ADHD/ND here, and I really agree with this one quote from this piece:
> those most affected by executive dysfunction require therapy to be more directive, specific and accountable; that is, processing of past trauma and relational approaches are not sufficient. What often does not seem like trauma therapy at all can lead to great strides forward if it allows individuals to obtain a greater sense of structure and mastery in day-to-day life tasks
I've spent so much time in therapy doing the whole "let's go through your childhood and your past" and it was just not effective in tackling what I really needed. It's remarkable how many licensed therapists just didn't know how to deal with this. I'm sure it's really helpful for some people, but outside of increasing some basic awareness about how my family of origin resulted in present-day behaviors, I definitely reached diminishing returns on that route.
As skeptical as I am of AI as an interventional tool for "reaching our most effective selves", I can't help but feel that if it can be wired up to do the appropriate "micro-interventions" that reflect OP's insight ("directive, specific and accountable ... to obtain a grater sense of structure"), we might see 'ADHD' become a thing of the past (at least for the people that share my phenotype of it). It's my hope at least...
Thank you for sharing your experience. I feel similarly
On a tangent, this makes me think about the explainability of ai models. In a way, discovering our childhood trauma and the way it affects us, is akin to searching for explainability
However, in practice, the best way to overcome whatever we want to overcome, might not be to first have an explanation of why/how it happened
I have a friend, next alcoholic, she was recently reading through her old journals to try to figure out her life. What happened? She told me that she had a really strong impulse to start drinking again.
In my opinion, you gain nothing from looking at trauma or trying to see some psychological way to get out of it. The only cure is to forget about it.
Acceptance of the fact that I will always have executive function difficulties and there is nothing that can really improve it. It's not the realization I wanted to have, but it is one I wish I learned earlier.
> it was just not effective in tackling what I really needed.
That's how I would summarize my experiences with psychotherapy too. I think the only thing I have truly learned from therapy is what I feared most. There ain't much in this universe that can truly help with ADHD. Medications and other interventions barely move the needle for me. Seriously, I am at the point in my life where I am basically done fighting the condition. It's a Sisyphean effort that's mostly fueled by arbitrary societal expectations and my own egotistical desires and insecurities.
Each begets the other. Trauma and abuse is in many ways (socially) hereditary but often enhanced by neurodivergence. In a brain with sensory sensitivities outside the norm, connection can be difficult (even between ND people), and from that disconnection often arises the sorts of overwhelms in both caregiver and child that make for neglect out of overwhelm or explosive situations.
Couple that with just plain generational trauma - physical punishment that ND people are more sensitive to, the high prevalence of CSA, and a world that doesn’t even try to make any accommodations and you find it more rare to find neurodivergent people who are untraumatized.
One result mentioned here but worth highlighting is the capacity to dissociate and the existence of dissociative disorders. Many people in this cohort also find they have the ability to structurally dissociate as a coping mechanism of last resort - an outsized percentage of people diagnosed with OSDD, DID, and DDNOS are neurodivergent, and among social groups of neurodivergent people often dissociative people will tend to attract - it’s nearly to the point that “capacity to dissociate” could itself be a neurotype. Anyway it’s a fascinating line of study, and if I didn’t have folks w dissociative disorders in my life I might doubt their existence.
Disassociation can be a useful thing to be able to do, sometimes. Under certain circumstances you can be better at dealing with dangerous, stressful situations, for example.
It's generally maladaptive but there's a reason the brain does it.
I've heard this term "trauma" a lot in the past few years, and often in context where I didn't initially think that word applied in the situation it was used. It's caused me to think about my own childhood and wonder, with that modern understanding of the word, did I experience "trauma"?
I wasn't sexually abused, I wasn't neglected, I wasn't wanting of love. I was however often scolded to a point where I felt horrible about myself. Scolded to a point where I didn't even feel like I could exist without disrupting the world. At times yes, physically scolded but nothing so extreme as to leave a mark.
To be fair to my parents I was a very high energy and "difficult" child. Big emotions. I was always the problem.
Obviously compared to some upbringings this was a walk in the park. But it really did have an impact on me and who I grew up to be. In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I've had a myriad of mental health issues throughout my adult life, ranging from low severity to medium, and on some rare occasions high. Genetics? Upbringing? Modern life? All of the above?
What you are describing is emotional neglect and a failure of parenting.
You were meant to learn to recognize and name that energy and emotionality, and then learn to sit with it and develop adaptive coping strategies as needed, not maladaptive ones like negative self-concept and emotional repression.
It can take quite a long time to realize all of this and unlearn the patterns, and unfortunately, first line therapies like CBT are possibly detrimental for these issues.
Edit: also, you need not be fair to your parents. They are meant to adapt to parenting you, even if you were legitimately overactive or overemotional. Instead, you adapted to them.
For me, making a distinction between the big Trauma with a capital T and little trauma with a lowercase t has been helpful. Any experience that has a lasting negative impact on you could be considered a trauma, but only very extreme stuff - violence, sexual abuse - would count as Trauma.
