ADHD and Prioritizing
My internal ‘prioritizing’ filter lets too much stuff through. And when everything seems equally important… nothing is.
ADHD and Responsibilities
My ADHD makes it hard for me to manage multiple responsibilities at once. Some trip me up, some get forgotten or neglected. But ALL of them leave me feeling overwhelmed, out of control, and in a constant state of emergency.
The number of things you’re responsible for isn’t what changes with ADHD. It’s what those things do while you’re holding them.
The same four dogs
The comic draws responsibilities as dogs on leashes.
In the non-ADHD panel, four dogs walk in a neat line, leashes gathered in one hand, all moving the same direction at the same pace. The person is whistling.
In the ADHD panel, it’s the same handful of dogs and the same person—but one has floated off attached to a balloon, one has bolted after a butterfly, one has lain down and refuses to move, and one sits looking back with the leash slack. The person is tangled in the middle of all of it, wide-eyed, wrapped in their own leads.
Why it reads as a constant emergency
Nothing in the ADHD panel has been dropped. Every leash is still attached. That’s the point—it isn’t a picture of neglect, it’s a picture of everything being held badly at once, in four different directions.
Which is why “you’re doing too much, cut something” so often misses. The load may be perfectly ordinary. It’s the pulling in opposite directions that’s exhausting, and no amount of caring more makes four dogs walk the same way.
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