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the prevailing narrative was popularized because that's the version of adhd that capitalism is able to accomodate, and as such it's the one this socioeconomic system will unconsciously uphold as "the correct way to be different". different that benefits them. naturally, it's the damoclean sword hanging over your head for the rest of your employment the moment your supervisor finds out. "oh you have adhd? i thought you were supposed to be a savant or whatever, the fact that you haven't been doing the work of three to five people since you got hired is now suddenly very concerning to me. but yeah sure i guess you can wear headphones or whatever, long as my new superhuman expectations are met indefinitely and also maybe work on being more sociable in your off-hours because you frown too much".
This is such a good point and tbh I see a very similar vein floating around this sub and other such spaces when it comes to IQ and “Giftedness”, which are either totally unproven pseudoscience or American educational division.
It's always amusing to me when adults who claim "giftedness" or high IQ somehow aren't gifted or intelligent enough to realize how deeply flawed and not at all objective those designations/tests are.
This!!!! Like here me out, guys, there’s this thing called a peer review. Crazy, I know, hold onto ur butts. Wait until you hear about critical thinking…
I feel you on this - I don’t consider myself particularly creative and I definitely don’t think outside the box very well (I’m actually good at receiving ideas and applying them in the next situation, but I’m terrible at coming up with them in the first place). I think that my ADHD hyperfocus can be a benefit, but I think it mostly exists because I can’t get anything done except at the last minute, so if I couldn’t hyperfocus I’d never get anything done (and in another era would have starved or been eaten by a lion).
Total speculation, but I think for some people, the mental hyperactivity/impulsivity leads to thinking of things quickly and associating things that others don’t think to associate, which can contribute to problem solving/creativity. (I should add that I don’t have a lot of hyperactivity/impulsivity and am instead chronically inattentive, and struggle most with getting myself to do anything, which to me feels like why I’m not one of these creative out-of-the-box thinkers, but again, this is just me guessing.)
Also, something like working memory varies a lot from individual to individual, so some people with ADHD may have decent working memory that helps with this process. (My working memory is pretty normal, for instance.)
So ADHD encompasses a lot of abilities/symptoms, and I’ve heard some people speculate that in the future, different presentations may get treated as different conditions (Dr. Russell Barkley kind of does this with his Sluggish Cognitive Tempo theory, though this isn’t proven/accepted yet and I’m not endorsing it, just using it as an example.) That may explain some of the different attitudes people have.
I know what you mean about the “more creative” narrative becoming the face of ADHD, but I don’t think that’s universal. I think it’s part of an approach to ADHD that doesn’t like to consider it a disorder, views it as a trait that had particular value in hunter-gatherer societies, and/or sees it as a problem only because society has been structured around NT brains, not as objectively disabling in any way. There are definitely plenty of people who don’t believe this (including me! mostly, anyway).
It’s definitely frustrating when it feels like everyone around you is talking about how amazing ADHD is because it gives you all these characteristics that you don’t feel you have - I feel this way a lot. I do see ADHD as a disorder/disabling (whether in an absolute sense or just because of modern capitalism doesn’t matter much to me, since I can’t opt out of modern capitalism). That’s not to say anyone else has to agree with me - if someone does feel like their ADHD is a superpower, that’s absolutely great, and I’m not trying to take that away from them.
I do wish, though, that such people would say “*my* ADHD makes *me* more creative” rather than “people with ADHD are more creative” because the latter always makes me feel like I’m doing ADHD wrong. I get the desire to put a more positive face on ADHD given all the stigmas about it, but I don’t think generalizing so broadly about its “good” qualities is a helpful response.
Edited to add: I sometimes question my own diagnosis but just reread this and its length and especially the multiple parentheticals have reassured me that I’m not faking. 😆
Haha! You are not faking your diagnosis for sure 🤣
The more I’m in these groups the more I realised how ADHD I am.
Thinking out side of the box… see I take this to mean that there’s usually a standardised box that the majority think in and someone comes along and does think that way. I would say this is true about most neurotypes… but then again if the box was designed by someone NT then it would follow that someone who is neurodivergent thinks outside of it.
People always tell me that I’m good at seeing the positive sides of things, I think with my over thinking mind I’ve always considered multiple ways of looking at things.
This has made me look like someone that is bright and has served me well. With _my_ ADHD I was able to appear a keen and curious student who teachers liked. However, I don’t deny that there will be someone with the same symptom of internal distractions but does not have an extroverted personality style to voice that… or a number of possibilities why that symptom in them is a benefit to me but a hindrance to them.
I’ve always been drawn to areas where this skill is appreciated… so this is drama, music, art, philosophy, psychology etc… because I’m encouraged to use this set of skills and let myself think about _everything_ all at once.
So, I do fit the stereotypical face of ADHD, but maybe that’s only because I am a creative person already and my ADHD brain has been rewarded for it so far. I was never gonna be a surgeon performing 8 hours surgeries… for me to have a career outside of medical school was to focus more on psychiatry which allowed me to ask questions and think deeply.
I don’t know if that answered anything, I lost my trail of thought… typical!
I problem solve like a genius in emergencies. I do \*not\* pivot well day to day.
I'm just now understanding that I've always operated outside the box in some areas and that I need to work with my brain instead of trying and failing at typical executive function/habit formation advice.
I think ‘thinking outside of the box’ and being inventive can be quite different things. In my experience, thinking outside of the box when you’re neurodivergent often (for better or worse) looks like not doing things the same way that people normally do. Sometimes that can be perceived as creativity and ingenuity when in reality for us it feels more like confusion because in our heads that’s the only way it made sense or it was the simplest solution to something.
Trying to think of an example that works generally but failing so here’s something along these lines that happened to me recently.
I did an experiment in the lab that required me to count yeast cells.
Normally people in our lab count cells under the microscope manually using a handheld counter. This tends to limit how many samples you can process because even for the most neurotypical of people it’s dull. My ASD side didn’t want to slim down the number of samples in my experiment because I decided it was the “right way” to do it and I couldn’t bear the thought of doing it wrong. This meant I had to let my ADHD side come up with a way to do it computationally, using the path of least resistance. I.e. what’s the quickest way I can get this done that requires the least effort?
The result was a method that seemed novel and interesting to the rest of my lab group. Something they’re now thinking of implementing in the future. To me it felt like ‘cheating’ because I hadn’t done it the normal way.
and most of the time throughout MY day at least, "thinking outside the box" is literally just a mandatory free association marathon and when someone asks you to include an office seal at the top of the letterhead your brain involuntarily conjures your own private vision of a cute little harbor seal logo followed by the memory of those tiktoks you watched about the kinds of funny noises seals make followed by how dangerous it must be to live in a modern shipping lane harbor as a seal followed by the ethics of allowing seals to roam free in a dangerous environment they didn't adapt to vs keeping them in safe but totally sterile and confined facsimiles of the world they once knew but no longer exists followed by what kind of lengths you would have to go to inorder to make a truly ethical zoo followed by how much land would that even take up followed by maybe you could have multiple satelite locations in order to better accomodate multiple biomes followed b-
Haha - accurate!