A car accident is a car accident. Sometimes they are fatal, sometimes the paint gets scratched. People sometimes get long term health effects from a fender-bender.
I almost feel like we need a different word that doesn’t have the confusing association. Like scratching your car (‘little t’ trauma) vs smashing the frame (big ‘T’ trauma).
I think there's a degree of some people being maybe genetically predisposed to having more serious adverse reactions to trauma as well. An obvious example is when it leads to psychosis. So the objective reality of what happened is not necessarily the only thing which factors into how it affects somebody's functioning.
I don't disagree with that at all, but I do think that line of thinking about ones own issues can lead to a sort of self-blame - thinking things like: if I were stronger I wouldn't have been hurt by that neglect or mistreatment. No question, who you are has a huge impact on how something effects you, but nobody reacts well to e.g. neglect or mistreatment. I might end up with depression, while my sibling ends up with anxiety. That's our predisposition interacting with the objective reality, but neither outcome shifts the blame for the neglect or mistreatment to us. I know that's probably not what you were trying to say, but I do think that idea is one possible place downstream of what you are saying.
> nobody reacts well to e.g. neglect or mistreatment
Maybe, but some people react by becoming stronger and some react by breaking down and failing. Regardless of other effects like depression, anxiety, paranoia etc., being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know? If you ended up weaker then sometimes nothing can convince you that's what was best.
> being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know?
That feels like a tautology. From context, you've defined stronger to mean better. So of course in that case stronger is better. But in reality stronger isn't always better. If you come to a chess match being able to bench more than your opponent, are you better at chess than them?
If there are tradeoffs, and there are always tradeoffs, then you can't actually say stronger is better. The neglect of your parents might make you more independent and you might find that helps with your work life, while at the same time it makes your personal relationships harder. Which of those do you happen to value more?
Which is not to say you can't personally find value in and appreciate even the negative the experiences that made you who you are. But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
> But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
Oh neglect is terrible; simultaneously the worst and the least recognized type of abuse.
My point is that adaptations to abuse vary enough that some can be more "desirable" than others (in addition to being more fit for the environment / the world at large in some cases), and someone stuck in a "worse" one could end up longing for a "better" one. Though, sometimes I long for "worse" ones myself as someone who feels "better" than I should be, so maybe the grass is just always greener.
I don't think "weak" and "strong" are useful in this discussion without defining them carefully. The way most people seem to get through these things is by becoming more thoughtful and emotionally mature. This is what is generally meant by "weak" in these conversations. "Strong" leads to pills and bottles and painful deaths trying to fight the feelings down.
Consider two approaches: one is to spend hours ruminating on your experiences every day to form insights and approaches to tackle new problems and make new progress. The other is to panic at the slightest sign of anything, compartmentalize everything and get stuck in fruitless thought loops constantly, making very little progress to integrate information or have insights. Say both of those take the same immense amounts of energy, but maybe the former would have a better shot at fighting active abuse, you know? In my experience, calculated thought is far superior to fruitless panic. In this way one could be considered "stronger" than the other even though both are technically undesirable (because constant rumination over everything is actually terrible, for example).
Real example based on real self-doubt across multiple friends I know.
I'm trying to say that the reason it's not defined carefully is because people who worry about this don't usually have concrete objective definitions. "Stronger" sounds better to someone who hates that they're "weak", because the costs are less obvious. (Consider breaking down in front of everyone all the time, embarrassing yourself constantly, never knowing what to do, irritating everyone by being inconsolable, etc. vs always being composed, manipulating situations to avoid embarrassment, always being prepared with plans and never depending on others. Despite the fact that the former is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely.)
One aspect of trauma is the helplessness of it: it's not just how severe the physical reality is, it's also about the inability to do anything about it (and the internalization of that inability).
The classic example is a child who drew a picture shortly after 9/11. The picture included people floating down the building on (I believe) balloons or umbrellas. Obviously unphysical; but the child imagining ways (however fantastical) that could have helped was a factor in reducing that child's trauma.
On a therapist can tell you whether you personally have trauma, but the lessons you took away from your experiences certainly sound like it to me.
Sounds a lot like CPTSD, which is more about symptoms and responses you have now caused by the continuous situations like you describe. It’s older and there’s been progress on the definition since it came out but Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (and website) is a good resource for the differences between this type of effect form upbringing vs single event traumas.
Personally since reading it and working through my own responses I’ve grown in leaps and bounds where previously I would’ve described myself exactly how you did.
> In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I'm kinda confused. Is that the good impact you think that had in you? Why?
I guess I just mean that nothing is completely black and white.
I learned to regulate my emotions, one way or another. Did it possibly (likely?) also have a long lasting negative effect on aspects of my mood, motivation, focus, etc.? I think there's a good chance.
Thanks, I understood that better. I hope you get to learnt (or are in the never ending process of learning) to understand and express your emotions in a helpful and productive way.
I have lots of problems understanding my feelings (good old alexithymia) and it's always been an struggle for me to understand or communicate how I feel or what bothers me.
OPs description resonates with me as well, and the impact is complex, and in my case, probably more good than bad. There is a romantic notion that childish energy shouldn’t be suppressed, but childish energy is what broke my toys (and my body), and I have expensive toys now (motorcycles, house, etc.)
