Explaining ADHD

Some questions need a bit of humility built in. This is one of them.

Explaining ADHD to neurotypical people is something many of us wrestle with, especially early on. There isn’t one perfect explanation. ADHD is nuanced. It comes in broad types, and then a wide range of trait combinations. It doesn’t fit neatly into a quick summary.

So what follows isn’t the answer. It’s a starting point. It’s what I’ve found works so far, and I’m still learning.

Situations

These conversations tend to show up in a few predictable ways. Someone asks what it’s like. Someone has heard something second-hand and wants to understand. Or ADHD comes up in conversation and you can feel curiosity in the room.

This is not about people trying to be difficult. I’m talking about well-intentioned questions from people who are genuinely interested. More people have a reasonable grasp now than they did, but they are still in the minority.

It also doesn’t help that media coverage can increase exposure without increasing understanding. If people have mainly absorbed ADHD through headlines, they often have fragments rather than a coherent picture.

Strategy

The most reliable tool I’ve found is metaphor.

Metaphors do something that lists don’t. They help someone feel the shape of your experience rather than memorise facts about it. They also give you something you can say without having to produce a whole lecture.

If you’re going to use metaphors, it helps to choose ones that connect with your own experience. They are easier to remember, and you can deliver them with confidence because they are grounded in how it feels for you.

Metaphors

A rule of three also helps. Any more than that becomes work for both parties.

When I explain ADHD, I tend to centre on three things that capture my experience as someone with primarily inattentive ADHD.

The first is that my brain doesn’t reliably switch off. The second is that I can slip into rumination and have to work hard to stay on track. The third is that when I have a lot going on, I can burn out from the effort of organising my thinking.

Those are not the only traits. They are simply the three that give the clearest sense of what it costs.

Engine

The first metaphor I use is the Ferrari engine with pushbike brakes.

It helps people grasp something that surprises them. Hyperactivity, for many of us, isn’t outward. It’s in the head. The engine is powerful, fast, and constantly spinning. The brakes are not proportionate.

That single image often helps people see why ADHD can be both useful and hard. It conveys intensity and capability, but also why managing that intensity is exhausting.

Switch

The second metaphor comes from a book that has been genuinely helpful for me, ADHD 2.0 by Ed Hallowell.

He describes the brain as running two broad modes. One is the mode for doing things. The other is the mode for drifting, ruminating, and wandering. He describes a switch that helps you choose the right mode for the moment.

In a neurotypical brain, that switch tends to work reliably. People can settle into focus when they want to more easily.

In an ADHD brain, that switch is less reliable. Hallowell uses the word glitchy, which is where I got the name for my podcast. That idea tends to help people understand inattentiveness, not as laziness, but as the brain slipping modes without permission.

Traffic

The third metaphor I lean on is about organising thoughts like traffic control.

I’m a visual thinker. When I’m overloaded, I can almost see a crossroads in my head, with someone in the middle directing traffic rather than traffic lights. In a neurotypical brain, that traffic conductor is alert and things stay organised, even when it’s busy.

In an ADHD brain, the traffic conductor is sleepy. Thoughts pile up. Priorities blur. The flow gets chaotic. If you don’t work hard to keep it under control, things crash into each other.

This metaphor often opens up one of the strangest aspects of ADHD for neurotypical people. The fact that stimulant medication can help. If the traffic conductor is sleepy, stimulants can help them stay awake. That can be counterintuitive to people who think hyperactivity must mean stimulants are the last thing you need.

Masking

At some point, people often ask the same question. If it’s so impactful, how did it take so long to be diagnosed. How did you build the career you have.

The best way I’ve found to answer that is to turn it back into effort.

Just imagine what it cost to appear normal. How tiring it was to live with that internal reality and then mask it. It was always there. I just went through life finding things harder than I could explain, without knowing why, and quietly wondering why I was so weird.

That part is often the penny-drop moment, especially for people who have known you for years. They can’t reconcile a psychiatric condition with someone who presents as competent. Once they understand the effort required to look that way, they start to see it differently.

Closure

I usually try and end with a recommendation. If they want to understand more, I point them to ADHD 2.0. It’s a useful follow-on because it’s deeper than headlines but still readable. I also mention the podcast as well as this blog as well because, well, that’s why I made them.

I suspect we’ll return to this topic, because everyone’s version of ADHD is slightly different. But for now, metaphors have been the simplest way I’ve found to turn a complex internal experience into something another person can actually grasp.