The unauthorised biography of every stupid thing I've ever said

Rumination is hyperfocus's evil twin that nobody warns you about. It's my brain deciding that an awkward conversation from the early '90s or a display in stupidity from 2017 deserves the same processing power as the fucking Mars landing.

For those of us with ADHD who experience it, rumination isn't just overthinking – it's thought-looping on steroids, where the emergency brake doesn't seem to work.

While everyone else might occasionally replay an embarrassing moment, my ADHD brain transforms it into an IMAX experience with surround sound, director's commentary, and a never-ending run time around things that shouldn't require a second thought.

Unlike hyperfocus, which, for me, often produces something useful, rumination is just mental hamster-wheeling that is exhausting.

My brain keeps a meticulously cataloged archive of awkward moments – things I said or left unsaid – each carefully rated on a shame scale that would make Proust's obsessive memory keeping in In Search of Lost Time seem casual by comparison. This mental ledger, constantly updated by my rumination, has become my own personal hall of fame for uncomfortable memories.

Here's two of my 'favourites' that for years haunted me, but from going through a bout of therapy recently, I've been able to laugh about.

What's that Musk-y smell?

There's not a day goes by without a headline about Elon Musk's fortune going through its own version of The Smiler. One day it's up by $30bn in 24 hours, the next it's down by $29bn in a day.

I mention him because my brain heads into a death spiral when I hear his name. Not for any of the reasons you'd think, but simply because in 2017 I was having a conversation with someone about the Tesla Model 3 and I said the word "Telsa".

For years I felt the infinite shame of not just saying the name wrong, but also not correcting my mistake immediately. It's on the list of things my brain thinks about often. It's a small thing that most people would likely forget within hours of it happening, but until recently I've clung on to it like it's the family jewels.

Can Gavin dance?

During my awkward teenage years, my family had the good fortune of winning a holiday to Butlins in Mosney. My neighbour tagged along, and at a disco packed with teens of all social graces, we found ourselves approached by two girls.

I should note that I don't think a girl had ever approached me before, so in fairness it was a new experience. With the loud noise of U Can't Touch This from MC Hammer in the background one of the girls asked me something, which at the time, I thought was "Can Gavin dance?". I was greatly confused as to how she knew my neighbour's name given we'd never met before. So I duly explained that I thought he was probably a terrible dancer.

As the girl walked away, I realise that she'd actually said something like "do you wanna dance?" to me. A super dope homeboy from the Oaktown I certainly was not.

Turning rumination into reflection

Research involving 3,000 Japanese adults revealed that self-rumination mediated the relationship between ADHD traits and depressive symptoms, while self-reflection had a protective effect by mitigating self-rumination’s impact. CBT therapy has definitely been helpful for me.

The mispronounced "Telsa" and the misheard dance invitation are just two items from my extensive collection of rumination artifacts. My brain catalogs them with the precision of a librarian with OCD, pulling them out for review at the most inconvenient times. Today, I've started to be able to cope with that a touch better.

The irony isn't lost on me that I've now immortalised these moments in writing, transforming my private ruminations into something shared. Perhaps that's the point... when these thought loops escape the hamster wheel of my mind and enter the world, they become less powerful.

And who knows? Maybe somewhere out there is a woman still wondering why that weird kid at Butlins thought she was asking about someone named Gavin's dancing abilities.