An ADHD coach has shared five little-known behaviors that people with the neurodivergent condition often exhibit.
Kelly Baumwho discovered she had ADHD disorder at age 30, said people with ADHD exhibit behaviors including taking up many hobbies and giving them up weeks later and stockpiling half-used notebooks.
The US coach said people with ADHD also tend to forget to meet their own basic needs due to “time blindness” and are usually the person in the room sitting with their legs twisted or in an unusual way.
“These are not symptoms, these are behaviors that many of us exhibit frequently – don’t diagnose yourself after that,” Kelly explained in an online interview. video.
The first behavior she listed was forgetting to do things to meet basic needs, such as eating, drinking water, or going to the toilet.
ADHD coach Kelly Baum (pictured), from the US, has listed five lesser-known behaviors that people with the condition often exhibit
“This has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is hyperfocus, because we tend to be time blind, we don’t really know how much time has passed and then we say, ‘Oh my god, I just totally got it by accident.’ skipped lunch,” Kelly said.
“Also, undersensitivity, which is the opposite of oversensitivity, sometimes we are not as aware of our body’s feelings as neurotypical people.”
The second behavior is taking up a lot of hobbies, because people with ADHD “run to anything” that releases even a “little bit” of dopamine.
ADHD causes dopamine dysfunction, meaning there are often lower levels of the chemical in the brain.
Kelly said people with ADHD can often forget to do things that meet their basic needs and sometimes have a pile of half-used notebooks in the house.
“You know, what gives you a lot of dopamine is something new, and nothing is as new as a new hobby that you hyper-fixate on for three weeks,” Kelly said.
The third behavior was giving up those hobbies “for the same reason.”
Another sign that someone may have ADHD is always sitting ‘funny’ in a chair, for example with their legs twisted or crossed.
“People with ADHD tend to have hypermobility, they also tend to need to move and fidget a little more,” Kelly said.
“Also a neurospicy thing, not just as an ADHD thing, is that the pressure of being curled up in a ball or having your legs wrapped tightly around each other can be calming.”
Finally, the coach said that many people with ADHD have piles of half-used notebooks somewhere in the house.
“This doesn’t just relate to novelty, it also relates to the deficit of intention, a term coined by Russell Barkley that highlights the challenge we have in executing all our plans,” she explained.
Kelly’s clip has been viewed more than 50,000 times and struck a chord with many of her followers.
‘The number of notebooks I have. Why do I keep buying more,” one viewer replied.
“Sometimes I forget to brush my teeth until 3pm because I work from home,” said another.
“I was looking weird when I saw this,” a third laughed, with a fourth adding: “The number of times I legitimately forget I need to go to the bathroom until it’s almost too late.”