One of the simplest, easiest, best changes that people can make for their ADHD loved ones is initiating interactions by gently calling our name…and then wait at least 10 seconds…or much longer…and if we say “hang on a sec,” please just hang on a sec and let us pull together that beautiful slimy neural wiring and tuck it away.
I prefer a gentle touch on the shoulder if it is my SO doing the "interrupting" because I often wear headphones but yes calling the name and waiting for a response works as well.
I love how supportive you both are to each other through this whole process....her to him understanding and him to abstractly putting in so much effort to understand and grasp how complex and challenging adhd hyper focus actually can be for us. My devastation is that when my hyper focus gets interrupted, sometimes it literally scares me, startles me and then i often find it could be weeks before i am even capable of finding it again. Its rather disturbing.
I've started to teach myself how to mangae my hyperfocus... 1. list 3 tasks that need to be done 2. procrastinate between all 3 tasks, let the frustration and bordom do it's thing 3. keep flipping between all 3 tasks till the boredom of switching kicks in 4. the task you land on will be one hyperfocus kicks in when you get bored of the changes...
That's exactly how it is. When my wife interrupts me in those moments....wow...it's not good at all. But I've learned to freeze and try not to open my mouth and tell her how I feel about her then and there. I hate that I am like that, it sometimes feels so unfair. And everything else about ADHD, you know what I mean, it has in so many ways ruined my life. I "knew" I had ADHD already in the early '90s and I talked to my doctor about it, but he blew me off with a comment: "ADHD is for people who don't want to work and be responsible, but that's not who you are, is it?" Well, that has never been me. I have four grown-up kids and have worked hard and am still working hard. And I've been studying all my life, including 3 years at university just after I had turned 50 y.o. I'm a carpenter, blacksmith, truck driver, welder, and shoemaker. I've done a lot of things in my life, and I know a lot of stuff. I've traveled all over the world, and been hiking in the mountains on the border of Sweden-Norway (in Jämtland where I come from😉), I have never stopped living like many "normal" people do after they've passed 60, and I'm actually proud of that! Still, I'm a loser. I have failed miserably in life and I have never accomplished anything because I couldn't keep my focus long enough. 3 years ago I talked to my youngest son on the phone, he had been diagnosed with ADHD 2 years earlier at 17 and participated once a week in a discussion group for people of all ages with an ADHD diagnosis. He said to me "Dad, I've been in this group for one year and you're the worst of them all." I was 59 and felt embarrassed about talking to my doctor here in Trondheim about it. But my son had asked HIS doctor about that, and that doctor said to him that if I didn't get help from my own doctor he promised my son that he was gonna take me as his patient. So, that made me brave enough to have a discussion with my doctor here in Trondheim. I wrote down a paper with my history that I thought was perfect to convince him that I needed help. Yes, you're right, of course I forgot it when I had my appointment which is totally normal for me. But I decided to "go with the flow" and try to convince him anyway, without my written life story. I didn't need that. I opened my mouth and used the word ADHD in my first sentence, he stopped me and said "I've been sure that you have ADHD for several years, but since you never mentioned it I didn't want to bring it up. I'm sending you to a neuropsychologist and then we go from there...." I got the diagnosis, been on meds for 2 years now. In the beginning, it was amazing and I felt relaxed, focused, and had control of things in a way that I used to dream of many years ago. It hasn't changed a thing. I should have had this help 30-40 years ago, that had made a difference in my life, I'm sure of that. Today, the worst thing about getting the diagnosis is that now I know how it feels to be "normal" and it makes me wonder why people don't live better lives when they are blessed with being NT (neurotypical). Anyway, it is what it is and I still come up with new ideas and projects almost every day, just like I used to do before. So my meds haven't changed that part of my personality. But I don't wish for anyone to have to live with this kind of challenge a whole life. "Normal" people can never understand the struggle ADHD brings to their lives. And I so envy them.
Having a hyperfocus interrupted can lead to impotent rage that brings tears of despair. It’s so hard to explain this to neurotypicals - it’s such an over the top reaction that they just don’t get. I barely get it and it’s happening to me. I’m so thankful for these videos, helping me see that I’m not alone.
Yes, and we're such "drama queens" when we get freaked out over the disruption! And then to take ten minutes out to explain, that I'm not trying to be over the top but what just happened WAS over the top for me!
Doing the “thing” for an ADHDer is not just the “thing.” It’s all the associations we generate & are trying to keep track of & pursue. Interruptions are like blowing up the entire process - snip snip - cutting through all the linked ideas that we were keeping track of. I think the slime/neural network description works for me, and it blows me away that Rich didn’t seem to think it was much of a thing to imagine his golf-game strategizing being interrupted.
Ikr? But for us, it's always a mid swing when you break our concentration. It's awful, enraging, scary, sad, every awful thing ever at once! We aren't trying to be furious, but losing all that data we may NEVER be able to retrieve is.... angry, plus furious, plus enraged! I lost my thought train! It may be gone forever! Why do people ask me to repeat what I just said that they loved? It's normally a1 shot, a burst of inspiration, I have no idea how to make it happen twice!!!! Especially the exact words and phrasing of the first time!!!
Absolutely!!! This is why i prefer working from home because in the office, its like this almost constant so i dont get things done! And when i do start…i’m anxious about being interrupted! This is a perfect example 🙏
I don't think my hyperfocus is as intense as I've seen other people describe it, but I definitely become very anxious and almost on the verge of tears when I get interrupted from doing something that's normally pretty hard to do, and I just had the motivation and will to do it. Like when I finally kick into gear and am ready to get my house cleaned, and then someone calls me or knocks on my door right as I'm just really getting into it. There's been times where I've masked until I'm off the phone, then broke down crying because I knew it would be another two weeks of living ina messy house before I could get that focus and energy back. So, so frustrating. Took me years to learn the art of saying, "hey now really isn't a good time, can I call you back?"
I think my experience is similar. to the first bit you said. Not as intense but I do use a lot of energy focusing on whatever it is I'm doing and when I'm interrupted it's like breaking a circuit. The thing I'm doing could be completely mundane or unimportant and the interruption might be to tell/ask me something that *is* important but I still get irritated.
This is a good example of how to make relationships better if you have ADHD or Autism. Tell them how your mind works in a way they can understand. When I explain how I feel when I get interrupted mid sentence, or when I have the next sentence lined up in my brain, I always say it feels like I have ants in my head. Crawling around and making me itch. I've found that most people seem able to relate to that somehow.
