Blood & Ink: IDD, Not ADD

A.D.D. Attention deficit disorder…

This clinical diagnosis has become so commonplace it’s now a trite statement made in passing conversation:

“Sorry, that’s my ADD acting up.” ”I can be so ADD sometimes.”

ADD isn’t real. Attention is a muscle or a skill. You don’t have an irreversible genetic disorder, you have a skill issue.

Modes of attention are known today as ‘spotlight’ or ‘lantern’ awareness. Spotlight attention is great when you’re trying to study, write, and connect. Lantern awareness is suitable when trying to take in the Gestalt of something, like sitting at a park viewing the landscape.

In any situation, your full awareness is online. You can’t choose to use anything less than your full attention. So long as you are conscious, your awareness is online.

Then what are we to make of ‘attention deficit disorder’?

How can you have a deficit of something that you can’t increase or decrease?

Attention is never lacking, nor is it deficient from a disorder. It’s not controlled effectively.

If you watch the cultural conversation on ADHD online, you’ll something else always accompanies this conversation: hyperfixation. Hyperfixation is like an extended tunnel vision, where the individual locks in on something for hours and hours, often making remarkable and massive progress on skill acquisition or learning something.

So we have a misnomer. You never have a deficit of attention. Attention is always present. The light of conscious awareness is always on whenever you are awake.

If we are not lacking in attention, what are we lacking in?

Intention. We are suffering from a lack of intention and grand narrative.

• We don’t know what we want to focus on.
• We don’t know why we have to focus on some things rather than others.
• We haven’t proven to ourselves why certain objects are worthy of our attention, and so our attention jumps around, searching for something that ‘clicks’.

Attention follows intention.

A child can’t pay attention in school because they’re daydreaming looking outside at nature? They’re not lacking attention — it’s directed fully outside or on their thoughts. What hasn’t been conveyed to them is the value of the educational experience in front of them. Why are they learning this? What will this give them? What is the expected gain or result from doing this? If this is conveyed effectively and honestly, in a manner that they can understand, you will have their undivided attention.

But your entire being must be behind the decision. Attention costs energy, another valuable resource when being human.

In reality, we’ve got the whole thing backwards. We paint the picture of IDD as a personal failing of the individual or a mere unfortunate circumstance of birth where their brain doesn’t work quite correctly. In fact, if the blame is to be pointed anywhere, it is at the society.

Modern culture has failed to provide a grand narrative of significant depth, beauty, wonder, and inspiration to harness the magnificent power of human attention and focus it.

It hasn’t demonstrated the causal links between day-to-day actions moving toward the realization of that grand narrative.

If I was a Gen Z, or Alpha, growing up, and I’ll I ever heard was a grand narrative that the world is dying and it’s just a matter of time, your existence is a meaningless jumble of atoms bouncing around for no good reason, and the only reason you need to do well in school is so that you can avoid poverty when the state comes at gunpoint to demand payment via taxation – I wouldn’t be very excited about any of that either!

What’s the point of paying attention to anything going in that direction?

But completely unfocused, ungrounded awareness is dangerous.

Completely unfettered awareness is the basis for schizophrenia, everything of equally significant meaning/connection, with no hierarchy of priority.

• If you struggle with attention, you must reclaim a grand narrative that is empowering and purposeful.
• You must delineate a personal aim that serves that narrative.
• And you must see how your daily actions take you toward that.

If you get those 3 in alignment, flow state arises naturally, actions feel purposeful and coherent, and you just might notice that your ‘ADD’ drops away.

Thank you,
EB.