If you know, love, teach, and/or parent someone with ADHD, you have probably run into the frustrating reality that is the inability to hold multiple things in mind at once.
Even for people with ADHD, every brain is different, and what one person struggles with may differ from their friends or children with ADHD.
Sometimes, juggling multiple things isn’t tough at some points in the day or in certain situations, but very difficult at other times.
I thought of this analogy the other day and it really felt like a powerful way to think about ADHD that we don’t typically do.
When you start out in a video game and you have only one “slot” in your inventory for, say, shields, then you have to keep juggling which shield you have. But other people have bigger inventories and can just swap shields as many times as they want.
For people with ADHD, their “inventory” is often just one single slot, and it is also often occupied by whatever is directly in front of them or in their hands.
So, if I put a frozen donut in the microwave to thaw, hit the “1 min” express button, think “ok but I need to come back in like 15 seconds so it doesn’t melt”, that would be achievable for a neurotypical brain, because the donut in the microwave can move to the “back” of my mental inventory, and packing snack can move to the “front” of my inventory.
But with an ADHD brain, there’s only one slot, so the donut in the microwave exits my inventory, snack enters my inventory, and the only thing that makes me realize I just incinerated a donut is the microwave dinging 1 minute later.
This “swapping” is exhausting, and it also results in many people with ADHD appearing as though they have “done nothing” but in reality they have done 10+ mental swaps in their “inventory” plus felt bad about forgetting things 10 times, all while trying to just get one thing done.
How do we try to accommodate this? Depends on the person or the brain or the moment! Reminders, or saying something out loud (“I have to check the microwave in 10 seconds”) may help, but simply acknowledging this reality and not seeing it as a personal or moral failure is a huge step. If someone feels ashamed of their brain, they won’t feel empowered to gain the skills they may need.
Do you have someone in your life whose brain works this way? What has helped them in these moments with a small “inventory?” Please share in the comments!
Share this post