Incy Wincy Spider...
"Give yourself permission to keep the file open when it genuinely is open. Not every situation resolves quickly. Some things are legitimately uncertain for a while. Your brain holding that open isn’t dysfunction. It’s accuracy." - Lindsey Mackereth
This blog post has been in draft in my head for a number of months. Having time now to finally sit and write it, I am finding myself stuck on where to start. So, I'll start by naming it as another of my "working theories".
This theory has its origins in my reading of a Substack post by Lindsey Mackereth (2026) called You don't need reassurance. You need coherence. I read this early one Saturday morning when I was feeding my dogs. Bleary eyed I found myself overcome with relief at reading, for the first time, the most accurate description of the internal workings of my mind. If you have read any of my other blog posts you will know that being late diagnosed ADHD has been a big journey of Self discovery and rediscovery. Any time I find something that resonates (particularly if it explains my experience but does not try to make me feel bad about it) it can turn in to a new hyperfocus or interest. Either that, or everyone in my life needs to hear about, right now!
This paragraph stood out the most:
"Neurocomplex brains, minds whose cognitive architecture is layered, relentlessly interrogative, and built for depth over surface, share something important regardless of where that complexity shows up or what it’s been called. They don’t just want to know what happened. They want to know why it happened, what it connects to, what it predicts, what the underlying logic is, whether that logic holds under different conditions, what the exceptions are, and whether the whole framework needs to be revised."
I have read this paragraph to many of my ADHD clients and the response is always the same... they sink back, they let out a sigh and they nod their heads silently. Before finding these words I would explain this process as Doctor Strange, you know, the Marvel character. You may wonder what a Marvel character has to do with any of this but I have found finding social or cultural references to illustrate a point is often useful in my work, Metaphors are a known tool in counselling because they can help illustrate complex theories in to everyday understandable language. I have found Marvel characters can be equally effective. Anyway, back to my point, so often anxiety in an ADHDer is a mechanism to manage uncertainty by focussing on perceived risks and trying to work towards the most positive, less troublesome future possible. It is often problem focussed coping. As I've marinated in my own thinking since reading Lyndsey's article, I have come to refer to this processing as spider-web thinking. And just like that my new working theory was born.
Here's how it works...
Most ADHDers I know will tell you that they can hold attention to multiple thoughts or stimulus at once. Often those multiple thoughts are related or connected but not directly or in a linear way. For example, someone who is not ADHD will follow one line of thought to completion before moving to another separate line of thought. Any connection's they make between these thoughts may be done so independently and in a linear way (ie. move from point A to point B and then move from point B to C). In contrast, an ADHDer, may move from point A to point B but do so via points E, C, H and D.
The image here was created by my Clinical Supervisor (Rabold, 2026) after I explained to her how I conceptualise ethical problems and/or decision making. I also call it meta perspective thinking (but spider web thinking seems more relatable). When I discuss problems with her she often provides me with an additional line of thought (or thread) to add to my existing web of thinking. I then consider this thread while also connecting it to the web and follow the path of the newly connected thread through the web to revise what I know of existing threads on the web (existing thoughts that relate to that problem). I have tested this with many ADHD clients and it instantly makes sense to them. They confirm that the black dot in the middle represents the focal point of consciousness from which we start exploring thoughts on the web, only we don't have to return to that point before moving on to another thread. We can be attending to all the threads at once, in some way, and often with only momentary consideration because that is all we need. If in time we need to consider any point with greater intensity or focus we can go back to it and refresh the whole web as required. If we assess that there is no need to do so we leave it as is... unfinished projects or multiple hobbies come to mind.
These words from Judy Grupenhoff (2026) help illustrate my point and the premise of spiderweb thinking:
"My path through life has not been linear. Not even close. Computer science. Consciousness research. Wisdom traditions and energy healing. Psychology, nutrition, and mind-body wellness. From the outside, these looked like completely different explorations, like a resume that couldn’t make up its mind.
