blunderbell
ADHD Through My Eyes
Spent my whole life thinking everybody experienced the same things as I did, until I finally understood ADHD and went to get a diagnosis in my 30s. Now I’m just trying to explain what works for me, and what it feels like for those who are even a little bit curious.
Blunderbell Comics: My Musings About ADHD Translated Into Chicken Scratches
Blunderbell Photojournalism: My ADHD Musings Haphazardly Snapped & Blathered
Productivity Tips & Tricks and Lifehacks for ADHDers
Understanding ADHD Focus & Why It Impacts So Many Things (Like Productivity)
Imagine focus exists in two different forms: The first form: a valve. You have the ability to control just how much attention you want to give to one thing over another. A specific task going to require around 3/10 of your attention? You can give it just that much, and conserve the rest of your…
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ADHD House Hack: How I’ve Made Chores (Finally!) Feel *Much* Easier
When it comes to housework and any regular cleaning or routine chores, I am abysmal at the task. My house is typically not a mess, I do a lot of tidying, but cleaning and especially deep cleaning is not anywhere near easy for me. That being said, even the tidying and surface level cleaning can…
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“I Just Can’t” 3 Kinda Awful, but Effective Tricks That Get Me Out of ADHD Paralysis
ADHD paralysis is one of the many banes of my existence. It’s almost impossible for me to act sometimes, no matter how important or dire a situation may be, and while I struggled with freezing and general executive function paralysis far more in the past than I do now, I still have issues with being…
The ADHD Experience
There are many different aspects that tie together the ADHD experience.
These include things like ADHD burnout, hyperfocus, overwhelm, and RSD.
A lot of these issues stem from the fact that ADHDers struggle with executive dysfunction. This means we have issues with things like: attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility.
Every ADHDer will manifest aspects of the ADHD experience in different ways, and struggle more with some than others – or find they struggle with different aspects at different points of time, on a day to day, week to week, or even lifelong basis.
I’ve done my best to cover many of these topics from my own experience and viewpoint, and you can have a look through individual aspects by clicking “Browse Topic” under the ADHD experience descriptions in each section.
ADHD Burnout
Mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion that happens as a result of constantly dealing with the stressors and challenges associated with managing your ADHD symptoms.
Emotional Dysregulation
An inability to regulate or manage your emotional stressors and states, which typically results in emotional reactions that seem exaggerated or in some other way deviate from social norms.
Hyper-Focus
The state of intensely concentrating on a topic, subject, or task, usually with ADHDers, to the point where the rest of the world (and often even their own internal signals like hunger and thirst) are blocked out.
ADHD Overwhelm
This can take the form of sensory overload, emotional overwhelm, overstimulation (of even your own thoughts and ideas), and/or ADHD paralysis (where you feel frozen and unable to act).
ADHD Paralysis
A state where an ADHDer is so overwhelmed they feel they cannot function effectively, frozen in their tracks, and sometimes incapable of thinking straight or acting at all.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)
A state of emotional dysregulation that’s incredibly heighted and can feel very painful, caused by either rejection or perceived rejection. This can lead to outbursts of anger, withdrawal, avoidance, and/or people pleasing behaviours to reduce the chance of further feelings of RSD.