Driving A Car Without a Steering Wheel

(Originally published on my blog, at angelnickirocks.Blogspot.com)

Have you ever known a person with ADHD or autism who really had a hard time focusing on things they were supposed to pay attention to, or getting motivated to do things they needed to do? Yet when they spent time doing something they were interested in, you could not peel them away from it? It just seems to draw them in and not let them go? For a lot of kids, that might be video games or playing with a favorite toy. For my friend Adwin, it’s painting… he’s been known to leave a room to use the bathroom, and then secretly sneak off to paint instead of coming back! For me, it’s usually painting rocks.

Why can someone pay attention only to certain things, but not others? This is one of the things that sometimes makes people think ADHD is fake. (With autism, people sometimes just call it perseveration and think of it as a symptom.)

The reason is that we don’t actually have a problem with our attention span. We have a problem with controlling what we pay attention to. It’s like driving a car without a steering wheel. The car is going to go where it’s going to go. Even while everyone around you yells, “Turn left! Turn left!” the car just keeps going where it’s going and eventually careens off a cliff.

Some people learn some tricks to help themselves control the car even without a steering wheel. Maybe they put up blockades ahead of time to stop the car before it goes off the road. Maybe they find a creative way to rig up a steering wheel. Maybe they try leaning to one side like they’re on a Tilt-a-Whirl. They figure out something. But for us it will never be as simple as just turning the wheel in the direction we need to go in. We don’t have the steering wheel. We never had it. We don’t even remember volunteering to drive this car.

Hyperfocus is what happens when the car finally gets to where it wants to go. When an autistic or ADHD person finds something they really enjoy doing, the car in their brain wants to take them there at all times. It is so much easier to just let the car go where it wants. We can spend hours doing something we love, even forgetting to eat.

When someone tries to interrupt us in the middle of our hyperfocus, we can get upset. It’s basically like you just jumped in front of our car screaming, “STOP! You have to wash these dishes!” It’s jolting and unpleasant, and usually doesn’t result in us washing the dishes. You might get run over, actually.

But hyperfocus isn’t a bad thing. Beautiful things can come out of hyperfocus. Artwork. Books. Inventions. Education. Small businesses. When an autistic or ADHD person find their hyperfocus activity, they put their heart and soul into it.

It’s also possible to use hyperfocus to help you succeed at things. If you can find a way to tie a chore or task in with your favorite subject or activity, you might be able to make it work. Maybe instead of washing the dishes, you just run them over with your car. (Okay, the car metaphor doesn’t quite work for this part. But give me a break! I’m sleep deprived!) A non-metaphorical example would be, a person who hyper focuses on volcanoes gets a job studying and reporting on volcanoes. Or a person who hyper focuses on video games finds a game that helps them learn a new language.

Hyperfocus is not always convenient, for the person caught in it or the people around them. It can be frustrating when one person wants to go run errands, but their companion won’t stop designing an obstacle course for squirrels long enough to help. It can be equally frustrating for the hyperfocusing person, when they really need to get some things done, but literally all they can think about is the squirrel obstacle course.

But it’s not a horrible thing either. Once you figure out your hyperfocus, you can learn new ways of controlling your crazy steeringwheelless car. And when you just can’t control it no matter what, maybe you can just see where the car takes you! You might find some amazing things!