I have found in my own life that the practice of emotional regulation has made me a pretty good diplomat in difficult situations. Sitting down, shutting up, and following the rules when I want to yell at people is the essence of de-escalation.
Well, I feel emotional regulation is different to shutting down you emotions and your energy.
Emotional regulation is a great thing to work with (I should keep on it), but I think it's very important to do it, not like "my emotions don't belong here, I'm not valid", but knowing the differences between different people, learning how different people behave and express themselves, and finding ways of moving your emotions to different places that help you express yourself and transmit your needs. And you don't have to do it the same way than everyone else (that's one of the most important things I've learnt since my diagnose a couple years ago).
For what it's worth I was a similar kind of child. My problems entirely went away with about 10 (or more) hours of exercise a week. This required a hobby I cared about and the right kind of friends, but since then things have been smooth
Yeah so I think when most people these days say trauma, they simply mean "An ongoing emotional overreaction due to a past negative experience." I think that's a super useful concept.
In your case I'd just ask myself "Do I still feel like I'm a bother in situations where I know I'm not because of X?" And if so, it can be productive to see if you can change that directly or indirectly.
Your comment reads like a case study from "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" by Pete Walker. Many of his studies focus on childhood experiences that are overall "happy" but fall short of "emotionally fulfilling".
This is utterly ridiculous. To be healthy we have to have an emotionally fulfilling, not just happy, childhood? How did we ever survive as a species?
How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
In my honest opinion, no one wants to look at genetics because it scares the hell out of them. But it’s most likely it’s complex genetics, not complex PTSD.
Scolding has been found to have pathways to some really bad things.
It doesn’t have to be the wrist experience to childhood to guarantee crippling adulthoods.
It’s not about little or big trauma, the focus on what any trauma did to the brain is what’s important because the fingerprint and footprint of trauma can be unique and underdeveloped the brain in certain areas regardless of source.
Very similar experience here. It was my mum doing the scolding and I learned 3 things as a child:
1) love is conditional on behaviour - pleasing mum was the primary goal above everything else.
2) when I had been “bad”, only the most extreme contrition on my part unlocked the love I needed (as a highly precocious and literate child I’d write little suicide notes for her to find apologising for being so useless. I was single-digit age).
3) The dissonance between the private incessant scolding and the public display of praise led me to develop a rich, secretive inner life, and become adept at hiding maladaptive behaviour. I became a skilled liar and dissembler.
Suffice to say that this did not do me any favours in life. For the longest time I was able to “fake” being a successful, functioning, and sensitive person. But in reality I was throwing mental landmines into my own future that I eventually stepped on, resulting in addiction, depression, anxiety, almost constant suicidal ideation, a painful divorce (due to my own behaviour), and the estrangement of my adult children. I broke down a couple of years ago, landed in a psychiatric clinic, and started unraveling the effects of a lifetime of living with this baggage. I’m now 61 and have had two of the hardest, most challenging, most heartbreaking, yet also most happy and serene period of growth ever. I feel I’m finally coming into my own and the power my childhood trauma has held over me is broken.
Have you read the PDF? It is whichever of the choices explains your lack of success in the real world, and this then brings relief from blaming yourself for that.
Really, that's it. Read the PDF.
The article even acknowledges that psychiatrist answer is wrong, and that all of the above are on a spectrum and nobody is ADHD-free or 100%-autist. This is not a problem because the answer is not meant to be correct, but only to be helpful and to "alleviate shame to enable people
to achieve their fullest potential".
So there isn't even an answer.
Which, judging by your post, I'm guessing you will find a deeply unsatisfying way to look at the world, as you sound like someone with a positivist view (facts are correct and everything is true or false, you either have ADHD or not, and even on a spectrum there's a number. But there isn't)
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
> A diagnosis of
ADHD or autism in adulthood often leads to incredible relief and
grief in processing all the moments of being blamed and shamed for
what was assumed to be a lack of effort, laziness and/or defiance.
This is definitely a factor for me when I tried to get diagnosed (which failed lol), because my parents whom caused my trauma would obviously refuse to blame themselves for my emotionally stunted development
Exact same thing happened to me, and yet it was never cracked open. I am pretty much the only person that knows the truth, that I don't have this constellation of diagnoses but that they were a coverup for the abuse foisted upon me by my own family.
Sadly it is still (and probably will be) too easy to deflect responsibility and have everyone believe their side. They will probably pass on with nobody realizing what they've done to me. It took me long enough for me to realize my own situation, was how severe it was. I hope more people wake up to the fact that people like me are out there.
The false diagnosis is a perfect distraction for you to continue to blame yourself for all your faults while they get away with everything, for decades. That lost time will never come back.
I find this fascinating. "Relief and grief", but one way or another, you were always in trouble or being blamed for being "you".
The thing we call ADHD is just one phenotype amongst thousands. Every behaviour has a cause, and anyone out there who has been through a childhood with traumatic experiences and feelings of guilt and inadequacy need to understand that they don't need to be told that they have the currently-fashionable condition in order to forgive themselves.
This sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be: What if I said that this happened because you had Mercury in Taurus? The point is here that nothing is your fault. Conversely, everything is; this mirrors the free-will vs predestination paradox.
> you were always in trouble or being blamed for being "you".
And the solution in the article is: how do best make them conform, and “do a bunch of work on themselves” so they are not like themselves, but more like the average.
I simply wrote to the psychiatrist a note that whatever my parents say, they'll make themselves look good, and therefore will paint a rosy childhood for me. I guess it also helped that my then partner was there and told her of how my parents told a "funny story" that made his parents gasp in horror.
Yep, the specialists having interviews with multiple different people from your environment (friends, partners, siblings...) help a lot to differentiate what's real and what not. Also, it's usual that once you pass your twenties you stop living with your parents and/or start shielding them a bit of your struggles, so they don't have the full view of your day to day "fight".
In my case they had interviews with two exes (who are two of my best friends), my sister and my parents.
It was the story of how my brother was asked at school to draw a picture of his last birthday when he was about 5ish and drew stick figures carrying building material because we were building something in the yard and my parents forgot his birthday.
I think it’s the fact they think it’s funny is the real problem. Some people make mistakes, my wife and I don’t care about anniversary dates. But if some one is hurt, brushing it off and disregarding their feelings and your role in causing the hurt is abusive because it undermines the persons safety and connection with the world and other people.
Good grief. I read your comment and … the levels of parental neglect wrapped up in your single story are overwhelming me.
I’m sure you don’t need validation from random internet strangers, but as one with a similar enough childhood, I wanted to share that it’s a thoroughly shit club to be in.
I thought it was a funny story. Only forgetting a birthday once seems like a success to me. We forgot Christmas and other holidays multiple times growing up. Just celebrate the next day/weekend. Besides, doing fun things with family is way better when it's not peak crowd season, which is always the case during holidays, or birthdays that land on weekends/early summer. I've even forgotten my own birthday countless times, starting way before I was an adult.
My wife and I have forgotten our own anniversaries and other events, so now we have reminders in our shared calendar so we don't forget to celebrate, mostly because it's embarassing to tell family that we both mutually forgot about our anniversary than that it actually bothers us. We have date night weekly anyway (and family night weekly)
Sadly it wasn't one birthday. Mine was near Christmas, so everybody remembered it (although I also hated it, because it was a dog and pony show to make everybody see what great parents they were), while my brother's was somewhere around April and thus was almost always forgotten.
Just an anecdote, but my mother forgot my 11th (I think) birthday, I’m 44 now and I think in just the last year or two she mentioned again she still feels guilty about it.
In her defense, I had my birthday party just a few days before and it was an unusual year in that school had started by (maybe even on) my birthday.
I remember feeling a bit disappointed on the day, but certainly not distraught or traumatised. I also never found myself randomly thinking about the incident after except for when my mom mentions it or from stories like this.
My point is that it depends on the person on how big a deal it was. Also, perhaps the parents do feel guilty about it, hence sometimes sharing it as a “funny story”, but I wouldn’t know.
My own 6 year old child seems to be neurodivergent (I suspect I am too) and is struggling a bit with pre-school, even now at a bridging school.
We first had to confront it about 2 years ago when the highly regarded mainstream school she was at said she would have to repeat the year.
At least for me as a parent, the possibility that my child won’t grow up to be a self sufficient is terrifying, so it was quite a bit to come to terms with.
Fortunately we weren't in denial and she’s getting exceptional assistance, but some parents definitely find themselves in denial when confronted with this situation.
It does depend a lot on the person, but it also depends on the parents. If they acknowledge it and attempt to make it right, that's one thing. However, if they just brush over it and don't acknowledge the child's loss, then it's a totally different case.
I could absolutely forget my kid's birthdays. Even though I love them dearly. It's just a round around the sun and culturally made important. Idk what else was going on but building something in the yard together with your parent sounds like fun to me.
Or, this was sarcasm?
Anyway I don't like birthdays myself. I don't like getting presents, I don't like giving them. If you want something just buy it. Why this weird ritual??
It's a once a year reminder that people are happy that you exist.
Sometimes children can feel like maybe their existence makes their parents lives worse, so it is important for them to be reassured that that is not the case (even if it is).
It's also just a fun thing to do. For some kids it's one of the few times per year they're allowed to go wild with sweets, so it's something they look forward to.
> If you want something just buy it.
Kids also often do not yet manage their own finances, so they don't have the freedom to just buy the things they want.
Never forget to see the world from the viewpoint of your children, too. Birthdays are very important to them, because they grow up in a culture, and neither they nor you can avoid that. By being dismissive about what is important to them, you confuse and alienate them. My parents were very dismissive about school, and that made my whole school time a bad experience for me.
Well luckily my wife is always on the ball. But I tell them I love them almost everyday. I really hope they will forgive me my chaotic mind. If a child has to get all their sense of value from a single day a year something's very wrong. I get all your points, it's important but not that important.