I wish we could clone your partner. He tries so hard to understand and is open to you trying to explain something so abstract and if to a non neurodivergent person. And you totally explained the hyperfocus perfectly! I absolutely love you guys because at 51 and female I didn't get diagnosed so I was in my '30s and trying to explain to people why and the way I am is nearly impossible for them to comprehend. I usually get responses like if I thought the way you do I would go crazy. And my answer is yes I'm crazy!
Such a good example! Also, culturally we know not to interrupt someone mid-swing. So know if we can get neuro-typical folks to recognize “mid-mental swing” behavior than perhaps the interruptions won’t feel so disrespectful and frustrating.
I love to watch You discussing it. I thing that's very helpful for neurotypicals to understand. When Roxi said "hyperfocus is permanent in the middle of a swing" it was the same I thought.
Take that and apply it to parenting where the interruptions are CONSTANT and you find nothing gets done because you’re constantly battling the desire to scream. Particularly when your kids are a mix of inattentive and hyper.
i'm in the process of trying to get diagnosed with ADHD, i was diagnosed with high functioning autism in high school (so about 4 years ago) but i was only recently informed about that literally a couple months ago so your videos are incredibly comforting for me, especially since my parents are adamant that i don't have it when i'm convinced i do
Maybe because it would be harder to reconnect slime than a wire? Or because a wire feels too streamlined for your mind? I don't know, but I feel the same way. Which is ironic, because a lot of my hyperfocus is related to computer activity, so a wire seems more appropriate. But it's not. The slime makes more sense to me.
Wires seem too narrow, when hyperfocus is encompasses the whole brain. I picture the slime muffling out the world and for that to be broken into is jarring.
Your videos helped me understand this about myself. I can remember EXACT instances in school and in my life and never understood why it was so intense.
When I’m in hyper focus I literally blend with the thing/project to which I’m paying attention. I “become” it and that’s when I do my best work.If I get disturbed by anything while in that state it’s like having nerve-endings ripped out and exposed. I feel so angry when that happens and it can take me a long while to feel my way back in and plug in all the connections where I left off.
To me it's like you've finally cleared the clutter off the table and are carefully and precisely constructing a huge house of cards, feeling in full control... Then someone casually comes along, slams the Sunday paper on the table and opens it, creating a small but devastating gust of air. I try, but it's really hard to not snap at someone at that point
Perfect analogy. It's frustrating when those closest to you won't accept the explanation and believe you are just making excuses for an incredibly 'short temper'. 😢
I am loving these videos of Rox explaining what things are like! Sometimes I totally feel her perspective and others I don't and LOVE the explanation. This one is so relatable! I can go back to what I was doing but it takes awhile "connect back to the network" but I totally understand that connection and rage 😅
it helps me to understand things in terms of momentum! once i've got that hyperfocus momentum going, i reallly want to see it through until i feel like i've got that follow-through feeling where your swing is complete and you're watching the ball sail away (so like... hitting 'post' on a fan thing I'd been working on, where you're now waiting to see the lie in terms of likes/reviews lol) once i've started the swing, if someone interrupts me... it would be a natural consequence for them to get hit with the club, but yearss of masking have gotten me pretty good at like.. tensing all my muscles and twisting my arms to avoid that. but most people seem blithely unaware of the athletic feat i've just done to keep them from getting beaned by the swing they just wandered into 😅
My interruption rage has been forced to mellow (because with three kids, getting interrupted is a guarantee!) But it really is like that mid-swing moment!! Though I do prefer the visual of your neuroslime 😂
That's absolutely how it is in hyperfocus. I've thought about it before for me. I don't hyperfocus a lot, so it's less of an issue. But when it happens it's so hard to manage the task again when interrupted. I don't care about golf or baseball or anything, but I do care about winning so I always attributed it to when someone coughs or whatever to interrupt someone's swing. The people that aren't jarred by even that are the super weird people, lol. But, they're the type of person I aim to be.
I love your analogy , scientists like the term "flow state" for me hyperfocus can be either a deeply focused zen state or a distracted impulsive loss of attention trance state. I like practicing zen archery in the summer to get more control over my focus, it definitely helps.
This honestly made me tear up a little bit because I now have a way to explain to my wife that I am not angry or annoyed with her, it is just so hard to get that focus back once you lose it. Thank you!
The way Bubby says, “That’s helpful” at the end of R’s explanation. Ooof. Right on spot, man. The most incredible partnerships are ones where both parties not only have a common goal, but work together to communicate and grow. God bless you both.
THIS! Thank you for sharing. A perfect example of hyper focus that my neurotypical hubby can relate to. I’ll be responding in rage with “you just interrupted my golf swing!”…no matter what it is that I’m hyper focused on.
I'm an artist with ADHD and my wife and I will spend hours sitting around the house not saying a word, but once I'm hyper focused on working she'll come over and ask if I've seen this funny ad, or deside she wants to tell me a story about someone's shoes she saw on the train. And oftens she keeps coming back every few minutes with some other distraction until I just turn of the computer and turn my chair and stare at her. Then she asks why I stopped working... To be honest I'm rarely mad when she interrupts me to mention food. I like food and often forget that I need while I'm working.
I speak in abstractions, metaphors, analogies, etc....I do this to try to help others understand me/what I am going through/feeling at the moment. Some get it, but most think I'm weird. The majority of people don't want to learn "my language" or way of speaking, but expect me to be fluent in "their language", which can be confusing for me. NeuroDIVERGENT people and NeuroTYPICALS speak TOTALLY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. We have been PROGRAMMED/BRAINWASHED in society that the ONLY ACCEPTABLE LANGUAGE is neuroTYPICAL, which is why we neuroDIVERGENT people will MASK/PRETEND to be neuroTYPICAL, so as to gain ACCEPTANCE. After trying to FIT IN ALL DAY, we are EXHAUSTED, and need some time alone to RECHARGE. It takes a lot of work to appear SOCIALLY "NORMAL". Not being up to the task doesn't make us "lazy". It just requires SO MUCH ENERGY/FOCUS/TIME to be a PERFORMING MONKEY on a DAILY basis. As for HYPERFOCUS....yes...if I am hyperfocused on something, and someone bothers me/BREAKS THE CONNECTION, it will cause a rage, because getting CONNECTED again will be hard. It's like DIAL UP INTERNET (computer plugged into the wall), compared to WIFI (someone using a laptop). That connection isn't INSTANT. We have to WORK for that CONNECTION, and WAIT for it to get us ONLINE. Once ONLINE, we are performing A TASK that requires HIGH CONNECTIVITY. While performing that TASK, someone comes in and pulls the plug from the wall, which causes us to LOSE ALL PRODUCTIVITY in that TASK. EVERYTHING HAS BEEN LOST, and must now be REBOOTED; START FROM SCRATCH, because we had not been able to SAVE DATA, therefore, we couldn't just PICK UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF. It is STARTING ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING, like a video game. Who wouldn't RAGE after playing a game, and getting all the way to the LAST LEVEL, and in the middle of the BOSS FIGHT, someone comes in, breaks your focus, and causes you to die, BEFORE you had time to SAVE PROGRESS, and in which case, sends you ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE GAME!!😡
How I had it explained was loads of tendrils of though reaching out, asking questions and receiving answers like as he said, " a neural network" an extension of your brain. Imagine then, someone coming along and snapping them off, and telling you, stop that now, focus on this now! It would, and does psychologically hurt. Especially, say in the workplace, your learning curve and focus training is so much tougher, but given the time you're on it, smashing it. Your colleagues that have mocked you are astounded. Then a manager comes along and says put that down, do this instead. The partial chaos, that the situation you about to transform into glorious order, is just that, chaos, to anyone else who picks up that task. It not only hurts you psychologically but it also appears that you are a totally incompetent mess. Playing "life" on hard mode, all the way.
