Attention, ADHD, Sleep & Dreams - eviltoast

Here’s a thought that fell upon me[1], last night, in those wee frosty, dark and restless hours: sleep is immensely important for everyone but it is even more so for us with ADHD[2] simply because we typically suffer from difficulties directing and commanding our attention and train-of-thought, whilest awake, and sleep, bringing dreams, brings relief.

When I do find myself struggling with control over attention – including getting lost in thoughts, inability to focus, inability to disengage and a propensity to obsess on topics – I also notice that I have absolutely no ability to let my mind drift and sort through the things that are challenging or bothering me, or it, in any kind of cathartic or therapeutic way.

I imagine that that’s what the sleeping mind does and, even more so, that is what the dreaming mind does: sift and sieve thoughts and experiences and memories.

It’s probably also succour for one’s corporeal body. Anyone post-puberty (or sufficiently far embroiled in it) knows that one’s body’s wants manifest in their dreams. Conversely, I know that my ADHD can see my waking self so sunk into a mire of focus that I can go without food or water, without sleep, end up borderline hyperthermic from sitting still or failing to notice that I’m inadequately dressed, even carrying a painfully over-bloated bladder.

Watching neuro-typical people in my life, I observe that they often daydream or muse wanderingly through their ideas as they go about their lives. None of them say they identify with my tales of ignoring my physical well-being in favour of black-holes of thought. Most of them even appear to be able to think about nothing at all at times: something I certainly could never do when I’m awake and sober.

I’ve heard some say that things like music or yoga or running are requirements for them to do this. Some say the television needs to be on but they’re not really watching it. Believe it or not: I even have neuro-diverse friends who use distraction-scrolling, online, to free their minds to mindless musings.

Those concepts are anathema to me. I find music to be exhausting despite loving it: if music is playing, you can be 100% certain that my attention will be focussed solely on it and its harmonies and musicality and dynamics and mood and message. [3] Similar things I could write about the others and scrolling must surely be worst of all.

So, for me, I think that sleep is my brain’s only chance to drift and my dreams are its only sand-box in which to play. [4]

Could one call such drifting and playfulness unnecessary for healthy human life? I shouldn’t think so.

I think that slumber offers the same to others who are either free of ADHD-related specialities, or are living with a different set, but they are rich with other chances to sort their thoughts[5] that are impossible for people like me.

Hence my unproven argument for the heightened importance and necessity of sleep for those with ADHD.

How could I back up this argument with citation? Have you any? Have you read anything of relevance or an opinion to put forth?

What could we conclude as a consequence? Perhaps this is the seed of an argument that any wholistic tackling of ADHD should necessarily amplify its emphasis on nurturing sleep and dream-time and warding against insomnia. [6]

Perhaps I am completely off the mark. [7]

Where shall we go with this, Beehaw? Throw your ideas into this petri-dish.

  1. Hello, Beehaw, and well met. Servus. Wazzup. ‘habe d’ Ehre. [8] I’m new here. I thought I’d just jump right in and make this – my first post – a proper challenging one. Testing the waters by diving into the deep end, as it were… I don’t know you but please Be(e) nice and help me add a “yet” on to that statement. ↩︎

  2. Ugh. I hate that acronym. I hate that label. ↩︎

  3. I cannot listen to the vast majority of over-produced podcasts or shows because of this. I would play a talk- or discussion-show for the ideas being discussed but my brain just goes, “oh, music!” and the words are reduced to noise. ↩︎

  4. I do enjoy games and many creative pursuits, too, but those waking hobbies are invariably approached with intense focus and presence. It takes active effort to prevent them from consuming me – see previous ramblings about forgetting I have a bladder. ↩︎

  5. Let me point out that I only experience ADHD-related inabilities to steer my attention the majority of the time. Sometimes – albeit rarely – I’m actually fine so I know what it feels like to be awake-but-drifting. I’m sure I’ve even meditated, before. ↩︎

  6. I think there is certainly a connection between ADHD and insomnia and finding citations for that would pose no challenge. Sleep-disruption is also listed amongst the side-effects of every ADHD medication’s package-insert that I’ve ever read. ↩︎

  7. I certainly do not mean to reinforce an us-and-them mentality or “claim” sleep for ADHD people in any way. I am simply intrigued by the idea that one could posit that sleep is of even-more importance and therefore more worthy of ever-more consideration. [9] ↩︎

  8. There. That’s about covered all the good greetings I can dredge up from the lands I’ve called, “home.” ↩︎

  9. Of course, I would argue that sleep goes tragically ignored in every population, beyond the charlatans peddling hacks and gimmicks. Today’s hypothetical does nothing to deny that. ↩︎