you say, "I need to find it." And at first, they smile and nod. They understand. Everyone's little fish get away sometimes. It happens to everyone.
It just happens to you a lot more. And a lot of the time, you don't find the little fish again. You have to ask the person who gave it to you to give you another. And at first, they oblige. But as it happens more and more, and with the same fish, they get angry.
"Why don't you just hang on to it better?" they ask. "Don't you care about the thing this fish is related to? Don't you pay attention when I give it to you? Why don't you put it in your net, like everyone else?"
"But I do," you try to explain. "My net just has holes in it, and they get out."
"Well, fix it then," they say angrily. "I'm not giving you this fish again." And they storm off.
So you try to fix your net. You try lots of things. You try tying bits of string around the holes, an old memory trick. You try patching them with post-it notes and notebooks. You try marking certain fish with special colours, to keep track of them better. You try taking special medication that keeps your net from making more holes. And some of the time, it works.
But for every time a hole is fixed, another appears. You struggle with it more and more, desperately trying to patch your net together so that it holds its fish like everyone else's. You finally start asking for help.
"Can you hold this fish for me?" you ask a friend. "Just until I need it."
"Sure," they say. "Don't worry about it."
And it helps. But the more you ask, the less helpful they're willing to be.
"Why can't you hold on to your own fish yourself?" they ask, irritated. "Everyone else does."
"My net has holes," you try to explain again, but they shake their head.
"That's not an excuse," they say. "Everyone's nets have holes."
"Yes, but mine are bigger, and there's more of them--"
"So just work at it! You can't go through life expecting everyone to patch up your holes and hold your fish for you."
"But I do work at it," you say helplessly. "It still has holes."
"If you were really working at it," they say, shaking their head, "You wouldn't be asking me to hold your fish for you all the time."
They won't look at your net and see all the patches on it, all the fish you do manage to hold yourself. They don't want to see that. All they see is the one little fish a week you ask them about. One little fish, they say, is far too much.
This is why people with ADHD ask for help, and eventually stop asking altogether. Because people that don't have it don't understand about the much bigger struggles that person deals with on a daily basis. They don't see the boulder on your back--they just see that handful of pebbles you ask them to hold onto sometimes. They start complaining about how heavy that handful is, how often you ask them to hold it, without realizing that you just want a little help with a little part of the weight. They complain about how often you ask them to hold your one little fish while you try to get the bigger ones back in the net. They complain about how often you get up and walk out of the room when you don't mean to, when you don't realize you did it until after you've done it.
I hope this helps some people out there, both people with ADHD, and people who have friends or family members with it.
