A theatre curtain is a remarkably efficient way to hide work.
From a seat in the audience, I can see whether the performance has started. Behind the curtain, someone might be shifting a wall, finding a missing prop or waiting for a cue that hasn’t arrived. I see the pause. I cannot see everything the pause contains.
That is where I want to begin with metaphors for ADHD: with the limits of my view.
I don’t have ADHD. Members of my family have diagnosed ADHD, and I have witnessed its effects firsthand. That makes me a family member with a perspective, not someone who knows what ADHD feels like from the inside. Their private experiences remain theirs to tell.
A useful comparison can help me question an assumption. It cannot give me possession of another person’s experience. Nor should it become a description I insist they accept because I happen to like the wording.
The images that follow concern different things: getting started, keeping track of an intention, judging time, finding an order among competing demands. They are ways into a conversation. Nobody has to recognise themselves in all of them, or any of them.
1. The work behind the curtain
Imagine the curtain staying closed while the audience grows impatient. From the seats, the apparent solution is obvious. Open it.
But opening it does not put the scenery in place.
I find this a useful image for the difference between a visible result and the work needed to produce it. An unanswered message is visible. The difficulty involved in returning to it, deciding what to say and keeping that intention available long enough to act is much harder for another person to see.
ADHD can involve difficulties with attention, organisation and completing tasks. The National Institute of Mental Health’s overview of adult ADHD describes these as difficulties that can interfere with everyday functioning. A quiet exterior does not tell me whether any of that work is easy.
The curtain helps me remember the uncertainty. It does not tell me what is happening backstage in a particular person’s life. I still have to ask, and accept that they might not want to give me a tour.
There is another limit here. People are allowed to be doing nothing. Respect should not depend on discovering that someone was secretly working very hard all along.
2. The car that has to be hotwired
In a discussion about ADHD metaphors on r/adhdwomen, Reddit user u/grandtheftautumn0 describes owning a car without knowing that other people have keys:
“You always assumed everyone had to hotwire it all the time”
The commenter explicitly limits the comparison to executive dysfunction, rather than claiming it covers all of ADHD. That qualification matters as much as the image.
What catches my attention is the preparation hidden inside an apparently ordinary act. From outside, two cars eventually move. One driver may have had a much more difficult time getting theirs started.
I can imagine how easily an observer might miss that distinction. Once the car moves, the earlier difficulty becomes inconvenient evidence. See? You could do it.
Except doing something once tells us very little about the effort required, or whether the same approach will work next time. URevolution’s guide to ADHD and difficulty starting tasks looks more closely at the gap between intending to act and beginning.
I would use the hotwiring image to ask what makes a start difficult, not to announce that I have found the key. It is an anonymous person’s comparison, not clinical evidence, and it does not mean everyone with ADHD is missing the same piece of equipment.
3. A message written in disappearing ink
Picture a small note on a kitchen table. Reply to the message. Take the form. Bring the thing you promised.
Now picture the words fading while something else needs attention.
This is an image I would offer cautiously for the difficulty of keeping an intention present. The message mattered when it was written. Its disappearance does not retrospectively make it unimportant.
Remembering daily tasks can be difficult with ADHD. The ink is only a comparison; it is not an account of how memory works, and ADHD does not mean that every memory fades or that somebody cannot remember the people they love.
That last distinction deserves room. A missed reply can hurt. It can also be a poor measure of affection. I don’t think a family relationship benefits when every forgotten action becomes a test of how much someone cares.
Nor does the metaphor erase consequences. The form may still need submitting. Someone may still be waiting. A useful conversation can acknowledge both the effect of the missed action and the difficulty behind it, without turning either person into the villain.
If this comparison fits, I would ask whether an agreed written reminder would help. I would also ask what kind, and when. A reminder chosen together is a different proposition from appointing myself supervisor of another adult’s memory.
4. A calendar viewed through a telescope
A telescope brings a distant object close. Reverse it and the same object seems much farther away. Nothing has happened to the object. The apparent distance has changed.
