Living with ADHD means that sequencing may be a challenge. I know it is for me, and I hear from many others (NOT a scientific survey) that it is for them as well.
Sequencing suggests that there is a logical stream- one thing follows another predictably and with reasonable result. Sequencing does not account for the ADHD brain. Frankly, our brains may interpret sequencing a bit differently.
1,2,3,4,5 may seem logical to you. To me? Not so much. I honestly have to fight my brain to accept that this is a reasonable progression. How do I know this? In a multitude of ways, but game-play is probably the most easiest to understand.
I play a "match three" game a lot. What I find constantly is that I am solving "match three" challenges well in advance of where the game "sees" me. This can be both good and bad.
In life, I have also had to deal with my sequencing issues- with both good and bad result.
I will never forget the day I saw my husband's cancer. In an instant, I knew what was coming. Was I right? Yeah. I hate that I saw the end of his days before he did. No one ever asked me how much I wanted to be wrong, or how knowing what was coming would change me and change the way I could relate with him. In many ways, what I knew brought a poison to the last, precious time we had.
Crap.
I knew my Dad was going to die a good six months before he did, knew my father in law was going to die a year before he did. I call it a sequencing issue. I knew it was coming, didn't know exactly when, just knew.
So am I suggesting that people with ADHD can foretell a future? No. Not at all. What I do suggest is that people with ADHD have sequencing issues. We may have a tendency to see the end and only then try to figure out how to get there.
Is this how the "neuro-typical" or NT see the world? Well, not generally. Does this view make us look a tad silly? Yeah.
What do we do? Make a choice.
I knew that I had to keep most of my observations about both my husband and my father to myself. My father lived in another state so my beliefs were easy to keep to myself. With my husband it was much harder and more complex.
Sequence. 1,2,3,4,5. So easy, so damnably difficult. First this, then that. For many ADHDers, so freaking difficult to understand.
That sequencing thing can work against us, too. I find that if I see things in an inevitable progression and even one part of this progression is not possible or feasible at the particular moment that I'm planning something, I'm stopped in my tracks and incapable of doing anything.
ReplyDeleteThe other problem I have with it is that it locks me into thinking in terms of a specific outcome, and if the outcome or the progression that leads to it is particularly interesting, I can't come up with alternative, preferable sequences. The outcome I envision often seems to others like creative, out-of-the-box thinking, but for me it's actually just as limited - only different from what another person would come up with.
Killer insight!
DeleteGetting locked is a problem for me too. I believe that it is problematic for many if not most ADHDers. I'm committed to a course of action and any deviation becomes intolerable. I NEED things to work the way I have pre-conceived and I don't know how to deal with deviation... so I just STOP.
Not being able to work in the straight line I have conceived is hugely stressful for me. I may have only just determined what that progression should look like but find myself completely committed to it. Like you, I become overwhelmed and unable to manage to the variation.
Your comment about how others may perceive your vision is both interesting and familiar. My favorite response is, "Not creative, just logical." To me, it is. It's also limited.
Sometimes I think my brain was designed by Escher.