Yes and no. It’s not exclusive to ADHD.

The ADHD part of this is being unable or very bad at “tuning it out” so you can focus on something. Like, you recognise there’s sound, but since it’s not relevant to what you’re focused on, you ignore it without thinking about the fact that you’re ignoring it… That’s what ADHD people are bad at.

It can be very helpful if you need to listen for specific sounds to survive. Like, if you were in the brush and you hear very specific crunching noises, the kind that you would hear if you were being stalked by a predator… Someone with ADHD would be able to pick up on that more readily, while doing something else (like, idk, gathering), than someone who doesn’t have ADHD.

IMO, a lot of ADHD traits provide advantages in specific scenarios, mainly related to crisis, conflict and survival, but those traits work against you for basically everything else.

My ADHD superpower is basically being situationally aware to the point at which it harms my ability to live. I almost always remember the most trivial details of places and situations that largely do not matter. I’ll get called into a meeting for some hyper important project from my manager for client x, and that I should be working with person y at the client site to push forward. I will remember every detail of the plant on the managers desk, whether it was real or fake, was it in dirt or mulch or that foam stuff that they sometimes use for plants, was it recently watered (was the substance it was in, wet?), any oddly colored stripes in the stem/branches/leaves. How big was it, were there any issues with it, did it have any neighbors (other plants, maybe a fish?), even pictures nearby, etc…

Then I have to email my manager later to ask who y is, because I’ve forgotten the name.

This is my life.

It’s an ability if you’re a prehistoric hunter or in a dense jungle with predators. We have the ability to listen to everything and be able to process sounds, smell and visual changes.

Having dinner with a date and it’s less of an “ability” and more of “you’re being an unattentive asshole” because your date is just another conversation in a sea of conversations.

It’s both, ADHD people just have a much, much harder time learning to filter it. But neurotypical people can learn to do it too sometimes. I envy the ability to turn it off

It’s a curse

It puts my brain to 150% processing and I just wanna listen to one conversation and aaaaaa

Even when I can’t listen to the dozens of voices due to them being nearly inaudible it still enables the part of my brain to try to decode them, so about 75% is used to try to listen to words that I don’t even wanna listen to

This is why ANC is heaven

I just thought it was like, an ability.

For me, it’s more a dis-ability as it makes it hard to concentrate on the conversation that I’m in or task that I’m doing.

In a way, it is…