> If you want something just buy it. Why this weird ritual??
Or make it, as was my case growing up, when my parents couldn't afford what I wanted anyway.
Money isn't an issue now, so gifts are definitely annoying. I'm not going to wait a month to maybe get the correct drill bit/appliance/etc. I'll just get the correct one now, and play a game or go into town with me on/near-ish my birthday
I usually have to work to get past the feeling that what I went through wasn't enough to recognize that it not being as bad as what someone else went through doesn't mean my thing wasn't bad. This is one where I get to be on the other side with a "funny story" my parents liked to repeat about that time when I was a baby and they were so tired of the crying that they considered tossing me off a bridge.
As an adult, I understand that kids can be really difficult and some dark stuff crosses your mind, and that alone doesn't make you a bad parent. As a kid, the constant retelling piled on to all the other neglect and very justified fears of abandonment.
Which is all to say your feelings about this are valid.
I just said they didn't believe in ADHD, which in my case - their darling wilted hothoused angel - is true. Relying on a generation that stigmatises autism/ADHD for informant reporting is nuts anyway.
> You don't have ADHD or autism, you just suffered from trauma.
Yeah that's exactly what I'm saying, but more specifically I wanted to relieve myself of blame through a label my parents could more easily empathize with
Well, adult treatment paths for complex ptsd are definitely much more resource intensive than adhd (medication) or autism (congrats for getting the diagnosis and good luck). So I don't think this can be what the article is about. It may not be well-covered by insurance, though, and thus not as much pursued (as compared to treating the superficial symptoms of depression, anxiety etc), especially as evidence for positive outcomes and standardised treatment is much more lacking.
It can be both. It frequently is when you're trying to navigate a condition and everybody is downplaying it or just pointing it as your fault for being stupid or lazy. And, yes, years of that (frequently involuntary) gaslighting creates trauma.
I’m sure a lot of people seeking an ADHD / Autism diagnosis after “discovering” they “totally have it” after seeing a video on social media do not in fact have ADHD / Autism.
Who knows? At least a YT video puts them in the direction of getting a proper evaluation after potential decades of struggling and not knowing "what's wrong with me", etc.
A somewhat common sentiment I've heard among those with autism and ADHD is that an untraumatised autist or ADHDer doesn't exist. The literal statement obviously isn't true, but a lot of the downwind effects of it are.
Most people are diagnosed with autism or ADHD because they have problems due to trauma, or they have problems which gave them trauma, or them having these problems made them more sensitive, which in turn traumatised them when it wouldn't have done the same to others. Many of the diagnostic criteria are trauma responses or otherwise external signals which have very little to do with the internal experience of actually having autism or ADHD.
What does a well-developed, untraumatised person with autism or ADHD even look like? We can make some broad statements based on assumptions, but many of those people won't even be diagnosed, since they've never had reason to. What made life work out for them isn't an active area of study, since finding that group of people is close to impossible.
I have schizophrenic disorder and OCD and most likely undiagnosed Asperger‘s because I’m an old fuck.
I continue to be traumatized by my disorder. In fact, I’m currently homeless living on disability with my mental illness and also connective tissue disorder.
You can’t have these disorders and not be traumatized, at least not at the level of disorder I have. I was a brilliant child and a brilliant college student, but had psychosis that made me drop out and having me change my major every other year. I still manage to graduate on the Dean’s list though it took me seven years.
So yeah, still traumatized by my family just not wanting to talk to him anymore because I remind them too much of my nephew who died by suicide. And that’s literally the truth. I didn’t do anything to them. I’ve never heard anyone in my life or even punch someone.
I was relentlessly bullied in junior high through high school not only by fellow students but also by my brothers all older than me. Mostly due to the fact that they had mood disorders as well.
But I know trauma isn’t the cause of my disorder. I know it cause I see it in my genetics. I’m a genetic freak and I can’t get anyone to care about it. And that further is a trauma. The sense of being alone and ignored even though you’re highly intelligent. I mean, I taught myself genetics and have conversations pretending I’m a scientist all the time with people who write all these studies it only falls apart when they ask me what school I went to, and I finally tell them the truth. Then they just stopped talking to me. That’s crazy right? That’s trauma. Anyway, just venting.
ADHD and Autism here. The only thing that has worked for me, and I'm strictly speaking of the ADHD part, has been medication. Everything else has been a waste of time. As for trauma, I strongly believe the correct causal relation is ADHD exposes you to increased chances of trauma. Not the other way around.
Because this is a technical article with nonstandard jargon, I'm going to state the most important piece of tacit knowledge that I know psychology professionals have but do not communicate to laymen (I personally came across it somewhere when reading the complete works of Eric Berne, but I can't recall exactly where).
Any apparent disorder in a person or persons has to be decomposed into the innate parts that existed prior to birth and the environmental experiences that happened afterwards as a prerequisite for any kind of theorising to give useful results instead of noise. They call this the diathesis-stress model and it's easily overlooked.
Not necessarily. Diathesis is a broader term that includes congenital aspects, maternal stressors and various toxin exposures, among other things.
