Staying Focused on God When You Have ADHD

In support of ADHD Awareness Week, here’s an encouraging piece on how you can

nurture your spiritual life and stay focused on God while navigating the complexities of ADHD.

Keeping the Lord at the forefront of your life is difficult for every Christian in every walk of life, but being a Christian with ADHD can present a number of unique challenges. Our brains’ chemical imbalances manifest in a host of symptoms that often make the pillars of faith – prayer, meditation, scripture reading, worship services – difficult, and sometimes even onerous. After all, this is a condition whose official diagnostic criteria includes “poor listening skills”, “squirms when seated”, has a “diminished attention span”, and experiences “marked restlessness that is difficult to control”.

After all, how do you pray when sitting still makes you want to jump out of your skin to the point of complete distraction? How do you read scripture when the text is so dense (and, sometimes, so boring) you find yourself either rereading sentences five times or glossing over them entirely? How do you attend church when half the time you struggle to focus on the preacher and the other half you’re trying not to distract the people around you with your fidgeting?

Looking long term, how can you be a good and faithful servant when you struggle to establish the habits and routines that get you to work on time or brush your teeth regularly, much less the ones that are supposed to help you grow into a mature faith?

As a Christian with ADHD, it is so easy to get down on yourself when your efforts almost inevitably lead to failure. To make matters worse, these struggles can be difficult to talk about for a number of reasons: coping mechanisms like masking make it hard to identify others like yourself; concerns like imposter syndrome may make you doubt the validity of your struggles; and negative experiences, with strangers and loved ones alike denying the very existence of your condition, can make you dread opening your mouth at all.

In the midst of so much guilt and shame, it can be tempting to excuse yourself from trying. To stop attending services, to put aside your bible, to cease praying. To say you can go no further because your disability renders you incapable.

I know from personal experience that there is a thin line between growing and burning out. It can be hard to tell the difference between rising to the challenge of spiritual growth and needlessly pushing yourself so hard you end up hurting yourself. It can be scary work to define your limitations, because you can’t always tell when something’s wrong until you’re down for the count.

But even in the face of it all – the shame, the guilt, the grueling work, the uncertainty – I want to encourage you, as your fellow pilgrim, to stay in the race. Yes, it is exhausting and scary and painful. Yes, you will fail over and over.

But take heart. ADHD or not, we are all falling short. That’s the whole point of Jesus’ perfect life, death, and resurrection – He did for us what we, in a thousand lifetimes and in a thousand different circumstances, never could.

Nothing we ever do will ever be enough to save ourselves – and an important step for the ADHD Christian is learning to accept that and learning to let go of the standard of perfection. I know it’s hard – that carefully crafted mask so often keeps us safe in a neurotypical world. But it has to go, because you’re running an ultramarathon and you don’t need any unnecessary weight.

Another (equally hard) step is to extend compassion to yourself. You have a disability. You will not be able to do everything a neurotypical person does. This doesn’t mean you’re less worthy, it means you require a different approach. The ADHD mind is highly innovative – so put that divergent thinking to use! Find the strategies that work for you, and, most importantly, don’t beat yourself up when the more traditional ways of doing something don't cut it.

If you miss a day (give or take fifty) of your daily reading, don’t try to catch up to where you’re “supposed” to be; be gentle with yourself, because sprinting to catch up only leaves you burned out and less likely to carry on the next day. If reading isn’t your strong suit, try listening to an audio version of the scriptures. If classic mindfulness meditation is only giving you hives, try movement meditation, which can involve walking or gardening or doing yoga. If your mind wanders every time you start a prayer, try prayer journaling to keep you on task and to give you a signpost to return to if you do go off course.

Faith is the hardest race we’ll ever run. But here’s why that joyful end is worth reaching.

Since my diagnosis a couple of years ago, I’ve been getting frustrated with myself for being wishy-washy – on fire one day, then lukewarm the next, having extensive plans laid out for how I’m going to transform my life overnight, then forgetting said plan after three or four days of mediocre effort. I go through long stretches of time trying to do it all myself, only to collapse in exhausted self-loathing at the feet of Jesus where I beat myself up for forgetting, once again, how desperately I need God at the forefront of my life. This has happened enough over the years that my ability to trust in myself began choking on self-cynicism – because who was I kidding when I said I would start a new reading plan or pray without ceasing or not skip Sunday services anymore?

But not too long ago, in the middle of more self-flagellation, it occurred to me: I could be upset with myself for forgetting yet again – or I could praise God for convicting my heart yet again.

The very nature of my humanness and my ADHD mind and this “body of death” means I will continue to forget His faithfulness time and time again.

Praise be to God that, likewise, His very nature – His holiness and mercy and love –  means He will continue commanding my attention now and long after time ends.

-Carrie Davis