This ongoing list is terminology I have coined to help myself minimize ADHD-related thought processes by quickly putting words to the cognitions.

If you are not ADHD, this list will not be of much help to you. If you are ADHD, it might be helpful to memorize this list, presuming you don’t have other words that are more helpful to you.

The terms are coined for maximum salience, because to recognize this shit in your own head you need concise and memorable words. All terms my coinages unless otherwise noted.

blurring: losing attention / zoning out, such that it’s less salient, less conscious, and so forth.

whomping: when voices/words become “whompa womp womp” in your head as you’re losing attention.

veering: slight deviations from the task at hand, such as clicking to other tabs when you’re working on something. not inherently bad, but can lead to blurring if you’re not careful.

reattending (“reatt” for short): the opposite of veering; refocusing or reattending to the thing you want to focus on.

headsanding: exactly what it sounds like. putting your attention to some distraction to avoid thought about something else.

do-sanding: doing an activity to avoid thought.

scrollsanding: perpetually scrolling through feeds (usually low-information feeds) to avoid thought.

ostrich: a pejorative for a person who shamefully headsands.

locking: getting hyperfocused on an activity such that you’re losing attention of your big-picture tasks (the most salient example for a lot of people: getting hyperfocused on cleaning)

autolying: the period of acute denial when you realize you’ve been caught off task. “are you fucking off?” — “NO… wait, yes.”

ponging: being unable to decide something and not consciously using a methodology for the decision, so you alternate between two options in a fast pace way a la pong until panic compels you to pick one.

Chinese Room-ing: repeating the verbatim/literal/rote details of something to trick others, or yourself, into believing that you are paying attention without actually understanding the point/idea/spirit of what you’re talking about — or the overarching principle, or the central premise, or whatever. comes from Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought experiment. (it might be helpful to google this.)

adhdhole: the rabbit hole of thought from adhd thought process, or when something is forgotten due to adhd tangents. (“we went down an adhdhole about the best place to get margaritas” / “we were going to talk about rent yesterday but it got adhdholed”)