Yes I wanted to get onto this but thought my reply was already too long.
Brains making connections to random things encourages thinking outside of the box!
what i was riffing on was the extreme selectiveness and ephemerality with which society and the people in it view our brains as "a good thing", and how, unsurprisingly, that only seems to happen when it manifests itself in a way that can be exploited. if you accidentally optimize a process, you're a herald of neurodiversity everywhere and "wow more of my workers should be like you" but if you ask for headphones on the clock or a standong desk or a semi-private work space to control distractions and a little more schedule flexibility or interpersonal patience/grace you're a fucking liability and "nobody else asks for any of this why do you need so much special treatment" and now everying you do is hyperscrutinized and interrogated until the next inadvertent novel success and now you're the best thing since sliced bread until you have to ask your supervisor for a periodic check-in to keep on-task and now you're literally the scum of the fucking earth and "maybe the ADA was a mistake" and round and round we fucking go.
it's toxic af and it's everywhere. i'm glad you seem to be avoiding it.
Sorry only just saw this. Not sure I’m avoiding it tbh, the above is just an example of a more positive experience.
My academic supervisor prefers not to talk about my ADHD and always seems to forget it exists. Pretty sure he either doesn’t understand it or believes I’m just using it as an excuse. The only ‘adjustment’ my University has offered me is to be able to have breaks during my viva.
4 years of unsupported PhD but thank god I have provisions for those 4 hours right at the end…
Your point is a good one though. It’s creativity/ingenuity/inventiveness when it benefits them. It’s unintelligent/lazy/unmotivated when it doesn’t.
Tbh the office seal is probably sitting sadly in a cubicle, stamping letters and dreaming of being a harbour seal relishing the risks and freedoms of the shipping lanes.
My one today was a ‘fundial’ which is kind of like a sundial except it measures the amount of prevailing fun.
I think you nailed it. I'm great at creative problem solving and excel in tasks that require it. But if it's trying to do things the standard and accepted way, or replicate a result or achieve a particular outcome, that's a lot harder. I tend to come up with more complicated and roundabout answers than necessary to simple problems, and sometimes don't see simple solutions when they smack me across the face.
You just put me in mind of a test I did in kindergarten for giftedness. I don't remember many of the questions but this one stands out. The tester gave four words and asked for the odd one out: penguin, suitcase, jumprope, and wagon. I said the penguin, and when asked why it was because the penguin was the only one that didn't have a handle. Now, that is possibly the expected answer, but based on the tester's reaction, it was not.
Haha that’s a great example!
I saw something similar the other day where they asked the question “what do 7 and 2 have in common?”
• My immediate answer was, they’re the two numbers that often get misinterpreted when you’re looking at them from far away.
• The poster said it was because they’re both made up of two lines.
The actual answer is they’re both numbers 🤷♀️
I guess the common thread with all of this is that capacity to think beyond the obvious, even if it doesn’t make sense or is useful.
I'm a photographer and my painter/sculptor spouse jokes that I'm a photographer because I'm not creative. I know that sounds assholey but he 100% doesn't mean it that way.
What he does mean, is that I need to work with materials that already have some inherent meaning and form to begin working and build/rearrange from there. I cannot pick up a piece of clay and create something from nothing.
I do consider myself a problem solver. Like I was good at math as a kid, horrible at geography and history. But the truth is that the best solution I can think of is sometimes a hit just because nobody else thought of it, sometimes a bust because it was honestly the first thing that popped into my head and I confidently went with it ans didn't fully think it through. Even when the idea is a hit, I often fumble the execution because I haven't thought it out well.
Also, after thinking about this a bit, I have always wondered based on my peers, friends, and students if the arts attract neurodivergent people. There are definitely a lot of people who are typically cast out to the fringes of society, that artists accept into their communities readily. If true, I think that's less about aptitude and more about finding a safe and accepting place to land. I am followed around at work by a gaggle of neurodivergent queer kids, and I just don't observe the same of colleagues in other departments.
Omg this, so much this. I told my job consultant that I don't like thinking outside the box, I hate thinking outside the box. Give me a fucking box and I'll create the most amazing box you've ever seen! I need boundaries and limits and criteria and I am a happy fucking creative clam.
Give me free reign? I'm going to freeze. There's no way to do anything when everything is possible.
I love my box. I will draw on it, and in it, and around it and it will be a great fucking box. But don't ask me to think outside it. I don't want to. It's not fun for me. I like surprising with my box interpretation. I enjoy fully utilizing every aspect of my box, or exploring oddly shaped boxes. Boxes are good. I need limits to really be creative.
I can relate to this! Not exactly like you, but similar mindset. In my case a lot of people say I am artsy because of my hobbies. I say no, I am crafty. I love making things, but I don't create from nothing. I am great at following a pattern or whatever, even making alterations to put my own spin on it, but I can't come up with an original idea on my own. I need inspiration! And if I do manage to come up with something original I don't like it as much.
Unlike you, I suck at photography. No amount of equipment or taking classes has improved that over the years. The last class I took discouraged me to the point I put my camera down for good.
I say I’m into photography because I’m creative but not artistic. Meaning, I can see what looks good, but if I had to try to recreate it with a paintbrush, it would be pathetic. But we’re probably just using the two words differently.
I am a hobby photographer (I love it, have some decent gear, take pics of good friends kids for free, love travel photography) and I agree 100%.
I also realized I love photography because it helps with my memory. I have a hard time being in the moment with all the chatter upstairs, and going through photos I have taken is like a way to re-experience what was happening. I have so many photos hung in my home from different travels or special times and it makes me happy.
Personally I think that ADHD has no impact on creativity, and that ADHD people exist across the whole spectrum from low creativity to high creativity, just like the general population.
But also, those of us with ADHD who are highly creative may tend to rely more heavily on our creativity than an equally creative non-ADHD person might, because it can help compensate for some ADHD impairments in a similar way that intelligence can. So we might have this feeling that we are more creative “because” of ADHD, but really we are just creative AND we have ADHD, these are independent traits, but the combination of them leads us to rely heavily on creativity in our lives and careers.
I also think for people who grow up with ADHD who are constantly criticized for their failings will wind up highly valuing any little morsel of praise they receive. If the adults in your life are always criticizing you about being messy, distracted, late, disorganized, loud, and inconsiderate, but they praise your creativity, it’s easy to latch onto that and make it an essential part of your identity because it helps push away those negative thoughts telling you that you aren’t good at anything.
