#i'm aware of the irony in a post about adhd being so long and i understand if yall end up skipping over it entirely nkjdcnx

[lesbianrobin]

oh.... yes..... as an adhd steve-lover (and person who has a history of unknowingly crushing on adhd characters) i beg to hear ur reasoning......... please...

alright so a lot of this is gonna be like projection ddnkjcn and it turned into more of a general character analysis than an adhd analysis and i’m sure that some things i describe will differ from your personal experience so feel free to critique me but here goes:

Why Steve Harrington Has ADHD

Steve struggles in school, yeah, but that’s not really… crucial to my reasoning? I personally did pretty well in school despite having difficulties with getting work done on time and understanding certain things. The fact that he clearly tried to do well and just couldn’t is what’s important. That’s a classic ADHD thing, feeling like there’s some kind of invisible block making it impossible to think the way you’re supposed to be thinking and do the things you’re supposed to be doing. We see him studying a few different times with Nancy (though he’s reluctant to focus on the task in s1), it’s implied he’s written multiple drafts of the essay that he shows Nancy in the beginning of s2, meaning that he wants to do well. After Nancy critiques his essay, he basically decides to give up because he’ll never be able to make it good enough, and he probably shouldn’t even bother applying to college, and he’ll just end up working for his dad anyway. It’s a bit of an extreme jump from the relatively mild criticism he receives, but it seems to me like the kind of mindset that I (and others with ADHD) fall into constantly. First of all, rewriting something you’ve already written when you have ADHD can be… torturous. It’s impossible to focus because you’ve done it already, it feels pointless and boring, and your brain is just done with the topic. To Steve, there’s no point in even trying because he’s never gonna get it right, and he’d rather not even try than apply to college and have to suffer rejection. ADHD isn’t laziness or apathy. People with ADHD actually tend to care a lot about their performance in various aspects of life, and they care so much that it can often either propel them to excellence or drive them to depression over failure (whether that failure is true or perceived). Spoiler alert: we’re about to get into rejection sensitive dysphoria, folks!

I think this describes Steve perfectly. He wants to be the best at everything (Prom King, anyone?) and he cares a lot about what people think of him (to the degree that he spent three of his four years in high school behaving specifically to avoid the possibility of Tommy H and others making fun of him). Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD, is a condition which impacts almost all people with ADHD. This means that they are far more sensitive than most people to what others think about them. Think about Steve’s entire character arc: he essentially spends season one chasing the approval of Tommy, Carol, and Nancy. When Tommy and Carol’s desired behavior differs from Nancy’s, causing conflict, he’s forced to take a look at himself and decide what’s more important to him: pleasing his friends, or doing what’s right. Since Steve is a certified angel, he goes with what’s right, and from there goes on to apologize to Jonathan and help him and Nancy fight the Demogorgon. (Sidenote: the fistfight with Jonathan could definitely be considered as further evidence of ADHD! RSD can cause extreme emotional reactions when the person in question feels that they have been hurt or rejected, such as Steve believing that Nancy cheated on him with Jonathan. The fact that Steve resorted to cruel insults that he clearly doesn’t believe shows that he was acting out of his own hurt and anger, not out of true hatred for Jonathan.) 

Anyway, s1 Steve’s entire life is built around seeking approval from his peers. He realizes that his desire for approval has turned him into somebody that he doesn’t like, so he makes a change, and by s2 we see that he’s shifted somewhat: Now, he wants to please Nancy. He’s able to handle being mocked by Billy and Tommy H because he no longer puts any stock in their brand of approval, but being told by Nancy that she doesn’t love him elicits another (somewhat) extreme emotional response: he immediately leaves her at the party with Jonathan and doesn’t pick her up for school the next morning. He’s upset with her. Later on, he goes to her house with flowers intending to apologize, though he doesn’t actually know what he’s apologizing for. All he wants is for Nancy to be with him and like him again, because he can’t handle feeling unloved and rejected. S2 is also where we see Steve’s academic insecurity, and he hints at issues with feeling like a failure in the eyes of his father. By the end of the season, he’s able to handle not being loved by Nancy because he’s found a new source of self-esteem and approval: Dustin and the rest of the kids. Through acting as their “babysitter,” Steve’s found something to take pride in that nobody can take away from him. Billy may have overshadowed his basketball stardom and broken his keg stand record, but Steve no longer needs these shallow achievements to feel a sense of self-worth. 

