In a book called Experiences and Explanations of ADHD: An Ethnography of Adults Living with a Diagnosis, Mikka Nielsen notes that “time is central” in people’s experiences of the diagnosis, and proposes a rhythmanalysis, which takes a philosophical view on the rhythms of society.
Essentially, she says ADHDers operate at a different speed than the rest of the world, which causes a kind of temporal dissonance, a constant struggle against a world that’s not moving in time with you.
We know the biomedical term proposed for this is “timeblindness” — but I hate this word. A rhythmanalysis approach feels less pathologizing, because it considers our context.
In particular, she uses the work of Marxist sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre, who analyzed the rhythms of urban spaces and their effects on humanity.
He says:
“Everywhere there is interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm.”
Lefebvre acknowledges that everyone’s bodily rhythms are varied and multiple:
“We each have our preferences and frequencies...the body consists of a bundle of rhythms, different but in tune.”
He describes these personal tempos as “a garland of rhythms, one could say a bouquet.”
ADHD as Desynchronization
Based in these ideas, Nielsen says we can view ADHD as “a relational phenomenon in reference to time” and “a desynchronization between the individual and their surroundings.”
She interviews several ADHDers about their bodily restlessness, the feeling of absolutely needing to get up and pace a room or bounce a leg, and also about their feeling of being out-of-sync with other people.
Using her “body as a metronome”, she feels this desynchronization in her own experience as interviewer - her subjects often seemed to be far ahead of her questions and going off on tangents she didn’t anticipate.
(Russell Barkley and friends, it seems, are also using their bodies as a metronome, ascribing syndromes to people who are out of time with their own judgements of “normal” temporality.)
“We can understand the restlessness connected to ADHD and the feeling of speediness as a kind of rhythmic dis-harmony,” Nielsen writes.
If harmony is made of balance and rhythm in combination, it makes sense that someone who is temporally out of step with the world around them would feel dysphoric, and that the people around them would also struggle to deal with such dis-harmony.
ADHD and Chrononormativity
Nielsen pulls in another idea from a different field - the concept of chrononormativity in queer theory, which has also been used “to analyse the general comprehension of autism as a development disorder.”
In order for someone’s development to be “abnormal”, there must be a “normal” development - this timeline of developmental standards was codified by child psychologists in the early 1900’s.
Chrononormativity says that queer people are “out of sync with society’s expectations for people to follow a specific chronology in life.”
We are often late bloomers — while our peers are having their first kisses, we are watching from the closet. While our friends are getting married and pregnant in their early 20’s, we are still finding ourselves.
Many of us who don’t come out until we are adults feel like we have lost decades, like we are playing catch-up, like we are truly experiencing love for the first time in mid-life.
ADHD also situates us outside of chrononormativity. We switch jobs once a year or more, we stay up all night and sleep into the afternoon, we reinvent ourselves constantly to avoid the crushing weight of existential boredom.
“Our bodies are expected to adapt to the temporal regime of society and follow the rhythm of a seven-day week and eight-hour job,” Nielsen writes of chrononormativity.
Many of us cannot do this, and we suffer for it.
Rituals of Self-Stimulation
Nielsen also explores stimming (although she doesn’t call it this) in a philosophical sense, using the work of anthropologist Mark Goodwin.
She refers to it as “rituals of self-stimulation” that “enable the body to become the moment - a body that accrues time as a penalty in the form of under-stimulation, and that perceives this time as a burden.”
Physiologically, stimming allows us to work out pent up energy and emotion and avoid overstimulation, but I love the idea that our bodies accrue time as a penalty.
Stimming acts as our own kind of metronome, a rhythm that can ground us when we feel like spiralling:
“By performing body rocking, the individual is immersed into a world they control, and time is made entirely on its own, at least momentarily.”
Nielsen then asks: If people with ADHD are operating faster than everyone else, wouldn’t the acceleration of modern life be beneficial? Everything seems to be speeding up as technology advances, but she says this can actually make our feelings of inner chaos worse.
“Acceleration is not necessarily productive...Figuratively speaking, as a traffic jam is often the result of too many car drivers wanting to move too quickly at once, transforming speed into slowness, so does over-stimulation and acceleration sometimes lead to distress and disablement.”
Barkley claims that ADHD is “destroying the timing and timeliness of human behavior”, but rhythmanalysis gives us a path out of this apocalyptic condemnation.
We are on our own time. The challenge is figuring out how to find our own balance and rhythm with the world around us, to create our own kind of harmony.
As some one diagnosed with adult adhd you triggered a couple revelations: 1. my 70+ year old father invariably gets up and paces a room when he visits me, and has bounced a leg all my life. 2. in regards to staying up all night and sleeping until the afternoon. I have done that all my life, as a child I would literally fall asleep one hour before I needed to wake up to catch the bus for school. I just thought that was because I am a night owl. I was born in 1968 and even though my brother was diagnosed with adhd as a child (he was born in 1971) I wasn't until adulthood. As a female, I often wonder if the different ways each gender deals with the issue meant I was totally overlooked and not diagnosed until I read up and self advocated.
Thank you for writing this article, it was very informative, unexpectedly revealing and validating.