attention rebels: redefining ADHD
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a visual zine, a plain-text/written version, and an easy-listening audio.
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Please credit Gillian Hestad (Divergent North) as the writer.
Suggested credit line: “© Gillian Hestad, Divergent North — used with permission.
Attention, Rebels — Blog Edition
Dear Reader,
You’ve probably been told ADHD is a disorder, a deficit, and a laundry list of problems to fix.
This zine doesn’t repeat those stories.
Instead of chasing what ADHD isn’t, let’s explore what it IS. It’s not medical advice. It’s not a “cure”. It’s not another lecture about “trying harder”.
It’s an experiment. A map. A flashlight beam sweeping over the clutter of all the words piled on us, asking:
what if they’re wrong?
This is for ADHDers who’ve carried shame, for allies trying to understand, and for the curious who suspect the old frame doesn’t fit.
If we strip away the judgment statements, what ADHD is “not”, how it compares to other brains, or how behaviours conform to systems—
What IS ADHD? what remains?
A Neurotype*
ADHD belongs within the wide constellation of human neurodiversity*.
Neurodiversity = human brain diversity. Like biodiversity, but for minds. *Brains come in many flavours. adhd is just one menu item.
These traits have always existed — across cultures, across generations — and have been selected for evolution because they brought something vital for survival:
quick adaptation, humor, creativity, curiosity, boldness in the face of the unknown, spontaneity, resilience...
oh, and despite public misconception, neurotypical isn’t a neurotype. It’s a privilege that comes from performing what society expects — staying on time, staying in line, staying the same. It’s not a brain wiring. It’s a reward for your ability to conform.
… it all comes down to this.
An adhd neurotype is uniquely tuned for salience: what stands out as meaningful, urgent, or alive in the present moment.
Attention flows toward what resonates now.
Energy ignites when the moment sparks curiosity, connection, novelty, or possibility.
Emotion and movement surge in response to what feels alive.
This is the through-line: ADHD traits converge around salience — a nervous system tuned to meaning in the present.
… if at this point you are thinking, “here we go, another jaded therapist who says ADHD is a superpower and doesn’t see how hard this is...”, stick with me. We are just getting started, and I bet you can’t guess where we are going.
your Attention please
Attention isn’t scattered. It’s tuned.
…an idea sparking at midnight, a playlist cover that swallows hours, a joke that detonates louder than the whole room.
The spotlight swings to whatever feels alive now:
It isn’t a lack of will. It’s the nervous system wired for resonance.
When the spark catches — hyperfocus.
When it doesn’t — paralysis.
Senses
Senses are vibrant and tuned to notice more.
Every sound, smell, flicker, vibe makes it through. Where other brains may filter, we feel it all.
... and the world doesn’t arrive quietly.
Noisy fridge. Perfume across the room. The scrape of a chair like thunder in your skull. The shimmer of light through leaves. The exact laugh of a friend across the street. The texture of fabric so rich you lose yourself in it.
But also:
ADHD senses are tuned wide open. Sometimes it overwhelms. Sometimes it delights. Always it reminds us: the world is vivid, alive, impossible to ignore.
Movement & Emotion
In ways we can see: legs bouncing, hands tapping, pacing grooves in the floor... It’s how the system steadies itself. Movement is regulation.
And the heart does the same. Emotions pour through wide-open gates. They rush loud and full, demanding movement, voice, release.
This is coherence. It’s a different rhythm of being alive. A dance of ebbs, flows, surges, and floods. Ways our system stays tethered to salience — alive to what matters now...
Flooded senses spark the body into motion. and some we can’t: heart racing, thoughts darting, an invisible inner storm.
Time
Time bends. Minutes stretch into forever, then vanish in a blink.
Urgency flips the ignition — everything gets done NOW.
This is a nervous system wired for lived time, not the revered “clock time” we have grown to see as normal.
A Ferrari Engine with Bicycle Brakes … and the Terrain
a high-performance brain isn’t broken if it struggles in a relatively new evolutionary environment.
A common metaphor says ADHD brains are like Ferrari engines with bicycle brakes, capturing speed and responsiveness but overlooking the terrain. Drop a Ferrari F1 car into a desert and it will seem defective.
Slip ADHD into rigid tracks — standardized classrooms, 9–5 cubicles, endless forms — and we’re told we’re failures.
But the terrain is wrong, NOT the engine.
school as factory
Desks = assembly lines. Age grades. Rigid schedules. Uniform curriculum.
Bells = shift changes.
For salience-tuned brains, this is friction.
The spark of curiosity, dismissed as “off task.” Movement, punished rather than understood. Thought that wanders, labelled unfocused.
We didn’t fail school. School failed us. It graded compliance, not meaning.
time as control
Bells cracked the day into shifts. Plantations turned hours into quotas. Railroads cut the world into zones for profit.
on time = good.
late = lazy.
minutes = worth.
But ADHD brains don’t run on clocks.
We run on resonance: urgency, interest, connection — these spark ignition.
At work, that rhythm is punished. Hours logged, not meaning made.
Burnout is the cost of passing as “on schedule.”
Clocks aren’t natural. They were built to measure labor — time as control. Time shifted from tool to moral law.
Capitalism, Colonialism & Disorder
ADHD traits once kept communities alive. tuned to signals. quick to act. bold in the face of unknowns.
Colonial capitalism flipped the script.
restless = disruptive. spontaneous = dangerous. different = defective.
Medicine sealed it. Behaviors pathologized. “Disorder” stamped in books. deficit. dysfunction. delay.
The truth: disability isn’t in the brain. It’s in the collision — a salience-tuned neurotype forced to survive systems of meaninglessness and conformity.
Meaning Over Monotony
ADHD shines when life lights up with meaning. Urgency. Curiosity. Connection. Novelty. That’s our compass.
Every distraction, surge of feeling, restless move were threads pointing back to salience. A nervous system tuned to resonance in the present.
What IS ADHD?
Now that we’ve scratched out the labels that never fit, what remains?
Here’s ADHD — in our own words...
ADHD is a neurotype — a natural and enduring way human brains and bodies are wired.
It’s tuned for salience: what feels alive, urgent, meaningful in the moment.
Calling it a “deficit” or a “disorder” is a value judgment, not an evidence-based truth.
ADHD can become disabling when a salience-tuned brain is forced into systems that demand “neurotypical” performance (clocks, conformity, efficiency, sameness), inviting us to imagine more expansive ways of learning, working, and being.
Environments, Hacks, & Self-Accommodation
these are survival tools. They’re refusals to burn down our nervous systems just to perform “normal.”
ADHD thrives when the world bends, even a little: soft light, flexible time, space to move.
And when it won’t? We hack it. Headphones. Stims. Playlists on loop. Timers turned into allies. Body-doubling with people who get it.
p.s. Want the receipts (aka sources)? I’ve collected them here
p.p.s. Science isn’t bad — but it is biased, and we deserve to read it critically.
Thanks for reading. :)
Take what resonates, leave the rest.
Just know: you are not broken, and you are not alone.
TL;DR
ADHD is a neurotype, not a defect.
ADHD brains are tuned to salience: attention, movement, senses, time, and emotion organize around what feels meaningful in the moment.
Friction emerges where clock-time, conformity, meaningless effort, and compliance are treated as moral goods.
Change the terrain (environment, expectations, supports), and ADHDers thrive.
