Not Quite a Superpower
how ADHD impacts my creative mind, for better and for worse
When I was first diagnosed with ADHD, my biggest pet peeve was seeing the insistence on framing it as a “superpower”, which comes off to me as toxic positivity. Anyone who knows me knows that toxic positivity is one of my least favorite things. I think you can embrace neurodiversity and reduce stigma without feeding everyone a line of absolute stinking horseshit. Not everything in this world needs to be 100% positive to be valid or accepted. It also minimizes the feelings and perceptions of people who are genuinely struggling, and that can make them feel even worse about something I can almost guarantee they feel sufficiently shitty about.
I highly recommend Dr. Sasha Hamdani’s TikTok channel - she is a doctor with ADHD and has a lot of actual information and super smart insights. She talks a little about the concept of ADHD as “superpower” below.
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Like Dr. Hamdani, I would choose not to have ADHD if given the option. If ADHD needs to be compared to a superpower, I’d say it’s like being given an ultra powerful Superman cape, but the cape only works some of the time, you don’t know when or how, and either you soar above the clouds or it will fly you directly into the side of a building.
At first, I was resistant to the idea that my ADHD was anything but a curse. I was looking back on my life knowing things could have been so much easier, rather than thinking about what might be good about it. In recent days though, as my creativity has recovered after a long, frustrating fallow period, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how my ADHD and my creativity are intertwined. For better or worse, my creativity has saved my life over and over again. In fact, creativity IS my life, and has given me a way to understand and live in a world that was not designed for someone like me to thrive in.
When I started reading about pattern recognition , and how the ADHD mind can make connections and associations that a neurotypical brain might not, I began to recognize how my neurodivergence can be an asset when it comes to creativity. I have always made connections between things that don’t seem to go together. I have a difficult time simplifying when I need to, because while these connections and associations make total sense to me, it is actually quite difficult to bring them together in a dramatically interesting way. I have always viewed this as a challenge.
Visual art is often a springboard for my work in unexpected ways. I will see a painting or a sculpture, and I will connect it to some sort of idea for a plot, character, or setting that might make no sense to a neurotypical person. For example, I unlocked the idea for my play The Worst Mother in the World after seeing this photo at the Whitney Museum:
The play is not about a diver of any kind. The play is about mothers and daughters, abuse cycles in families, and post-partum depression. However, something about this image made my brain start linking together ideas that had been floating around in my mind, and it gave me a framework for the visual elements of the play. I wrote some dream sequences where the protagonist is haunted by a woman in the same diving mask (not to mention some terrifying puppet babies). This was a controversial sticking point for some people who initially read the play, as they didn’t really understand what I was going for. However, when the play received a terrific production at Halcyon Theater in Chicago, the dream sequences were masterfully executed by a killer design team, and the mood it created was exactly what I had pictured in my head.
Music is a key part of my creative process. I listen to it with noise cancelling headphones when I am working. It drowns out the noise in my head as well as any ambient sounds or distractions. Most unusually, I prefer to listen to music with lyrics when I am actively writing. This would distract a lot of people, but it can actually trigger a “flood” of sensation and ideas in my brain. A certain song or musical movement can unlock a concept for me, and it feels as if a swarm of lightning bugs are communicating with each other in a code that I don’t always have access to. I know that sounds a bit woo woo, but I can’t really describe it any other way. When I get into this space, I can finish a scene I’ve been struggling with, or I get a visual that leads me to the way I want a scene to look or feel. A lyric can also unlock a line of dialogue for me, give me a working theme, or provide a jumping off point for a scene. It’s like having two conversations at the same time that occasionally intersect, and it is pretty cool my brain can do that.
I have read about the feeling people get in their brains from ASMR (thanks to my misophonia, ASMR makes me homicidal), and I think that’s what music does for me. It creates visceral physical sensation and also calms me down. It’s why a good concert does more for my brain than almost any other live experience. Sadly, I do not possess any significant musical talent. I was an okay singer at one point, and I can play some basic songs on an acoustic guitar, but that’s about it. I think I'll always be jealous of songwriters. It’s a skill I desperately wish I had.
