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Being Socially Motivated is Not a Disorder

Unpacking body doubling, “executive dysfunction,” and the pathology model of ADHD.

Devon Price

Photo by Winston Chen on Unsplash

Skye is passionate about the craft of needle felting. With a few overstuffed bags of wool roving, a pack of needles, and her callused hands, she’s constructed everything from hats and vests, to small decorative dolls, to an entire barnyard scene complete with pigs, cows, a feeding trough, tiny felted chickens, and a massive, two-story needled felted barn.

Holding up a small needle-felted BB-8 from Star Wars, Skye laughs and tells me, “This is what keeps me from losing my shit at my boss. I stab this cute little guy so I don’t stab anybody else.”

Skye’s been active at needle felting conferences and selling her work at craft shows for over 25 years; there’s no questioning her dedication to the hobby. But unless another person is in the room near her, working on some craft of their own, Skye can’t focus enough to do any felting at all.

“When I’m alone, there’s too much going on all at once in my brain,” she explains. “And there’s also, somehow, nothing at all? There’s this void of no motivation. Even my meds don’t help.”

Skye is a 46-year-old ADHDer, a person with attention deficit hyperactive disorder. She was diagnosed and began taking…

Devon Price
Devon Price

Written by Devon Price

He/Him or It/Its. Social Psychologist & Author of LAZINESS DOES NOT EXIST and UNMASKING AUTISM. Links to buy: https://linktr.ee/drdevonprice

Responses (13)

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Thank you.

When I first read your Laziness Does Not Exist piece here on Medium years ago, I had no idea what was in store for me, and your books have since really helped me make sense of my newly discovered autism and ADHD.

Listening to this…

Fascinating! Years ago, I was a member of a small but very dedicated fiction writers workgroup. We met weekly, in person at a local library to read some of our work out loud, and to discuss each member's weekly writing output, which we distributed…

I can’t go into a long reply right now, but can we look more closely at the implications of putting executive dysfunction and related terms in quotation marks.
Experiencing disorder with regard to your context, your environment isn’t a personal…