I don't think that this is what the person in the picture means, but the ability to focus on one thing while ignoring/put aside all the noise in your head. With ADHD the inside of your head sounds like being in the center of a fun fair, where it's almost impossible to hear your "own" thoughts.

[–] lung@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pretty sure they are all your own thoughts, or none of them are. I'm unclear where thoughts come from. Either way, a big part of meditation is focus training, and while people differ in this ability, everyone can improve - like exercise

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago

Of course they are your own thoughs, well at least I hope so. It's just not the thoughts you want to follow now, and that takes a huge amount of energy to do so. Because they are all the same "volume". Not only that, the thoughts get mashed together and it can be impossible to distinguish between them.

So you sooner or later inevitably start following the wrong thought which spawns a dozen other seemingly random thoughts (but they are not random for you) and then you get yelled at because you're slow and made a lot of errors and hear once again "just focus on the task" or "why don't you just concentrate on what you're doing".

So if neurotypicals can simply focus by ignoring or by putting aside other thoughts, for neurodiverse this is "silence". Not in the meditative "empty your head, let all thoughts go" way, that's another huge step.