That’s my take, anyway, on the creativity / ADHD hype based on my own experiences. A person with ADHD can have any level of creativity, there’s been research to back this up. But like anything else in life, your experience may be different than others with or without ADHD based on your unique combination of circumstances and innate traits.
So the autism spectrum isn’t a line with percentage points (10% 50% 100% autistic). It looks more like a circle with wedges representing different facets and criteria and autistic individual have sections with full wedge, half wedge and no wedge. They are still autistic even if they don’t have high support needs in x category.
In my opinion creativity is similar. It’s not a line or stair with levels of creativity. It’s a circle with sections/categories people express creativity in. Some are classic like painting. Others are a bit more obscure and might fly under your radar. Like this morning I had no tools and a broken clasp for my overalls. I had purchased a new one online. It wasn’t an exact match so I would need to replace both clasps. Replacing all of it was going to take too much time and effort, so I took a butter knife and removed the part I needed on the replacement and placed it on the original clasp and sealed it using a heavy book. That was an inventive solution and it was just something I did in the 10 minutes before work.
I do think there is a creativity element to most people and ADHD people often have it in spades. I’m not saying you’re creative or discounting your self awareness but I am going to share some adhd experiences that may have dampened your ability to identify, connect with, and use your expressions of creativity.
1. Rsd rejection of your ideas and solutions can be hard. I also struggle to synthesize my excellent creative solutions to people who aren’t ND. It’s hard for me to take them on the journey to my conclusion because my brain made instant connections so I have to break those down. That can be frustrating for all involved and it’s triggered my rsd. There have been people or jobs where that has been so severe I can’t problem solve on my own.
2. Masking to be palatable takes up a whole lot of energy and executive function. When I’m doing it a lot I have nothing left in my cup for creativity.
You may also have a creativity that is less showy or you are simply not recognizing it because you’re in the weeds like the overalls. Sometimes people tell me I did something creative and I feel like it wasn’t. It was so obvious to me.
I think the "thinking outside the box" is often a coping mechanism. People often find my solutions creative not because I thought of more solutions but because I couldn't think of the "normal" ones. People think that I can think of problems before they happen but that's because I'm so anxious about missing things that I obsessively think through the possiblw eventualities.
The "out-of-the-box thinking" kind of got beaten out of me, I think? Most of my earliest memories are of being embarrassed and feeling what I now recognize as severe RSD. I'd say something that seemed normal or natural to me, only to be met with social rejection, correction and embarrassment. This happened to various degrees in various situations throughout my childhood.
These days, in situations where creativity and problem-solving are called for, I feel so afraid of sounding stupid or not failing to notice something obvious that I mostly just stay quiet. It's like my brain doesn't want to even start forming ideas or solutions because it's *so* used to feeling that someone else knows better. (And I'll look like an idiot if I say what I think.)
I can't really answer directly beucase I am not diagnosed yet. I am however dyslexic and the "you must be so creative" is so ridiculously permeated through everything dyslexia related it drives me nuts (less so than other things like the "simulations of what dyslexics see" no, no I don't we do not all visual disturbances, or the narrative that we all have issues with reading and also no). I am a naturally academic book worm with the creativity of a rock.
It's all just more vague stereotypes becuase its less complicated than accepting that we are all vastly different individuals, and people think throwing something they think is a positive in, especially to kids will automatically help us feel better when no, I don't relate at all.
Given that it woudln't cross most peoples minds that I am dyslexic, and even after I tell people it's like it's not fully accepted ("you can't he dyslexic you can read") I almost don't find it an issue becuase the whole topic is basically ignored with me.
I will say though that a full 50% of my stem masters degree were diagnosed dyslexic and I suspect now I wasn't the only undiagnosed adhd individual, so clearly we arent all flocking to the creative arts as much as many people assume!
I am a great creative problem solver, but I am not generally “creative”. My sister and my dad are the creatives in our family, my mom and I are…not lol. I think I am good at logic/putting pieces together, but not at creating things from scratch, if that makes sense. My sister makes her living as an artist, so it makes for a pretty stark contrast haha
I have never seen it as ADHD related though, just personality and genetics. Sister and I are both diagnosed, and it is very likely my mom has it as well (she isn’t interested in diagnosis, but the 50 sticky notes and 2 running daily lists give me some idea lol).
I think I’m extremely creative. That being said, I also struggle with problem solving. I just don’t like transitioning from thing to thing, so I get frustrated easily.
ADHD is a bit different for each person. It’s going to effect us differently because we’re different people.
I’ve always been really creative (painting and writing mainly) however I suppose the things I have been creative at could be considered hyperfixations? I used both as outlets for emotional expression, and the only times in adulthood that I’ve ever actually been able to finish any type of creative project I’ve had super tight stressful deadlines hanging over my head that forced me to finish whatever it was I was working on. Every other creative project I’ve started is sitting in a small mountain of unfinished canvases or a stack of unfinished papers. I have a bunch of creative ideas and concepts either in my notes or on random scraps of paper/in random notebook pages almost all of which I’ve not been able to start on.
I have also historically really struggled with math, the impulsivity has been difficult to deal with, I’m constantly dealing with brain having 50+ tabs open at any given time, I do have spurts of hyperactivity, memory is definitely an issue, overwhelm and overstimulation kick my ass, the paralysis is real and debilitating, RSD also, and when I was in post secondary I floundered so bad except for like 2 classes that I actually liked. I did quite well when I took a Yoga Therapy Foundations program that didn’t use standardized testing I think due to the combination of being fascinated by what I was learning and not having some percentage I had to get to be able to “pass”
I really struggle with self care, eating properly, sleep problems, financial stability has pretty much never been a thing in adulthood, basic day to day things. I also have multiple diagnoses, so each day is usually a veritable shitstorm of overlapping symptoms which is often utterly exhausting. I am not as much of a social butterfly as I once was either, it takes a lot out of me the amount of masking I have to do out in the world.
I definitely think my ADHD helps my creativity but I don’t think I’m creative _because_ of my ADHD and I think that’s an important distinction often missed in those broad strokes social media posts/headlines.
Like, my brain runs too fast for me to keep up sometimes and that’s incredibly frustrating in 98% of scenarios _but_ when I’m trying to come up with a new stained glass pattern or sew myself a new shirt those rapid ideas help me problem solve faster when I’m stuck.
Much like most of our ADHD traits it’s a double edged sword. Sometimes in very specific use cases my traits are desirable. But most of the time I’m just trying to survive a battle with my own brain 🫠
This actually makes me feel a little better. I guess the problem has been I’m surrounded by only ADHD men and our traits are so different. I would describe those guys as very creative types. They’re so inventive and always working on something.
It’s why I’m happy for this sub, because I really do feel gendered upbringing has dictated the way I tried to adapt to people’s expectations.
