ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

by Edward M. Hallowell

“Creativity,” as we use the term in connection with ADHD, designates an innate ability, desire, and irrepressible urge to plunge one’s imagination regularly and deeply into life—into a project, an idea, a piece of music, a sandcastle. Indeed, people with ADHD feel an abiding need—an omnipresent itch—to create something. It’s with us all the time, this unnamed appetite, whether we understand what it is or not; the act of creation offers the magnet’s north pole to our south and clicks us together. It captivates us, plants us in the present, and sets us transfixed within the creative act, whatever it might happen to be.

But then, what you’ve created…disappoints. It’s not just disappointing, but suddenly you feel it’s terrible, awful, the worst ever, and you plunge into despair. Then, just as unexpectedly, out of nowhere the vision comes back. You get reinspired. You can see it, you want it, you can’t resist. You have to try again. Off you go—dreaming and creating and probably brooding again too.

People with attention issues tend to have acute bullshit detectors. We hate hypocrisy maybe more than any other human failing, and we can spot it a mile away. We don’t join cults. That’s definitely a positive side of rejecting help.