My ADHD Life in Colour

Talk about seeing something visual…

I started my ADHD journey with Right To Choose (an NHS pathway here in the U.K.) over a year ago and despite receiving my diagnosis a fair while back, I have only been in titration for a couple of months.

Why is that relevant? Well because when I tried my new ADHD meds, I felt, for the first time in my life, like a functioning person.

One of the coping strategies I found for focussing at work was to colour in. Trust me when I say this has definitely become a bit of a hyper fixation! Every single shop I went into I was looking for pens, for colouring books, on my birthday, that’s what I wanted buying for me, I thought about colouring almost every minute of every day.

So, my job, when broken down into its most basic components is talking on the phone and processing information. I know what I say off by heart/memory (gosh that makes it sound dull.. I’m not a robot; I’ll blog about it!) and I’m actually quite good at it.

Before the colouring I would complete number games (think Sudoku and the like) and previous to that I would have countless fidget toys which I’d break and wear out stupidly fast.

I’d also end up throwing them across the room many times a day.. maybe that’s an ADHD thing too, or maybe that is me being clumsy. Who knows!

BUT! Colouring. This is why I am trying to write this.

Oh distractions… haha.

Colouring is a way to busy my hands and busy the part of my brain that craves to be busy and needs to direct attention somewhere. It might not work for everyone but it certainly works for me.

Pre-meds my colouring was bright and funky and exciting. It was new and allowed my focus at work to stay where it needed to be.

After starting meds (Xaggitin XL) I can safely say my colouring went next level. My pens were wearing out within a week, I was finishing whole colouring books during that time too and trust me when I say that I was staying within the lines better than ever.

I’ll do another post about the meds and the results in regards to work, because that is pretty cool too! Although, and here is the interesting part (to me.. at least!), for various reasons I’ve had to stop taking them and my colouring.. well. Let’s just say that it took a turn.

My colour palette changed. Significantly. The selection of vibrant colours I had favoured got put away in the pen pot (which usually sat redundant and empty on my desk day and night), and out came grey.

Grey. Four differing shades of grey, to be precise. Oh, and black. So actually, correction; three shades of grey and a black.

My exciting, colourful, rainbow pages turned to black and grey. My amazing therapist asked why and my answer was simple.

Overwhelm.

Overwhelm from the choices, with the colours, with the empty space that stared up at me from the page.

Those things, hurt my head. I couldn’t comprehend how to start and how to literally put (coloured) pen to paper. Too hard. Too challenging. Couldn’t do it.

I spent about two weeks working solely with these four colours. Taking my time, considered choices for each element; so different to my speed and style before.

Coming off these meds, almost made me struggle in a completely new way. Far more intense. I think, in part this is because I had a glimpse of ‘how life could be’.

Experiencing something so amazing and so powerful and then having that taken away, well it’s a hard pill to swallow (or not, as the case may be).

I’ve tried to find a balance now.

It has helped that I’ve been booked in for a medication review this Sunday coming, which has given me hope again that there will be something else that will work just as well and not have the same detrimental effects on my physical health. Everything crossed. Double crossed. Triple crossed!

Sorry… Back to the colouring… it is now a mix of both black and grey and colour. I’m trying to bring my vibrancy back into my days. When I feel that overwhelm (it likes to saunter into the office at least a couple of times a day), I’ll go back to the black and grey. I take a break, and then try again with some colour.

I’m hoping I’ll be back to my full rainbow self shortly, but for now I’m just trying to get by the best I can. Sometimes everything, literally everything is a struggle and at the moment, that’s where I’m at.

These small changes of adding colour back in are hard but it’s helping. I never thought I’d be able to describe my mental state in such a visual way, but here it it. My life in black and white. And colour. Sometimes.

Photos to follow!