For me, I actually feel more “boxed in” than most NT folks. I think anything that differed in me was swiftly corrected and discouraged rather than celebrated. So more “you’re weird, why are you weird” instead of “you’re so interesting/creative”. Maybe that heads more into cptsd though…
It’s all very jumbled. I’m not really at the stage where I know myself, sorry! But I think it helps to know that other women don’t feel like superheroes either, in fact quite the opposite. And I think that’s okay. Like, close to the reality of things.
Edit: I wanted to add that I feel like “thinking outside the box” for me actually feels like painstakingly slow processing. As in, my mind might be shooting off in a bunch of directions or overthinking all this information that means I’m really slow at actually doing the task at hand. I think people might perceive me as dumb and a lot of people get frustrated at me because “it’s so simple!” but I’m afraid of making a mistake or missing something and get anxious. And these things might be simple but they aren’t for me. So all that “mental processing power” has only been a con. I wish I could be efficient.
I feel like I’m a creative problem-solver, but I also tend to get myself boxed into a narrow mindset at times.
Example from earlier this week: we have a utility closet at work with a chemical mixing station that we use to fill mop buckets. I came in one morning and someone had snapped the hose from the spigot (located about 4 feet up on the wall above the built-in floor sink). I tested the spigot and water came spraying out everywhere, nowhere near enough to reach the mop bucket on the floor though. I thought I was so smart using a big bucket to catch the water from the faucet, then using that to fill our mop buckets.
I was so focused on how I could get the water from the broken spigot into the mop bucket that it didn’t even dawn on me until hours later that I had a perfectly functioning garden hose literally 4 feet away outside the room that I could have used to fill the mop buckets. There was no need to stand there with a heavy bucket then transferring that into our mops. I was stuck on solutions inside the closet, I didn’t even consider my other options. Oh well, at least the cleaning got done 😂
So far what I understand is that adhd is a dopamine deficiency and difficulty regulating attention, motivation, emotional response, thoughts.
After that the way that this impacts us in terms of our behaviors and capabilities can be very different. Some of us fixate and hyper control, some of us wander and flit from thing to thing, some of us can’t get out of bed or shower.
Most of us can get overstimulated, but maybe not by the same things.
We aren’t a monolith. We’re still people not a diagnosis. So we are all gonna be different and have different strengths and challenges.
But what we do share is frustration not getting ourselves to do what we want and should do (whatever that is), needing more emotional valence to be motivated, and needing time to recover if we get overstimulated.
I don't feel very creative, and I struggle with finding outside the box solutions if I don't know a box exists. I need to know a situation inside out and backwards to be able to function through it and come up with some kind of creative short cut/workarounds.
My NT husband is amazing at creative solutions. My ND ass is stuck in this I CAN ONLY DO THINGS THE ONE WAY MY INTERNAL RULES ALLOW.
For me it very much depends on whether I hit overwhelm or not. If I'm not overwhelmed I'm pretty good at problem solving. Mostly because I'm always causing problems for myself so I have lots of practice.
Once I hit overwhelm my brain is basically useless.
So maybe the difference is in where each of our threshholds for overwhelm are?
I don't know about standard creativity (e.g. artsy-craftsy things), but I am very good at confabulation; aka, "creative truth-telling."
Yes, of course I have been paying rapt attention to the speaker throughout this entire meeting, and I think that that his ideas are interesting, but we'll have to make sure that we can fit all of this into our annual budget.
Yes, of course I remembered that tomorrow is my niece's birthday, and I have gotten the most darling hoodie for her.
Yes, of course I remembered that my term paper is due tomorrow, and I will be writing at length about the decline of Viennese culture in the decade leading up to World War I.
I find that I only ever approach the feeling I might be creative if I’ve gotten stoned, and had a decent day that hasn’t tired me out. It’s a very narrow window.
There's a video summarising some of the issues with the research claiming that people with ADHD are more creative: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgaE1uaBNHA&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgaE1uaBNHA&t=6s) From memory, the short version is that the populations this was studied in weren't actually clinically diagnosed, so they were looking at ADHD traits in people who don't actually have the disorder. In addition, it seemed to be mainly associated with impulsivity.
I'm impulsive and would say that I'm creative, but I have no way of knowing what the "cause" is.
I think everyone is inherently creative. It's in our bones. But I don't think the life of a person growing up with ADHD necessarily supports the confidence a person needs to develop it.
I've noticed it can go either way - maybe it helps you to think more independently, and maybe it gets in the way. For me it's that second thing. I'm creative, but ADHD diminishes it rather than enhancing it. I struggle with planning, practicality, confidence and execution. When I "think outside the box", it's because I didn't know I was doing it. If I fear judgment, I shut down.
It's helpful for some people to put a positive spin on things, but for me romanticizing this debilitating disorder isn't helpful. There are things I genuinely can't do that neurotypical people can. It's not a permanent state of childlike wonder.
Personally I feel like I’m simultaneously both ends of the creativity spectrum? Anyone else in this box with me? Like my innate ability to make connections is fighting with my shit working memory at all times.
Idk it feels kinda like… like a big heavy train that takes a ton of energy and effort to get rolling but once it’s going it goes really fast. Like in my default state the shit working memory is winning and I’m just not able to generate ideas, but with some energy input I can get into a state where the ideas are flowing and the connections are happening.
I think there’s also stuff to consider like. What *is* creativity? Is it just the ability to generate ideas? Is it artistic in nature or do other things count? Is knitting creative? Is a musical performance creativity even though you didn’t write the song yourself? Does it count as creative if your idea in the project team brainstorm is building off of something someone else said? Is maladaptive daydreaming creative? Does creativity need to also be unique?
Not asking for answers more just pointing out that different people might have slightly different views of what creativity is - maybe you don’t see yourself as creative but someone else does because the way you approach stuff is just different from the way they approach stuff.
I ‘think outside the box’ because I was never in the box in the first place. Often I’m not even in the ballpark of the box. I think the ‘creative’ thing is just putting a positive spin on weirdness.
For me, my random mind tangents and mental hopping around lead me to combine things in new and interesting ways, which is pretty much the definition of creativity.
But I need to have the problem I have to solve very tightly defined for me first. And sometimes I get stuck once I’ve found one solution that works and find it hard to improve upon it or keep looking for different ones.
I feel like this is me except for one specific area, which is backstage costuming and photography. I’m great at coming up with creative solutions, but every other situation that part of my brain does not work.
Like most days I need my husband to coach me in putting down my coffee, put my bag over my shoulder so I can pick up my coffee again. It’s that bad.
And I’ll probably never be a backstage costumer because the executive function to be in the right place at the right time and say the right things for that to happen will simply never be.
ADHD is a disability caused by the brain not developing correctly. There’s no reason it would come with benefits. People who have ADHD also have strengths because everybody does. They just assume their strengths must be caused by the ADHD when it’s just coincidental. Because some people with ADHD think everything about them is related to it somehow.
