Clowning could be the best ADHD medicine by Alison

One of the quotes that sparked my continued pursuit of clowning was: "Instead of thinking that each problem you face is a tragedy, you can use the creative side of your brain-- which is likely to benefit from your ADHD traits--- to figure out a solution." (Fast Minds- Craig Surman and Tim Bilkey).

I gave up on my dream to be a therapeutic clown. I gave it up thirteen years ago when I dropped out of my theatre degree in Montreal, too depressed to continue. I married, moved to Ottawa and had two children. In 2023, was diagnosed with ADHD at 36 years old. I reignited my passion for theatre through improv, stand up and clowning healing from a painful separation and divorce. I have always found it difficult to express myself through writing, so the ease of communication through clowning helpful. I needed a new way to play and get out of my head. I believe clowning is all about resilence to chaos, externalizing that chaos in our lives and embracing it. Clowning is not therapy in itself but the effects of letting loose and laughing at yourself distracts my constantly changing mind and uplifts my usually defeated spirit. My brain connects things that are at random and creates ridiculous and unexpected results with absolutely no effort. My brain takes the reins and I let it loose like a bucking bronco.

I face misunderstandings from practically most of the systems and people I interact with. I am trying to inject clowning into everything I do to strengthen my ability to laugh at myself and the situations I have encountered. As soon as my invisible disability becomes visible--assumptions are made in customer services, public services and banking institutes because of the lack of education about ADHD. 

Clowning takes moral courage even in the face of disapproval. Being the only one in a crowd to take an unpopular stance requires resilience. That unpopular stance might be that we are foolish as a species. That we are unwise, we always think we know more than we do. 

What I have learned from clowning, is that it takes an individual who is courageous enough to be absolutely vulnerable in front of a crowd. To open up themselves and connect with the audience with their offer to connect. When I clown, I take the risk to celebrate vulnerability when it has a deep and lasting payoff for the audience. These opportunities to practice reaching for your inner child and other people's inner child is what has such an empowering effect on all people.  I am new to clowning but so far it grounds me and helps me to figure out who I am. The more I learn about clowning, the more it touches another issue I might have struggled with as an undiagnosed adult with ADHD.

Failure and celebrating failure is helping me to face my fears right now. This is absolutely freeing for me to experience when I am struggling to see my successes everyday. The act of acting out failure as a goal-- gives you room to see it in a different light and make more sense to your life that sometimes doesn't or didn't make sense before your ADHD diagnosis. Your failures and ability to fail in a planned and practiced way becomes your gift. It is an invaluable gift to society-- to celebrate failure and laugh in the face of fear and rejection.