Dude when someone interrupts me in hyper focus I physically cant continue that task anymore, it’s like if I want to finish a task i need to make sure no one is near me so no one talks to me. Especially when i dont want to do the task and i finally start hyperfocusing on it, and then someone interrupts me i will never finish that task EVER again.
Very well explained!! This is exactly how I feel too about my hyperfocus; it's literally like a magnetic connection, and if someone breaks that magnetism, it really grinds my gears, especially if it's a task of boring house chores I'm hyperfocused on, or "organizing" 😂 That's why I put my phone on flight mode sometimes if I remember it during the midst of a session to not get distracted by phone call or sms.
Thank you both so much for providing wonderful references I can send my partner WHEN HE INTERRUPTS MY HYPERFOCUS lol 😅 I try to not get agitated (and I even accommodate him by breaking my focus & giving him attention sometimes!), but I cant help ittttt 😇 hehe. Your videos help me communicate to my partner and those around me exactly what it's like!
Great videos. I look at how short these videos are and think "they couldn't possibly impart any information in that amount of time", but somehow the videos seem to last a long time and are very informative
That's absolutely right..Mid swing and even if Someone picked THAT MOMENT to suddenly walk up and hug you and say I love you, you would be snapped out of it. You can never get back in that zone again. At least not that day, or maybe ever and you know it. You feel bad for raging but it took you so long to just GET STARTED!
I write and make illustrations fir a living and for a long time I would fall into this horrible event trap where I'd be working, and my mom would come up aand say something and interrupt the focus, and Id get sad, didnt know why. But the even worse thing is when she'd interrupt asking me how my project was going WHICH IS SOMETHING I DESPERATELY WANT HER TO DO, because I have trouble valuing my project if other people dont show an interest in it- and YET the focus slime is snipped- and I would be devastated on an instant. No.matter how good I thought the project was before, it's "terrible" now. Then I'd tell her I dont think its good, and I just wasted a ton of time doing it because "it's never going to get done" and id be all mad and horrible and its like... I felt really like the least tolerable person in the world because here she is trying to do something nice and I just turn into this irrational ball of fury for NO reason, and like my life is OVER. So anyway. This helps to know whats going on. The reason I think the project will never get done, is because the string that holds it together is snapped and Im not confident I can put it back. And if I cant finish it then the time I spent before is a 'waste'. I always thought it was like there were two worlds, a fantasy world where everything I do looks amazing and im so proud of it, and the real world where I have a 'real' persons brain and I realize that what I did only looks good to me in this fake world. And it seems like the bridge between the two is that awkwardly timed SNIP in a project, which especially if its combined with someone coming to apraise my work(but reacts in a wah that doesnt satisfy me and how cool I THINK the project is) I get triggered with RSD. And then BOOM cortisol association with the project, and I never want to work on it again. And its all cuz people dont bother to ask me how my project is going AT THE END of the work hour and not just whenever it strikes them lol. Honestly thats the worst too. Ppl see hou working and they think "I'm gonna reward this person for working hard by giving them a pat on the back and its bad timing, then at the end of the day you wanna show them the completed thing and its like they dont care, or more likely they have other motivations and interests, and they dont see that the appropriate time to reward you for the work is AFTER its DONE.(or after im done working on it, on a break, etc)
I am her so I 100% get what she's saying. What I don't know is how to work with that. My wife needs to do some things and sometimes needs my input. My hyper focus can last for hours. It's not reasonable for my wife (or even possible in some cases) to have to wait until I emerge. So what do we do? How do we do it? A golf swing is seconds, a hyper focus can be interminable...
This is very true. I was doing some very important work very fast because I was fully in it and then my mother called me about some useless unimportant bs that interrupted everything, I had a complete rage outburst towards her because of that
I think this issues is why I had such a hard time at work at my last job. I was so focused on filling orders that had already come in and was almost done when a new one would come in that was a higher priority and so I had to stop everything, go grab it and fill it before I could finish my first one. Rage inducing.
For me its like getting ripped from one reality into another. When im absorbed in my task, my whole brain is revolving around that. When i get yanked out of that its like getting picked up from a nice swim and getting yeeted into a snow bank. Yoinked from one reality and dropped into another, snd its a complete shock to the brain that makes my whole system go W T F. W T F.
literally what happened today. Kept being asked questions in quick succession while trying to do a task. For me it's like how the parents in peanuts cartoon speak like trombones, can't focus on what they were asking. And then got told off for not answering so I snapped at them. Later I apologised for snapping, but they didn't apologise to me, because to them it's not weird or frustrating. I'm undiagnosed and desperately need to be.
Bruh! I get that! I tried to tell them something similar and they fortunately do apologize back. Sometimes its the montly cycle that makes me more irritated than normal. Sometimes its the overload of family always asking me to help them with tiny tasks throughout the day, its random when and where it happens. So its like a constant disconnect and then reconnect. 😢 in a span of minutes.
💯 My #1 favorite benefit of taking medication is that I don't get frustrated every time my kids interrupt me. I feel like I can be more present with them. But, I dislike it for other things.
Yeah it honestly does feel like you're anchored and then if someone lifts that anchor you just kind of drift out to the sea of thoughts and bullshit again
Im so glad im not alone in this. I always explained it like in hyperfocus, im underwater, chilling. No one bothering me. Im in my own universe. Now interupting my hyperfocus is someone just brutally dragging me back up to the surface. But i really like the slime explination haha
Yup it feels like your whole brain is zoomed in and you’re about to have a serious conversation with what your hyper focusing on and you can feel that intense pressure on your forehead 😊🎉
Even with tiny things, honestly. I used to work in hospitality, and if I was filling salt and pepper shakers just to kill time waiting for a customer to come in or something more important to happen, I would get irrationally angry if I was disrupted once something important started happening and I was needed somewhere. Salt and pepper filling. I remember being confused and self-critical over how upset I was over being disrupted over meaningless busy work. There were somethings about serving that were very good *and* very hard for ADHD.