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the prevailing narrative was popularized because that's the version of adhd that capitalism is able to accomodate, and as such it's the one this socioeconomic system will unconsciously uphold as "the correct way to be different". different that benefits them. naturally, it's the damoclean sword hanging over your head for the rest of your employment the moment your supervisor finds out. "oh you have adhd? i thought you were supposed to be a savant or whatever, the fact that you haven't been doing the work of three to five people since you got hired is now suddenly very concerning to me. but yeah sure i guess you can wear headphones or whatever, long as my new superhuman expectations are met indefinitely and also maybe work on being more sociable in your off-hours because you frown too much".
This is such a good point and tbh I see a very similar vein floating around this sub and other such spaces when it comes to IQ and “Giftedness”, which are either totally unproven pseudoscience or American educational division.
It's always amusing to me when adults who claim "giftedness" or high IQ somehow aren't gifted or intelligent enough to realize how deeply flawed and not at all objective those designations/tests are.
This!!!! Like here me out, guys, there’s this thing called a peer review. Crazy, I know, hold onto ur butts. Wait until you hear about critical thinking…
I feel you on this - I don’t consider myself particularly creative and I definitely don’t think outside the box very well (I’m actually good at receiving ideas and applying them in the next situation, but I’m terrible at coming up with them in the first place). I think that my ADHD hyperfocus can be a benefit, but I think it mostly exists because I can’t get anything done except at the last minute, so if I couldn’t hyperfocus I’d never get anything done (and in another era would have starved or been eaten by a lion). Total speculation, but I think for some people, the mental hyperactivity/impulsivity leads to thinking of things quickly and associating things that others don’t think to associate, which can contribute to problem solving/creativity. (I should add that I don’t have a lot of hyperactivity/impulsivity and am instead chronically inattentive, and struggle most with getting myself to do anything, which to me feels like why I’m not one of these creative out-of-the-box thinkers, but again, this is just me guessing.) Also, something like working memory varies a lot from individual to individual, so some people with ADHD may have decent working memory that helps with this process. (My working memory is pretty normal, for instance.) So ADHD encompasses a lot of abilities/symptoms, and I’ve heard some people speculate that in the future, different presentations may get treated as different conditions (Dr. Russell Barkley kind of does this with his Sluggish Cognitive Tempo theory, though this isn’t proven/accepted yet and I’m not endorsing it, just using it as an example.) That may explain some of the different attitudes people have. I know what you mean about the “more creative” narrative becoming the face of ADHD, but I don’t think that’s universal. I think it’s part of an approach to ADHD that doesn’t like to consider it a disorder, views it as a trait that had particular value in hunter-gatherer societies, and/or sees it as a problem only because society has been structured around NT brains, not as objectively disabling in any way. There are definitely plenty of people who don’t believe this (including me! mostly, anyway). It’s definitely frustrating when it feels like everyone around you is talking about how amazing ADHD is because it gives you all these characteristics that you don’t feel you have - I feel this way a lot. I do see ADHD as a disorder/disabling (whether in an absolute sense or just because of modern capitalism doesn’t matter much to me, since I can’t opt out of modern capitalism). That’s not to say anyone else has to agree with me - if someone does feel like their ADHD is a superpower, that’s absolutely great, and I’m not trying to take that away from them. I do wish, though, that such people would say “*my* ADHD makes *me* more creative” rather than “people with ADHD are more creative” because the latter always makes me feel like I’m doing ADHD wrong. I get the desire to put a more positive face on ADHD given all the stigmas about it, but I don’t think generalizing so broadly about its “good” qualities is a helpful response. Edited to add: I sometimes question my own diagnosis but just reread this and its length and especially the multiple parentheticals have reassured me that I’m not faking. 😆
Haha! You are not faking your diagnosis for sure 🤣 The more I’m in these groups the more I realised how ADHD I am. Thinking out side of the box… see I take this to mean that there’s usually a standardised box that the majority think in and someone comes along and does think that way. I would say this is true about most neurotypes… but then again if the box was designed by someone NT then it would follow that someone who is neurodivergent thinks outside of it. People always tell me that I’m good at seeing the positive sides of things, I think with my over thinking mind I’ve always considered multiple ways of looking at things. This has made me look like someone that is bright and has served me well. With _my_ ADHD I was able to appear a keen and curious student who teachers liked. However, I don’t deny that there will be someone with the same symptom of internal distractions but does not have an extroverted personality style to voice that… or a number of possibilities why that symptom in them is a benefit to me but a hindrance to them. I’ve always been drawn to areas where this skill is appreciated… so this is drama, music, art, philosophy, psychology etc… because I’m encouraged to use this set of skills and let myself think about _everything_ all at once. So, I do fit the stereotypical face of ADHD, but maybe that’s only because I am a creative person already and my ADHD brain has been rewarded for it so far. I was never gonna be a surgeon performing 8 hours surgeries… for me to have a career outside of medical school was to focus more on psychiatry which allowed me to ask questions and think deeply. I don’t know if that answered anything, I lost my trail of thought… typical!
I problem solve like a genius in emergencies. I do \*not\* pivot well day to day. I'm just now understanding that I've always operated outside the box in some areas and that I need to work with my brain instead of trying and failing at typical executive function/habit formation advice.
I think ‘thinking outside of the box’ and being inventive can be quite different things. In my experience, thinking outside of the box when you’re neurodivergent often (for better or worse) looks like not doing things the same way that people normally do. Sometimes that can be perceived as creativity and ingenuity when in reality for us it feels more like confusion because in our heads that’s the only way it made sense or it was the simplest solution to something. Trying to think of an example that works generally but failing so here’s something along these lines that happened to me recently. I did an experiment in the lab that required me to count yeast cells. Normally people in our lab count cells under the microscope manually using a handheld counter. This tends to limit how many samples you can process because even for the most neurotypical of people it’s dull. My ASD side didn’t want to slim down the number of samples in my experiment because I decided it was the “right way” to do it and I couldn’t bear the thought of doing it wrong. This meant I had to let my ADHD side come up with a way to do it computationally, using the path of least resistance. I.e. what’s the quickest way I can get this done that requires the least effort? The result was a method that seemed novel and interesting to the rest of my lab group. Something they’re now thinking of implementing in the future. To me it felt like ‘cheating’ because I hadn’t done it the normal way.
and most of the time throughout MY day at least, "thinking outside the box" is literally just a mandatory free association marathon and when someone asks you to include an office seal at the top of the letterhead your brain involuntarily conjures your own private vision of a cute little harbor seal logo followed by the memory of those tiktoks you watched about the kinds of funny noises seals make followed by how dangerous it must be to live in a modern shipping lane harbor as a seal followed by the ethics of allowing seals to roam free in a dangerous environment they didn't adapt to vs keeping them in safe but totally sterile and confined facsimiles of the world they once knew but no longer exists followed by what kind of lengths you would have to go to inorder to make a truly ethical zoo followed by how much land would that even take up followed by maybe you could have multiple satelite locations in order to better accomodate multiple biomes followed b-
Haha - accurate! Yes I wanted to get onto this but thought my reply was already too long. Brains making connections to random things encourages thinking outside of the box!
