I had a light bulb moment recently, when a friend made a passing reference to a mutual acquaintance who “seemed lonely.” I was puzzled for a moment, since I had never thought so. Then I realized she was interpreting the acquaintance’s chattiness as social neediness.

This little pebble of insight dropped into my own history and rippled out into waves of new understanding. People have been making the same assumption about me, for the same reason, all my life.

My soliloquies aren’t usually as dire as this one.

BUT IT ISN’T TRUE. I’m talkative because I’m a verbal processor. Language is the primary filter through which I make sense of the events of my life. Whether due to ADHD or SPS or both, I engage intensely with my experiences. Ergo, they beget a LOT of processing.

The presence of others is not necessary for this processing to occur. I keep journals in multiple formats, and sometimes talk myself through tasks when I’m alone. Not that I don’t enjoy conversation with others, too. But chattiness is the manifestation of a need fulfilling itself, not a symptom of an unfulfilled need. No amount of social contact reduces my chattiness, unless it exhausts me so completely I can’t string two words together. Even (especially!) then, I’ll spend the next few days (or weeks) processing that conversation – and whether in thought, writing, or audio journal, processing it verbally.

I haven’t always been so clear about all of this. Decades of being misperceived as needy, gauche, or (heaven forbid!) under-controlled have, at times, caused me to feel ashamed of my verbalness, as if it betrayed some sort of insufficiency I was trying to hide. Yet all through those same decades, I was also praised and respected for articulacy and writing skill, often by the same people who disapproved of my chattiness.  As if well-developed skills were in no way related to constant practice! :o

A New Wrinkle

The “official” description of ADHD lists three defining characteristics, any/all of which may be present. One of these, hyperactivity, I don’t see in myself at all. I’m a little fidgety, but that’s about the extent of it.

And then there’s impulsivity, which I recognize more, but mostly as something I’ve already found my own strategies to manage. An issue of the past, in other words.

But then, in an ADHD support forum, someone mentioned continuing a conversation despite having the feeling that their conversation partner wanted to end it. I’m familiar with that. VERY familiar. So much so that I long since evolved a strategy to keep it from killing friendships – I instruct friends to let me know, kindly but early, and if necessary, repeatedly, when they need to wind down a conversation, without fear of repercussion.

But I never considered chattiness as related to ADHD. Until someone in the forum commented that medication had been helpful in reducing that situation, along with other occurrences of impulsivity.

Oooooohhhhhhh!

Before You Leap

Apparently, average adults experience automatic and minute pauses-for-reflection, during which they ask themselves without even realizing it whether the thing they’re about to do is a good idea. From my several decades of observation of humankind you could have fooled me, but supposedly that’s the norm.

Impulsivity is the absence of this pause, and causes drowned phones, buyer’s remorse, and realizing hours too late that a friend wasn’t into a conversation.

I have been labeled a compulsive talker more than once – often in highly judgmental and derogatory terms – but it has never been suggested, nor occurred to me (until now) that I am an IMpulsive talker!

The I in the Eye

As I learn more about ADHD and begin to recognize how it impacts my life, I’m philosophical about the fact that I can’t afford pricey assessment or treatment. Both seem to produce rather hit-or-miss results at this point in time for those who can afford them, so I may not be missing much. But now I’m curious whether prescription medication would affect my chattiness. If it’s an external reflection of my super-associative mind trying to digest omnidimensional experiences within the linearity of language, would drugs rein in my free-ranging thinking processes?

If so, would I like that?

Perhaps I begin to understand why even people who seem to be getting good results with ADHD medication sometimes stop taking it because, “I didn’t feel like myself.”

Identity is such a slippery thing. I have seen a lot of people confuse their identity with their mental or neurological disorder(s). This can be seriously problematic when it causes them to think distress is their natural state, and therefore nothing can be done about it. It’s an even bigger problem when someone rejects treatment because they mistake states of mind caused by disorder or disability for their innate personality.

I don’t want to make either of those errors, but I have to wonder: If chattiness turned out to be a symptom of ADHD rather than my true personality, after decades of people reacting to me chatting, and me reacting to their reactions, how long it would take me to wrap my mind around that?!