ADHD is not a Ferrari with bad brakes by Gabriel

Many of us ADHDers have heard about the analogy that our brain is a Ferrari with bicycle breaks created by Dr. Hallowell. And while I respect him and understand that this is only an analogy and that ADHD is not easily defined, as a car enthusiast, I beg to differ.

If we are going to use a car to describe the ADHD brain it’s definitely not a refined Ferrari but more like an old muscle car, inefficient brakes, ridiculously overpowered, and essentially the suspension of a horse wagon.
As an ADHDer you are behind the wheel of a car that just doesn’t want to turn enough when you need to turn (understeer = decision paralysis) and that when you step on the gas a little harder its back slides out and spin more than you want (oversteer = impulsivity).

So you have to compensate for those errors all the time… ALL. THE. TIME.

Every millisecond you are trying to use it to navigate life, you are calculating, predicting, correcting, correcting the correction, screaming for dear life (rejection sensitivity), trying to remain behind the wheel, pulling yourself using said wheel as a handle rather than as a direction control instrument, all while experiencing a deep feeling of shame for being a worthless driver (self-discrepancy gap).

And it doesn’t stop there. The gas pedal sometimes gets stuck (hyperfocus), so good luck stopping, even if you had those Ferrari brakes. You have to learn the tricks that get it unstuck and pray that it works on time.

— Speaking of time, what time is it? — Said Inner Voice A
— Oops, we just blew through the red light on “I-should-go-to-sleep Street”! — Screamed Inner Voice B
— You truly are the worst driver! — Said yet another, Inner Voice C
— You are inept since we were kids and I feel unsafe, this is not going to end well — the voice continued.
— Anyway, that gas pedal is still stuck… — Voice A ignoring, as usual, Voice C
— What if we give a little skewed-to-the-right kick on the pedal to get it unstuck! — that was the always witty Inner Voice D, suddenly jumping in with a solution.
— Maybe — answered Voice A — but now that we are accelerating, “Very-important-deadline Avenue” is not that far so we might as well use the momentum to get there early… Can you guys imagine, everyone will love us.
— There!!! It worked, pedal unstuck!!! I save the day, again!!
— But what about “Very-Important-Deadline Avenue”? Well, I guess we can just keep going, and it would be heal… th… zzzzzzzzz —little did Voice A know that he was only human, the deadline wasn’t met. Alas, yes Hyperfocus is a superpower; but is an unreliable superpower really super?

Did I mention this muscle car is haunted? It is, a thousand voices inhabit the car. So it gets noisy.
The voices aren’t the only contributors to the noise, the radio turns itself on and sometimes it gets locked on, sometimes the tuner changes randomly.

Frankly it’s exhausting, so much that minivans look enviable in comparison: no surprises, comfortable, everything fits in there, not too fast or too slow, 360 camera view. The only problem is that, you know, it’s a minivan (I have nothing against minivans, in my old age I actually kind of like them).

I try to remind myself to keep driving and have fun doing it, embrace the challenge, embrace the muscle car, because I’m stuck with it but also because it can also be so, so FUN and interesting, charming, and cool.
If we just keep driving, exploring the tricks on how to tame it, taking care of it, servicing it properly; maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to glide through the highway with the full moon shining on that roof.

It will probably still scare the heck out of us, but we’ll laugh, put it back on gear and keep driving.

Turn it into a project car. Car lovers do not always like their cars but they are called car lovers for a reason. As much as they dislike walking up for a nice drive only to find a poodle of oil under their vehicle, they love to put in the time and effort to work on them, and then working some more on their dysfunctional, quirky, annoying project cars.
Get yourself a nice toolbox (like the CADDAC blog), read and get wrenching. You will never turn it into a fully self-driving minivan, but if you could, would you really want to?

May this help you when minivan people (god bless them, we know they mean well) complain about your “bad driving habits” and say things like: “If you really cared, you’d drive better!” or “Why didn’t you turn when you had to?!” May you remember this analogy then and may they understand that it is not a driving style, it’s a precision-driving act.

Keep wrenching, you are doing it fine!