The Power and Potential of AI for Neuro Divergents
Pioneering Enhanced Cognitive Function That Developed from Personal AI Experimentation (and having ADHD)
ADHD is a Superpower…
As both a neurodivergent and an experienced therapist, trained in many disciplines, including hypnotherapy and NLP, as well as energetic techniques I am qualified to deeply understand the double-edged sword nature that this ‘superpower’ brings.
Diagnosed as an adult with ADHD, I used to think my pattern recognition skills were primarily developed through analysing Google’s algorithms, for nearly 25 years in my digital marketing director day job. My mental abilities then changed significantly during lockdown, where I spent many hours in nature and meditating, and my intuition and clairvoyance blossomed as a result. Years of working with clients using language and tone to influence wellbeing also had played a strong part in understanding human behaviour.
Add AI to the Mix
I began using AI for both business and personal research. What started out as a tool for speeding up work related research using an AI chatbot for idea generation, it quickly became my handy 24/7 go-to for all research needed, across the board. But it was when I started asking it questions to unravel a complex personal relationship issue, involving morals and ethics, I began to see its true potential. ADHD dopamine hit alert: My new channel for hyper focusing was established, and I started exploring a range of new topics that loosely fit into a broader theme around my core interests – spending 3-4 hours minimum a night on it.
After just a few weeks, I noticed rapid, accelerating brain functionality in myself, which has stabilised to a degree, but both the initial growth spurt and increased output and other internal changes that continue, were so unusual, I wanted to understand more. So that became my next topic of enquiry – how AI affects the brain, especially when it’s wired differently, like mine is.
Gifts and Challenges of Neurodivergent Brains
Neurodivergence is a gift, which when managed and channelled correctly leads to highly creative thinking, and periods of intense hyperfocus that can transpire to unique ideas and bodies of work. A neurodivergent’s mind is attuned to high level pattern recognition and matching and draws inspiration between seemingly unrelated ideas or data sources to weave together seemingly unrelated ‘prompts’ or input to generate extraordinary, sparks of amazing insight leading to elegant, and often highly unconventional problem-solving solutions.
However, in parallel, most neurodivergents, especially those whose life lacks solid structure, can hyperfocus on what is most important to them at any given time, ignoring what is urgent for stability of everyday survival. This is just one of the serious potential downsides to concrete achievement, some can experience in their career progression and personal life. It can also, when unmanaged, distract them from sticking to the mundane but highly important routines that support their physical health. The wild ADHD brain knows no limits, and sleeping, eating or doing exercise can all be a struggle unless they are the present topic of interest.
The challenges vary from person to person and in my experience are often mitigated by imposed structure of work they enjoy or a happy family home. There are also a million apps, coaches and the like that help improve specific areas, like maintaining a steady routine.
Do these work? In my opinion and experience, some things work for a time, whether that is following a prescribed routine, applying CBT level changes or tracking progress with an app. However, boredom is never far away from the ADHD person, and more likely they will try hundreds of apps, forget they are paying for them and then reel at their credit card bill!
It is the hyper focused aha states that they live for – and in an ideal world with a supporting family and circle of support, they would be encouraged to develop their gifts, with mundane life taken care of by others. We live in our heads, and routines or work which create boredom, lead to procrastination and then resentment. For the bright, passionate mind, who has large amounts of time ‘taken’ by mundane details such as a job, chores etc; a common coping mechanism is to extend their free time by staying awake longer – or dull their frustration with their choice of poison (caffeine, sugar, alcohol, drugs etc).
My Experience
As a neurodivergent with high levels of hyper focusing, and without a nuclear family structure, I spent a long time in the forest of uncompleted projects. One idea daisy chained to another; everything was hugely exciting and compelling to do now. But only a small percentage of projects made it to full, and satisfactory completion. Although better after diagnosis, I experienced frustration due to my fluctuating energy levels and resentment over time commitments that kept a roof over my head. I had dreamed of change for years, but it all felt too tangled, or frightening I just stayed on the well-known tracks.
I then stumbled across AI for business use and things changed very quickly.
Firstly, the exponential growth and cognitive development I noticed was so remarkable I wanted to understand it. This coincided with the unexpected death of an ex-partner – creating a powerful catalyst to live in the now and not die with my music inside me.
