Artist Statement
Though my experience in Graphic Medicine involved more angrily ripped out sketchbook pages than any purely alphabetic work I’ve ever created, it was also surprisingly similar to other rhetoric courses I’ve taken. Graphic Medicine is an interdisciplinary field that explores the intersection between healthcare discourses and comics (Czerwiec et al. 43). Comics are a medium that uses sequential panels, images, and text to tell a story (McCloud 9). When reading and analyzing others’ comics, I thought about the choices the creator had made and assessed their effectiveness. When creating comics, I carefully considered purpose, audience, and mode of delivery throughout the process. Like any attempt at effective communication, my work with comics required me to rhetorically (aka: strategically) respond to the task at hand.
This project takes the form of a graphic pathography, or an exploration of a medical experience using comics (Czerwiec et al. 90). Graphic pathographies are a common genre found in graphic medicine, often created by patients and caregivers to reflect on and provide personal accounts of health experiences. In creating my graphic pathography, I sought to explore the following: What does ADHD shutdown—commonly referred to as ADHD paralysis*—feel like? And how can I visually represent these feelings and lived experiences to an audience who doesn’t have ADHD?
*The use of the word “paralysis” here is problematic, as it uses physical disability as a metaphor. Further discussion can be found in the “Problematic Language” section of this statement.
Exigence
As a student, I struggle to begin assignments. Despite knowing what I have to do and wanting to do it, I sometimes fail to initiate or make progress. Sometimes it feels like there’s an internal barrier stopping me from taking action—like there’s a gap between intention (“I swear I want to do this thing”) and action (the thing clearly not being done). My challenges have impacted my work across my academic career, including my Graphic Medicine course. And, because I am consistent only in my inconsistency, I ended up ditching the idea I had been workshopping all semester and instead created a graphic pathography to try and communicate one of the main barriers I was facing: what is commonly referred to as ADHD paralysis.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that significantly impact functioning in various domains of life (NIMH). A key component of ADHD includes executive dysfunction, or recurring issues with executive functions (ADDA, “Executive Dysfunction”). Executive functions refer to cognitive processes that relate to task initiation, organization, and decision-making (ADDA, “Executive Dysfunction”; Diamond 136). When there are a lot of tasks or decisions to be made, people with ADHD report feeling overwhelmed and physically unable to move or make a decision (ADDA, “ADHD Paralysis”; Hagan; Oroian et al). Struggling to prioritize, they can become trapped in a loop of bouncing from task to task—or thought to thought—without completing any of them.
In my case, the desire to be the most efficient with my time is often (ironically) the biggest waste of my time. When each task contains multiple steps, I can get stuck trying to determine the “best” place to start—which results in not starting at all. This comic is meant to depict that experience. I thought of the idea because it literally happened to me the morning before an assignment was due, which can be seen in the tasks listed on my comic’s To Do List.
Purpose & Audience
I structured this comic as part of a broader social media project titled ADHD(e)-Classified, where each “file” represents a different ADHD-related symptom, experience, or information. The goal of this project is to communicate the experiential realities of ADHD to those who do not have it and may have a difficult time understanding what it feels like. To reach a general audience, it was initially designed for Instagram and was shaped by the platform’s sizing constraints at the time. In remediating the work for publication, the format was adjusted to improve readability. If you want to check out the #OriginalArtisticVision, click the following link to access a flipbook version of the comic that emulates a swipeable Instagram post: https://simplebooklet.com/adhdeclassified
This comic (File 1) is intended to be a humorous depiction of what it’s like to experience input-induced inaction and overwhelm. While people with ADHD may resonate with this comic, its primary audience consists of people who do not have ADHD. Future comics within the ADHD(e)-Classified Cinematic Universe™ may instead target ADHDers, but this one does not. Drawing from disability studies and graphic medicine, this comic adds onto the fields’ tradition of platforming lived experience as experiential knowledge. If I were to post this project on social media, I would make sure that there is a disclaimer in my account bio or pinned to my profile stating that any experiences depicted are not meant to speak for everyone’s ADHD experiences.
Problematic Language & Intentional Redirection
The phrase “ADHD paralysis” is not one I personally use, and it appears in this project as a point of recognition that I intentionally move away from—and aim to move my audience away from as well. This colloquially-named and widely recognized term relies on metaphor, borrowing from physical disability (paralysis) to describe cognitive experiences like feelings of overwhelm, confusion, or panic. Disability studies scholarship has long critiqued the usage of disability as metaphor as problematic (Mitchell and Snyder). This has typically referred to the literary usage of disability as a metaphorical signifier of social hierarchies or “a stock feature of characterization” (Bartlett; Mitchell and Snyder 47–48), but there is still risk in using one disability to describe another. It’s important to be critical of using physical disabilities as descriptors for neurological or mental experiences, as it could potentially erase important distinctions between different forms of disability and reproduce imprecise and/or harmful language.
This comic is not focused on unpacking that terminology in depth, but it exists alongside a (hypothetical) broader body of work that does engage more directly with the language itself. Based on prior awareness of the term’s popularity, its recognizability seemed like a rhetorically effective entry point to reaching audiences who don’t ordinarily contend with language in this way. Instead of centering the term, I wanted to use it briefly in order to redirect audiences toward more accurate language. In practice, this means pairing or replacing it with alternatives such as “ADHD shutdown” or references to executive dysfunction.
If actually posted on social media, this comic would be accompanied by additional context that explicitly critiques the term and encourages audiences to move away from it. Created with this previously established distinction and context in mind, the simulated caption on the first page references previous content having explored “why [this phenomenon] deserves a different name.” In this way, the use of the colloquial term is meant to be transitional; it reflects a rhetorical strategy of meeting audiences where they are and guiding them towards more precise and disability-conscious language, while allowing this individual comic to focus on representing the experience itself.
