forum Making A Character With ADHD?

Started August 13, 2019 by Anon

tune

Here's the thing… I know next to nothing about ADHD except Percy Jackson and other demigods have it. I want to try my hand in making a character with ADHD, but I don't know where to start. Does anyone have any advice for me?

My time has come.
Okay, so as a person with ADHD, this is my personal experience with the disorder. It may vary in other people.

There are 2 modes on attention: "I can't hear you bc I got distracted and whoops, what's going on?" and "God himself can't pull me away from this."

Also two modes for movement: "I have to keep tapping my fingers/twirling my hair/spinning the pencil/etc, because I have to be moving a little." and "Sitting down is driving me insane. How can I run around in circles without looking insane?"

Once again, two modes for memory: "I remember this one specific detail from this book that I read once in kindergarten." and "I can't remember what I had for breakfast for this morning."

Boosting because I want to learn more firsthand stuff.

Also be sure to boost again if no one replies again.

Okay, well, this is gonna be a long one. But hey, perhaps it might help someone. I have split up my post so it can be read more easily.

I am a patient with ADHD myself. Most people reduce ADHD to two symptoms: being easy to distract and an urge to move. While these are the main symptoms, ADHD shows in more subtile ways as well.

ADHD shows in many areas, in many forms throughout one's life.

Focus, Distraction

Symptoms

As @Fangirl616 already wrote, there are two types of focus: Hypofocus ("Underfocused": Super distracted and unfocused) and Hyperfocus ("Overfocused": Insanely glued to something and literally blending out everything else to the point where the room next door could just explode and you wouldn't even hear it). As the ADHD-Brain has difficulties filtering the stuff it takes in from it's senses, those two will alter a lot, especially if something bores or really excites the patient. I for example can forget like EVERYTHING I meant to do on a day and just loose myself into stuff that excites me while being unable to do something boring like taxes because I loose focus so fast I do not make any significant progress for hours. If I am super focused, I will blend out my surroundings so much that someone can approach me from within my visual field shouting and I might just not notice that person and really jump when he/she "appears" right next to me. The world around me just ceases to exist. When I am like this, it can be extremely annoying to me to get dragged out of my bubble, because my brain just wants to go on doing what I was doing. Imagine watching the last episode of your favorite TV-show and right before the grand finale, someone switches off the TV and DARES to talk to you. That's how it feels, only that it does not need a tense grand finale, it can be just a tiny story you're doing.

On the other hand, the only thing that keeps me from getting fired for just standing up and doing whatever the f*** I want in a boring meeting is sheer willpower.

For your character

The fact that ADHD-patients get distracted very easily makes many very good in dealing with several tasks at once for a short time, because they are used to switching their attention back and forth rapidly. Many people with ADHD I know (myself included) are very good at stuff like talking to a customer and looking up their file at the same time. While they cannot do both as the same time like everyone else, they are very good at piecing together the parts they missed in a conversation while doing the other stuff because piecing together parts of a conversation is what we have to do every day to not appear rude after they drifted away while someone talked to them. The crux is that this does absolutely NOT work out well for extended periods of time without brakes in between. This will overload the brain and flip the effect to the opposite: Instead of being able to do two things at once by puzzling together stuff we missed, we will resort to just not paying attention to anything at all. The flip from one to the other can happen within seconds and not announce itself at all.

Disability to organize

Symptoms

Many ADHD-patients are abysmal at organizing and adhering to stuff like a daily routine and need to either plan with very large buffers in between tasks or try to stick to a very strict routine. An important thing one has to know about ADHD is that it does not only affect how distractable and unable to filter someone is with his/her outer focus, but also with his/her inner focus.
Imagine a tornado of thoughts, impressions, memories, sounds, smells, sights, etc. that constantly swirls around in your brain. Everything is as important as the next thing to the ADHD brain. The person talking to you can be just as important to your brain as the memory of the bunny your friend got last week. This leads to a distinct lack of structure within an ADHD mind that translates into real life. Imagine your head just keeps spitting out stuff and you make of it what you can. Now imagine you got a pocket calendar. How is the stuff in your brain supposed to fit on that frickin' page? Won't work! This chaos inadvertently will lead to missed appointments, forgotten tasks, etc. and every time, you think "yep, I got a good structure to note it all down all worked out and planned my day very well" something you utterly forgot will come around and crash your neat planning. Every time.

In addition to that inner chaos, ADHD-patients have the tendency to dawdle a lot just because they got distracted. I will sometimes get up, walk towards the bathroom to brush my teeth and get distracted along the way, which means that an hour later I still haven't brushed my teeth but did… well… I don't know… must have been important, d'uh!!

This will lead to ADHD-patients being more on the…. later side of appointments, you know? Like… "I'll be there in 10 Minutes, just leaving the house" - "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TURN UP HERE HALF AN HOUR AGO!"… that sort of thing. All because they just lost track of time and of what was important at that moment.

