[In the first of two posts today about presence and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the author provides a first-person account of a mixed reality experience titled Impulse: Playing with Reality that simulates the condition. This is an abridged version of the original story from The Telegraph, which includes three more images and three looping videos. For more information, visit the Impulse website. –Matthew]

[Image: Miranda experienced stress and panic while trying Impulse, a virtual reality game that shows what it’s like to have ADHD. Credit: Heathcliff O’Malley]

I wore a headset that simulates ADHD – see what I saw here

A new ‘mixed reality experience’ simulates what it’s like to have ADHD. Our writer tried it out

By Miranda McMinn
October 11, 2024

I’m experiencing 35 very stressful minutes: a “mixed reality” experience that you interact with through a headset that claims to show what it’s really like to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Impulse, narrated by Tilda Swinton, is “a story about the extremes of ADHD”. It won awards at Venice Film Festival and is about to premiere at London Film Festival. And the effect it has is shocking.

The ADHD Foundation reports a 400 per cent increase in the number of adults seeking a diagnosis since 2020. The jury is out on the causes, but these include genetic predisposition, trauma, birth complications, brain injury, exposure to toxins and other medical and lifestyle issues. According to the NHS website definition, ADHD is a condition that affects people’s behaviour. People with it “can seem restless, may have trouble concentrating and may act on impulse”. After experiencing Impulse I wonder if it’s understating the case.

Headset on, Impulse starts with a “game” about processing information. First you need to gather brightly coloured “information” by hoovering it up with your left hand, then with your right hand you have to shoot the shapes it creates (money, keys, food) towards a matching counterpart. If you aim true and shoot at the right moment you supposedly gain a point.

“It’s down to you,” says Swinton in a calm voice laced with menace. “Suck up the information… Then match like with like and spit it out.” It seems simple enough. The colourful part representing the abstract information is garish yet beautiful. It’s up to me to turn it into something sensible. But electronic music is pumping like a heartbeat in the background and getting faster and faster and before long I’m really not doing very well.

The game moves up through four levels, from Excite to Stress, Overwhelm and finally Panic

The game moves up through four levels, from “Excite” to “Stress”, “Overwhelm” and finally “Panic”. The music gets faster and more ominous. Lights flash and confuse. The symbols start to include spiders and skulls. By Level 3 – “Overwhelm” –  I’m talking to myself. “I have to hoover up information and I have to process it and it’s moving really fast and it’s actually bloody stressful. And I’ve lost.”

I always lose. I’m a little nauseous. I feel angry and cheated as I realise it’s impossible to succeed. Swinton’s voice confirms this fact. “I can see you’re trying but it’s not quite enough,” she says, sounding patronising. “You’re letting frustration get the better of you.” Well, you try it, I want to say.

Level 4 – “Panic” – feels actually impossible. “Some games are impossible,” gloats Swinton. “I’d be lying if I said you really had a chance there.”

I recognise the feelings of stress, overwhelm and panic from my own life. But afterwards, when I’ve calmed down, I realise that in my case, the times I’ve experienced these have been a rational response to the ups and downs of normal existence: having a full time demanding job, three children, and for 15 years, coping with ill parents.

For someone with ADHD, however, these feelings can be the response to having to find your keys.

The problems faced in everyday life

Joseph Aquilina, 46, an advisor to the producers, is a neurodiversity consultant and ADHD coach. He also has ADHD himself. What does he think of how the game represents the experience?

“Yes, that can be what it’s like just getting your keys to get out the door. It’s a really good metaphor for things like that, because one of the objects in there is a key… but then the other objects are, like a skull. What the hell has the skull got to do with it? Well, that’s our [people with ADHD] brain. I might think, Oh, I’ve got to get the key. And in the middle of my brain is, oh, the key is like, a key is connected to a trunk. And a trunk is like, coffin. Coffin is dead. Yes, there could be random things that just pop into your head that distract you from what you’re trying to do.”

It sounds frustrating.

“Absolutely, like everyday things that everyone takes for granted, you can have real difficulty doing, and that does lead to frustration… I’ve got clients who are doing advanced mathematics – [the kind of maths] that you just think, how do you do that? But they’ll constantly forget where they’ve put their shoes or their phone… just constantly. You could lose your keys four or five times in one hour.”

May Abdalla, the co-director of Impulse, which took two years to make and involved interviewing 200 people with ADHD, says: “The more you interview people, the more you realise [the expression] ‘attention deficit’ doesn’t make sense. When you speak to people, they are profoundly attending to their issues. But they don’t know what not to give attention to. They’re giving attention to the sounds of my earrings as I move left and right. So it’s hard for them to focus on what I’m saying.”

She explains: “It’s sort of like an ultra sensitivity”.

The chase for adrenaline

Meanwhile, back in my headset, the experience moves away from the game and on to a more documentary style section that charts the lives of four real case studies, Errol, Omar, Tara and Leanne. The majority of them have suffered trauma in their pasts – violence, bereavement and neglect – but the interviews reveal that they all share certain traits, including the chase for adrenaline, often wanting to climb buildings and get up high. Recounting their younger experiences the men describe having more swagger, the girls (now grown women) are more self-denigrating.

Errol, now in his 60s and a performer, fitted the “naughty boy” trope of ADHD as a young man. He says: “I used to climb to the top [of buildings]. I used to get off on people being scared… that I was going to fall.”

Leanne, who has ADHD, describes how ‘I just want to walk on the wall, jump on the car’

Tara, now in her 20s, grew up in a middle class family in Carlisle. “I always spoil things,” says her voice. She recalls: “I would be more excitable [than other people]. If we were playing pretend swords I would go too far and accidentally hurt someone. It feels really good in the moment but then out of the moment you realise what you’ve done. It’s all gone horribly wrong.” There’s a sense of shame in her voice. We hear that before she got her diagnosis she made multiple suicide attempts and self-harmed.

By the end of the headset experience I felt sympathy, a degree of recognition and a wish to understand more about this condition which affects so many people. It’s easy to look at a list of symptoms, far harder to experience the intensity and intrusiveness of the feelings they provoke.

[Snip to end; read more about ADHD in the rest of the original story]