Changing Gears

This month for Mind Matters, I’m going to tell you a bit of a personal story. Early on in my relationship with my partner, who has ADHD, I noticed there was a pattern of behavior between us that would often leave me feeling a bit sour. Whenever I asked them to do something — whether it was taking out the trash, grabbing something from the car, or any task that required them to stop what they were doing — the response would be a big sigh or drawn-out groan. 

For context, I am someone who pays a lot of attention to my environment, and when I see that something needs doing, I do it. Better now than later. I am constantly stopping my current project or task to attend to other things that demand my attention. I used to believe that it was normal for everyone to do that. So to me, this reaction came across as a gesture of annoyance or frustration and, after a while, I started to feel hesitant about asking for help. I worried that I was nagging and sometimes felt hurt because what seemed like simple requests to me were often met with such reluctance and pushback. The story I told myself was that they didn't care — but that wasn’t the case at all.

You see, neurodiverse brains just work differently. Many often struggle with having to stop one task to start another. This is an executive function skill that we call 'task-switching' in psychology. For most neurotypical people, doing a task is kind of like riding a 10-speed bike with well-oiled gears. It requires effort of course, but it’s usually fairly easy to adapt to the condition of the road. Switching tasks, like me pausing work on this article to make lunch for example, is like turning onto a new street with a slight slope, and quickly shifting into a lower gear to adjust for the change. No big deal. 

However, for someone who is neurodiverse, their brain can sometimes operate like a bike with a sticky shifter. Once they get into the right gear, it’s easy enough to travel along, but it’s the shifting itself that causes trouble. Building on this analogy, being asked to do something else can feel like cruising along in high gear, only to suddenly be faced with a sharp turn onto that street with the hill. 

Oof. Not only is their mental momentum geared towards what they were already doing, but for many ADHDers, their ‘bike’ isn’t built for quick adaptability. It can take significantly more time and effort to find the appropriate gear to tackle that very same incline. This makes task-switching feel less like a simple change in direction and more like a real uphill battle, both mentally and emotionally.

This explains why autistic and ADHD individuals can get into a hyper-focus mode; forgetting to eat or use the bathroom, or stop whatever they are currently doing to attend to something else (even if it would only take a minute or two). They’re cruising along in their current gear and conserving energy by maintaining momentum on the task at hand. There is a cost to stopping and changing direction halfway up a hill — it becomes A LOT harder to get started again.

For those around them, this challenge can be baffling and, at times, frustrating. The effort it takes to change gears can manifest as behaviors like the hyperfocus, time-blindness, inactive listening, forgetfulness, or deferring tasks with an "I’ll do it later." From the outside, it might seem like laziness or disinterest, but internally, it’s their brain striving to be efficient in its own way. 

Understanding this has been transformative for me. I learned that my partner’s sigh or groan wasn’t about annoyance or frustration with me asking them to do something — it was about the monumental effort their brain anticipated in needing to change tasks. This realisation has helped me approach these moments with more grace and less resentment. 

I’ve also come to see how harmful it can be to assign meaning to behaviors we don’t fully understand. Early on, I misinterpreted these reactions to my requests as a lack of care, which led to feelings of irritation and unhelpful reactions on my part. But as I grew to understand the way neurodivergent minds work, I was able to offer support and find ways for us to collaborate better as a couple. Nowadays, anytime I need something, I queue it up on a joint to-do list app that we both share. It may sound weird, but it works for us. I can set the destinations (or tasks) and my partner gets to plan a route that better suits the way their bike (I mean, brain) works. Stuff actually gets done and I don’t have to feel bad about asking — It’s a win/win!

In my counselling practice, I see many couples grappling with similar challenges. Friction often arises when partners have different neurotypes, with one or both of them struggling to navigate behaviors of the other that feel foreign or ill-natured. As a society, we often wrongly assume there’s a ‘one-size-fits-all’ to the way our brains work, but that’s far from the truth. There is a fundamental level of biodiversity within our own species — called neurodiversity, and it has big impacts on not only how we think, but how we function in the world and in our relationships.

Contrary to how it may seem, this is both a good and necessary thing. Although skills such as task-switching can be a challenge for some, neurodivergent brains often excel in creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, bringing fresh perspectives and clever solutions to problems others might overlook.  Our world truly needs people with these sorts of strengths. 

It’s estimated that 15-25% of the population is neurodivergent, meaning someone you know, love, or maybe even you yourself regularly experiences these kinds of challenges. My hope is that by sharing this story, I can help others grow their awareness and better understand how to show up for and support their neurodivergent loved ones.