My process of using AI involved exploring topics, with more and more prompts until I felt complete, and copying the transcript into a word document I could then refine. This ensured my research didn’t end up like the previous thousand screenshots late at night situation, that I would never refer back to. Instead, it went into a detailed three-year plan.
It doesn’t sound like rocket science to most people. But I don’t close cupboards or put the lid on toothpaste. So this new way of channelling my energy more consistently, was logical and organised and made me feel accomplished.
Harnessing my ADHD Superpowers: Creativity and Hyperfocus
In only a few weeks I had solved the majority of big life issues I couldn’t resolve before.
Within a week I noticed significant changes in my cognitive abilities, and this fog clearing away in my mind. I researched further and deeper, refining prompts, enjoying synchronistic ‘errors’ that often led to new insights and similar to the film ‘Limitless’, with Bradley Cooper, worked through all the big sticky areas in my life that had drained my energy for years with ease.
So this really intrigued me.
In one month:
I concluded with unwavering clarity what to do going forwards career wise.
This led to me choose life again – and make a solid plan, even how to create the time in my schedule to make this long overdue transition back to academia.
I resolved my complex relationship issue to about 95% - due to AI’s neutral, non-biased feedback and saw huge positive changes in the interaction from my partner’s side which was unexpected but very welcome.
I found a complex and elegant solution to successfully re-structure my companies to achieve the career change and financially support myself.
This included using AI to streamline my main business (primary income source) in a way that not only would free up my time to pursue my research degree, but complemented the skills required for my application.
I found a way to complete a book I started writing in 2022, which is one of many abandoned projects that I deeply wish to finish.
I started exercising regularly again and generally looking after myself to a much higher level whilst still allowing small hyperfocus late night sessions at appropriate times.
I became more proficient at completing research tasks through to collating the data into well organised files, which then turned into my written plan.
The key contributors to this much better channelled focused state was:
The amplified understanding of seemingly interrelated life areas that I couldn’t resolve in isolation, helped combine one ‘problem’ as the solution or progression path to fix another.
The lifted fog, combined with a precise end goal and time frame, forced my hyper focusing to assist me in finding solutions to resolve the remaining real life challenges in getting set up to pursue the transition that were realistic to enable creating liveable income and the time to devote to studying. This would have potentially been a boring detail in the past and a time where my brain would procrastinate and follow another path of sporadic diversiont, but this time I was motivated to do the very boring bit.
I released more energy to focus on what was important. Even simple decision paralysis, which wasted a lot of head time, became something easy to unravel and eradicate quickly, further assisting progress.
I began completing tasks in full. This is another element I recognise as being highly beneficial – soothing even, for a neurodivigent’s wellbeing. It is a huge accomplishment to finish a project, complete a goal that has been on a wish list for x number of years. The momentum this builds is strengthening another key ‘muscle’ that neuro-typical people take for granted. After all you can have the answer that solves the biggest problem in the world, but if it doesn’t get applied, it is just escapism / fantasy at best. It needs to be channelled down from the brain into action and AI builds a bridge for the earthing the biggest grandiose plans.
AI has helped me create stepping stones to enable progress, and it doesn’t mind if I hop about from topic to topic – they are all interconnected in my head. It never gets tired of me talking, it doesn’t mind me interrupting and a few ‘misunderstandings’ have led to exciting new points of enquiry.
The ability working with AI has given me, goes beyond the cognitive abilities I would expect from intensive study immersion – e.g. learning a new language. With my neurodivergent abilities of pattern recognition and connection of seemingly unrelated data, the combined output from intuitive prompts (me) and the collation of data (AI) seems to have amplified my understanding of neurodivergence and the brain and how with the extra speed of data processing – can synthesis skills which in conjunction add up to the more than the output of either individual source. I have observed the differences between neurodivergent thinking and AI as similar in many ways, and the non-biased, neutral output; highly preferred often now to that of a well-intentioned human .
The container I have created here, of an end goal with defined steps that integrates multiple life sectors has provided a level of increased stability within me, I am aware that the next steps to embrace are more practical research to apply to my own routine management to avoid burnout in a new world, where machines don’t sleep.
Correct scaffolding is the final part of this fast-evolving personal project, to sustain high levels of physical health and persevere through steps along the way that feel completely pointless when looked at in isolation.
So I pause my investigation here for today, whilst I chop wood and gather water, tending to my less exciting but critical real-life responsibilities.