Let’s talk about Mabel and ADHD

As the title sort of implies, I headcanon that Mabel has ADHD (and I’m probably not the only one) and this scene from Sock Opera is a scene that really stands out to me as a sign she has ADHD.

Many of you are probably thinking, “Oh, she’s going to say that the fact that Mabel got so easily distracted is proof she doesn’t have ‘laser focus’ and that is a sign she has ADHD.”

No.

That’s not what I’m about to say.

Let’s make something clear, Mabel does have “laser focus.” In this episode, for example, she laser focused on making a puppet show Gabe would like. In Headhunters she laser-focused on making Stan a new wax sculpture, in The Love God she laser focused on getting Robbie a new girlfriend. I could go on, there are plenty of other examples. The fact that she can laser focus is a sign of her having ADHD.

“But the ‘AD’ in ADHD stands for ‘attention deficit.’ How is laser focus a sign she has ADHD?” you ask. Well from my own experience with having ADHD, and from research I’ve done, “attention deficit” doesn’t necessarily mean the inability to focus for long lengths of time, it could very well mean laser focusing on the wrong thing at the wrong time. This is known as hyperfocus. It’s something that is experienced by many people with ADHD (not all, but a fair amount of people) and it’s basically when someone is so focused on something it’s nearly impossible to stop and focus on something else. Take me for example, I could focus on nothing but Gravity Falls analysis and theories for hours and hours and hours. The problem is that it’s very difficult for me to get out of hyperfocus to do the giant pile of homework stacking up on my desk. For me, it’s also occurred between interests. At the beginning of the new year, I promised myself to write more GF fanfiction and draw more GF fanart, a few days later I suddenly began re-obsessing about Wander Over Yonder. For like three weeks I couldn’t think about GF fanfics or fanart, all I could think about was WOY. And I think that’s basically what happened in this scene of Sock Opera. I think that if Gabe hadn’t shown up, Mabel would have hyperfocused– or as she called it, laser focused– on the laptop. She was ready and motivated to help Dipper. The problem was that something came up that she found more interesting, and suddenly her hyperfocus switched to that.

Now, what about Dipper? Was he hyperfocusing in this episode on the laptop? The answer is: possibly. According to research I’ve done on hyperfocusing, it’s normal for someone without ADHD to fall into a hyperfocus state once in a while. What makes hyperfocus an ADHD thing is that it’ll happen more frequently. (please note that I didn’t do any research on whether or not hyperfocusing regularly is solely an ADHD thing or if this is common with other mental disorders as well.)

Personally, I think Dipper was in a flow state rather than a hyperfocus state. Flow state is defined as being fully immersed in an activity. This is something I learned a little while ago in school and I immediately had to look up the difference between flow and hyperfocus. The difference is controlability. It’s fairly easy to get in and out of a flow state, but hyperfocus is hard or impossible to control, and it’s incredibily hard to start and end it at will. That being said, the fact that Dipper was able to help Mabel with her puppet show in the day, and work on the laptop at night, and showed no signs of it being a struggle to switch between the two tasks, implies that he was in more of a flow state than a hyperfocus one.

Now back to Mabel, since she’s the topic of this post (really the only reason I brought up Dip was because I figured someone was going to ask anyway). The fact that it’s difficult to get in and out of hyperfocus is further evidence that Mabel experiences it and is aware of it. She didn’t help Dipper at night with the laptop (although part of that is probably because they have to sleep at some point, and Dipper didn’t seem to care one bit about sleep this episode) and consider maybe she didn’t because she knew she really couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t focus on the laptop until the puppet show was done. This also could be part of the reason she recruited Dipper to help her. I mean sure, she obviously needed help, but consider, the sooner the puppet show is done, the easier/sooner she can get out of hyperfocusing on puppets and start focusing on the laptop and helping out Dip.

That is why this scene stands out to me as a sign she has ADHD.

And ADHD Mabel is just one more thing to love about Mabel. :)