For example, restricting the range of discourse to the purely congenital excludes things like fetal alcohol syndrome, the ages of both parent's gametes and pre-natal exposure to endocrine disruptors. However, in everyday usage, the diathesis refers primarily to those of the symptoms in the physiology, psychology and behavior of the subject that aren't attributable to life experiences (good and bad) rather than the microbiology specifics that act as carriers for any specific cause.
What's important above all else for the psychiatric practice is effective decomposition of any disease into parts that are amenable to study and treatment, rather than comparison to the hypothetical of what kind of "peak" may be achievable for a specific genotype if everything else went well.
The environmental values of the living hood of where the child is to be born in to; is an element I would add to how I intercept it.
Those who are to be born in to an abusive environment may be more prone to continuing the traits of abuse than those who come from reasonable families.
The whole ADHD and trauma link is very interesting. I'm not a scientist, but from personal experience every single person I've met with ADHD has had severe childhood trauma. So it really makes you wonder if that old theory is right about childhood trauma triggering an overload to a child's flight or fight response, which leads to ADHD.
Especially when the trauma involes a caretaker. Parents are like a child's image of god, and for one to turn against the child is devastating.
Almost no parent is ever going to admit their own behavior triggered their child's ADHD or depression. But if they did, then they did. It can still happen.
I know plenty of people with ADHD diagnosis and normal childhoods without any unusual trauma. Most of them also have comorbidities (stuff typical to autism spectrum, learning or motor function difficulties).
I think ADHD is something you are born with, but there are many other things that can cause similar difficulties, including trauma. And as the linked article mentions, neurodivergent children are more likely to have parents who suffer from similar difficulties, which may increase their chance of suffering some sort of childhood trauma.
Likewise, but also I've got boy-girl twins. They're 9 now, but we're pretty sure we could tell he had ADHD at six months old (on a waiting list to see if he's autistic too). She's never shown any sign of either. As twins, they've been raised together, I can't think that he suffered any more trauma than she did.
I also thought I had a relatively normal childhood but it turns out those long episodes of terror and anxiety at home and school, later repressed through a slew of coping mechanisms, were -if perhaps "normal" enough- definitely not healthy :)
I have some friends that had hard experiences growing up from their parents because of their ADHD. ADHD effects kids earlier in development and requires some extra attention from parents (who also may have ADHD). It might be more likely that kids with ADHD have trauma because of their parents reaction to it.
For what it's worth I know people with ADHD who have no evidence of childhood trauma.
I'm saying this to offer an honest counterpoint to your anecdote. I don't think you meant to imply that ADHD is entirely due to trauma, but in fairness to parents it's probably worth entertaining the idea that some kids are just born that way.
I believe current research results indicate about 75-80% of ADHD can be attributed to genetics. In other words there are room for other factors but genetics clearly dominante in our current understanding of ADHD.
> I'm not a scientist, but from personal experience every single person I've met with ADHD has had severe childhood trauma
I have an ADHD diagnosis. The only particularly traumatic thing in my childhood was my parents getting divorced when I was a teenager because my mother had an affair. I already had some symptoms of it before that happened. Prior to that, my parents might not have been the best parents you could possibly have, but they didn’t do anything that would merit the label “severe childhood trauma”
"Trauma" is a very bad name because it sounds violent and extreme, so you can easily think it doesn't apply to you. In actual fact, it can be caused by something as routine as "sleep training" where infants are left to cry themselves to sleep, or being snapped at for expressing emotion, all before the age of 5. The years before 5 are foundational, but you usually no not have memories earlier than 5 so it's very hard to say definitely what happened especially when causes for trauma are relatively routine.
You need a trusted therapist to guide you into exposing what the subconscious mind is holding onto from infancy. It is subtle, deep, difficult, rewarding work. But I do think people discount trauma because it sounds scarier than "someone snapped at me in frustration as an infant for expressing some emotion and I learned to disconnect from myself."
There have also been studies showing that ADHD and autistic individuals are more likely to develop PTSD from traumatic experiences than others. Not to mention the rate of comorbidity can be fairly high, hypothesized for a variety of reasons.
Too much heritability for trauma alone to be the whole story. It's likely genetics produce latency and environment triggers, if trauma is indeed a big part of the picture.
this is simply not true, and there's tons of scientific evidence of the contrary. ADHD makes you vulnerable to abuse because generally speaking people have a hard time dealing with the foibles of ADHD people. That makes you a target. We know that from science, there's no point in theorizing. ADHD is mostly genetic, highly hereditary and both under diagnosed and under treated. That's all there is to it.
I would argue the relationship is in the other direction. People with ADHD often have childhood trauma caused by the way others treated their ADHD symptoms in childhood.
An experience that produces grit and resilience in one person, in another produces visits to a mental health practitioner 20 years later. The practitioner is confused and writes an article: did the event produce the long-delayed visit, or the person’s inherent way of interacting with the world?
To state the question correctly, is to imply the answer. Declaring all events that subjectively motivate a mental health visit as “trauma” is to allow private realities and have the patient determine the standard of care. Factually, we all know that if someone insists on holding onto a minor slight for an extended time, this is rarely about the event itself. The mental health community got waaaayyyy off track with this radical expansion of the concept of trauma.
