Finish this sentence: "Having ADHD is like...."

I asked ADHD Twitter (I will never call it X) how they like to describe their ADHD brains: What were their favorite analogies for being neurodivergent? We've all heard the Ferrari analogy by Dr. Edward Hallowell:

And we've all probably heard some form of the stereotypical analogy about people with ADHD being easily distracted by squirrels:

But how do actual people with ADHD like to describe their own brains? Let's see what the people of Twitter had to say.

What analogies or metaphors do you use to describe your ADHD brain?

The following quotes are from replies to the original Twitter thread, but have been slightly edited to improve readability.

🤕 "For rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), I really like comparing it to bruises. With bruises, if someone accidentally bumps you, it's really easy to be like, "Ouch. Careful - I have a bruise there," but it's a lot harder to communicate that with mental bruises." - @weedleeedle

🥣 "ADHD is like: Everybody at the table is eating soup. They get spoons. You get a fork." - @kappinski

REPLY: 🚫 "And if you pick up the bowl and drink from it because it's easier than trying to eat soup with a fork, everyone tells you that's rude and you're doing it wrong." - @RRopelius

💻 "As a teen, I'd say that my mind was like a computer with a completely different architecture from most people's computers. So, running 'normal' software didn't work; I needed to run an 'emulator'. (An emulator allows one computer to run software for a different kind of computer. It can work really well, but it takes up lots of processing power and it's never entirely perfect.... I had never heard of masking at the time.)" - @yadybird

🍌 "Having ADHD is like playing Mario kart, but the bananas are invisible, so I always run into more bananas than everyone else around me. With ADHD medication, I can see the bananas! With therapy, I have more shells to knock the bananas! But also, the bananas never go away completely." - @niknakodile

🧊 "For me, life with ADHD is like running on ice: It's hard to get any traction while my mind keeps slipping." - @1SensFan1

🏎️ "For me, living with ADHD is like having the fastest car in the world and having no clue how to drive it. It's like being the best engineer, but having no tools to work with." - @WutangToft

🗝️ "It’s like that scene from Harry Potter where they have to catch the flying key. You kinda have an idea of what you’re supposed to do, but as soon as you take the steps to do it, the task changes and you’re not even sure which thing you’re supposed to grab anymore." - @TheMellMcClell

🧼 "For executive dysfunction, the metaphor I came up with is its like trying to grab soap. You want so desperately to do the thing (i.e., grab the soap), but every time you try, your focus and attention just slide right off of it." - @weedleeedle

✉️ "ADHD is like a reimbursement request. If you don't write it down, it didn't happen. (Unless I want to recall which pile I dropped that thing into six months ago... I can usually remember that.)" - @ALadyJewel

🎬 "Everything, everywhere, all at once." - @becsolila

🚴‍♀️ "The other day I was thinking about how the bike light illuminates several meters in front of me, and how my ADHD, on the other hand, would illuminate 360 degrees, but for a useless 20cm. I just need a bike light for my brain..." - @Meduselchen

💡 "I was talking to a friend about how I can either love something and get super invested in it (e.g., a TV show) or not be interested in it at all. There's no in-between. And the metaphor that came was: Having ADHD is like when I was a kid and I tried to balance the light switch in the middle, but ultimately, it could only be on or off." - @R3dLeprechaun

🤹‍♂️ "Having ADHD is like my thoughts and tasks are balls I have to juggle. Every now and then, a new ball is thrown at me. Non-ADHD people have a shoulder bag, so they can decide which balls to store for later. But me? I have three choices: juggle all of them, let the new ones fly past me, or just drop all of them and cry." - @cherryredtoes

👎 "ADHD is like being left-handed and everyone else expects you to use their right-handed tools and get the same results." - @MsSaraRobinson

📰 "Having ADHD is like watching the news, but the scrolling bar at the bottom is constantly alerting you to other news. You’re trying to listen to what the news anchor is saying and keep up with the scrolling news at the same time, but you end up only getting bits and pieces of each story." - @BrittLovesLamp

👶 "ADHD is like parenting a toddler. Except you are the toddler." - @SugasPixieStick

🎛️ "This came to me once I was medicated: ADHD meds made my brain like a sound mixing desk. Before I had medication, I had no control over the sliders that regulate all the thoughts." - @sallyr

🧺 "Having ADHD is like driving 130mph on a road with insane bends and there are 2 bees inside the car. So the fear of crashing is real... except you’re actually inside a box that's not even moving because it’s just a car simulator. And now you have to put your laundry away." - @willlowpuff

🟫 "Having ADHD is like running in mud." - @Hamboniephone

🏊‍♀️ "Before getting prescribed ADHD medication, I felt like I was swimming against the current with weights on my ankles; like I was using all of my energy just to get nowhere. But the meds calmed the water and removed the weights. So, while I still have to swim, I'm at least seeing results for my efforts." - @cherryredtoes

🗄️ "This is more of a visual one, but I always think of the SpongeBob episode when he can't remember his name, and his brain mini mes are frantically searching all the filing cabinets." - @theshortness

🌀 "Currently, I have 9 different Chrome windows open, with a total of over 100 tabs. And because it's trying to do so much at once, my poor old MacBook is running slow and freezes occasionally. That's my ADHD brain. Except - instead of a macOS, my brain runs on Windows 95 (AKA the blue screen of death.)" - @Jana_OGrady

🐎 "My attention is like a bolting horse. If you try to force it in a direction it doesn’t want to go, it will rear and throw you off. But if you want to go where it’s already going, you will get there faster than you can imagine." - @Dobbersville

🎶 "Its like opening 20 tabs in Windows explorer and there's something different happening in each one: there's a film and music playing in the background, everything is fast and chaotic, thousands of things occur in one minute... but it overwhelms the browser, freezes, and then you can do nothing." - @arsamandiii

🐝 "My ADHD brain is made of bees, some of which are dead." - @mrsbettysbooks

📱 "I have a brain that runs on Android when everyone else is Apple. They essentially do the same thing but there are major differences in how to use them." - @TinkBryson

🪣 "Having ADHD is like building sandcastles. Everyone else has nice little buckets and shovels, but I only get to use my hands. They're busy building while I grab handful after handful of sand, only to find that it's slipped through my fingers by the time I get back to my build site. So I go back and forth, grabbing more and more sand, but never amassing much. Meanwhile, everyone else's sandcastles are almost done and I've only just started on my moat. By the end, my moat is PERFECT, but there's no castle inside it. And everyone else has already gone home." - @rk_tw33ts

📻 "It's like having a broken radio you can't turn off, and the only station it has is always playing half a song on repeat." - @Leaglem

🍽️ "For me, ADHD is like trying to balance 5 spinning plates, but only being able to see 3 at a time." - @mutombros

🐙 "Having ADHD is like trying to arrange octopuses on a shelf. You get one up there, wrestling with its legs and the squashy nature of its body. You turn around to grab the next one, and the first one has already slithered off the shelf onto the floor." - @speshmagiclady

Which is your favorite?

Did any of these analogies or metaphors resonate with you? Personally, my favorites were the Mario Kart one, the soup one, and the swimming pool one.

Click the embedded tweet below to find and "like" your favorites, reply to the thread so you can add your own idea, or see the full list of 199 original replies!