S3 shows that, although he’s moved on from seeking approval from specific peers, Steve is still stuck searching for validation. He flirts indiscriminately hoping for anybody to respond positively, and he gets a job to appease his father. Here, I’m gonna jump ahead a little bit (because that’s just the way my brain is saying it’s gotta be lmao) and talk about a few of Steve’s other canon traits, then circle back around to how we see his ongoing struggle with RSD manifest in s3.

Now for the trait that people more commonly associate with ADHD, especially in men and young boys: hyperactivity. This one is a little more self-explanatory so I’m not gonna spend as much time on it. Steve excels in situations with clearly defined rules and expectations where it’s easier to stay on-track, as well as in high-pressure, fast-paced environments. This is why he succeeds in basketball and why he’s such a big damn hero every season. He thinks on his feet and steps up in intense situations without hesitation. Steve is the one who wedged something under the elevator door so that everyone could escape, he’s the one who took out a Russian soldier before he was able to alert anybody else, and when he saw Billy about to ram into Team Griswold Family, he crashed into Billy’s car. Part of this is the fact that it’s a sci-fi action horror show, and there are going to be dramatic action-packed situations, but it’s telling that if Steve is around, he’s almost always the one leaping into danger and adapting to the situation to deal with it quickly. Speaking of s3: The conversation Steve and Robin had on the floor in the Russian torture chamber!

This feeds into an even more elaborate Steve meta theory of mine about how he basically lives his life as if it’s a play and there’s a script and a set of rules that he’s gotta follow to please the audience, so I’m not gonna go into ALL of it, but this conversation is also important to the idea of Steve having ADHD and struggling with RSD. Steve says, “It just baffles me. Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it’s all just… bullshit.” When Robin says that she feels like her life has been “one big error,” he agrees. So far, Steve has lived his whole life according to one set of rules. If you flirt with girls and go to parties and play basketball, you’ll be cool and popular. Now that he’s graduated, he’s floundering. The structure of high school is gone and everything he worked for doesn’t actually matter in real life. People with ADHD often struggle more than others with the transition from high school to either college or the working world. Loss of familiar frameworks, routines, and actions can hit the ADHD mind hard, and this is pretty clearly happening to Steve in s3. In the beginning of the season, he can’t even manage to have a decent conversation with a girl without bringing up school and his own perceived failures. Sidenote: Robin also mentions that Steve was late to class every single day, which is both extremely relatable to me and the most ADHD thing I’ve ever heard. I knew exactly how long it took me to get from my house to the school, and I woke up with plenty of time to get ready every single morning, yet I somehow managed to be late so many mornings that I got multiple detentions and ended up having to skip a couple of classes entirely because another tardy would have fucked up my disciplinary record.

Later on in the bathroom scene, when he’s talking about why he didn’t talk to Robin back in school, Steve says, “…maybe ‘cause Tommy H would’ve made fun of me or I wouldn’t be Prom King. It’s stupid…” and it’s somewhat of a continuation of the earlier conversation. Steve is expressing the same sentiment. Now that he’s out of high school, everything that he once used to measure his success and self-worth is just stupid. This is another classic RSD thing! People with ADHD/RSD often set impossibly high standards for themselves and then struggle with self-hatred and doubt when they cannot live up to these expectations. Robin kind of inspires and encourages him to set new, more attainable standards for himself. Spending time with Robin makes Steve happy in a way that he’s never really been before, and he realizes that all of the benchmarks of normalcy and success that he’s been striving for don’t guarantee happiness like they’re supposed to. Instead of finding happiness in academic, romantic, or athletic success, he finds happiness in an unlikely friendship. His whole arc for three seasons has essentially been a big struggle with RSD and impulsivity where he learned how to handle social rejection and place the needs and feelings of others before his own.

There’s also a ton of little things in Joe Keery’s acting choices that support ADHD Steve, like his near-perpetual motion and the way that he’s gotta pace and eat a damn banana (both the traditional way and the no-homo breaking it into pieces way, might I add) so he can listen to Dustin talk about the Russian code. I personally relate to a lot of things he does, like mixing up basic names and facts (like Nazis/Germans in s2 and Gumby/gumbo in s3), and needing to explain a whole situation out loud before he really gets it (like when he runs down the entire monster situation in the mall in s3). I don’t know if those are ADHD things but they make me feel Seen. 

Anyways. That’s about it!! Thanks for asking lmao