I mentioned to a couple of my old bosses that I’m beginning to wonder if I might have ADHD (the inattentive type) and asked what they thought. They both said I don’t have any problem with maintaining focus and if anything I can become too focused in my work 😂🫣 they were surprised when I said that hyper focus is a symptom and were like “well in that case…” 😅
Guys i love you !! I have 39y and diagnosed adhd .. I am high performance guy but. last 3 years workimg over 16h for 3 project is to much for me.. in my country dont have adderral but 6h drive in germany i can buy .. when i first take 5mg adderal its calm me down abaout 200% !!! And i can focus !! I take 5mg every morning for 5 days in the week .. weekend i dont take adderall . Its life change for me second Day when i took adderral i cry why i diagnosed that late .. now i dont forget simplex things like shoping list from my wife i walk and drive słower and much easy i listen
When I'm writing... I ended off calling being 'in flow state' hyperfocusing as I stream of consciousness rough drafted the work, as being in "The crystal palace of pure thought". Its beautiful and its detailed and its a whole THING... but its pure thought, and so fragile. An interruption makes it crumble. To get BACK into writing flow state, first I have to reconstruct the palace...
The feeling is similar to what you'd feel if someone was to force reset your computer in the middle of you working on a big project and close all of your browser tabs (and prevent any of the easy recovery methods from working). It's the loss of all of that context that really hurts. I absolutely love the golf swing analogy, though.
OMG! “It’s like interrupting a golfer mid-swing”, or “shouting at a tennis match during a serve.” That is the best analogy ever! Seriously. I know exactly what to tell people now… golfers, at least. Just watch any televised golf game or tennis match. Better still, watch Happy Gilmore or 7 Days in Hell and actually enjoy it. It takes a lot of time to get to that same level of focus and a lot of time to get back if interrupted.
Hyperfocus is something I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, but it's something that gets me into so many issues as I start losing track of time and that.... Its hard to balance between when I'm doing and what I should be doing properly.... It's kinda horrible as I feel like I've let everyone down.. But on another front, I've done alot of what I needed to do... Torn!!!!
Interrupting hyper focus is like slitting an Achilles tendon of our being completely symbiotically attached to whatever we’re doing. That’s what it is for me.
When the husband suggested changing the analogy from a string of slime to wire, he seemed to be thinking it worked better because wires conduct electric current better. But perhaps what the wife was getting at was that the string of slime is fragile and easily broken, as she was attempting to convey that ADHD hyperfocus, while very intense, can sometimes be easily broken by the slightest distraction.
Totally made me think of the classic scene from “Blazing Saddles”: 😂 Hedley Lamarr: My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. Taggart: Ditto. Hedley Lamarr: "Ditto?" "Ditto," you provincial putz? Taggart: I'm sorry, sir
I call this “hitting my reset button”. I have to start whatever it is that I’m doing (or thinking) all over again. I HATE it when people hit my reset button!!
My ADHD Dad loses his absolute s**t when we’d recorded a television programme, watched the television programme, and then the next programme has started but hasn’t been recorded so suddenly stops about 10mins in. He’d start shouting and who turned it over?! I was watching that! And basically blame everyone in the room because the programme suddenly cut off. So then we’d have to explain to him, we’re watching a recorded programme, when the next thing starts it’s going to cut off. don’t start watching it. Etc etc.
If water conducts, slime conducts and it's a more organic explanation. I don't fall into that degree of hyperfocus that often. Mine, when I do it, which is rarely, is more the rest of the world goes dark and it's only me and the thing I'm doing blazing bright. You can't shake me out because I go full trance. I do have trouble tuning things out, but not then. The rage is from hyper focus when I'm stressed because I can be pulled away. When I'm really, truly in it, I have to want to come out to be pulled out.
Was just playing a match and I was really focused I got a call from my mom and managed to keep the focus intact without difficulty, but she had sent three texts earlier to talk to me that only arrived a moment after the call and I went from very calm and focused to extremely angry and I realized from the texts that she had sent them before the call. So I wasn't angry at her, but the hyperfocus was broken and I had to shut down anything extra. The movie I was playing the sounds kept seeming louder and louder from the game and I kept turning them down further but they kept seeming louder and louder and then the phone chimed again and I threw the thing ten feet. Which is uncharacteristic of me at this point in my life, earlier I had difficulties but man did it ever piss me off.
She's spot on with her explanation. I think of it as being in a golden lit tunnel. Can't see anything outside of it.. don't care either, if I'm honest.
![ADHD TikTok stars Roxanne Emery & Richard Pink [ADHD Love] join Prof. Nancy Doyle | Jeremy Vine On 5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xhPzbEUAY_s/mqdefault.jpg)
One of the simplest, easiest, best changes that people can make for their ADHD loved ones is initiating interactions by gently calling our name…and then wait at least 10 seconds…or much longer…and if we say “hang on a sec,” please just hang on a sec and let us pull together that beautiful slimy neural wiring and tuck it away.
I prefer a gentle touch on the shoulder if it is my SO doing the "interrupting" because I often wear headphones but yes calling the name and waiting for a response works as well.
I love the abstract explanation of how a hyperfocus feels to you. It's completely how I explain things to people.
I love how supportive you both are to each other through this whole process....her to him understanding and him to abstractly putting in so much effort to understand and grasp how complex and challenging adhd hyper focus actually can be for us. My devastation is that when my hyper focus gets interrupted, sometimes it literally scares me, startles me and then i often find it could be weeks before i am even capable of finding it again. Its rather disturbing.
I've started to teach myself how to mangae my hyperfocus...
1. list 3 tasks that need to be done
2. procrastinate between all 3 tasks, let the frustration and bordom do it's thing
3. keep flipping between all 3 tasks till the boredom of switching kicks in
4. the task you land on will be one hyperfocus kicks in when you get bored of the changes...
