Salutations, I’m Skye. I’m a psychotherapist, diagnosed ADHD, and I write about therapy, therapy culture (yes, they’re different things), neurodiversity, trauma, creativity, addiction, psychology, meaning and relating.
Ladies and gentlemen. Fellas and fellesses. People of unspecified gender and origin, and all creatures great and small: I’m begging you. For the love of all things true and good and beautiful: please, please stop calling ADHD a “superpower”.
I’ve tried to be reasonable so far about this. I’ve worked hard to hedge my bets and be less abrasive when I talk about it. You tend to get good at playing nice, when you’ve got a mind where reactivity is always in the next building — the one on fire, forever threatening to char your relationships and health and employment into a smouldering carcinogenic mass.
People don’t believe me when I tell them I’m like this, because I’m generally an OK human with an average life and not a raging psycho. This is the result of many years and an eye-watering amount of money spent learning to self-manage since adolescence, and has nothing to do with my natural constitution. Nobody sees how much effort goes into maintaining equilibrium: the work of pouring water on live coals, the re-connecting of burnt-out wires, the holding of the centre. But if my particular experience of ADHD involves any superpower at all, it’s Bruce Banner’s ability to keep the Hulk at bay.
The Hulk, uncontained and volatile, is not something you want living inside you. The Hulk is an unstoppable force of pure, ungovernable chaos. It’ll pop out unbidden and tear up everything in sight, then stubbornly refuse to appear when it’s needed most. The Hulk will destroy the people you love as indiscriminately as your enemies — and when it’s all over and you come to, it will be your hands covered in gore. And they will call it a superpower, even as you weep for all that cannot be fixed and the ways in which you have disgraced yourself.
I only ever seem to read about ADHD like it’s something enviable, admirable and adorable. I’m a cute little potato person, tee-hee! I’m a creative powerhouse, and my hyperfocus is over 9000! I’m not disordered, I’m just more passionate, feeling, sensitive, authentic, interesting and free-spirited than all the other boring basic bitches.
Am I the only one who thinks this is absolutely insane?
Since I gave up my public system work for ethical (and sanity) reasons, Substack has become increasingly important.
All funds raised go towards funding independent research in psychotherapeutic treatment development. My areas of experience and interest include suicide bereavement, sexual trauma, ADHD, addiction, and the use of AI in psychotherapy.
