Embracing Your Inner IMP: Celebrating the ADHD Within

By Rick Silver, MD

An essay on coming to terms with my own neurodivergence/ impulsivity.

I am a 70-year-old psychiatrist. I have been told that I have ADHD, hyperactive impulsive type.

More than just a name, it is the creature dancing at the core of my being, very much alive, writhing, demanding constantly to be released, the genie that emerges to spit fire and pull verdant mountains from the flat, dry earth.

Despite guiding many patients to embrace this wonderful and challenging way of experiencing life, I have – for myself -- wrestled with this being for decades. Its many moods – swinging wildly from subtle and charming to overpowering and offensive – have rushed through me like a powerful, never-ending tide.

It is a force that - when focused - creates edifices, novel and fantastic, unimaginable and unimagined by other’s; and - when unbridled - tears those same edifices down, sending them crashing to the ground.

More than once, I have enjoyed the applause of a job well done. More than once, I have suffered as I painstakingly gathered the pieces of another shattered dream or relationship, unable to grasp how or why this devil inside me chose one course of action over another.

I have wielded this double-edged sword as it cut both ways but was never fully in charge: maybe this time, I could channel the angel to manifest magnificent outcomes. Or would the imp triumph once again, mischievous and disruptive, my own personal Loki – a trickster god, neither fully good nor evil, but aiming always to create chaos?

But chaos is the stuff of gods, the raw, untamed energy of our universe, twirling into existence trillions of galaxies spun across unimaginable distances; and damning those same creations to the crushing gravity of black holes, tearing substance to shreds at the speed of light, light itself drawn into unfathomable vortices, snuffed out for eternity -- Brahma and Shiva, side by side in their eternal dance of creation and destruction.

Angels and devils are we humans, each of us inheriting in some small measure the immense powers of god, at times a spark of the universal light, and at others a broken shard of god’s great vessel. We seek balance, a safe middle ground, teetering precariously between salvation and damnation.

But for some of us, the pendulum swings unpredictably, and time and again we lose the dignity of center. We are imps when the world calls us to be good. We barrel past boundaries, thinking ourselves funny and charming – but blithely unaware how our behaviors offend those around us with more measured sensibilities. We are impulsive, impudent, impossible.

And lonely.

We arrive at the gathering with the energy of clowns, bold and brash, hoping this time to land the joke. But what laughter may come dies quickly and the crowd drifts away, polite faces hiding words that would shame us if spoken aloud. Their silence is crushing, their message roaring inside our ears: Please. Just grow up. Just for once: get it right.

But every story, as the saying goes, has so many sides. Only recently -- as I’ve held my humiliation in my hands, turning it over, searching its rough, raw face for some hopeful, undiscovered facet -- have I seen a glimmer, the possibility of a gem within the impenetrable stone.

Look, hold it just this way, can you see that spark? Hold it so the words of others don’t matter, hold it so their expectations melt away under this new light, hold it so your own words rise, hot and shimmering, potent and powerful: I am not wrong. I am not broken. I am not less than.

I am an imp, but on my terms -- creative, energetic, charismatic, risk taking, out of the box. My mind brings colors and shapes to the world that others are not yet able to see. I am funny, visionary, loud, charming, engaging and intentionally annoying. Forces run through me, rivers of ideas, waves of feelings, and I channel them, offering again and again these gifts from beyond.

And I am soft. And loving. And kind.

If this then is ADHD, so be it. If my energy overwhelms, see it as an invitation to your greatness. If my presence jars you, feel the swirl of possibility within your own bones. If my voice rings powerfully in your ears, hear it too in the deepest wells of your heart. It is there that your imp awaits, coiled and ready to spring, beckoning your courage to play again like a child.