@@kaijukojin4371Interesting
That's exactly how it is. When my wife interrupts me in those moments....wow...it's not good at all. But I've learned to freeze and try not to open my mouth and tell her how I feel about her then and there. I hate that I am like that, it sometimes feels so unfair. And everything else about ADHD, you know what I mean, it has in so many ways ruined my life. I "knew" I had ADHD already in the early '90s and I talked to my doctor about it, but he blew me off with a comment: "ADHD is for people who don't want to work and be responsible, but that's not who you are, is it?" Well, that has never been me. I have four grown-up kids and have worked hard and am still working hard. And I've been studying all my life, including 3 years at university just after I had turned 50 y.o. I'm a carpenter, blacksmith, truck driver, welder, and shoemaker. I've done a lot of things in my life, and I know a lot of stuff. I've traveled all over the world, and been hiking in the mountains on the border of Sweden-Norway (in Jämtland where I come from😉), I have never stopped living like many "normal" people do after they've passed 60, and I'm actually proud of that! Still, I'm a loser. I have failed miserably in life and I have never accomplished anything because I couldn't keep my focus long enough. 3 years ago I talked to my youngest son on the phone, he had been diagnosed with ADHD 2 years earlier at 17 and participated once a week in a discussion group for people of all ages with an ADHD diagnosis. He said to me "Dad, I've been in this group for one year and you're the worst of them all." I was 59 and felt embarrassed about talking to my doctor here in Trondheim about it. But my son had asked HIS doctor about that, and that doctor said to him that if I didn't get help from my own doctor he promised my son that he was gonna take me as his patient. So, that made me brave enough to have a discussion with my doctor here in Trondheim. I wrote down a paper with my history that I thought was perfect to convince him that I needed help. Yes, you're right, of course I forgot it when I had my appointment which is totally normal for me. But I decided to "go with the flow" and try to convince him anyway, without my written life story. I didn't need that. I opened my mouth and used the word ADHD in my first sentence, he stopped me and said "I've been sure that you have ADHD for several years, but since you never mentioned it I didn't want to bring it up. I'm sending you to a neuropsychologist and then we go from there...." I got the diagnosis, been on meds for 2 years now. In the beginning, it was amazing and I felt relaxed, focused, and had control of things in a way that I used to dream of many years ago. It hasn't changed a thing. I should have had this help 30-40 years ago, that had made a difference in my life, I'm sure of that. Today, the worst thing about getting the diagnosis is that now I know how it feels to be "normal" and it makes me wonder why people don't live better lives when they are blessed with being NT (neurotypical). Anyway, it is what it is and I still come up with new ideas and projects almost every day, just like I used to do before. So my meds haven't changed that part of my personality. But I don't wish for anyone to have to live with this kind of challenge a whole life. "Normal" people can never understand the struggle ADHD brings to their lives. And I so envy them.
Having a hyperfocus interrupted can lead to impotent rage that brings tears of despair. It’s so hard to explain this to neurotypicals - it’s such an over the top reaction that they just don’t get. I barely get it and it’s happening to me. I’m so thankful for these videos, helping me see that I’m not alone.
Yes, and we're such "drama queens" when we get freaked out over the disruption! And then to take ten minutes out to explain, that I'm not trying to be over the top but what just happened WAS over the top for me!
Yes, perfect analogy! I never even knew about the rage being an ADHD thing when interrupted until a few years ago... It's horrible!
Doing the “thing” for an ADHDer is not just the “thing.” It’s all the associations we generate & are trying to keep track of & pursue.
Interruptions are like blowing up the entire process - snip snip - cutting through all the linked ideas that we were keeping track of.
I think the slime/neural network description works for me,
and it blows me away that Rich didn’t seem to think it was much of a thing to imagine his golf-game strategizing being interrupted.
Ikr? But for us, it's always a mid swing when you break our concentration. It's awful, enraging, scary, sad, every awful thing ever at once! We aren't trying to be furious, but losing all that data we may NEVER be able to retrieve is.... angry, plus furious, plus enraged! I lost my thought train! It may be gone forever! Why do people ask me to repeat what I just said that they loved? It's normally a1 shot, a burst of inspiration, I have no idea how to make it happen twice!!!! Especially the exact words and phrasing of the first time!!!
Absolutely!!! This is why i prefer working from home because in the office, its like this almost constant so i dont get things done! And when i do start…i’m anxious about being interrupted! This is a perfect example 🙏
I don't think my hyperfocus is as intense as I've seen other people describe it, but I definitely become very anxious and almost on the verge of tears when I get interrupted from doing something that's normally pretty hard to do, and I just had the motivation and will to do it. Like when I finally kick into gear and am ready to get my house cleaned, and then someone calls me or knocks on my door right as I'm just really getting into it. There's been times where I've masked until I'm off the phone, then broke down crying because I knew it would be another two weeks of living ina messy house before I could get that focus and energy back. So, so frustrating.
Took me years to learn the art of saying, "hey now really isn't a good time, can I call you back?"
I think my experience is similar. to the first bit you said. Not as intense but I do use a lot of energy focusing on whatever it is I'm doing and when I'm interrupted it's like breaking a circuit. The thing I'm doing could be completely mundane or unimportant and the interruption might be to tell/ask me something that *is* important but I still get irritated.
This is a good example of how to make relationships better if you have ADHD or Autism. Tell them how your mind works in a way they can understand. When I explain how I feel when I get interrupted mid sentence, or when I have the next sentence lined up in my brain, I always say it feels like I have ants in my head. Crawling around and making me itch. I've found that most people seem able to relate to that somehow.
I wish we could clone your partner. He tries so hard to understand and is open to you trying to explain something so abstract and if to a non neurodivergent person. And you totally explained the hyperfocus perfectly!
I absolutely love you guys because at 51 and female I didn't get diagnosed so I was in my '30s and trying to explain to people why and the way I am is nearly impossible for them to comprehend. I usually get responses like if I thought the way you do I would go crazy. And my answer is yes I'm crazy!
Such a good example! Also, culturally we know not to interrupt someone mid-swing. So know if we can get neuro-typical folks to recognize “mid-mental swing” behavior than perhaps the interruptions won’t feel so disrespectful and frustrating.
I love to watch You discussing it.
I thing that's very helpful for neurotypicals to understand.
When Roxi said "hyperfocus is permanent in the middle of a swing" it was the same I thought.
Without you guys I wouldn’t have even recognized my anger over this. Now I understand it! Thank you! Yes interrupted hyper focus is rage inducing.
Take that and apply it to parenting where the interruptions are CONSTANT and you find nothing gets done because you’re constantly battling the desire to scream. Particularly when your kids are a mix of inattentive and hyper.
😂😭😭😭
Yes!!!
Preach twin. 😢 It ain't easy. Stay strong
i'm in the process of trying to get diagnosed with ADHD, i was diagnosed with high functioning autism in high school (so about 4 years ago) but i was only recently informed about that literally a couple months ago so your videos are incredibly comforting for me, especially since my parents are adamant that i don't have it when i'm convinced i do
Well ADHD and autism have a lot of overlap, but nobody knows you better than yourself. I hope you get the diagnosis and support you need.
