Boredom and ADHD — Discovering and Feeding Your Interests
By Catherine Mutti-Driscoll, MA, PhD, CALC
I came across an interesting book the other day—a book about boredom. The title was quite intriguing, “The Elephant in the ADHD Room: Beating Boredom as the Secret to Managing ADHD,” by Letitia Sweitzer. This topic piqued my interest as I had already read about how ADHDers have interest-driven nervous systems and that when we are interested, we are engaged and perform well—and when we are not, well, good luck with that.
Many of us know all too well that painful feeling of lack of stimulation, sleepiness, and/or restlessness that boredom represents. This feeling may even haunt us the majority of the time as we amble through school, work, parenting, and our relationships, just trying to do the best we can. Sweitzer (2014) asserts that, to manage ADHD, it is important for us to understand our “Elements of Interest” as well as have the freedom to pursue these interests.
Reading this book took me on a process of trying to figure out what had interested me as a child in order to unearth the interests that could power my motivation and performance as an adult. On pages 62 & 63, I began circling “Elements of Interest” words that resonated with me, including “drama,” “exercise,” “face-to-face,” “imagination,” “nurturing,” “one-on-one interaction,” “originality,” “physical action,” “romance,” “social interaction,” “story,” and “time limit.” I was pleased to see that my job as an ADHD coach checked a number of these “Elements of Interest'' boxes, such as face-to-face, nurturing, one-on-one interaction, social interaction, time limit, and imagination. I wondered, could I bring more drama, physical action, romance, originality, and story into other parts of my life? Could I make my experiences include more of these Elements of Interest while juggling parenting and work?
As I noodled on these questions, I noticed how this exercise resonated with advice provided by Sari Solden and Michelle Frank in their “Radical Guide for Women with ADHD'' book. Like Sweitzer, Solden and Frank encourage us to play with dreams that we had as a young child in order to illuminate more possibilities for ourselves in the present. According to Solden and Frank (2019), “Compelling visions and a sense of purpose stimulate and activate us, which is crucial for adults with ADHD whose brains crave and require input that is highly stimulating. Exploring what gives us purpose, meaning, and future direction isn’t just feel-good fluff, it is imperative to regulating the ADHD brain” (p. 73).
Solden and Frank encourage us to find a way of tracking and collecting information on items or topics that “spark” or interest us, whether we dictate our ideas, collect magazine articles, or keep a journal. For example, I am beginning to engage my interest in romance by collecting books I want to read on the Goodreads app (plus setting a reading goal there keeps me motivated for reading!) and archiving movies I want to watch on the Likewise app. In addition to these apps, I am starting a folder on my google drive (harder for me to misplace than a notebook!) where I plan to keep lists of exercise, dance classes, and writing classes I want to take.
Finally, there is the knotty issue of time and freedom to pursue these interests that I have begun tracking. This is the part of the equation that is definitely still a work in progress! So far, taking group writing and exercise classes has helped me regularly engage with my interests, but if that doesn’t end up providing me with enough progress, I plan to find an ADHD Coach who could support me in creating time and space for my interests, thereby helping me regulate my brain in the best way possible. Onward and upward!
In addition to coaching, therapy, and medication management, we have a range of education/support groups for people with ADHD.