This article is important to me and I need some help understanding it correctly. Am I correct in my understanding that it is basically saying that getting a proper adhd/autism diagnosis is helpful for people? Or that people with complex trauma should or shouldn’t be diagnosed with adhd or autism? I’m sorry, this is a bit confusing to me.
It's an article with no clear conclusion it's normal to feel confused.
My read of the article is balancing the fact that there's a lot of overlap between CPTSD/ADHD/ASD in the symptoms (emotional dysregulation, hyperarousal, etc) and in hereditary factors (undiagnosed parents causing trauma more often on average). Also that traumatic childhood experiences are more likely to stick around as CPTSD in adulthood if there's also neurodivergence.
The author says there can be incredible relief to be correctly diagnosed with ADHD/ASD, so obviously she says it's helpful.
But she also warns that wrong treatment can often happen (eg. Giving stimulants to perpetual fight or flight PTSD brains), or inneffective therapy.
Relief if correctly diagnosed, decades of wasted effort if incorrectly diagnosed. Especially if the underlying issue lies elsewhere, but is ignored in favor of the mistaken one.
- People with ADHD and Autism have higher probabilities of childhood trauma and abuse. They might seek a diagnose in adulthood and that can bring them relief and be helpful.
- People with non-ADHD/autism related childhood trauma are more likely to perceive themselves as being neuro divergent. They might have executive disfunctions, and try to find an ADHD diagnosis (that could probably get, as it matches their symptoms) but as of today seems like there isn't evidence (yet) that ADHD stimulant medication helps with non-ADHD executive disfunctions.
- Hence, is important for professionals to verify the history of the patient and make sure they had ADHD symptoms when they were children (that would confirm ADHD), and if not, maybe try to find different psychotherapeutic treatments that would be more helpful to their complex PTSD.
> as of today seems like there isn't evidence that ADHD stimulant medication helps with non-ADHD executive disfunctions
Because there is not much research into that, not because research presents evidence against.
"More research is needed to determine whether executive dysfunction in adults with complex PTSD who did not present with ADHD symptoms as children respond to and tolerate ADHD medications."
Ah yeah, that's why I was noting there isn't evidence that it helps (and not "there is evidence that it doesn't help"). I'll try to edit and add a "yet" to make it clearer.
I think it says that psychologists/psychiatrists do not really know what to do when adhd/autism symptoms overlap with childhood-rooted complex ptsd/trauma in adult patients and more research is needed. That's how I read it mostly.
Although diagnosis relies on observations made while patients are awake, the prevalence of sleep disturbances in individuals with ADHD is reported to be in the range 25–55 % (Corkum et al. 1998; Hodgkins et al. 2013; Owens 2005; Sung et al. 2008). In a recent Australian study, 62 % of children with ADHD had moderate or severe sleep problems and 22 % took sleep medications during the 1-week observation period (Efron et al. 2014). Indeed, high nocturnal activity and disordered sleep were defining characteristics of ‘hyperkinetic reaction in childhood’ or ‘attention deficit disorder’ in earlier versions of the DSM (American Psychiatric Association 1980; Barkley 1990; Sadeh et al. 2006; Spruyt and Gozal 2011).
My hot take is that *a ton* of ADHD cases is primarily lack of restorative sleep due to sleep disordered breathing, that is suffocating in sleep. Brain does not enjoy suffocating so people tend to wake up. Every couple minutes. Whole night. Without actually being aware that they do. They feel tired and brain fogged, lose concentration easily, have poor impulse control and so on. Even "mildly" disordered breathing in sleep causes frequent microarousals that fragment sleep and basically obliterate its restorative quality.
> My hot take is that a ton of ADHD cases is primarily lack of restorative sleep due to sleep disordered breathing
Uh huh. Explain the completely opposite reaction to Amphetamines and basically being impossible to become addicted to them. Explain the altered brain structure.
Everyone has a 'hot take,' it's amazing that they all lead to it not being a thing.
Now let me help you, the sleep disturbances are the hyperactivity of the brain not letting you go to sleep until you hit complete exhaustion and the dysregulation of the circadian rhythm.
Because it's widely but not overtly discriminated against and in some cases you can't get into certain professions at all.
Unless you get quite lucky, it can be extremely difficult to hold down long-term employment, build stable relationships, or get anything done, and in some places it's very difficult to get treatment.
It makes life more difficult than it needs to be unless it doesn't.
I have dozens of peoples of genetics from 23andMe.
There is no way anyone can tell me there is not a large genetic risk factor in developing ADHD and autism. Because I see it in the genetics of people who have ADHD and autism. The most frequent polymorphisms I found in ADHD belong in a gene called DDC or dopamine decarboxylase.
Does trauma play a role? Probably. But genetics amplifies the risk that trauma will initiate these disorders..
I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type and OCD and I see those in my genetics as well. And my childhood was traumatic as all get out. But that’s also because my disorder is genetic, and my mother and brothers were also mentally ill.