For your character

An ADHD-Character is probably more a chaotic person with a tendency to be late. This can be an advantage though. As organizing a day is not the strong suit of ADHD, they learned to improvise very early on in their life. Have them follow a plan and they will likely have difficulties and stray off that plan, but if something crashes that plan and everything starts floating, they will likely deal with that very confidently. It's just like they are used to go about things.

impulse control disorder

Symptoms

A very noticeable symptom of ADHD is a typical impulse control disorder. Impulse control disorders are not exclusive to ADHD by any means, they are very common in fact, some people just have them without any disorder (usually they are just called choleric) so this is not an "only ADHD" thing. Impulse control is what we do when an "impulse" (something good happened, something bad happened, something upsets us… etc) gets into our brain and the brain decides to act on it in a controlled fashion. You know, you don't scream hysterically at your burger because the patty has fallen out, even if that annoys you, because your brain controlled that impulse of rage and you acted in relation to what happened…. except when you have an impulse control disorder and well… just start screaming hysterically at your burger because the patty has fallen out. This ICD (impulse control disorder) is the most difficult part for most non-ADHD-people to understand because it is super irrational, especially in children who often struggle with impulse control even without ICD. Someone with ICD can just be super joyful, happy and laughing in one moment, then something really insignificant happens (like a patty falls out of a burger) and BOOOM that person just snaps. Hard. This gets so far (at least for me) that I sometimes get so hysterical about literally NOTHING that I cannot eat properly anymore because the hysteria has turned off my fine motor skills completely and I look like a complete imbecile when trying to get that fallen out patty into my mouth.

People do not understand this because how would they? This is super irrational, super unpredictable and super annoying. Imagine children playing in the backyard, casually shoving each other around. Everyone is laughing and BOOOM that one kid just starts screaming out of nowhere and starts beating everyone in a frenzy of tears, screams and rage. The effect of this ICD-induced rage usually wears off within minutes, but the person who experienced it will suffer greatly. He/She knows that his/her reaction was super-wrong of course. They often cannot explain, why they got so angry (because there was no reason at all, BUT IT IS ALWAYS THE FIRST FRICKIN' THING TEACHERS ASK! "WHY DID YOU DO THAT" IS NOT A GOOD QUESTION TO ASK A 9 YEAR-OLD, OKAY?! GOD DAMN IT!, sorry, back to topic). Snapping like this is not a thing someone does willingly, it's just something that happens to you and you can't do anything about it sometimes. Because if you could, you would have. Apologizing for something you could not have done better is extremely difficult.

This ICD is the most telling sign for other ADHD-patients that someone has the disorder as well, because literally the only people who can relate to how that ADHD-guy feels in such moments is someone else with ADHD.

For your character

That character snaps sometimes. Out of nowhere. Within the blink of an eye. And then he cools down in the blink of an eye two minutes later.

Procrastination//Unwillingness to do stuff that isn't fun

Symptoms

As described above: ADHD-patients have a very characteristic unwillingness to do stuff that is not fun. While we all can relate to that, ADHD makes this way worse. I cannot say how difficult it would be for me to do stuff I don't like without ADHD, but I can say for sure that I often struggle immensely with this. I just can't make myself do stuff. I just can't. It feels impossible. I can't do it. No way.

for your character

well, not much to say here. The character will just for the life of him/her refuse to do stuff he/she should but doesn't like. That's the end of it.

Self-Esteem and Addictive behaviour

While ADHD will often not lead to serious problems as other disorders would, it will lead to many little problems at once. This is even more treacherous as it often goes unnoticed. Imagine: You tend to be late, you tend to forget things, people think you're rude because you drifted off mid-conversation again, you are late on all your tasks your boss wanted you to do and just cannot make yourself do them and you just beat the hell out of a burger in the canteen because the frickin' patty would not stay in while everyone secretly stared at you. You get to feel bad for yourself a whole lot. This is the greatest danger with ADHD: How can you not believe that you are a failure when every day consists of stumbling from one fire in your life to another while knowing that YOU caused those fires?

ADHD is believed to be caused by a lack of dopamine as neurotransmitter within the brain. This is related to depression and addiction. ADHD-patients have a very high tendency towards depression and the self-esteem issues mentioned above fuel that. As ADHD is often related to an ICD, patients often show a tendency towards addiction. They cannot control impulses that flood them, so a win in a poker game might cause a way greater kick than it would without ADHD, because the brain failed to put the impulse into proportion. This gets you hooked on addictive stuff faster.

Another thing that causes addiction is that Nicotine and Coffeine are acting as substitutes for dopamine. ADHD patients will often drink TONS of caffeine just to make it easier for them to contain their symptoms. Same is true for smoking: They will just do it to get rid of that god damn feeling that you are going to burst when you cannot move a lot right now.

Wow, I promised a long one. This is not all I can tell you about ADHD, if you want to know more, just ask :)

Hope this gigantic article actually helps someone :)

Cheers!

My time has come.
Okay, so as a person with ADHD, this is my personal experience with the disorder. It may vary in other people.

