The ADHD walk!

Have you ever heard of postural sway?⁠
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Credit: @savetimeshan on TikTok

[pearl-may]

If postural sway is a problem, how come it feels like dancing, reduces the amount of abrupt changes and therefore physical stress, and achieves everything that can be acheived without a lot of sway? To me, it just indicates that somebody's in the zone.

[Anonymous-cbxw]

As someone who walks in this particular way… mentally, it’s a ‘shortest route’ concept. Minor dodging of obstacles through bodily manipulation help maintain the shortest route concept. With that mindset, my peripheral is also more attuned as to AVOID obstacles through such bodily manipulation.

In turn, unexpected events that rapidly approach me (even while standing still) are more avoidable. I can peripherally see an incoming event and contort just enough (it tends to be under-exaggerated movement due to the ‘shortest path’ concept) to where I can avoid that collision. Primarily for effects of safety. And yes, avoidance as well.

[frankshameful]

Why is it a bad thing to walk like that? I do it a lot but it seems to really shine through when I have a task I’m really focused on completing. It feels more flowing and efficient than to have to redirect my whole body. I work a factory job that’s pretty repetitive so it’s easy for me to check out mentally and let my body do the task. Like autopilot almost. I do feel like I’m not enough or “worthy” some times but I don’t get the correlation

[calebwilliams]

Nah I've been doing this since I was little 😂. Plus it's like a dance almost a trance state when I'm trying to get somewhere on foot. Moat of the time I'm just focused on something else and want to get there as swiftly as possible.😎

[annadushenkina]

I can offer a different idea: if you walk fast (like a lot of us ADHD people do), this dodging and weaving is almost inevitable. That's how you avoid bumping into things (most of the time) without slowing down.

[LispyJesus]

I do this constantly. But in reality it’s nothing super deep. I don’t pay attention to where I’m walking well enough and am always about to run into shit and that’s how I avoid it. I’m focused on something else or in my head.

[catpoke]

We're just moving last second. That's all it is. It's taking the path of least resistance to avoid an obstacle we either didn't notice or only subconsciously noticed and therefore had to dodge. No point shifting your whole trajectory when you can just tilt your torso out of the way.

[kikiseo]

How does swaying relate in any way to "not feeling good enough"?? If someone's rocking side to side, it's likely a stimming thing.

[brianmathews]

This guys using too much executive functioning Brain power to diagnosis our sway lol

[MrBeklager]

Its more of being in the zone and having fun

[GlenTylerJennings]

Those clips from tiktok are not what postural sway is. At all. People people are focused and in a hurry and don't make the decision to go around something they just move around the obstacle in a smooth dance-like fashion. A lot of marching band kids do that too because you're taught to pivot parts of your body to move around things without turning your whole body around. People with ADHD may do this more frequently because they're hyperfocused on a task and their minds don't process changing the path quickly enough and instead shift their body at the last second to prevent collisions.

Postural sway is when your body is swaying around because your balance is off, it's not intentional. It can be when you're standing still and you can see someone leaning back to front kind of shifting their weight from their heels to their toes in order to counterbalance the sway, or it can be side to side. Their bodies just sway a little.

[ticketforepic]

What are you going off about? Postural sway is the only benefit of ADHD I've discovered as of yet. I'm told I walk like a runway model.

[samrobinson]

In high-school it seemed cool, I would get in these hyper focused states eyes straight forward but moving and weaving around people pretty easily.

[drtopherdds]

ADHDer here with postural sway, yup.
Self esteem issues and anxiety, nope... nada.
Nothing could be further from the truth for me.

[adamcrane]

i just wanna get somewhere with the least amount of steps. especially if i'm focused on doing something, i just wanna get it done. couldn't imagine taking the extra 3 steps and 2 pivots to get there like a sane human being 😂

[Susichea]

Partially true cause they walk like this because they can’t waist time getting to what they were so focusing doing

[Kira_Kittyboi]

Honestly anyone who thinks walking like that is a problem they just don’t get it, we get it tho we get it 😎

[base]

I have swagger and confidence in my adhd sway. It’s how I move

[troubled-sir-]

I thought of it as a superpower, now I just feel bad

[batrickpateman]

That's why dudes were freaking out when #metoo was a bigger deal and started talking about the pence rule in the workplace.

Forgive me for digging up that ancient history.