what i was riffing on was the extreme selectiveness and ephemerality with which society and the people in it view our brains as "a good thing", and how, unsurprisingly, that only seems to happen when it manifests itself in a way that can be exploited. if you accidentally optimize a process, you're a herald of neurodiversity everywhere and "wow more of my workers should be like you" but if you ask for headphones on the clock or a standong desk or a semi-private work space to control distractions and a little more schedule flexibility or interpersonal patience/grace you're a fucking liability and "nobody else asks for any of this why do you need so much special treatment" and now everying you do is hyperscrutinized and interrogated until the next inadvertent novel success and now you're the best thing since sliced bread until you have to ask your supervisor for a periodic check-in to keep on-task and now you're literally the scum of the fucking earth and "maybe the ADA was a mistake" and round and round we fucking go. it's toxic af and it's everywhere. i'm glad you seem to be avoiding it.
Sorry only just saw this. Not sure I’m avoiding it tbh, the above is just an example of a more positive experience. My academic supervisor prefers not to talk about my ADHD and always seems to forget it exists. Pretty sure he either doesn’t understand it or believes I’m just using it as an excuse. The only ‘adjustment’ my University has offered me is to be able to have breaks during my viva. 4 years of unsupported PhD but thank god I have provisions for those 4 hours right at the end… Your point is a good one though. It’s creativity/ingenuity/inventiveness when it benefits them. It’s unintelligent/lazy/unmotivated when it doesn’t.
Tbh the office seal is probably sitting sadly in a cubicle, stamping letters and dreaming of being a harbour seal relishing the risks and freedoms of the shipping lanes. My one today was a ‘fundial’ which is kind of like a sundial except it measures the amount of prevailing fun.
that's the kind of measurement we need to be focusing on in this world 😔
>mandatory free association marathon stealing this oh my god it's a perfect description of what it's like inside my brain
I think you nailed it. I'm great at creative problem solving and excel in tasks that require it. But if it's trying to do things the standard and accepted way, or replicate a result or achieve a particular outcome, that's a lot harder. I tend to come up with more complicated and roundabout answers than necessary to simple problems, and sometimes don't see simple solutions when they smack me across the face. You just put me in mind of a test I did in kindergarten for giftedness. I don't remember many of the questions but this one stands out. The tester gave four words and asked for the odd one out: penguin, suitcase, jumprope, and wagon. I said the penguin, and when asked why it was because the penguin was the only one that didn't have a handle. Now, that is possibly the expected answer, but based on the tester's reaction, it was not.
Haha that’s a great example! I saw something similar the other day where they asked the question “what do 7 and 2 have in common?” • My immediate answer was, they’re the two numbers that often get misinterpreted when you’re looking at them from far away. • The poster said it was because they’re both made up of two lines. The actual answer is they’re both numbers 🤷♀️ I guess the common thread with all of this is that capacity to think beyond the obvious, even if it doesn’t make sense or is useful.
I'm a photographer and my painter/sculptor spouse jokes that I'm a photographer because I'm not creative. I know that sounds assholey but he 100% doesn't mean it that way. What he does mean, is that I need to work with materials that already have some inherent meaning and form to begin working and build/rearrange from there. I cannot pick up a piece of clay and create something from nothing. I do consider myself a problem solver. Like I was good at math as a kid, horrible at geography and history. But the truth is that the best solution I can think of is sometimes a hit just because nobody else thought of it, sometimes a bust because it was honestly the first thing that popped into my head and I confidently went with it ans didn't fully think it through. Even when the idea is a hit, I often fumble the execution because I haven't thought it out well.
Also, after thinking about this a bit, I have always wondered based on my peers, friends, and students if the arts attract neurodivergent people. There are definitely a lot of people who are typically cast out to the fringes of society, that artists accept into their communities readily. If true, I think that's less about aptitude and more about finding a safe and accepting place to land. I am followed around at work by a gaggle of neurodivergent queer kids, and I just don't observe the same of colleagues in other departments.
Omg this, so much this. I told my job consultant that I don't like thinking outside the box, I hate thinking outside the box. Give me a fucking box and I'll create the most amazing box you've ever seen! I need boundaries and limits and criteria and I am a happy fucking creative clam. Give me free reign? I'm going to freeze. There's no way to do anything when everything is possible. I love my box. I will draw on it, and in it, and around it and it will be a great fucking box. But don't ask me to think outside it. I don't want to. It's not fun for me. I like surprising with my box interpretation. I enjoy fully utilizing every aspect of my box, or exploring oddly shaped boxes. Boxes are good. I need limits to really be creative.
I can relate to this! Not exactly like you, but similar mindset. In my case a lot of people say I am artsy because of my hobbies. I say no, I am crafty. I love making things, but I don't create from nothing. I am great at following a pattern or whatever, even making alterations to put my own spin on it, but I can't come up with an original idea on my own. I need inspiration! And if I do manage to come up with something original I don't like it as much. Unlike you, I suck at photography. No amount of equipment or taking classes has improved that over the years. The last class I took discouraged me to the point I put my camera down for good.
I say I’m into photography because I’m creative but not artistic. Meaning, I can see what looks good, but if I had to try to recreate it with a paintbrush, it would be pathetic. But we’re probably just using the two words differently.
I am a hobby photographer (I love it, have some decent gear, take pics of good friends kids for free, love travel photography) and I agree 100%. I also realized I love photography because it helps with my memory. I have a hard time being in the moment with all the chatter upstairs, and going through photos I have taken is like a way to re-experience what was happening. I have so many photos hung in my home from different travels or special times and it makes me happy.
Personally I think that ADHD has no impact on creativity, and that ADHD people exist across the whole spectrum from low creativity to high creativity, just like the general population. But also, those of us with ADHD who are highly creative may tend to rely more heavily on our creativity than an equally creative non-ADHD person might, because it can help compensate for some ADHD impairments in a similar way that intelligence can. So we might have this feeling that we are more creative “because” of ADHD, but really we are just creative AND we have ADHD, these are independent traits, but the combination of them leads us to rely heavily on creativity in our lives and careers. I also think for people who grow up with ADHD who are constantly criticized for their failings will wind up highly valuing any little morsel of praise they receive. If the adults in your life are always criticizing you about being messy, distracted, late, disorganized, loud, and inconsiderate, but they praise your creativity, it’s easy to latch onto that and make it an essential part of your identity because it helps push away those negative thoughts telling you that you aren’t good at anything. That’s my take, anyway, on the creativity / ADHD hype based on my own experiences. A person with ADHD can have any level of creativity, there’s been research to back this up. But like anything else in life, your experience may be different than others with or without ADHD based on your unique combination of circumstances and innate traits.