There are 2 modes on attention: "I can't hear you bc I got distracted and whoops, what's going on?" and "God himself can't pull me away from this."

Also two modes for movement: "I have to keep tapping my fingers/twirling my hair/spinning the pencil/etc, because I have to be moving a little." and "Sitting down is driving me insane. How can I run around in circles without looking insane?"

Once again, two modes for memory: "I remember this one specific detail from this book that I read once in kindergarten." and "I can't remember what I had for breakfast for this morning."

^^^

That is exactly how it works. I took medicine for it, too, so if you need information on how the meds affect someone, I can help

1) Bumping this because this is super interesting.
2) @willbebackinafewweeks (whenever you get back), or anyone else, I'd be down to hearing how meds affect a person? Like, what kind of side effects and such?

I am an ADHD kid with meds, and as far as I know they basically just even out the brain chemicals that cause ADHD, (ADHD is genereally caused by an imbalance in certain brain chemicals) like putting a bigger memory chip in a slow device, or changing the battery in a toy that has a dying one.
For me my meds work pretty well, and they help me focus throughout the day, and it IS noticable when I forget to take them because I can be more easily distracted and or hyper when I forget. I also have more speeling mistakes when I'm off my meds, (I'm off them right now)
(I will write more when I get back)

(Oof, I did, thanks Dom)
Uhmmmm… where was I….
Oh yeah, another symptom of ADHD is impulsiveness. It's this symptom that happens to be the reason I'm on meds, since apparently it used to be so bad when I was younger I would run out into traffic without any reason.
Impulsiveness is basically just a sudden urge to do something. For me the most recognizeable impulses I can think of now are my cleaning impulses. LIke, I am a very messy person. My room looks like a hurricane went through it.
But then I get random days where all I wanna do is CLEAN. And then I clean, and clean, and clean and clean some more. And it's not just tidy up cleaning, it's dump out my dresser and reorganize cleaning.

One example of this would be the day I spent three hours taking care of the dishes because it was bugging me. This resulted in my lunch nearly ending up in the compost.

Then, as mentioned before, there is the hyperfocus thing, where you focus on something so much you drown everything out. I do this with books. A lot. So much so that I've had to train myself not to do it in case my mom tries to call for me. And I've been permanently banned from books in the morning because I'll get distracted and not do other things, like chores, and going to school. The only problem is that when it happens with other things, at least for me it tends to be kinda random and impulsive. Like cleaning, writing, art, and schoolwork.

One time I was so focused on a puzzle on the last day at my grandma's house, I kept working on it right through supper (it was a 1000 pcs) because I was so hyperfocused that people just had to go around me.

Unfortunately most of the time hyperficus isn't a thing, so I multitask instead, this is why I have at least 20 RPs on the go, and a few game tabs CONSTANTLY. Because I constantly need to switch tasks, or nothing gets done.

Forgetfullness isn't necessarily the cinching symptom in my personal opinion, but it could be! You could also just be forgetful, and not have other issues.

True. I also am varyingly impulsive, distracted by everything, can have a lot of trouble sitting still, and have a really big problem finding the ability to do anything that doesn’t give me pleasure and find my work constantly piling over me and only really starting on projects when the deadline is only a few hours away.

THAT sounds a lot like ADHD… so possibly bring it up with someone who can give you a proper diagnosis?

True. I also am varyingly impulsive, distracted by everything, can have a lot of trouble sitting still, and have a really big problem finding the ability to do anything that doesn’t give me pleasure and find my work constantly piling over me and only really starting on projects when the deadline is only a few hours away.

This is me. Like, dead on me.
But this is like a relatively recent development for me, personally. As in the past four years or so (I'm seventeen). I've heard that ADHD is something people have from birth but I'm not how sure how true this is?

Also, thanks @Wolfheart for the info. I appreciate the time you took to explain it!

True. I also am varyingly impulsive, distracted by everything, can have a lot of trouble sitting still, and have a really big problem finding the ability to do anything that doesn’t give me pleasure and find my work constantly piling over me and only really starting on projects when the deadline is only a few hours away.

This is me. Like, dead on me.
But this is like a relatively recent development for me, personally. As in the past four years or so (I'm seventeen). I've heard that ADHD is something people have from birth but I'm not how sure how true this is?

Also, thanks @Wolfheart for the info. I appreciate the time you took to explain it!

ADHD is something I'm 99% sure you're born with. My mom and my then doctor were ninety percent sure that I had ADHD when I was like, idk, 3 or four? ADHD is caused by a screw up in natural brain chemicals, so that's a thing that either develops really early, or you're born with.
This is stuff my mom has been explaining to me all y life because she did the research, so if I'm wrong, then okay, I'm wrong, I can't be a 100% sure,
I AM however a hundred percent sure that whatever the cause, ADHD does not go away.

Also you're very welcome! Any questions about life with ADHD I will be happy to explain as best I can!

Yeah. I might have had the symptoms since forever but Idk because I can barely remember the past. But I was always an energetic younger kid (though of course so was everyone).