ADHD Guide for/by Artists, Day 3

When i was thinking about a Intention-Deficit Disorder guide, i first thought that it needed to work in a quick reference way. So i had this idea that maybe the beginning of the guide could be for those moments when you're totally flustered, trying to feel like you're not crazy, (but when you're not able to just grab a CBT workbook and furiously write it all down trying to figure out how to calm yourself down.)

There wouldn't be so many pages so that in the middle it would be easy to find things, reminders for reference, things that you can take or leave. But once you get near the other end of the guide, it'd be a more speculative perspective, existential maybe, that is also empowering because to get to that part of the guide is to have the bandwidth to do so, AND to be innately curious about following the philosophical quandaries into some unmapped expanse.

i redid the beginning quite a few times before arriving to Version 0.03 because even though i was thinking it wouldn't be like a traditional book, i also knew that it would set the tone for the rest of the zine. i took out the version that started with a glossary or table of contents, and then i took out the version that started with a checklist of things to do when in a kind of emergency. 

so by the time i got to my third pre-rough draft of the ADHD Guide for/by Artists, i felt like i had figured out the most thought striking way to begin a conversation from somewhere in the middle. there was something about the tone of confidence in the extract below that strikes at the heart of 'i believe you'... which is such a source of pain for so many with invisible disabilities. 

[Image is of white and jarring yellow text on a black background. It reads: 50 - 70% of ADHD kids are utterly rejected by close friendships by 2nd grade. (The inability to make and keep close sustained friendships with other children) A devastating consequence of this disorder, their child is not as liked as other children, the sleepovers, going to the movies where people celebrate their peer relationships. The emotional impulsiveness [gets in the way]. Friends forgive your distractibility, your working memory problems, and even your restlessness. They will not forgive your anger, your hostility, the quickness with which you emote to other people, because it is offensive, it is socially costly. Dr. Russell Barkeley addressing parents in his talk ‘30 Essential Ideas parents should know about ADHD]

i think that this impactful excerpt alone is why so many online ADHD advocates love and refer to Dr. Russell Barkley's Youtube videos. Even though his resources are foundational, i argue that they are still not that accessible for the very people they are supposed to help, so i'm making a transcribed bulleted version. (want access to it? please pay it forward on patreon.com/cedrictai)

Russell Barkley is the powerful white patriarchal father figure that tells the fear flaming, anti-vaxxing Scientologist what's what. (Can you tell i still yearn for a QTBIPOC point of view?) He's also really clever with his analogies, which is a boon for advocating for oneself, A BOON!

[Image is text on a print-making looking background: Attention Deficit
Hyperactive Disorder(ADHD) is a misnomer, (for one, not everyone has hyperactivity) so a Dr. Russell A. Barkley offered a more accurate description: time blindness & intention deficit disorder]

one thing i think about is how much i feel like i often forget the fundamentals of being alive, or how i may take a lot of notes but don't really have everything conveniently in one place. 

i used to try to keep some of these things printed out and kept in my wallet, but i wanted it also to be interesting if someone asked, 'what is that?' and instead of going into a long personal story, if you were to flip to any page, in only a few minutes someone might realize that its not about empathizing with personal stories, but that there are overall ableist privileges that have shaped what we think of as 'normal'. And i was hoping it wouldn't be entirely off putting in a confrontational way, but that loving kindness felt urgent, and where one wouldn't need to have the specific diagnosis of Intention-Deficit-Disorder to find the research both practical and rich.

Especially compared to other ways of illustrating Time-Blindness:

A page from the CBT handbook on ADHD, it's as clear as geometric mud to me.

[Image is of a diagram that reads: You can imagine any disease as a graph of causes and effects where each effect itself can be a cause. In ADHD we might see something like this (a real model would be much more complicated). What i'm trying to show is that executive function issues are both caused by the pathology of ADHD while also being the cause of some of the ADHD symptoms. i found this in a Reddit thread and at some point i thought i understood it...]

Since ADHD is a heterogeneous thing, not only is it an invisible disability, but it’s one that exhibits symptoms and affects people in a myriad of ways. There are fun resources (especially comics) that spark a-ha moments, but i also wanted to be able to be more nimble where it neither feels necessary to list every kind of first person accounts (in which it’s the details that make it believable), but also that it could actually make fun of itself, the concept of a guide that is the be-all-end-all, not make the tired, ‘oh look a squirrel’ self-deprecating joke, which is just a joke at ones’ own expense. 

i want people to feel engaged because kindof like the diagnosis, i want the guide to celebrate inhabiting the in-between areas that i think are really potent;

between one tone of seriousness (but anecdotal feel) of a TED talk,
and the other tone of seriousness, the neutral authoritative tone that makes care look a lot like mind numbingly boring labor. 

[Image is of a highly populated diagram of comorbidity with ADHD and how likely someone with ADHD is to have another issue. It ranges from Oppositional Defiant Disorder (Behavioral Disorders) to Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Mood disorders and other co-occurring conditions. This is one of the actual handouts that I got from Kaiser Permanente's group ADHD session. (how many times do you think this was photocopied before it made its way to me?)]

and i guess i’m a skeptical/suspicious type, because i’m also wary of the polish of a message not just because it can feel like it's a sponsored message brought to you by a marketing firm, but that it innocently affirms only one kind of beauty, when i think that a message can be delivered well in a form that is just as scrappy as can be.

Or just in general, how I know that for me, i’ve loaded up on meditation apps, but again like with the first page i posted, if you are easily distracted the moment you touch your smart phone, it’s like trying to get through a field of landmines just to get to a reminder. 

i’m interested in if such a thing can directly, but also inherently, challenge an ableist mindset, and also if it might serve as a gentle reminder to all of the other resources out there, that everything can always be broken down more into much more digestible chunks, especially if you need to spell it out to people who simply want to refuse to believe that Time-Blindness is a thing and who are adamant that we can only rely on Capitalism/Suffering/Hope for survival.

if you DO believe in Capitalism, please consider donating to Patreon.com/cedrictai