Process
My creation process was heavily influenced by Debbie Tung’s work in her graphic memoir Everything is Ok. In this book, Tung shares her personal experiences navigating anxiety and depression. She talks about incredibly painful mental health experiences—but the panels depicting these experiences are almost lighthearted (Tung 18–19; 28). She balances levity and heaviness in such a charming way, and this juxtaposition of turmoil and humor resonated a lot with me as a reader. I also took inspiration from the Instagram account ADHDinos (@adhdinos), which creates and hosts some of the most popular ADHD-related comics I’ve found on social media. It is a purely entertainment-driven comic account that shares experiences related to ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Though the target audience of their content is people who already relate to the experiences being shown, their (almost stilted) topic-related humor is something that influenced my work.
I am (hyper)aware of my artistic limitations, so the images I chose to depict on the first page (along with the facial expressions incorporated later on) were intentionally simplistic. I used Canva to digitally organize my individually-created (and museum-worthy) drawings into consecutive panels. A combination of hand-written and digitally-added text were used, and minor icons from Canva’s free-use elements were used to enhance hand-drawn images.
Rhetorical Context: Making the Illegible Legible
The title (first) page of the comic simulates what a hypothetical Instagram post might look like. The opening panels after this are meant to emulate a cinematic training montage—from the mirror speech to sweatbands to cracking knuckles. Knowing that I wanted the majority of my comic to resemble a computer screen, I decided to vary the framing of these panels for visual interest. However, once the laptop is introduced, things become less in-the-world; the wooden table previously seen under the laptop disappears as I become consumed by the screen.
Aside from the initial and concluding pages, my comic has multiple overlapping, text-based panels within the larger panel representing the computer screen. This was an intentional decision that sought to disrupt the flow between the overlapping panels to replicate the feeling of not knowing where to start first. I was attempting to communicate the feeling of having more and more things “pop-up.” The choice of text—or the content of the pop-ups themselves—was based on actual thoughts that popped into my head when I tried to sit down and work. In reality, there were more tasks on my to-do list for the day, but I chose to narrow it down to the four tasks shown in my comic to more easily show viewers how my brain connects seemingly unrelated tasks together. That same thought progression guides the nature of the text in these pop-ups; it doesn’t feel as simple as “checking off a box” for me.
Each task expands into multiple sub-tasks, illustrating how even simple responsibilities can become complex networks. This structure can also be read as rhizomatic, or resisting a single linear reading path and instead presenting multiple competing points of entry (Deleuze and Guattari; Yergeau). Drawing from work in neurodivergent rhetorics and disability studies, the cognitive processes I’m describing can be understood through a rhizomatic neuroqueer framework. A rhizomatic neuroqueer way of thinking is one in which thought does not follow a linear or hierarchical structure, instead branching, “looping,” and resisting normative expectations of cognition (Yergeau). Not only is there something happening in my mind that people can’t see, but it’s operating through an unconventional and tangential logic. It’s intense, nonlinear, and difficult to articulate—characteristics that can feel irreconcilable with academic pursuits. In creating visual clutter using interrelated pop-up tabs, I tried to make that experience legible to others.
With each series of pop-ups, viewers can see me going through 3 stages of emotion. The confusion and intrigue spurred by the idea of efficiency turns into shock and alarm, eventually turning into the panic that precedes the overwhelm (at which point the screen is completely obscured by pop-ups). With each new pop-up, we can also see time passing on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The decision-making time also increases as more choices are presented, as seen by the laptop’s clock icon in the upper right corner of the screen. I hoped this would make the concluding page make more sense, but I initially played around with switching back to my comic-me for the end of this piece. In this version, I would have either become overwhelmed and slammed the laptop shut, or I would realize that I’m hungry and IRL pop-ups would begin bombarding my psyche—signalling the cycle re-started. But tbh, I like the abruptness of the current layout. Concluding with an image of a dead battery screen follows the passage of time seen throughout the comic, and it’s a metaphor for how drained I can feel after making no tangible progress.
Conclusion
I have a complicated relationship with tasks that lack a clearly defined endpoint and require multiple, multi-step things to do. Ideas seem intensely tangential, and every concept feels connected. So, even a successful attempt at writing a single paper means I get 3–4 scribbled, half-legible project proposals for free. And if there’s nothing telling me “You are 100% done with this thing now,” I could literally keep going forever and still have an “unfinished” product.
Writing—like any act of creation—is a deeply embodied and cognitive activity. That’s kind of scary.
Writing, rhetoric, and composition studies champion multimodality and nonconventional ways of communicating. Disability and neurodivergent rhetorics expands this commitment to validating the plurality of being—recognizing and honoring multiple ways of thinking, feeling, and existing in a space. But throughout my undergraduate career, I’ve struggled to internalize disciplinary ideals enough to accept my own non-normative practices and cognition. The process of creating this comic was a cool step towards reconciling knowledge with belief. If rhetoric can be understood as “the study of potential misunderstanding” (Roberts-Miller), then this comic sought to resolve a common misconception: what looks like laziness can be an overwhelming, laborious, and exhausting internal experience. You can’t accurately gauge the amount of time, labor, or effort someone has invested; it’s possible to put a lot into something without having much to show for it.
Like all multimodal mediums, comics provide unique articulatory affordances that alphabetic text alone cannot. I’m someone whose embodied and cognitive experiences can be frustrating, to say the least, and comics offered a uniquely effective vehicle for me to share my inner experiences as a neurodivergent student and writer. I hope that other students are able to experiment with this medium and potentially explore, reflect on, and share their own unique writing processes and struggles.