But for me, they were never separate. They were just different facets of the same unified system. Each facet was internally consistent. Each one was describing a different aspect of the same underlying reality and the rules to work within it. And I was always less interested in what any single facet could explain than in what lived in the connections and overlaps between them. Because, for me, the truth lie not in the facets themselves, but in how they related to and illuminated one another.
What I didn’t have language for until recently was why. It wasn’t restlessness or an inability to commit. It was that my mind was running multiple streams simultaneously. I was tracking each system in parallel, watching how they moved in relation to each other, following what happened at the intersections. I wasn’t moving from one field to the next. I was holding them all at once and bouncing between them."
I believe that it is an ADHDers capacity to think in this way that helps us identify patterns and sequences and be able to predict outcomes. This and the speed at which our thoughts happen. It is also this spider web way of thinking that can make us look distracted and not paying attention or it can overwhelm us and make us appear dysregulated (see also, the perfectionist zone of doom). Although it would be remiss of me not to point out that this dysregulation often results from external pressures. It is often frustration that people do not understand our process or give us the adequate space and time to follow it. We are often dismissed as overthinking something or wasting time on something that is not important. This can piss us off and/or leave us feeling like we are too much.
This way of thinking can show up when we are given verbal instructions and can be why we look like we can't follow them. What is really happening is that we have already started deconstructing step one before the following steps have been spoken. So, while we hear them we are not fully attentive to the following steps because we aren't yet ready to deconstruct them. This means we may need a little more time in between the articulation of each step or we we may benefit from having written instructions too. This process is often labelled proscrastination or absent minded. It is the exact opposite. What it needs to understanding and patience. Being rushed derails this process and leaves us unsettled and uncomfortable. While to an outsider it may look like we are over engineering something, given enough time to think things through (and sometimes be supported to think out loud) we can more readily narrow our focus and prioritise tasks for completion. It is here that we thrive. As Lindsey points out "[c]omfort says: you don’t need to worry about this right now. Coherence says: here is how this actually works, here is where you actually stand, here is what this actually means". Comfort is felt when coherence is achieved. When comfort is achieved with coherence, concentration can follow.
Carol Shilliday in her recent book (2026) wrote that "Some people with ADHD handle complex concepts and enjoy learning and gathering information but can be thrown off by distractions and attentional issues...when they find things that are a good match for their brain wiring, they can be quite accomplished, earning degree, building good careers, and being successful entrepreneurs" (p23). While I love that Carol is highlighting our capacity and intellect and am disappointed that she uses language like distractions and attentional issues (too often these days things are advertised as neuroaffirming while still subscribing to a pathologising model of understanding someones experience). This is not helpful for understanding an ADHDer or helping them thrive. My point here is not to criticise Carol, as her book is a wonderful resource for helping ADHDers understand the wounded parts of themselves. Instead, it is to highlight a broader point that these so called attentional issues that the pathology paradigm seems fixated on are only attentional issues when you consider the expected standard of the environment (do not get me started on executive functioning). Imagine what would be possible if those standards accounted for this different way of thinking instead of expecting the same boring standard of performance?
I'm going to leave this here for now because I can feel a "soap box" part surfacing and I could end up on a totally different part of the spiderweb. Funnily enough, as I read over what I have written here in order to finish writing it, I am reminded that I struggled to find a place to start. Now I see that I was not sure which part of the web would be the logical starting point. Ultimately, I just had to jump on to the web and follow the threads of thought. Hopefully you have enjoyed your journey on the spiderweb as you've read it.
PS. I love Lindsay's term neurocomplexity. While I focus on ADHD here I recognise that this way of thinking extends to other forms of neurodiversity/complexity.
REFERENCES
Most references are linked within the body of the post and not listed here.
Shilliday, C. (2026) Inside ADHD: An Internal Family Systems Workbook to Understand Your Parts and Emotionally Thrive. New Harbinger Publications.
