Embrace Your ADHD: Forget the Bottle, Let Your Chaos Explode.
Forget the Bottle, Let Your Chaos Explode!
“ It’s your turn … This is your legacy.”
“ How? I can’t.”
“ You Can!
Everything you have ever felt, Everything you have buried,
Forget the Bottle, Let Your Chaos Explode!”
They say people with ADHD are like computers without enough RAM.
That is true, astoundingly true even. But unlike cold machines, we have unlimited potential.
When I learned and confirmed from several doctors that I do, in fact, have ADHD: I didn’t feel sad, I felt relieved.
For years and years, everyone around me told me that I daydream too much; that I need to pay more attention as if I have control over that; that I need to stop being forgetful as if I don’t have the short-term memory span of a goldfish.
They tell me again and again that I am dumb and irredeemable, that I am doomed academically because of my IQ and I will never make it if I pursue a STEM career because I don’t have good grades and I am a female. After 23 years, I almost believed that.
Almost, till a doctor diagnosed me with ADHD.
I was ecstatic because this proves that it is something out of my control. all these years I tried so hard to conform to regular standards, to follow a school curriculum that’s designed without disabled students in mind only to barely fight my way through. More often than not, I cried out of frustration at how difficult it is for me compared to everyone else to retain certain information, I felt dumb and powerless.
Till that moment, when I was diagnosed, it hit me:
So that’s what it is. All those mistakes, all those carelessness, they are not my faults.
You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!
— Kate Kelly, Peggy Ramundo
It is not uncommon for people with learning disabilities to be diagnosed later in life, sometimes having been misdiagnosed several times with other disabilities or depression already. We are considered “disabled”, often categorized as inattentive(“lazy”), impulsive(“stupid”), and hyperactive(“crazy”).
It seems as if ADHDers are made of chaos: we absorb too much information for our brains to process, we jump from one venture to another, being the jack of all trades and master of none, we don’t have an on/off switch for our focus, and so forth.
Everything is chaotic for us, and we are the embodiment of chaos.
But is that it? Are we doomed forever?
The Answer is a Hard No!
There are strengths in all of us, and so are true for people with ADHD.
In Kelly and Ramundo’s book, they asked us the fellow questions:
Inattention: Did you ever consider that your lack of attention might be telling you that you are not passionate about what you are doing?
Impulsivity: Is it possible that it can help you take the leap you need to take in order to grow? That you are less likely than your more placid friends to stay in the same routine jobs, relationships, and behavior patterns?
Hyperactivity: Can this be channeled into focused energy? We can learn to make high-energy work for us, not against us.
In addition, The National Center for Learning Disabilities tells us that despite our apparent drawbacks, there are several strengths that we ADHDers excel at:
Out of the Box Thinking
Visual, Spatial Details
Gets the Big Ideas
Empathetic
High-Risk Tolerance
Creative, Original
Not Giving Up till the Problem is Solved
When piecing these questions and information together, is it not hard to see how we can unleash our chaos to do our bidding:
Actually, anything humans do is enhanced by the capacity to think outside the box. As AD(H)Ders, we tend to excel at that kind of thinking.
— Kate Kelly, Peggy Ramundo
Society is made for the majority of normal people, it is a bottle that restricted and confined our chaos with rules and customs. But just because that’s the norm doesn’t mean we can’t change it, instead of burying our heads down in shame because of our learning disabilities, wear it as a badge of honor, unleash our chaos and let it explode safely, on our terms.
In this channel which I just started out on a whim because of my ADHD tendency, I will continue to explore ways and different possibilities of unleashing our bottled-up chaos, through arts, crafts, data science, and possibly many more.
Whether you are a fellow ADHDer, or if you are simply struggling through lives with similar concerns, I invite you to join me in this wonderful journey suggested by Ned Hallowell, M.D, the world-leading authority on ADHD, to unleash our chaos through a creative outlet.
Disclaimer: I understand that there are various forms of ADHD, and my condition is not yet the worst, please take no offense if the above suggestion won’t work with you, I simply mean to provide an alternative way to cope. This is also by no means medical advice and the best way to get help is to still through professional psychiatrists.