forum Writing a character with ADHD
Started by @childoftheuniverse
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SolarisBlond

Okay so I have serious ADHD, and I kid you not there's no limits to how many times I catch myself tapping my fingers on a desk or against a coffee cup. I get distracted super easily like I would need to pee and I would walk into the kitchen because I'm lost in thought. I know that happens to everybody but it happens to me like an unnatural amount of times a day. We ADHD-diagnosed humans get carried off easily when we talk; we would be talking about sharks to tornadoes because our thoughts did this:

Sharks live in the Ocean. Hurricanes come from the Ocean. Hurricanes are a type of weather. A tornado is weather too.

Then our brains come back to the topic, and this happens:

Sharks + tornadoes + SHARKNADOOOOOOOOOOOOO

See? Carried away. To make this less stressful for you, here is ADHD mostly summed up in points:

  • We're easily distracted
  • We question everything
  • We think faster than we're able to form words, so we slip up a lot while talking
  • We're EXTREMELY witty
  • We often tend to forget things
  • We get bored super easily
  • We fiddle with small things (Ex: I chew on the end of a guitar pick, we chew a lot of gum)
  • We laugh our lungs out at anything remotely funny

I hope I helped you, and I'm sorry I took so long to respond.

@AliasAlistiere

Though a friendly reminder that not everyone with ADHD is always bouncing off the walls and can't keep a thought in their head for less than 5 seconds before it somehow spirals into something else. I have ADHD as well but it shows up differently in some aspects with my case. Honestly I'm categorized as quiet and introverted. This doesn't mean I don't have ADHD though.

I'm decent at listening to people, but when a story drags on particularly long I find myself getting kinda anxious/impatient wishing that they would just cut to the chase already, this can cause little habits of mine like leg bouncing or fiddling with something while I wait. Sometimes a particular word can trigger something within in my head during a convo and it will spiral into an idea/story/scenario that will play out while I'm in this conversation and it will cause me to space out/stare off in the middle, because my brain is trying to keep up with 2 things at once. Another thing is multitasking. Whether it's having to have the t.v. on in the background while I'm on my phone, or when it comes to a paper or multiple assignments, and just kind of hopping around and doing little bits of different things at the same time. People with ADHD needs that extra stimulation for their brains to keep focus and not be bored. This can be really helpful at times, but at others it's honestly a pain in the ass.

Hyper-focusing is another big thing my ADHD makes me deal with. If you don't know what it is, it's pretty self explanatory in the sense that there's something (like a particular book, an event your witnessing, an assignment/ lesson, etc) that you just super focus on. Like everything just kind of blurs around you and you /Only/ focus on This One Thing for a period of time. This can be super helpful in some aspects like if you hyper focus on say world building for a story or working on a long essay, you can get a lot done on something when this happens and it's great! However hyper focusing is mainly a pain in the ass, because a lot of people can't control what they hyper focus on, and can instead accidentally get distracted and hyper focus on something completely different than the thing that they want to/ were supposed to do. So like even if you Know you Should and Have to be working on that essay for your finals it's really really hard to because you can't focus on it cause your focus is else where for the time being. I have heard of people being able to learn how to control this to a degree though, and it becoming super useful in their daily lives.

I do earnestly agree with the thinking faster than our mouths can keep up with that SolarisBlond mentioned though. Sometimes it feels like my head has 20 ideas at once, but somewhere along the way it gets jumbled before it comes out of my mouth making it a little awkward and a little muddled sounding. Because of this sometimes if I try to talk faster to get all my words out before I forget them, I end up stumbling over them and making things worse. To avoid this sometimes I talk a little slower or stretch things out a bit so I can decipher my thoughts and decide what to say so I don't stumble or stutter. Forgetfulness is another common trait that ADHD people tend to have, whether it be forgetting what you have to do later on in the day, or forgetting where you were going with a particular sentence while you were in the middle of saying it.

Sorry for the long post I just wanted to specify that there's a pretty big spectrum when it comes to ADHD symptoms, and not everyone would be the stereotype. Not everyone is going to be like how I specified either as these are my specific symptoms. So my best advice would be research different people's accounts on having ADHD, sometimes you can rely on the sources who say their best friend, family member, etc. is ADHD so yada yada yada but the direct source is best. Make sure you look up multiple to make sure you can make your character more believable. Also I read a short article a while back that made some interesting points and clarifications about ADD/ADHD. It's college level read though, but if you're up to it the essay is called "Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era" and it's written by Richard Restak. Now this essay is found in a book, so I'm not 100% sure you can find it online. However if you're really interested in it I have the book so I could send you scans of the essay via email or something If you can't find it anywhere. I will say though that the essay is very opinionated so take some of the things with a grain of salt. Also if you have other questions I'd be happy to help. Again sorry for writing a literal essay about this, and good luck with writing your character~

@HighPockets group

I have ADD, but a thing for both (correct me if I’m wrong) is that we’re either super focused or super unfocused. Also, my brain is in motion 99.9 percent of the time. My point of relaxation is a 12.