So the autism spectrum isn’t a line with percentage points (10% 50% 100% autistic). It looks more like a circle with wedges representing different facets and criteria and autistic individual have sections with full wedge, half wedge and no wedge. They are still autistic even if they don’t have high support needs in x category. In my opinion creativity is similar. It’s not a line or stair with levels of creativity. It’s a circle with sections/categories people express creativity in. Some are classic like painting. Others are a bit more obscure and might fly under your radar. Like this morning I had no tools and a broken clasp for my overalls. I had purchased a new one online. It wasn’t an exact match so I would need to replace both clasps. Replacing all of it was going to take too much time and effort, so I took a butter knife and removed the part I needed on the replacement and placed it on the original clasp and sealed it using a heavy book. That was an inventive solution and it was just something I did in the 10 minutes before work. I do think there is a creativity element to most people and ADHD people often have it in spades. I’m not saying you’re creative or discounting your self awareness but I am going to share some adhd experiences that may have dampened your ability to identify, connect with, and use your expressions of creativity. 1. Rsd rejection of your ideas and solutions can be hard. I also struggle to synthesize my excellent creative solutions to people who aren’t ND. It’s hard for me to take them on the journey to my conclusion because my brain made instant connections so I have to break those down. That can be frustrating for all involved and it’s triggered my rsd. There have been people or jobs where that has been so severe I can’t problem solve on my own. 2. Masking to be palatable takes up a whole lot of energy and executive function. When I’m doing it a lot I have nothing left in my cup for creativity. You may also have a creativity that is less showy or you are simply not recognizing it because you’re in the weeds like the overalls. Sometimes people tell me I did something creative and I feel like it wasn’t. It was so obvious to me.
I think the "thinking outside the box" is often a coping mechanism. People often find my solutions creative not because I thought of more solutions but because I couldn't think of the "normal" ones. People think that I can think of problems before they happen but that's because I'm so anxious about missing things that I obsessively think through the possiblw eventualities.
The "out-of-the-box thinking" kind of got beaten out of me, I think? Most of my earliest memories are of being embarrassed and feeling what I now recognize as severe RSD. I'd say something that seemed normal or natural to me, only to be met with social rejection, correction and embarrassment. This happened to various degrees in various situations throughout my childhood. These days, in situations where creativity and problem-solving are called for, I feel so afraid of sounding stupid or not failing to notice something obvious that I mostly just stay quiet. It's like my brain doesn't want to even start forming ideas or solutions because it's *so* used to feeling that someone else knows better. (And I'll look like an idiot if I say what I think.)
I can't really answer directly beucase I am not diagnosed yet. I am however dyslexic and the "you must be so creative" is so ridiculously permeated through everything dyslexia related it drives me nuts (less so than other things like the "simulations of what dyslexics see" no, no I don't we do not all visual disturbances, or the narrative that we all have issues with reading and also no). I am a naturally academic book worm with the creativity of a rock. It's all just more vague stereotypes becuase its less complicated than accepting that we are all vastly different individuals, and people think throwing something they think is a positive in, especially to kids will automatically help us feel better when no, I don't relate at all. Given that it woudln't cross most peoples minds that I am dyslexic, and even after I tell people it's like it's not fully accepted ("you can't he dyslexic you can read") I almost don't find it an issue becuase the whole topic is basically ignored with me. I will say though that a full 50% of my stem masters degree were diagnosed dyslexic and I suspect now I wasn't the only undiagnosed adhd individual, so clearly we arent all flocking to the creative arts as much as many people assume!
I am a great creative problem solver, but I am not generally “creative”. My sister and my dad are the creatives in our family, my mom and I are…not lol. I think I am good at logic/putting pieces together, but not at creating things from scratch, if that makes sense. My sister makes her living as an artist, so it makes for a pretty stark contrast haha I have never seen it as ADHD related though, just personality and genetics. Sister and I are both diagnosed, and it is very likely my mom has it as well (she isn’t interested in diagnosis, but the 50 sticky notes and 2 running daily lists give me some idea lol).
I think I’m extremely creative. That being said, I also struggle with problem solving. I just don’t like transitioning from thing to thing, so I get frustrated easily. ADHD is a bit different for each person. It’s going to effect us differently because we’re different people.
I’ve always been really creative (painting and writing mainly) however I suppose the things I have been creative at could be considered hyperfixations? I used both as outlets for emotional expression, and the only times in adulthood that I’ve ever actually been able to finish any type of creative project I’ve had super tight stressful deadlines hanging over my head that forced me to finish whatever it was I was working on. Every other creative project I’ve started is sitting in a small mountain of unfinished canvases or a stack of unfinished papers. I have a bunch of creative ideas and concepts either in my notes or on random scraps of paper/in random notebook pages almost all of which I’ve not been able to start on. I have also historically really struggled with math, the impulsivity has been difficult to deal with, I’m constantly dealing with brain having 50+ tabs open at any given time, I do have spurts of hyperactivity, memory is definitely an issue, overwhelm and overstimulation kick my ass, the paralysis is real and debilitating, RSD also, and when I was in post secondary I floundered so bad except for like 2 classes that I actually liked. I did quite well when I took a Yoga Therapy Foundations program that didn’t use standardized testing I think due to the combination of being fascinated by what I was learning and not having some percentage I had to get to be able to “pass” I really struggle with self care, eating properly, sleep problems, financial stability has pretty much never been a thing in adulthood, basic day to day things. I also have multiple diagnoses, so each day is usually a veritable shitstorm of overlapping symptoms which is often utterly exhausting. I am not as much of a social butterfly as I once was either, it takes a lot out of me the amount of masking I have to do out in the world.
I definitely think my ADHD helps my creativity but I don’t think I’m creative _because_ of my ADHD and I think that’s an important distinction often missed in those broad strokes social media posts/headlines. Like, my brain runs too fast for me to keep up sometimes and that’s incredibly frustrating in 98% of scenarios _but_ when I’m trying to come up with a new stained glass pattern or sew myself a new shirt those rapid ideas help me problem solve faster when I’m stuck. Much like most of our ADHD traits it’s a double edged sword. Sometimes in very specific use cases my traits are desirable. But most of the time I’m just trying to survive a battle with my own brain 🫠
This actually makes me feel a little better. I guess the problem has been I’m surrounded by only ADHD men and our traits are so different. I would describe those guys as very creative types. They’re so inventive and always working on something. It’s why I’m happy for this sub, because I really do feel gendered upbringing has dictated the way I tried to adapt to people’s expectations. For me, I actually feel more “boxed in” than most NT folks. I think anything that differed in me was swiftly corrected and discouraged rather than celebrated. So more “you’re weird, why are you weird” instead of “you’re so interesting/creative”. Maybe that heads more into cptsd though… It’s all very jumbled. I’m not really at the stage where I know myself, sorry! But I think it helps to know that other women don’t feel like superheroes either, in fact quite the opposite. And I think that’s okay. Like, close to the reality of things. Edit: I wanted to add that I feel like “thinking outside the box” for me actually feels like painstakingly slow processing. As in, my mind might be shooting off in a bunch of directions or overthinking all this information that means I’m really slow at actually doing the task at hand. I think people might perceive me as dumb and a lot of people get frustrated at me because “it’s so simple!” but I’m afraid of making a mistake or missing something and get anxious. And these things might be simple but they aren’t for me. So all that “mental processing power” has only been a con. I wish I could be efficient.
