What to Know About the ADHD Bubble

People who have ADHD are often described as being “spaced out” or “in their own world.” Maybe you have that friend or family member who often seems disconnected to what’s happening right in front of them.

You’re talking to them, but they don’t seem to be hearing you. Or they seem to be engaging with you but then they’ll suddenly zone out and ask “what did you just say?”

It’s as if the conversation never happened.

It may feel like they’re blowing you off or ignoring you, or that they don’t care.

I can’t speak for everyone with ADHD, but speaking for myself and many people I know, that’s (usually) not the case at all.

Here is how some people with ADHD described it in a Reddit thread:

Someone can be talking to me, I can even acknowledge what they say, but then I forget about it immediately, as if it never happened.

Someone can be talking to me, and it’s like I’ll receive the input a few minutes later when they walk away. I’m not ignoring them; I literally don’t notice. I’m in my bubble.

Welcome to the “ADHD Bubble.”

What is the ADHD Bubble?

To understand the ADHD Bubble, it’s helpful to understand the experience of someone with ADHD. This in itself is not an easy thing to do, because we don’t all have the same experience.

ADHD often gets described as a “lack of attention,” but that’s really an oversimplification of what’s happening.

It’s more accurate to say that people with ADHD lack the filter that keeps out unnecessary stimulus. When a person without ADHD walks down the street, they are focused on where they are going. They take in only what’s relevant to them. There’s a “filter” to keep out the irrelevant matter and stimuli that exist all around us.

A person with ADHD lacks that filter, so everything gets in. This leads to over-stimulation and overwhelm. In addition, it forces our executive function capacity of our brains to work harder to sort out what’s relevant from what’s irrelevant.

The ADHD Bubble is a Protective Space

The ADHD Bubble is the place we go to protect ourselves from the vast amount of stimuli that exist around us.

People with ADHD often live at the extreme edges of the spectrum: we either take in everything at once and become overstimulated or we block out the world in order to focus.

There’s rarely a middle ground.

Exposing ourselves to everything that’s happening around us can be very draining on our energy, much moreso than people without ADHD might experience.

Side Note: Stochastic Resonance

The irony is that sometimes, people with ADHD need that external stimulus and noise in order to focus. This is the principle of stochastic resonance, a phenomenon that explains how moderate noise can improve cognitive performance in people with ADHD.

This is why people with ADHD often work better in coffee shops and other public settings, where people without ADHD would find it hard to focus.

Nobody said our brains are straightforward or easy to understand.

The ADHD Bubble is Not Always a Conscious State

In my own experience, there are times when I consciously block everything out in order to stay in my own energetic bubble.

It may be because I’m overstimulated, need to ground in my own energy, or I’m actively focusing on something and need to maintain that focus without distractions, even while I move around. In those cases, I’ll use strategies like listening to music through headphones to stay in my energy bubble.

Automatic Protection From Hyper-Vigilance

Other times, retreat into the ADHD Bubble is not conscious. When we are surrounded by so much stimulus, the lack of filter that causes us to try to pay attention to everything can turn into hyper-vigilance.

Every sound can be a threat. In this case, the nervous system automatically reacts to that situation by shutting down the outside world and pulling us into our own safe space.

It’s an automatic protective reflex — like the way you’d instinctively pull your hand back from a hot flame, or the way your leg kicks when the doctor hits your knee with the little hammer.

This hyper-vigilance explains why your friend with ADHD may not process what you’re saying to them when you’re standing right in front of them, but can hear a conversation that’s happening in a soft tone on the other side of a noisy room.

We can come across as being both deaf and having super-powered hearing at the same time.

In social situations with large groups, it’s common for us to do best when we are focused on only one or two people at a time. Otherwise its easy to get over-saturated and over-stimulated with noise and discussions because we try to follow everything all at once. This quickly burns out our cognitive engine.

The ADHD Bubble is where we go to come back to ourselves and recharge.

What to Know About Your Friend Who is in Their ADHD Bubble

The most important thing to know about your friend who gets lost in their ADHD Bubble is that they are not ignoring you. Their lack of responsiveness or engagement doesn’t mean they don’t care.

In many cases, we might not even be aware we are in our bubble. And when we are in the bubble, it’s because our nervous systems need the reset. It’s not always something we can control or pull ourselves out of.

Strategies for Navigating the ADHD Bubble

We know it can be frustrating when you’re trying to tell us things and it seems like we aren’t paying attention or we instantly forget.

Here are some strategies for navigating the ADHD Bubble:

(1) If you’re talking to your ADHD friend and it seems like they’re spaced out, that might be a sign to try again another time. You might even call it out for them, telling them that you can sense it’s not the best time for them to focus. Normalize it for them, without judgment.

(2) If you have ADHD, call it out when you notice you are in it. When I recognize I’m in my ADHD Bubble while someone is trying to talk with me, I will ask them if we can have the conversation at a another time when I can fully pay attention to them.

(3) A little compassion can go a long way here. Remember that your friends and colleagues with ADHD don’t take in the information and stimulus in the same way that you do. It takes us longer to process and we have less bandwidth available at once. We need to “clear the cache” of our brains more often.

We aren’t ignoring you, and we do care.