ADHD Boy Mum

Hello, Dearest Gentle Reader! I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend. I spent some time away from writing so I could focus on my family and figuring out what to talk about in this post. So how about we learn about what annoys us lot with ADHD? Actually… not “annoy”… irk. We’re learning what irks us!

Misophonia
This is a big one which I know gets under our skin just from talking to people with diagnosed and suspected neurodivergence. Misophonia is defined as a ‘disorder characterised by extreme emotional and physiological reaction to specific sounds or stimuli, often leading to stress or social impairment’. Let’s break that down: someone next to you is slurping their drink, chewing loudly, snorting through their throat (bleh!), or filing their nails. Stimuli like this can make us physically wince, twitch, or flinch – but it can cause us to feel physically sick, or completely leave the room before we tell them they sound like pushing Weetabix through a meat grinder! Yes, the reactions are significantly disproportionate to the sound itself, but to us our reactions are totally valid. There have been studies linking misophonia and ADHD by similarities in sensory sensitivities and emotional regulation.

Change
Many people with ADHD and autism are known to struggle with change, whether it be changes to routine or environment, or last minute alterations to plans. Although ADHD is often mischaracterised by extreme impulsivity and being late to everything, many actually find solace in planning a plan efficiently so that we know where we need to be, how to get there, how long it will take, and when we need to be there by. My best friend calls this her “autinerary” (autistic itinerary), which I feel fits it beautifully! So any last minute changes to that carefully constructed script has the ability to throw us off completely, leaving us angry and confused. In terms of environment and routine, we can find it difficult to adapt to something if we had found comfort in a place or pattern, so when it changes we struggle. For example we get a new job, we struggle with social interaction, procedures and processes – saying, “at my other job, we did this…” only to be told, “well WE do this…”

Stress
Okay, I know this sounds obvious but it’s not the feeling of stress that irks us – it’s when other people are stressed. Often when having to perform under pressure, people with ADHD thrive because their brains are more stimulated, there is more going on, their hands are constantly moving and their brain noise is replaced by the fast paced tasks lined up in front of them. When other people start to feel the pressure and get stressed, it tends to annoy people with ADHD who are at peace for the first time all day. Aaaah, all those times you tell us to chill out, calm down, or “it’s not that deep”… Oh, how the tables turn, my friends! If you picture that meme of the dog sitting in a room on fire saying, “It’s fine.” that’s us in stressful situations. Things we find stressful may seem very mundane to neurotypical people, but the stressful situations that make them sweat? Baby girl… my sweet summer child… It’s okay, the ADHD’s got this one!

Interruptions
Oooooh this is a big one for me!
One example of how interruptions can annoy us is if we’re engaging in conversation and telling a story, then SOMEONE talks over us? Excuse me, my liege, I have finally emerged from my shell and you have the audacity to speak over me and make me feel like my two cents don’t matter? “Rude” doesn’t even come close! This leads us straight into our Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, and if it keeps happening so we’re repeating the same words over and over again, we end up shutting our mouths and turning in on ourselves. It’s common manners to just listen to someone who’s talking, you know? Don’t be that person!
Another example is having our hyperfocus interrupted. “You threw off my groove!” comes to mind. Our comfortable period of having a one-track mind is completely shattered, the train de-railed. Now we’re thinking about everything and nothing. Interruptions during hyperfocus can trigger strong emotional reactions, such as frustration or anger. This is partly due to the ADHD brain’s struggle with working memory and attention regulation. When an individual is interrupted, it can feel like a sudden jolt back to reality, disrupting their flow and causing confusion about what they were doing. The emotional response to interruptions can be intense, as the ADHD brain may perceive these disruptions as significant threats to their focus and engagement.
Interruptions can also affect our executive function, not just with hyperfocus on a task, but just the idea of doing the task. Let’s say you get up and go into the kitchen, you start filling the sink with hot water and soap to wash the dirty dishes. Then someone says, “Can you do the washing up?”, or “Oh, you’re washing up?”… Well not anymore! This is called Demand Avoidance and it can happen when our burst of executive function and autonomy have been suddenly interrupted.

Social Battery
Our social battery loosely fits in with our spoon repository in energy expenditure, but in a solely social regard. This can happen at parties or large gatherings, even on a night out, at work, or with family. Our energy to interact with others has depleted, we go quiet and want to leave but most of the time we stay out of fear of upsetting someone. We tend to sit in a corner, or play with the cat or dog instead of other people, or we sit closer to a speaker to drown everyone out. If people are trying to socialise with us after our battery has run out, this can feel very annoying to us, because we have nothing left to give. We tend to mask during these situations, slapping on a smile that doesn’t reach our eyes or offer fake laughs. Sometimes we will just try to slip away unnoticed and return to the comfort of home.

All of these things are totally normal emotions to feel, while those with ADHD may feel them more suddenly and more intensely than neurotypical people, it doesn’t make these emotions any less valid or more irrational.