*Please not I am speaking entirely from personal experiences and not seeking to make universal claims about autism, ADHD, AuDHD and monotropism
Monotropism is a theory that was created by Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson to describe autistic people’s experiences when it comes to attention. Those who are monotropic seem to be able to hyperfocus on a smaller range of things at once, but in greater depth compared to those who are not monotropic. The monotropic area of focus is sometimes referred to as an attention tunnel. This can also make it harder for monotropic people to notice or switch to many things outside our area of focus (attention tunnel). However, monotropism can also bring a great sense of joy for many autistic people in terms of the satisfaction we can get when we’re able to hyperfocus on an interest which brings us happiness. Kerian Rose’s video also provides a good introduction to monotropism.
So what has this got to do with my AuDHD then? Well a lot to be honest! I certainly relate to the descriptions that have come from monotropism. Yet, I do feel with ADHD in the mix too, my experiences of monotropism may slightly differ compared to autistic people who aren’t also ADHDers. I’ve touched on this in my book ‘Young, Autistic and ADHD; Moving into adulthood when you’re multiply-neurodivergent’ Where I shared the following about my experiences with monotropism.
“I have come across some autistic ADHDers relating to parts of monotropism, but not fully. One example is jumping between a few different areas of focus due to the impulsivity and attention difference in ADHD. However, anything that falls outside their select hyper-focuses (or attention tunnels) can be very difficult to transition to.I would say this is closer to my experience too at times”
One thing that has changed for me is that I do relate to monotropism more now compared to when I wrote the book back in Spring 2022 to Autumn 2023 (writing and publishing a book takes years!). So yes, I do find my area of monotropic focus may be broader or I have multiple aspects within my attention tunnel at one time. However, I find my impulsivity means I bounce around those specific areas of hyperfocus, but rarely anything outside of it. I cannot as easily transition to anything outside that area of hyperfocus like a non-monotropic (or sometimes referred to as ‘polytropic’) person can do.
I now see it more as multiple aspects of my attention existing within the same monotropic attention tunnel. Rather than me having multiple tunnels and not being able to focus on what exists outside of those attention tunnels. I’ve created a diagram to demonstrate how I see the bouncing between more than one area within the same monotorpic attention tunnel. It still hard to focus to anything outside the attention tunnel, meaning I am not polytropic.
Funnily enough when doing the research for this post, I came across another blog on ADHD and Monotropism which queries the possibility of attention hoping within the same attention tunnel too. “Maybe some of that apparent attention-hopping happens within an attention tunnel anyway, and other people just aren’t seeing the connections!”
At this stage I’m not aware of any research seeking to understand AuDHD and monotropism from this perspective, and there isn’t any right or wrong way of looking at this when trying to understand how our own neurodivergence works for us individually. Based on my current understanding of AuDHD and monotropism at the time of writing, I suspect many of our experiences of monotropism will differ to people who are autistic or ADHDer’s, and not both.
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments if you’re an AuDHDer who experiences monotropism!
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References:
Sarah Boon 
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