Understanding
the ADHD Mind

That is the gap I want to explain. A task can be small, familiar and important, and still remain undone. A much bigger task can absorb me completely. Having the ability to do one doesn't reliably get the other done.

Waiting doesn't buy me more time on the certificate either. A late CVRT doesn't simply give me a fresh twelve months from whenever I finally turn up. The expiry date takes account of when the test was due. There is no advantage in leaving it. I know that, and the call still hasn't happened.

There's always some sort of bill that gets missed. Taxing the van or the car has been a repeated one. The renewal arrives with the details I need. I could log in and pay it in about ten minutes, but I put it off.

It can get to the point where the possibility of being questioned by the guards makes it urgent. Then suddenly I can get on with it. The job hasn't become easier. There is just pressure attached to it now.

And I still owe the back tax. It isn't as though the delay has saved me the money. I've created stress around something I was going to have to do anyway.

Forgetting doesn't mean I spend the whole day feeling nothing about it. I remember, and there's guilt, shame or frustration. Then it goes out of my head again. Later, another unfinished thing pops up, and the feeling comes back with that one.

I can be in a good mood and suddenly remember something I haven't done. It's like a little pinprick of poison. Nothing new has happened, but the reminder changes how I feel. That can happen several times in a day. When a few of those things come back together, the day can feel overwhelming very quickly.

That is probably the most common way I start a message.

There's a message from a friend I like, and I haven't answered it. The longer I leave it, the bigger the reply becomes in my head. At first, all it needed was a quick hello. Now I've left it so long that it feels like I'm completely ignoring them.

Then I remember it. Another little pinprick.

People who know me well have come to recognise the pattern. Some expect a slow reply. I still find myself starting with the apology, because I know the delay is there even if they understand it.

I can care about someone and leave their message unanswered. That is one of the frustrating things about it. The caring doesn't reliably turn into the small action that would let them know.

Then there's leaving the house. I go back in for the keys, notice something else, deal with that and come back out without the keys. Or I'm already in the van and someone asks whether I locked the door. I did, but now I can't remember doing it, so I go back to check.

One time, I went out to get something from the van and left the house door open because I was coming straight back in. I got a phone call while I was in the van. It distracted me, and I drove away.

The house door was still wide open.

Some of these things make me laugh when I tell them. They also have consequences. Once the phone call caught my attention, I lost track of the reason I'd left the door open.

There's good in my life as well. I have work I care about and a wife who understands. There is also stress, forgetting and household strain. Those things don't cancel each other out. A life can contain work you chose and people you love while still needing help.

I run Revival Float Rooms and Revival Harmony in Limerick. My work includes floating, sound sessions, cacao sessions and courses for sound medicine practitioners. There's practical work around all of it, including the ordinary administration that doesn't become interesting just because the business matters to me.

I've been on mindfulness retreats, mindful days and mindfulness courses. I practise mindfulness and incorporate it into my sound practices.

I've also been making books and planning tools. There's Mindset Gratitude, The Path to Harmony: 110 Lessons for Strength and Growth, the cacao guide and lots of different planners. The Path to Harmony went through several updates over the past year, and I finished a version about a month ago. I've returned to these projects, changed them and kept working on them. Finishing doesn't always mean I leave them alone.

What I recognise in that work is hyperfocus. When something is new and exciting, I can spend days on it. I don't need somebody to persuade me to become interested. The interest is already there, and it carries me into the work.

That doesn't make the unbooked test less confusing. In some ways it makes it more confusing, because I know how much attention I can give something. I just can't assume that attention will be available for the next thing on the list.

What I have is ideas. They arrive out of nowhere, one after another, and the problem isn't how many there are.

The problem is that they all turn up wearing the same badge, and the badge says: important, do this now.

A new course idea can feel more urgent than the van's test because it is new and the test isn't. The idea gets the afternoon, and the reminder gets another day on the counter. I can be well into the new work before I notice what I've set aside.

My wife understands that these difficulties are real, and I'm working on them. Understanding doesn't remove the effect of forgetting something or leaving another job unfinished. There has already been household strain and general stress.

It's important to me that the book makes room for the person alongside someone with ADHD. They have their own daily life to manage. An explanation may help a couple understand a pattern, but it doesn't complete the task or repair a hurt on its own.

I'll come back to that in Chapter 16. For now, I want to acknowledge it here, because these difficulties don't stay neatly inside one person's head.

Here's the thing I've been circling.

I've been sitting in therapy rooms since I was sixteen.