I think of a deadline that way: the date is fixed, but its felt nearness may not be. Tomorrow can be understood as a fact without feeling close in the way someone else expects.
ADHD can involve difficulty managing time and planning. A telescope gives me a way to think about a mismatch between knowing a date and organising the stretch of time before it. It does not explain the whole difficulty, and it certainly does not mean people with ADHD are unaware of clocks.
Otherwise the advice would be wonderfully simple. Buy a clock. Perhaps two, for a complicated case.
The question I would rather ask is which part of the timing is difficult. Estimating how long something takes? Noticing how much time has passed? Working backwards from the moment of departure? Those are different problems, even when the visible result is the same late arrival.
A smaller, agreed checkpoint might be worth discussing. So might a clear departure time rather than only an arrival time. These are possibilities to choose together, not a system I can prescribe from the comfortable position of being someone else.
5. A queue with no numbers
Imagine walking into a waiting room where everyone has an appointment, nobody has a numbered ticket, and several people are already at the desk.
There is plenty to attend to. The trouble is establishing what happens next.
AI-generated illustration: URevolution / Midjourney
This comparison helps me separate having things to do from having a usable order in which to do them. An email, a household task and a half-finished application can all be present without arranging themselves into a sensible queue.
It also directs some attention towards the person making the demands. If I hand someone several requests and call all of them urgent, I have not supplied a priority. I have supplied several requests.
I would rather be specific: this one needs doing today; that one can wait; let’s agree what happens if there isn’t time for both. Where possible, the person doing the work should help decide the order.
Of course, a numbered queue does not solve every difficulty. Knowing what comes first and being able to start it are different matters. The comparison is useful only while it helps us locate a problem more precisely.
6. A sentence with an unreliable pause button
A thought arrives in a conversation. There is a moment between having it and saying it, a small space in which another person might still be speaking.
An unreliable pause button is one way I can picture difficulty holding back a response. Impulsivity, including interrupting, can occur with ADHD. The comparison concerns that pause; it says nothing about a person’s intelligence or how much they value the speaker.
It would be easy to make this image insulting. An adult is not a remote-controlled appliance, and I don’t get to operate the buttons.
What I can do is separate a conversation about interruption from a verdict about someone’s character. People should be able to finish what they are saying. Someone who interrupts should also be able to discuss what makes that difficult without being told they are simply selfish.
If an agreed signal helps, it needs to be agreed. If it feels humiliating, that matters. A technique that makes one person feel managed may be a poor bargain, however orderly the conversation becomes.
Where a metaphor stops helping
There is a danger in finding a comparison satisfying. I might start listening for evidence that it is right.
Then someone tells me their experience is different, and I am tempted to defend the metaphor. The queue is a good metaphor. I have spent time on the queue.
They owe the queue nothing.
People with ADHD can choose their own language, including language I would hesitate to use about them. Someone might find a fast-machine comparison funny or a superpower description affirming. Another person might hear the same words as pressure to make a disabling condition entertaining or impressive.
I don’t need to settle that disagreement on their behalf. I do need to avoid treating one person’s preferred description as permission to apply it to everyone.
There is also a difference between recognising an image and having ADHD. Many people forget tasks, lose track of time or interrupt occasionally. Clinical assessment considers a persistent, impairing pattern across situations, alongside a developmental history. Relating to a metaphor cannot do that work.
For a family member, the more immediate risk is using an analogy as a substitute for believing someone. If a person must produce a brilliant comparison before I take their difficulty seriously, I have made understanding unnecessarily expensive.
That is one reason the discussion of ADHD ableism belongs beside the discussion of language. A person should not have to make their experience easy for me to imagine before it counts.
I can leave room for an answer
My family connection gives me a reason to care about this subject. It does not make my interpretation the final word.
I can offer an image and ask whether it fits. If it does, we might get closer to a useful conversation about what would help. If it doesn’t, I can put it down without making someone explain why my explanation failed.
I am still in the audience. The curtain does not become transparent because I have written about it.
There is room for a plain sentence, too: I believe you. You don’t have to find another way to say it.