@@_Dakodabear honestly i think i have both lol and thank you i appreciate it!
This is why being a parent ruined me. Especially the 3:30pm school pickup time. I've not had Flow since my kid was born.
Slime feels more accurate to me than wires. I'm not really sure why though.
Maybe because it would be harder to reconnect slime than a wire? Or because a wire feels too streamlined for your mind? I don't know, but I feel the same way. Which is ironic, because a lot of my hyperfocus is related to computer activity, so a wire seems more appropriate. But it's not. The slime makes more sense to me.
Wires seem too narrow, when hyperfocus is encompasses the whole brain. I picture the slime muffling out the world and for that to be broken into is jarring.
Slime isn't built for hands like a wire
Your videos helped me understand this about myself. I can remember EXACT instances in school and in my life and never understood why it was so intense.
It's painful to be interrupted. Yes, perpetual mid swing does explain it.
When I’m in hyper focus I literally blend with the thing/project to which I’m paying attention. I “become” it and that’s when I do my best work.If I get disturbed by anything while in that state it’s like having nerve-endings ripped out and exposed. I feel so angry when that happens and it can take me a long while to feel my way back in and plug in all the connections where I left off.
Omg thats exactly how i feel! You both are so good at explaining how i feel!
To me it's like you've finally cleared the clutter off the table and are carefully and precisely constructing a huge house of cards, feeling in full control... Then someone casually comes along, slams the Sunday paper on the table and opens it, creating a small but devastating gust of air. I try, but it's really hard to not snap at someone at that point
Perfect analogy. It's frustrating when those closest to you won't accept the explanation and believe you are just making excuses for an incredibly 'short temper'. 😢
I am loving these videos of Rox explaining what things are like! Sometimes I totally feel her perspective and others I don't and LOVE the explanation.
This one is so relatable!
I can go back to what I was doing but it takes awhile "connect back to the network" but I totally understand that connection and rage 😅
it helps me to understand things in terms of momentum! once i've got that hyperfocus momentum going, i reallly want to see it through until i feel like i've got that follow-through feeling where your swing is complete and you're watching the ball sail away (so like... hitting 'post' on a fan thing I'd been working on, where you're now waiting to see the lie in terms of likes/reviews lol)
once i've started the swing, if someone interrupts me... it would be a natural consequence for them to get hit with the club, but yearss of masking have gotten me pretty good at like.. tensing all my muscles and twisting my arms to avoid that. but most people seem blithely unaware of the athletic feat i've just done to keep them from getting beaned by the swing they just wandered into 😅
My interruption rage has been forced to mellow (because with three kids, getting interrupted is a guarantee!) But it really is like that mid-swing moment!! Though I do prefer the visual of your neuroslime 😂
That's absolutely how it is in hyperfocus. I've thought about it before for me. I don't hyperfocus a lot, so it's less of an issue. But when it happens it's so hard to manage the task again when interrupted. I don't care about golf or baseball or anything, but I do care about winning so I always attributed it to when someone coughs or whatever to interrupt someone's swing. The people that aren't jarred by even that are the super weird people, lol. But, they're the type of person I aim to be.
I love your analogy , scientists like the term "flow state" for me hyperfocus can be either a deeply focused zen state or a distracted impulsive loss of attention trance state. I like practicing zen archery in the summer to get more control over my focus, it definitely helps.
This is perfect. I've never been able to explain it properly before. Permanent mid-swing slime network.
This couple is sooo sweet. Two people describing their total different worlds for each other and in the same time love each others. ❤
This is how I should start explaining when I'm hyperfocused.
This honestly made me tear up a little bit because I now have a way to explain to my wife that I am not angry or annoyed with her, it is just so hard to get that focus back once you lose it. Thank you!
This is great communication. Love watching you two in conversation. Thank you. ❤
The way Bubby says, “That’s helpful” at the end of R’s explanation. Ooof. Right on spot, man.
The most incredible partnerships are ones where both parties not only have a common goal, but work together to communicate and grow.
God bless you both.
THIS! Thank you for sharing. A perfect example of hyper focus that my neurotypical hubby can relate to. I’ll be responding in rage with “you just interrupted my golf swing!”…no matter what it is that I’m hyper focused on.
Absolute gold. Thank you!
I literally don’t hear or notice anything else if I’m hyper focused, especially reading
I really do love the new videos that you are doing. It also helps me to feel that I'm not the only one in the world like this.
I love you two, thank you for lifting shame and explaining ADHD
I live the neural net analogy, totally nails it. You guys are amazing!
This!!!
Roxanne is explaining,in her own way,how her brain works.
This couple are amazing ,it's helped me realise the strange things I do aren't something I have to isolate with because people think I'm so weird ❤
I'm an artist with ADHD and my wife and I will spend hours sitting around the house not saying a word, but once I'm hyper focused on working she'll come over and ask if I've seen this funny ad, or deside she wants to tell me a story about someone's shoes she saw on the train. And oftens she keeps coming back every few minutes with some other distraction until I just turn of the computer and turn my chair and stare at her. Then she asks why I stopped working... To be honest I'm rarely mad when she interrupts me to mention food. I like food and often forget that I need while I'm working.
I speak in abstractions, metaphors, analogies, etc....I do this to try to help others understand me/what I am going through/feeling at the moment. Some get it, but most think I'm weird. The majority of people don't want to learn "my language" or way of speaking, but expect me to be fluent in "their language", which can be confusing for me. NeuroDIVERGENT people and NeuroTYPICALS speak TOTALLY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. We have been PROGRAMMED/BRAINWASHED in society that the ONLY ACCEPTABLE LANGUAGE is neuroTYPICAL, which is why we neuroDIVERGENT people will MASK/PRETEND to be neuroTYPICAL, so as to gain ACCEPTANCE. After trying to FIT IN ALL DAY, we are EXHAUSTED, and need some time alone to RECHARGE. It takes a lot of work to appear SOCIALLY "NORMAL". Not being up to the task doesn't make us "lazy". It just requires SO MUCH ENERGY/FOCUS/TIME to be a PERFORMING MONKEY on a DAILY basis. As for HYPERFOCUS....yes...if I am hyperfocused on something, and someone bothers me/BREAKS THE CONNECTION, it will cause a rage, because getting CONNECTED again will be hard. It's like DIAL UP INTERNET (computer plugged into the wall), compared to WIFI (someone using a laptop). That connection isn't INSTANT. We have to WORK for that CONNECTION, and WAIT for it to get us ONLINE. Once ONLINE, we are performing A TASK that requires HIGH CONNECTIVITY. While performing that TASK, someone comes in and pulls the plug from the wall, which causes us to LOSE ALL PRODUCTIVITY in that TASK. EVERYTHING HAS BEEN LOST, and must now be REBOOTED; START FROM SCRATCH, because we had not been able to SAVE DATA, therefore, we couldn't just PICK UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF. It is STARTING ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING, like a video game. Who wouldn't RAGE after playing a game, and getting all the way to the LAST LEVEL, and in the middle of the BOSS FIGHT, someone comes in, breaks your focus, and causes you to die, BEFORE you had time to SAVE PROGRESS, and in which case, sends you ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE GAME!!😡
I adore you both. She's just like me frfr and he's so kind and supportive! Plus, yall make me realize I'm not crazy
How I had it explained was loads of tendrils of though reaching out, asking questions and receiving answers like as he said, " a neural network" an extension of your brain.
