The words people use

Attention regulation

Attention regulation describes directing, sustaining and shifting attention. It is useful language for the contrast between struggling to stay with one activity and becoming deeply absorbed in another. It does not replace the clinical criteria for ADHD.

What it can look like: someone stays focused through a demanding practical task and struggles to complete the paperwork afterwards.

Hyperfocus

Deep absorption in an activity, often one that is interesting, with difficulty noticing other needs or switching away. People use hyperfocus to describe an experience; it is not a core diagnostic criterion or an ability everyone with ADHD has.

What it can look like: a teenager who cannot read four pages of a set text and has taught himself to code because a game mod needed it.

Zoning out

Losing the thread while your attention is elsewhere, sometimes during a conversation with someone who matters to you. You may notice immediately or realise afterwards that you missed part of what was said.

Difficulty processing spoken information can have several explanations. If that is a concern, describe it separately rather than assuming it is simply another name for distraction.

What it can look like: someone who has no idea what their partner just said about the weekend and won't ask, because asking means admitting they've done it again.

Distractibility

Distraction can come from outside or from your own thoughts. A memory or a new idea can pull attention away from the thing in front of you.

What it can look like: a solicitor who reads the same clause four times because a memory from 2009 keeps turning up in the middle of it.

Context switching

Moving between activities can take time and effort, including finding your place again afterwards. A short interruption may have a longer effect than the time spent on the interruption itself.

What it can look like: a developer who cannot get back into the problem after a short chat about the kettle.

Working memory

Holding information in mind while using it, like a phone number between hearing it and dialling. Think of a small mental desk. Someone may recall a great deal from long-term memory and still struggle to keep a current instruction in view.

What it can look like: somebody who can recite the plot of a film they saw once in 2011 and cannot hold three items from a shopping list.

Prospective memory

Remembering to carry out an intention later. You know what you planned to do; the difficulty is bringing it to mind when it needs doing.

What it can look like: someone remembers after the post office closes that they had meant to send a parcel that afternoon.

Time blindness

An informal phrase for difficulty noticing time pass or estimating how long something will take. A person may genuinely expect a job to take five minutes and discover that forty have gone.

What it can look like: someone repeatedly underestimates how long getting ready will take and leaves later than intended.

Object permanence

In ADHD conversations, people sometimes use this term for the experience of something slipping out of mind when it is no longer visible: food in the fridge, a task in a closed drawer, a person they meant to contact.

The experience is worth describing, but object permanence has a different meaning in developmental psychology: understanding that something still exists when it cannot be seen. Forgetting to attend to something is not the same as believing it has ceased to exist. Attention and remembering an intention are more useful places to begin describing the everyday difficulty.

What it can look like: a person puts an unfinished task in a labelled box, closes the lid and stops remembering to return to it.

The doorway effect

Forgetting an intention after moving into a different space. It is a familiar experience beyond ADHD, and the phrase is not a diagnostic sign. What matters in an individual account is how often forgetting happens and how it affects daily life.

Executive function

Processes involved in planning, prioritising, holding a goal in mind, beginning, stopping and switching. Difficulty here can help explain why knowing what to do and carrying it out are different demands.

What it can look like: somebody with a first-class degree who cannot organise their own week.

Task paralysis

An informal description of feeling stuck in front of a task you intend to do. The reasons may include overwhelm, uncertainty or emotional weight; the word itself does not establish the cause.

What it can look like: a person sitting in the car outside the house for twenty minutes, because going in means starting the evening.

The wall of awful

ADHD coach Brendan Mahan’s phrase for the emotional barrier that can build around a task. Previous difficulties, disappointment and worry about trying again can make approaching it harder. It is a coaching metaphor, not a diagnostic term.

What it can look like: a fifteen-minute phone call that has become impossible because it should have been made in March.

Analysis paralysis

Getting so caught in researching a decision that making it becomes harder. It overlaps with task paralysis, but here the research itself can feel like progress.

What it can look like: eleven browser tabs comparing printers, no printer.

Demand avoidance

Resistance to a demand, sometimes even one involving something you had wanted to do. People may use the phrase for different experiences, so the situation and response need describing.

This everyday description does not establish the more specific, debated profile sometimes called pathological demand avoidance. My ‘Absolutely Not’ response is something I can describe without deciding that it belongs to that profile.

What it can look like: someone who wanted to go to the gym right up until it appeared in the calendar.

Emotional dysregulation

Difficulty managing the intensity, duration or expression of emotion. A reaction may be hard to settle even when the person wants to respond differently. It is discussed in ADHD research and also occurs in other contexts.

