Living Environment and ADHD

City stimulation or quiet countryside — how does where you live shape the ADHD mind? A psychiatrist reflects on Chicago and Saugatuck.

The modern definition of environment is "the aggregate of conditions in which a person or thing lives." My own experience of living in both Chicago and Saugatuck, Michigan may illustrate what that definition means in practice — and why it matters for people with ADHD.

Chicago's big city stimulates. There are countless fine dining opportunities, music venues — a personal favorite is the Jazz Showcase — live theater, and vast, lovely parks. From our windows, the view of expansive Lake Michigan fills me with a busy wonder. I can walk to restaurants, parks, and my Walgreens, which is a three-block stroll from our condo. I am surrounded by sirens, traffic noise, and the clamor of a beautifully diverse city. City living charges me up.

Saugatuck, a small Michigan town almost directly across Lake Michigan, might be the polar opposite. Restaurant options are limited, and fine dining is essentially absent. Entertainment venues barely exist. Everything requires a drive — grocery stores and pharmacies are thirty minutes away in the next town.

Yet western Michigan offers something Chicago cannot: endless opportunities for hiking through the woods where I rarely encounter another person. Mowing the lawn became my happy place, a genuinely meditative practice. Gardening, grilling on the back porch, and bird watching were all peaceful, restorative activities.

Shinrin-yoku — Japanese for "forest bathing" — is a well-established practice with a growing body of research supporting its mental health benefits. Time spent among trees, away from screens and urban noise, measurably reduces cortisol levels and lowers heart rate. Cloud gazing and bird watching are similarly recognized as calming pleasures, gently anchoring attention without demanding it. The busy city life stimulates all the senses. The quiet country life restores them. I enjoy both, and I think that balance is worth examining.

People with ADHD are, by definition, highly distractible. The barrage of stimuli that energizes some people can paralyze others. A recent patient with ADHD described exactly this kind of paralysis — not in a city, but in managing the many competing details of running a busy, successful business. The mechanism is the same: when everything demands attention simultaneously, the ADHD mind can freeze rather than prioritize.

I would never recommend that a patient relocate to a small town. But I do tell every patient about forest bathing and other restorative practices. You do not need to leave Chicago to find stillness. The city's parks — Lincoln Park, Grant Park, the 606 trail — offer genuine respite. Even a deliberate twenty-minute walk without earbuds, paying attention to what is around you, can function as a reset.

If you live with ADHD and find that certain environments consistently overwhelm you, that is useful clinical information — not a personal failing. The goal is not to avoid stimulation entirely, but to build in regular, intentional periods of quiet. Whether that looks like a weekend in Michigan, a walk along the lakefront, or simply sitting in a park without your phone, the restorative effect is real. Your environment is not fixed. You can shape it, even in small ways, to support the way your mind works.