Imagine then, someone coming along and snapping them off, and telling you, stop that now, focus on this now! It would, and does psychologically hurt. Especially, say in the workplace, your learning curve and focus training is so much tougher, but given the time you're on it, smashing it. Your colleagues that have mocked you are astounded. Then a manager comes along and says put that down, do this instead.
The partial chaos, that the situation you about to transform into glorious order, is just that, chaos, to anyone else who picks up that task. It not only hurts you psychologically but it also appears that you are a totally incompetent mess. Playing "life" on hard mode, all the way.
Great analogy. The talk thru was a brilliant explanation
Absolutely brilliantly put…..that’s exactly what it is and how it feels 🤯🙃😊
Dude when someone interrupts me in hyper focus I physically cant continue that task anymore, it’s like if I want to finish a task i need to make sure no one is near me so no one talks to me. Especially when i dont want to do the task and i finally start hyperfocusing on it, and then someone interrupts me i will never finish that task EVER again.
Very well explained!!
This is exactly how I feel too about my hyperfocus; it's literally like a magnetic connection, and if someone breaks that magnetism, it really grinds my gears, especially if it's a task of boring house chores I'm hyperfocused on, or "organizing" 😂
That's why I put my phone on flight mode sometimes if I remember it during the midst of a session to not get distracted by phone call or sms.
Wow, I hope you know these videos help me soooo much! Your explanations & stories put all my Dr's to shame. I love you so much❣️💜
Thank you both so much for providing wonderful references I can send my partner WHEN HE INTERRUPTS MY HYPERFOCUS lol 😅 I try to not get agitated (and I even accommodate him by breaking my focus & giving him attention sometimes!), but I cant help ittttt 😇 hehe. Your videos help me communicate to my partner and those around me exactly what it's like!
YES!!! Thank you for articulating this so well ❤👏👏
Great videos. I look at how short these videos are and think "they couldn't possibly impart any information in that amount of time", but somehow the videos seem to last a long time and are very informative
That's absolutely right..Mid swing and even if
Someone picked THAT MOMENT to suddenly walk up and hug you and say I love you, you would be snapped out of it. You can never get back in that zone again. At least not that day, or maybe ever and you know it. You feel bad for raging but it took you so long to just GET STARTED!
I write and make illustrations fir a living and for a long time I would fall into this horrible event trap where I'd be working, and my mom would come up aand say something and interrupt the focus, and Id get sad, didnt know why. But the even worse thing is when she'd interrupt asking me how my project was going WHICH IS SOMETHING I DESPERATELY WANT HER TO DO, because I have trouble valuing my project if other people dont show an interest in it- and YET the focus slime is snipped- and I would be devastated on an instant. No.matter how good I thought the project was before, it's "terrible" now. Then I'd tell her I dont think its good, and I just wasted a ton of time doing it because "it's never going to get done" and id be all mad and horrible and its like... I felt really like the least tolerable person in the world because here she is trying to do something nice and I just turn into this irrational ball of fury for NO reason, and like my life is OVER.
So anyway. This helps to know whats going on. The reason I think the project will never get done, is because the string that holds it together is snapped and Im not confident I can put it back. And if I cant finish it then the time I spent before is a 'waste'.
I always thought it was like there were two worlds, a fantasy world where everything I do looks amazing and im so proud of it, and the real world where I have a 'real' persons brain and I realize that what I did only looks good to me in this fake world. And it seems like the bridge between the two is that awkwardly timed SNIP in a project, which especially if its combined with someone coming to apraise my work(but reacts in a wah that doesnt satisfy me and how cool I THINK the project is) I get triggered with RSD. And then BOOM cortisol association with the project, and I never want to work on it again.
And its all cuz people dont bother to ask me how my project is going AT THE END of the work hour and not just whenever it strikes them lol. Honestly thats the worst too. Ppl see hou working and they think "I'm gonna reward this person for working hard by giving them a pat on the back and its bad timing, then at the end of the day you wanna show them the completed thing and its like they dont care, or more likely they have other motivations and interests, and they dont see that the appropriate time to reward you for the work is AFTER its DONE.(or after im done working on it, on a break, etc)
Are y'all recording this stuff for a podcast? I would subscribe so hard! 😁
"That's helpful..." I could almost see the lightbulb above his head 😄❤
Excellent description.
I am her so I 100% get what she's saying. What I don't know is how to work with that. My wife needs to do some things and sometimes needs my input. My hyper focus can last for hours. It's not reasonable for my wife (or even possible in some cases) to have to wait until I emerge. So what do we do? How do we do it? A golf swing is seconds, a hyper focus can be interminable...
YES!!! Perfect explanation.
This is very true. I was doing some very important work very fast because I was fully in it and then my mother called me about some useless unimportant bs that interrupted everything, I had a complete rage outburst towards her because of that
Thank you 🙏🏻
I think this issues is why I had such a hard time at work at my last job. I was so focused on filling orders that had already come in and was almost done when a new one would come in that was a higher priority and so I had to stop everything, go grab it and fill it before I could finish my first one. Rage inducing.
I want to give the most huge appreciation I could to this video 🌟🥳
For me its like getting ripped from one reality into another. When im absorbed in my task, my whole brain is revolving around that. When i get yanked out of that its like getting picked up from a nice swim and getting yeeted into a snow bank. Yoinked from one reality and dropped into another, snd its a complete shock to the brain that makes my whole system go W T F. W T F.
Thank you❤
literally what happened today. Kept being asked questions in quick succession while trying to do a task. For me it's like how the parents in peanuts cartoon speak like trombones, can't focus on what they were asking. And then got told off for not answering so I snapped at them. Later I apologised for snapping, but they didn't apologise to me, because to them it's not weird or frustrating. I'm undiagnosed and desperately need to be.
