Interest Isn’t Enough (When Everything is Interesting)

Many autistic affirming therapists will recognize the concept of the interest based nervous system, coined by Dr. William Dodson. In case you’re not familiar, my favorite speaker on this concept is Megan Anna Neff of Neurodivergent Insights. She has several blogs explaining the concept which focuses on the idea that once engaged ADHDers can do just about anything!

I was thinking about this the other day, thinking about how there are so many things I’m interested in but I still end up stuck and spinning my wheels. I also see this in people I work with often, especially when something like depression comes in to play a confounding role.

Of course interest is not the only thing running motivation for ADHDers, Dr. Neff has a framework called PINCH which outlines other motivational factors.

But here’s the thing, I have found no matter how much interest (or even sometimes urgency, novelty, or other motivational factors) sometimes it just isn’t enough. I can’t get myself going.

Ok, I’m going to back it up a minute here. For some time in college and grad school I had a group of friends who really enjoyed this set of principles to drive their community spaces. One of them was “immediacy”.

I used to be kind of confused by it, why the fuck would immediacy be helpful in community building.

In fact in some ways it reminded me of the characteristic of white supremacy culture that is “sense of urgency”. This idea that we need to do things right damn now instead of slowing down. In other ways my ADHD brain totally got it, get the thing done now while I’m thinking about it.

But what if it works the other way too?

There are so many times when I have something I want to do, I’m interested in, it has a deadline, and/or it’s new to me (some of the key factors in Getting Shit Done as an ADHDer).

As I have been building my business, starting a podcast, continuing clinical work, and worked as leadership in a group practice the tasks have piled up. That’s all just work stuff too, doesn’t even account for friends, video-games, arts and crafts, and other personal pursuits.

All of these things hold interest, many are urgent and several new. And yet it can be hard to get started.

Some of that is just the sheer amount of them. There is not really a way or time to be bored when the to-do list is so well endowed. But what I realized the other day was that there’s something that can kick start me like almost no other.

Now, the real tried and true method to get me focused on something is to sit with me, on video, phone, even text, and let me bounce off you as I do it. It’s a more active form of body doubling.

But even then, sometimes I just get pulled off track. Sometimes I’ll be recording my podcast and it’ll take an extra 30 minutes or more because between episodes (or even episodes and their bonus content) something sparks.

My co-host will say something that prompts me down a rabbit hole and that’s when my interest grabs hold. I fall down that rabbit hole and have to drag myself back out.

I have a whole list of posts to make for social media, but honestly unless there’s something prompting it it’s hard for me to actually create and post them. Once that prompt comes though, it happens with immediacy.

I see this in others as well.

<——-My body-double crew.

At night, I’ll open my vide-ogame up just to see my partner pick theirs up, prompted by me to task switch. Clients can get the task done when it’s prompted in session. It’s all those little “oh shit, right!” moments we see all the time.

So, what if what looks like a motivation issue is actually a task initiation issue? What if that task initiation needs another person?

In those moments with my partner they task switch in and it actually re-doubles my motivation to continue on my game. It can become a feedback loop. This is what community can do for us.

So when I’m working with clients who want so badly to be able to do everything, especially when they have so much going on, it can be helpful to shift away from “why aren’t they motivated” and look toward “where are the prompts failing”.

What about you, fellow ADHD therapist? Have you seen this pattern? Do you know your own prompts?