7 Ways to Love People with ADHD

People who live with ADHD function in a slightly different way from everyone else. Much of the time, they don’t understand themselves, and many are frustrated, exhausted, and lonely from trying to fit in with society or to mask their symptoms. People with ADHD tend to be extremely sensitive to rejection, most of them fearing it will happen at any time.

Just as every person receives and communicates love and affection in their unique way, those with ADHD feel loved when you do certain things for them. As neurotypical people, we might not have even considered some of these things to be particularly loving. But to those with ADHD, there are no better ways to feel loved, understood, and valued.

7 Ways To Love Individuals with ADHD

Doing solo activities together

Most people with ADHD, like extroverts, love doing things together. This doesn’t mean you have to focus on each other for it to count. Sometimes, doing different activities in the same room is the best way of spending quality time with someone with ADHD.

For example, you might be doing housework in the same room they are playing video games in. Though they are not focused on you, they will find your presence comforting and enjoyable. When people with ADHD spend too much time alone, they are prone to overthink and spiral. Sharing space with them as you both do solo activities often helps them focus and keeps them calm.

Let them share about their latest hyper-fixation

If you’ve spent any amount of time around someone with ADHD, you will know that they often have a new point of interest. People with ADHD don’t become casually interested in things; they tend to burn with blazing passion about stuff. Whatever their focus’s current object, they have probably spent hours researching and learning about it, absorbing all there is to find out about it.

This kind of enthusiasm can be exhausting when it’s not your particular interest, but their excitement can be catchy. If you give them space to share and encourage them with questions and reactions to their excitement, they will thrive. They might not be conscious of the fact that you are giving them the floor intentionally to show them love, but they will still feel loved for having been heard.

Help them do the thing they’ve been putting off

People with ADHD are often labeled as lazy procrastinators, but this is hardly ever the case. There are many reasons why people with ADHD put off tasks, and none of them are truly to do with laziness.

Some tasks, although straightforward, often feel more complicated to people with ADHD because they tend to overthink things. Besides this, any task that has been put off for a long time begins to feel bigger and scarier than it truly is.

Jesus teaches us to show practical love to others by bearing each others’ burdens in the many “one anothers” of Scripture. Paul puts it like this: “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2, NIV).

You could show practical love like this for people with ADHD by coming alongside them and helping them do the things they have been putting off. Whether it’s housework, laundry, grocery shopping, or correspondence, they will likely be grateful for the company, and the tasks will feel less like work and more like fun.

Depending on the nature of the task, you could add a bit of challenge to make the task a competitive one, like seeing who can water the most houseplants in the space of ten minutes.

Make plans for them

If there’s one thing that intimidates and paralyzes most people with ADHD, it’s planning. Having a short, easily distracted attention span means that planning for simple things is a lengthy or difficult process. When people with ADHD have jobs that require them to plan for projects, the last thing they want to do socially is anything that requires planning.

People with ADHD love spontaneous adventure, but many social activities require planning. A simple road trip, for example, might require you to have snacks, fuel, money, and other provisions.

If you are the type who prefers planned activities, you can show love to your ADHD friends by taking on the planning of social events. Even if you feel bad at planning, you are likely still better at doing it than your ADHD loved one.

Be weird together

Many people with ADHD have a collection of habits they do in secret. A lot of these habits are strange or quirky to neurotypical people, but for people with ADHD, these behaviors are comforting, necessary, or just fun. More than most, people with ADHD tend to have a playful, childlike streak that they sometimes have to hide for fear of judgment or being seen as weird.

For example, someone with ADHD might start speaking in a foreign accent for no reason other than they are good at doing it, or they might make a certain sound repeatedly. Many people with ADHD get a phrase or lyrics from a song stuck in their head, repeating the words for days.

This behavior is known colloquially as ‘stimming’ and is a repeated behavior that has a comforting or enjoyable effect on the ADHD brain. You could try joining them for a bit of fun and make up your own ‘stim’ or copy one of theirs. On thing people with ADHD will teach you is that you don’t always have to understand things to have fun!

Reassuring physical affection

Physical affection is often a highly subjective thing, with people either loving it or not. However, research has found that most people with ADHD tend to love physical affection. Giving them regular tight hugs and reassuring cuddles goes a long way.

People with ADHD are on a constant search for dopamine and endorphins, whether they realize it or not. They develop habits based almost entirely on the pursuit of these chemicals, and their life can be an endless series of activities that boost their feel-good hormones.

Few things produce dopamine as fast and effectively as a bear hug, a spontaneous cuddle, or reassuring kisses from someone you love. Keeping your ADHD friend or loved one well-supplied with physical affection will keep them feeling loved and happy.

Do research into ADHD

There are a lot of resources about mental health available today. When you’ve done a fair amount of research, you begin to find the things that professionals agree on, and you can begin to weed out some of the more speculative bits of information. Sharing what you have learned with your ADHD loved one shows them that you care and might actually teach and help them, too.

There is a common misconception that people with ADHD have learned all about their condition and know all there is to know about themselves, but this is often not the case. Most people with ADHD would struggle with research into their disorder, and many have never learned more than the basics about ADHD.

Sharing the information you have learned in your research of the topic could be one of the most loving and helpful things you could do for them.

Love In Action

Showing love to someone with ADHD might look a little different from “normal,” but mostly, it’s about practical things. When you understand why people with ADHD do certain things or struggle with certain things, you begin to realize how you can practically support them or make them feel seen and valued.

Jesus showed us what practical love looks like by meeting people exactly where they are. Paul explained it best when he said “love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:9-10, NIV).

Ultimately, when you educate yourself on ADHD, you will learn how to step up and fill the gap in even more ways. People with ADHD often contain many quirks and unique characteristics along with their struggles. When you can show them that not only do you see their uniqueness, but you love and value it, your ADHD loved one will feel secure and comforted.

If you would like to learn more about ADHD, a good place to start is with a counselor. Not only will you learn about neurodiversity, but you will understand more about relationship dynamics with the people you love. If you would like to meet with a counselor, contact us by email or phone.