At least once a week, illustrator Pina Varnel will find some mysterious bruise or scratch on her leg or arm she has no recollection of getting.
“I also don’t pay attention to the obstacles I’m bumping into on the way,” she said. Instead, “I’m preoccupied with not forgetting to take the trash out and hyper-focusing on a new hobby, thinking of what cute streaming graphics I could draw.”
As Varnell, author of the upcoming book “Feeling Like an ADHD Alien,” puts it: “It’s almost like my head isn’t fully in the room with me when I walk. I’m not really paying attention to where my body is in space, and by the fifth time I’ve walked into the vacuum, the pain has just faded into background noise.”
If you have ADHD (or suspect you do), mystery bruises like Varnell’s are not uncommon.
“Many adults with ADHD report frequent bruising or bumping into objects, and this is often related to differences in proprioception, which is the body’s ability to sense where it is in space,” said Cristina Louk, a mental health counselor who specializes in ADHD and neurodiversity-affirming therapy in Washington state.