Bruh! I get that! I tried to tell them something similar and they fortunately do apologize back.
Sometimes its the montly cycle that makes me more irritated than normal. Sometimes its the overload of family always asking me to help them with tiny tasks throughout the day, its random when and where it happens.
So its like a constant disconnect and then reconnect. 😢 in a span of minutes.
💯 My #1 favorite benefit of taking medication is that I don't get frustrated every time my kids interrupt me. I feel like I can be more present with them. But, I dislike it for other things.
I feel like it takes a lot to make myself focused and when you pull me out of it, it’s really hard to focus again
Yeah it honestly does feel like you're anchored and then if someone lifts that anchor you just kind of drift out to the sea of thoughts and bullshit again
Im so glad im not alone in this.
I always explained it like in hyperfocus, im underwater, chilling. No one bothering me. Im in my own universe. Now interupting my hyperfocus is someone just brutally dragging me back up to the surface. But i really like the slime explination haha
Yup it feels like your whole brain is zoomed in and you’re about to have a serious conversation with what your hyper focusing on and you can feel that intense pressure on your forehead 😊🎉
Even with tiny things, honestly. I used to work in hospitality, and if I was filling salt and pepper shakers just to kill time waiting for a customer to come in or something more important to happen, I would get irrationally angry if I was disrupted once something important started happening and I was needed somewhere. Salt and pepper filling. I remember being confused and self-critical over how upset I was over being disrupted over meaningless busy work. There were somethings about serving that were very good *and* very hard for ADHD.
I mentioned to a couple of my old bosses that I’m beginning to wonder if I might have ADHD (the inattentive type) and asked what they thought. They both said I don’t have any problem with maintaining focus and if anything I can become too focused in my work 😂🫣 they were surprised when I said that hyper focus is a symptom and were like “well in that case…” 😅
My adhd now has a proper British accent.
Guys i love you !! I have 39y and diagnosed adhd .. I am high performance guy but. last 3 years workimg over 16h for 3 project is to much for me.. in my country dont have adderral but 6h drive in germany i can buy .. when i first take 5mg adderal its calm me down abaout 200% !!! And i can focus !! I take 5mg every morning for 5 days in the week .. weekend i dont take adderall . Its life change for me second Day when i took adderral i cry why i diagnosed that late .. now i dont forget simplex things like shoping list from my wife i walk and drive słower and much easy i listen
When I'm writing... I ended off calling being 'in flow state' hyperfocusing as I stream of consciousness rough drafted the work, as being in "The crystal palace of pure thought". Its beautiful and its detailed and its a whole THING... but its pure thought, and so fragile.
An interruption makes it crumble. To get BACK into writing flow state, first I have to reconstruct the palace...
The feeling is similar to what you'd feel if someone was to force reset your computer in the middle of you working on a big project and close all of your browser tabs (and prevent any of the easy recovery methods from working). It's the loss of all of that context that really hurts.
I absolutely love the golf swing analogy, though.
OMG! “It’s like interrupting a golfer mid-swing”, or “shouting at a tennis match during a serve.” That is the best analogy ever! Seriously. I know exactly what to tell people now… golfers, at least. Just watch any televised golf game or tennis match. Better still, watch Happy Gilmore or 7 Days in Hell and actually enjoy it. It takes a lot of time to get to that same level of focus and a lot of time to get back if interrupted.
Hyperfocus is something I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, but it's something that gets me into so many issues as I start losing track of time and that.... Its hard to balance between when I'm doing and what I should be doing properly.... It's kinda horrible as I feel like I've let everyone down.. But on another front, I've done alot of what I needed to do... Torn!!!!
SO good! Thank you!
Rich is looking very much like Matt Berry in the thumbnail. Matt Bery and Rich both seem like cool dudes.
Interrupting hyper focus is like slitting an Achilles tendon of our being completely symbiotically attached to whatever we’re doing. That’s what it is for me.
That's exactly it ..Bang on 💯💡🎉
I used a slime analogy the other day, very well explained with the golf swing tho!
It's like projecting my brain into the task.
When the husband suggested changing the analogy from a string of slime to wire, he seemed to be thinking it worked better because wires conduct electric current better.
But perhaps what the wife was getting at was that the string of slime is fragile and easily broken, as she was attempting to convey that ADHD hyperfocus, while very intense, can sometimes be easily broken by the slightest distraction.
Yesss this is exactly it! ❤
This is perfect ❤
Totally made me think of the classic scene from “Blazing Saddles”: 😂
Hedley Lamarr: My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention.
Taggart: Ditto.
Hedley Lamarr: "Ditto?" "Ditto," you provincial putz?
Taggart: I'm sorry, sir
I call this “hitting my reset button”. I have to start whatever it is that I’m doing (or thinking) all over again. I HATE it when people hit my reset button!!
It even kind of hurts when somebody cuts my "slime". It is so terrible to be interrupted...
My ADHD Dad loses his absolute s**t when we’d recorded a television programme, watched the television programme, and then the next programme has started but hasn’t been recorded so suddenly stops about 10mins in.
He’d start shouting and who turned it over?! I was watching that! And basically blame everyone in the room because the programme suddenly cut off.
So then we’d have to explain to him, we’re watching a recorded programme, when the next thing starts it’s going to cut off. don’t start watching it. Etc etc.
If water conducts, slime conducts and it's a more organic explanation. I don't fall into that degree of hyperfocus that often. Mine, when I do it, which is rarely, is more the rest of the world goes dark and it's only me and the thing I'm doing blazing bright. You can't shake me out because I go full trance. I do have trouble tuning things out, but not then. The rage is from hyper focus when I'm stressed because I can be pulled away. When I'm really, truly in it, I have to want to come out to be pulled out.
Actually slime is a very good energy conductor 💡
This is how I'm going to explain it from now on.
Was just playing a match and I was really focused I got a call from my mom and managed to keep the focus intact without difficulty, but she had sent three texts earlier to talk to me that only arrived a moment after the call and I went from very calm and focused to extremely angry and I realized from the texts that she had sent them before the call. So I wasn't angry at her, but the hyperfocus was broken and I had to shut down anything extra. The movie I was playing the sounds kept seeming louder and louder from the game and I kept turning them down further but they kept seeming louder and louder and then the phone chimed again and I threw the thing ten feet. Which is uncharacteristic of me at this point in my life, earlier I had difficulties but man did it ever piss me off.
She's spot on with her explanation. I think of it as being in a golden lit tunnel. Can't see anything outside of it.. don't care either, if I'm honest.