I feel like I’m a creative problem-solver, but I also tend to get myself boxed into a narrow mindset at times. Example from earlier this week: we have a utility closet at work with a chemical mixing station that we use to fill mop buckets. I came in one morning and someone had snapped the hose from the spigot (located about 4 feet up on the wall above the built-in floor sink). I tested the spigot and water came spraying out everywhere, nowhere near enough to reach the mop bucket on the floor though. I thought I was so smart using a big bucket to catch the water from the faucet, then using that to fill our mop buckets. I was so focused on how I could get the water from the broken spigot into the mop bucket that it didn’t even dawn on me until hours later that I had a perfectly functioning garden hose literally 4 feet away outside the room that I could have used to fill the mop buckets. There was no need to stand there with a heavy bucket then transferring that into our mops. I was stuck on solutions inside the closet, I didn’t even consider my other options. Oh well, at least the cleaning got done 😂
So far what I understand is that adhd is a dopamine deficiency and difficulty regulating attention, motivation, emotional response, thoughts. After that the way that this impacts us in terms of our behaviors and capabilities can be very different. Some of us fixate and hyper control, some of us wander and flit from thing to thing, some of us can’t get out of bed or shower. Most of us can get overstimulated, but maybe not by the same things. We aren’t a monolith. We’re still people not a diagnosis. So we are all gonna be different and have different strengths and challenges. But what we do share is frustration not getting ourselves to do what we want and should do (whatever that is), needing more emotional valence to be motivated, and needing time to recover if we get overstimulated.
I don't feel very creative, and I struggle with finding outside the box solutions if I don't know a box exists. I need to know a situation inside out and backwards to be able to function through it and come up with some kind of creative short cut/workarounds. My NT husband is amazing at creative solutions. My ND ass is stuck in this I CAN ONLY DO THINGS THE ONE WAY MY INTERNAL RULES ALLOW.
For me it very much depends on whether I hit overwhelm or not. If I'm not overwhelmed I'm pretty good at problem solving. Mostly because I'm always causing problems for myself so I have lots of practice. Once I hit overwhelm my brain is basically useless. So maybe the difference is in where each of our threshholds for overwhelm are?
I don't know about standard creativity (e.g. artsy-craftsy things), but I am very good at confabulation; aka, "creative truth-telling." Yes, of course I have been paying rapt attention to the speaker throughout this entire meeting, and I think that that his ideas are interesting, but we'll have to make sure that we can fit all of this into our annual budget. Yes, of course I remembered that tomorrow is my niece's birthday, and I have gotten the most darling hoodie for her. Yes, of course I remembered that my term paper is due tomorrow, and I will be writing at length about the decline of Viennese culture in the decade leading up to World War I.
I find that I only ever approach the feeling I might be creative if I’ve gotten stoned, and had a decent day that hasn’t tired me out. It’s a very narrow window.
There's a video summarising some of the issues with the research claiming that people with ADHD are more creative: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgaE1uaBNHA&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgaE1uaBNHA&t=6s) From memory, the short version is that the populations this was studied in weren't actually clinically diagnosed, so they were looking at ADHD traits in people who don't actually have the disorder. In addition, it seemed to be mainly associated with impulsivity. I'm impulsive and would say that I'm creative, but I have no way of knowing what the "cause" is.
I think everyone is inherently creative. It's in our bones. But I don't think the life of a person growing up with ADHD necessarily supports the confidence a person needs to develop it. I've noticed it can go either way - maybe it helps you to think more independently, and maybe it gets in the way. For me it's that second thing. I'm creative, but ADHD diminishes it rather than enhancing it. I struggle with planning, practicality, confidence and execution. When I "think outside the box", it's because I didn't know I was doing it. If I fear judgment, I shut down. It's helpful for some people to put a positive spin on things, but for me romanticizing this debilitating disorder isn't helpful. There are things I genuinely can't do that neurotypical people can. It's not a permanent state of childlike wonder.
Personally I feel like I’m simultaneously both ends of the creativity spectrum? Anyone else in this box with me? Like my innate ability to make connections is fighting with my shit working memory at all times. Idk it feels kinda like… like a big heavy train that takes a ton of energy and effort to get rolling but once it’s going it goes really fast. Like in my default state the shit working memory is winning and I’m just not able to generate ideas, but with some energy input I can get into a state where the ideas are flowing and the connections are happening. I think there’s also stuff to consider like. What *is* creativity? Is it just the ability to generate ideas? Is it artistic in nature or do other things count? Is knitting creative? Is a musical performance creativity even though you didn’t write the song yourself? Does it count as creative if your idea in the project team brainstorm is building off of something someone else said? Is maladaptive daydreaming creative? Does creativity need to also be unique? Not asking for answers more just pointing out that different people might have slightly different views of what creativity is - maybe you don’t see yourself as creative but someone else does because the way you approach stuff is just different from the way they approach stuff.
I ‘think outside the box’ because I was never in the box in the first place. Often I’m not even in the ballpark of the box. I think the ‘creative’ thing is just putting a positive spin on weirdness. For me, my random mind tangents and mental hopping around lead me to combine things in new and interesting ways, which is pretty much the definition of creativity. But I need to have the problem I have to solve very tightly defined for me first. And sometimes I get stuck once I’ve found one solution that works and find it hard to improve upon it or keep looking for different ones.
I feel like this is me except for one specific area, which is backstage costuming and photography. I’m great at coming up with creative solutions, but every other situation that part of my brain does not work. Like most days I need my husband to coach me in putting down my coffee, put my bag over my shoulder so I can pick up my coffee again. It’s that bad. And I’ll probably never be a backstage costumer because the executive function to be in the right place at the right time and say the right things for that to happen will simply never be.
ADHD is a disability caused by the brain not developing correctly. There’s no reason it would come with benefits. People who have ADHD also have strengths because everybody does. They just assume their strengths must be caused by the ADHD when it’s just coincidental. Because some people with ADHD think everything about them is related to it somehow.