What it can look like: a person whose afternoon is ruined by a curt email, who knows while it's happening that the reaction is out of proportion and cannot get out from under it.

Rejection sensitivity

Rejection sensitivity describes a strong response to actual or anticipated rejection. You may also see the informal term RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria. RSD is not a separate formal diagnosis, and the terms shouldn't be treated as interchangeable with all emotional difficulties.

The experience is worth describing in its own words: what happened, what you felt, what you thought it meant and how it affected you. That gives more information than the label alone.

What it can look like: a brief reply feels cold, even though its meaning is uncertain.

Justice sensitivity

Being particularly affected by perceived unfairness. The perception can be mistaken, and caring about fairness is not unique to ADHD or a measure of someone’s moral worth.

What it can look like: somebody who still cannot let go of a colleague being treated badly three months ago.

Rumination

Repeatedly returning to a thought or concern without reaching a useful resolution. It might involve a conversation, a mistake or a worry about what could happen.

This one travels with anxiety and low mood as much as it does with ADHD, so it's worth mentioning to whoever assesses you rather than assuming where it belongs.

Alexithymia

Difficulty identifying and naming your own emotional states. Knowing something is wrong without being able to say what.

What it can look like: someone who can only tell they were upset by noticing afterwards that they were short with everyone.

Sensory sensitivity

Finding particular sensory input unusually intense, distracting or uncomfortable: light, sound, smells, textures or touch. Needs vary, including within the same person across situations.

What it can look like: a person who cannot follow a conversation in a busy café and has quietly stopped suggesting cafés.

Sensory seeking

Seeking particular input, such as movement, sound or something to hold. Some people find certain sensations help them settle or concentrate. Seeking one kind of input can coexist with sensitivity to another.

What it can look like: someone who works better in a noisy kitchen than a silent library and has been told their whole life that this is impossible.

Stimming

A word used for repetitive movements or sounds, which may help with regulation or expression. A movement alone does not establish its purpose or someone’s diagnosis.

Hypervigilance

Heightened alertness to possible threat, such as scanning a room or closely monitoring changes in someone’s mood. It need not be constant to be distressing.

Hypervigilance is often discussed in relation to trauma and anxiety. It can coexist with ADHD and may resemble distraction from outside. If it is part of your experience, describe it specifically so that it receives attention in its own right.

Interoception

The sense of your own inside. Hunger, thirst, needing the loo, tiredness, the early warning signs of losing your temper.

What it can look like: somebody only notices that they missed lunch when they feel tired or uncomfortable later in the afternoon.

Masking

Suppressing traits, deliberately or otherwise, to come across like everyone else. Rehearsing what to say. Copying how other people behave in a room. Holding still.

Keeping up an outward appearance can be tiring, and it may make difficulties less visible to others.

What it can look like: someone works hard to conceal restlessness during meetings and feels exhausted by the effort afterwards.

Body doubling

Working in another person's presence, in the same room or remotely. Some people find it easier to stay with a task this way, although research on body doubling itself is limited.

What it can look like: two friends agree to work on separate pieces of admin during a video call. Chapter 16 looks at how to make such an arrangement clear and mutual.

Waiting mode

Having one thing on later in the day and being unable to do anything before it. An appointment at three, and the whole day is gone.

It is an informal description of an experience, rather than a recognised diagnosis.

What it can look like: someone leaves a whole morning unused because they are worried about losing track of time before an afternoon appointment.

Doom box

A box, drawer or pile where things go when sorting them is too much. Moving the items out of sight may clear the space while leaving the decisions for another day.

Revenge bedtime procrastination

Staying up late to claw back time the day took off you, knowing full well you'll pay for it tomorrow.

This phrase is used beyond ADHD. It describes one possible reason for delaying bedtime, not every instance of staying up late.

What it can look like: a parent awake at one in the morning watching something they don't even like, because it's the first hour that has belonged to them.

Neurodivergent and neurotypical

Neurodivergent is a broad, non-diagnostic term for people whose neurological development or functioning differs from what is considered typical. ADHD, autism and dyslexia are commonly included. Neurotypical describes people considered typical in this respect. Neurodiversity refers to variation across people, rather than a diagnosis of an individual.

Presentations

The three clinical presentations of ADHD: predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, and combined. The presentation describes the current symptom pattern and can change over time.

Comorbidity

The clinical word for conditions occurring together. Anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, dyslexia and autism can occur alongside ADHD. More than one difficulty may need its own assessment and support.

AuDHD

Informal shorthand for having both ADHD and autism. Chapter 9 explores the overlap and why one visible behaviour cannot tell us which explanation applies.