DadHD Brain

“Why are you the way that you are?”

It’s one of the funniest lines in The Office, but lately it also feels like a fair question to ask myself.

Not in a self-deprecating sort of way.

More in a “why is my brain like this?” kind of way.

For a long time, when I had extra time, I’d just zone out or throw on Friends and let my brain shut off for a while.

Lately, there’s been less of that.

More quiet. More thinking. More thinking than I’ve ever allowed myself to do, if I’m being honest.

And somewhere in all of that, I realized something that probably should’ve hit me sooner:

I don’t answer questions the way most people do.

Apparently, according to my wife, I answer them weird.

She’s not wrong.

If someone asks me something, my brain rarely goes straight to the answer. It goes to the why behind it.

Why does this matter? Why are we doing it this way? Why does anything need to change?

I’m not usually trying to be difficult. I just have a hard time making sense of something if I don’t understand the reason behind it.

So when somebody asks me a simple question, I usually don’t give a simple answer.

I give the background. The context. The explanation behind the explanation.

Because in my head, that is the answer.

That’s the part that makes it make sense.

But not everybody wants that.

Some people want the answer and then want you to stop talking, which is apparently a real preference people have.

My wife is much more direct than I am. She asks one question and wants one answer.

Meanwhile, I’m giving the two-VHS extended edition with commentary.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized this isn’t just a communication habit.

It’s how I move through the world.

I want things to make sense before I can settle into them. I want the reason behind the reason. I want the full picture before I know what to do with what’s in front of me.

If I don’t have that, it feels like I’m missing part of the map.

And I think this is where a lot of us miss each other.

Someone asks one thing.

I answer the question my brain needs, not always the one they actually asked.

And then I’m confused when it feels like we somehow missed each other.

Maybe you’ve done this too without realizing it.

The strange part is, once I saw that in myself, it started helping me understand other people better too.

Lately I’ve been paying more attention to how differently people process stress, communication, and emotion. Not to put everyone in a box. Just to understand a little more and assume a little less.

And one thing I’ve been learning is that not every reaction means what I think it means.

Sometimes overwhelm looks like anger.

Sometimes frustration isn’t personal.

Sometimes the person in front of me isn’t nearly as mad at me as I assume they are.

Sometimes they’re just overloaded. Overstimulated. Tired. Already at capacity.

Sometimes what looks sharp on the outside is really just stress with nowhere to go.

That doesn’t explain everything.

But it has helped me stop jumping straight to the worst conclusion.

It has helped me pause.

It has helped me remember that not every hard moment is rejection, and not every tense moment is about me.

That’s been good for me.

And honestly, it’s been good for my relationships too.

I still over-explain things.

I probably still answer questions with more information than anybody asked for.

That part may not be changing anytime soon.

But at least now I understand it better.

And maybe more importantly, I’m starting to understand that a lot of communication problems are not really about one person caring more, trying harder, or being right.

Sometimes it’s just two people standing in the same conversation, using completely different maps.

Sometimes that alone makes it easier to meet each other halfway.