brain hole
noun. The several-hour-long state of (typically ADHD-induced) hyperfocus, in which it feels like no time is passing but suddenly it’s 10pm and you haven’t made dinner yet.
Example, “Its 7pm. We should decide what time we want to do dinner before we fall down another…. brain hole.”
Tag: hyperfocus
As a person with ADHD I can’t understand how people are able to listen to an audio book while doing something else simultaneously. When I listen to an audio book I need to be in a dark room with no other living creature nearby to distract me, and even then do I find it difficult to listen to an audio book.
As a person with ADHD I can’t understand how people are able to not listen to audio books/podcasts/TV/music while doing something else simultaneously.
Provided, of course, the other thing I’m doing does not require a lot of word/number processing. Often when I do nothing at the same time as I’m listening, I’ll zone out and think about other things instead, because my mind isn’t being effectively engaged.
Having interesting audio while drawing, gif-making, cleaning, walking, showering, playing certain video games etc is how I consume most of my media. It will also keep me from being distracted by outside noises, assuming these noises aren’t loud enough to mess with my auditory processing.
It COULD be however that you simply are not an auditory learner, or that you have particularly bad auditory processing.
I listen to podcasts and music and things when I’m either riding the bus or doing tasks that don’t require my brain to make words: knitting, washing dishes, upgrading my computer, that kind of thing. It keeps my hands busy enough so I can focus on the words I’m hearing.
This doesn’t work when I’m trying to write (even with music – if it has words, I’m not going to be able to focus, and if it doesn’t, I’ll still get lost in the melody from time to time) or otherwise do something that requires the verbal part of my brain to do its thing. Everything turns into noise.
I have to be doing multiple things at once. If there’s a tv on, I’m knitting, cruising Tumblr, or reading, sometimes all at once. If I’m trying to really focus on the tv, I still have to be knitting or I chew my nails to the quick. If I’m walking for exercise, I have to be listening to music or a podcast.
I didn’t really identify the ‘cannot stand boredom because it’s painful’ or the ‘can’t ever be doing nothing’ symptoms of ADHD with myself until I realised that that doesn’t automatically equal frenetic physical activity. It also equals ‘I have seventy tabs open because I want to watch/read ALL of these things, but don’t have the focus now and have to keep scrolling through my dash’. It equals ‘I love this show with every fibre of my being, but I’ll go nuts if my hands aren’t active’. It equals ‘I’m working out and on a beautiful bushwalking track, but if I don’t have a soundtrack I can’t enjoy it’.
3 Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks
“When we step back and ask, “What does everyone with ADHD have in common, that people without ADHD don’t experience?” a different set of symptoms take shape.
From this perspective, three defining features of ADHD emerge that explain every aspect of the condition:
1. an interest-based nervous system
2. emotional hyperarousal
3. rejection sensitivity”
Oh
I’m reblogging first, then clicking through to read the article (less likely to lose it or forget to do either), but just from the piece quoted – oh. Yes. That does lay it out rather succinctly, doesn’t it?
I needed this when I was fucking TEN.
Interesting fact: this article was written by Dr Dodson, who introduced the term ‘RSD’ for ADHD.
Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.
It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.
You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED.
The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’
It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.
It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?
Holy shit someone actually described my relationship with time wtf.
This was something I thought everyone experienced in my prediagnosis state, until I wrote about it in a short story and a teacher told me it was bad writing because ‘time doesn’t do that’.
knitting in the dark 