My ability to solve creative problems makes me a good artistic collaborator. Theater is an inherently collaborative medium, and a play is only as good as the people you make it with. When I am in a room with actors, directors, and designers, it gives me more dopamine than just about anything. My brain absolutely lights up. Being able to see the work on its feet and get out of my own head quiets the noise and the self-doubt, and helps me create my best work. I sometimes will get that “flood” of senses in my brain during a good rehearsal. I think that’s from the energy of other humans in the space with me. It’s also a lot more fun than writing alone at a computer (most of the time, anyway). The pattern recognition ability makes me an efficient problem solver in the room. I don’t have a giant ego, and I never assume that what I have written is good or functional. In fact, I think ADHD makes me feel like a no talent fuck up so much of the time that when issues inevitably come up, I am just relieved they’re not worse. Nothing - and I mean nothing - feels better than when I fix a problem in a rehearsal room. It’s magic. Plain and simple.
While all of this is super cool, the negatives complicate the positives. Why can’t I have excellent pattern recognition but also have a consistent daily writing practice? If I’m so good at solving problems, why do I never know where anything is and why am I constantly losing things? If my brain is so excellent at handling multiple concepts, why do I get paralyzed when I feel overwhelmed? My creativity and my ADHD can work together beautifully, but I don’t know how or when. Sometimes I’ll put music on and bang out pages, and sometimes I wind up aimlessly skipping through shuffle to find the “right” song, and before you know it I’ve been looking up lyrics on Genius for an hour. I wish I had an actual superpower - perhaps one that allowed me to harness my brain and use it to the best of my creative ability.
As I was thinking about all of these things this week, my Substack feed was full of posts on ADHD and creativity. It felt like a lovely synchronicity. I came across a guest post by
on ‘s Create Me Free about neurodivergence and creativity. Allegra has synesthesia , which is a fascinating phenomenon. I don’t think that I have it the way she defines it, but I do sometimes get direct sensory input in a way that is difficult to describe. I also found this quote very compelling:Telling stories, through whatever medium you choose, is a powerful way to help people imagine an alternative future or relate to an experience that you want to highlight. It can allow people within the mainstream to put themselves in the shoes of a marginalised or excluded person and see where the system has failed them. Stories and art get into our minds and souls in a way that facts and data never can.
I also read a post on writing with ADHD by
on SubMakk, and she gives some excellent advice and insights. I found myself nodding and laughing, because so much of it resonated with me. I think the most important thing I took away from it is that I need to learn how to work with my ADHD rather than resist it. I am never going to be a person who sits down and works on a play every single day, and the more I try to be that person, the more likely it is that I will fail, feel bad about myself, and not write again for weeks. My time would be better spent doing what I always do, which is not writing for several days or even a week, and then sitting down, hyperfocusing, and banging out 40 pages. I write in bursts.I think there is always that fear in the back of my mind that one day I will simply not be able to write, but I think that fear came from having undiagnosed ADHD and not knowing what was wrong with me. I described it to my therapist as having a hidden “trap door” in my brain that would open up and suck things into it, with no rhyme or reason, and I was constantly terrified that one day it would take everything I had worked so hard for. The fact is that I have written since I was five years old. I think I will always write. I need to trust that, and trust my process. Learning to trust myself might be the hardest part of all.
What are your favorite Substacks/resources on creativity? Shout them out in the comments.
My 6 yo loves all the series by Dav Pilkey and I have seen him refer to ADHD as a superpower quite often. I spend a lot of time talking to my kid about how our brains work differently than other people, but I don’t like the toxic positivity either. It IS hard to make connections that other people don’t follow. I have never been able to listen to music with lyrics while writing or working in any capacity but I always loved Hans Zimmer’s scores and the Pride and Prejudice score music was my favorite in college.
I was supposed to go talk to my grad school professor about how I would get paralyzed when I was overwhelmed, and I never did. Even though I had good grades, they were annoyed that I didn’t seem “emotionally mature.” Turns out I think it was an ADHD thing all along.