I’ve told myself and others that I don’t get bored easily. I can daydream through some experiences or I’ll distract myself with games, books, etc.
But I’m finding out that I’ve always had my hands full with an activity, doing more than one at once. Like playing animal crossing with a movie playing, and eating lunch. Of course, I end up missing conversations in whatever media I’m consuming.
It’s like I’m so good at distracting myself that I need something to catch my focus. If it’s boring or predictable, I don’t have to pay attention. I’ve had friends point out that I do things the hard way a lot.
I don’t want this feeling to be boredom because that feels like a moral failing. It’s thinking of people I care about and not being able to muster up enough compassion to give them my undivided attention. I can’t sit through a phone call and I wish I could.
I hate that it comes off as me being an edgelord sometimes. But it’s just me not reacting strongly.
Writing this, I realize how much of this is an attention disorder or something dissociative. I’ve carried these confused feelings about how I perceive myself and I’m only now starting to dismantle the shame.
And I’m probably going to look into helping my focus.
I don’t want this feeling to be boredom because that feels like a moral failing. It’s thinking of people I care about and not being able to muster up enough compassion to give them my undivided attention. I can’t sit through a phone call and I wish I could.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s actually a very common experience to people with adhd or audhd, and if you don’t want to call it boredom, you can call it stimming or dopamining. It’s not a moral failing on your part, it’s just the way your brain works.
The result is the same: the current activity doesn’t stimulate your brain enough, so you go and look for something else to provide that dopamine hit. I don’t really have any advice, I struggle with it, too… But at least accepting yourself and being upfront about it with people you care about helps understanding that you mean no disrespect by it, or that you don’t care less for people or things just because your brain chooses to focus on other things.
Forcing yourself to focus can be very painful, and even traumatizing, so watch out. I know because I tried for years, and it only ended with me burnt out and unable to live without masking, making me feel like shit all the time. Try to be gentle to yourself, and try to get advice by ND people for ND people. I’ve tried so many techniques for focus and concentration, and while they’ve worked for my NT friends, I can’t get to stick to them, they just make me feel like more of a failure, which is also showing some of that internalized ableism I have to work on.
EDIT: I’ve been reading unmasking autism lately, and it has a lot of good advice on the whole “give yourself some grace and understand you’re not a lesser person for having a disability”, even if adhd people is not the intended audience. Maybe give the audio book a listen.
