ADHD Definition (the short version)
Here’s what’s striking: for all the havoc ADHD creates- at home, at school, at work, in relationships- there’s remarkably little understanding of what’s actually causing it. And it isn’t about attention, not really. An ADHD brain isn’t a flashlight with a dying battery- casting too weak a beam. It’s a lantern. It throws light in every direction at once. We don’t attend to too little- we attend to everything taking place in the present. The trouble isn’t the light. It’s that we can’t easily aim it, or steer our thoughts, emotions, and behavior along with it.
And aiming is the whole game. The part of the brain that does the aiming- that decides “not now”, “not that”, “wait a moment”, is the same part that steadies our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. So when aiming is hard, it’s rarely hard in just one place. The lantern swings toward whatever’s brightest in the moment: the sudden idea, the strong feeling, the thing right in front of us. It’s not that we don’t care, or aren’t trying. It’s that the hand on the lantern keeps getting pulled in different directions.
As Dr. Russell Barkley reminds us, “Without self-control, we wind up in places we didn’t really want to be.”
Russell Barkley, Taking Charge of Adult ADHD: Proven Strategies to Succeed at Work, at Home, and in Relationships (New York: Guilford Press)