It’s not nature or nurture, it is always nature and nurture.
Assuming ADHD is to some extent a chemical thing (I.e. brain didn’t properly develop impulse control or attention span or whatever), we now live in a world that enables those exact things.
If you lived in a world where the principal media were written articles/books and long-form TV shows/movies, your brain was still trained to focus.
Most media is now basically an ADHD simulator, with constant context switching, intense stimuli etc. which only reinforces whatever ADHD traits one may have.
I would guess it’s somewhat similar to the interaction between smoking and asthma.
ADHD results in a dopamine imbalance which results in the sort of novelty seeking behaviors they tend to exhibit.
Part of pubescence is incrementally transferring your reliance on your parents to reliance on your peers. Which is why teenagers test boundaries constantly. They have to divorce from their parents incrementally, and on their own timeline, not the parents’. Your brain has reward systems to encourage that, but can also be hijacked by substances, which is why we pay special attention to substance abuse in children. But there are many reasons for children to fail to socialize, some of them environmental, and a biological drive to fill that with something (including The Internet and “engagement” in particular) if it can’t be filled with social safety. And once it has begun it can be a feedback loop of intentionally choosing one over the other.
There are some models of addiction medicine that say that people with hope and connection have a much easier time giving up physical addictions than people who don’t. There isn’t enough stick in the consequences of addiction to get you out of the cycle. You need carrot to transition, and the bigger the carrots the easier the journey.
> There are some models of addiction medicine that say that people with hope and connection have a much easier time giving up physical addictions than people who don’t. There isn’t enough stick in the consequences of addiction to get you out of the cycle. You need carrot to transition, and the bigger the carrots the easier the journey.
I totally agree with this. And I think this is the part that's easy to miss in the narrative around how trauma and ADHD connect. Wherever ADHD traits originate, someone's desire to change matters.
If you love your job, but inability to concentrate is hampering performance, you're much more likely to WANT to change than if your job is merely a nuisance required for economic sustenance.
Yes, our modern world is perfected to provide as much distractions to ADHD brain as possible, while working life has become more mentally demanding. Lots of people who struggle now would have done okay 50, 100 years ago when there were less distractions, and larger share of population did physical jobs instead of knowledge work.
Exactly. Even if we assume the distribution of traits on the ADHD spectrum in human brains has been constant over the last 100 years, today's media and work enablements have massively increased the share of people (and part of the spectrum) for whom ADHD traits inhibit their way to live the way they'd like to.
Meh, I think this is the impression people who don't have it tend to get, or maybe it's like that for some people deep into the hyperactive dimension. While I do find some of it problematically engaging for a little while, I think it's the people around me who don't have ADHD that get more fixated on that stuff. It wouldn't be as chronic as it is if it wasn't much more broadly appealing than there exists a population of people with ADHD.
For me, I need something more deeply stimulating and long-form. A good weekend outing for me is a 14 hour hike with a sketchy scramble. I don't get any value out of constant context switching, constant bright flashing lights like rythym games or any of that, and I'm way more comfortable than most literally just sitting quietly and thinking.
I think the big divergence between how I respond to my environment and how normal people respond to their environment is that normal people tend to be problematically attracted to artificial gamified stimulated experiences, like academics, slot machine style social media, scary movies, sports, stuff like that. My biggest difficulty is that I just don't really care about arbitrary competition, benign social threats, existential danger etc.. I'd much rather be in a position where I'm actually in real danger if I mess up, or if I write some program incorrectly and risk leaking sensitive data. That's where my brain works at its best.
Right now I'm hesitating to go back to school because I have no idea if I—as a man in his mid-thirties—will be able to trick my brain into being stressed appropriately when exams come around, at least enough to show up and complete them.
i don't understand the downvote. i'm printing this out and putting on our fridge. we have 4 kids all with ADHD autism but trying hard not to complex trauma them.
Hey, I didn't downvote you, but you may want to correct some spelling before you do that. A random paragraph: https://imgur.com/a/FXOZ3JZ
I kind of think, any scrapbook/sheet you may compile yourself would have a much bigger impact. The effort you put in give it importance for the children as well, this is how humans work :)
UK, EU, America has different societal values. I never had an issue with ADHD growing up in Asia. Nobody friggin cares. It's only western people making a huge deal outta nothing.
I consider my ADHD as a weapon because I can take it down a notch with medicine when I need to focus, but for other things like gaming, I can use my aDHD for better perf.
ADHD is spectrum, just because it doesn't bother you so much doesn't mean there aren't those with more severe symptoms. Studies say that ADHD is way more prevalent among prison populations, for example. I would say ending up in prison, homeless or a drug addict due to untreated severe ADHD is a pretty big deal for those people.
Does anyone know of any good study linking ADHD to underlying physical condition, like chronic inflammation or coeliac?
My kid has some form of behavioral disorder but it doesn't really check all the boxes of any known condition. He doesn't have attention problems. He's very active, but not unmanageable. I don't think he's autistic, though he's socially awkward. He's very defiant with adults, so OCD does match (though that doesn't help much). Definitely very low self-esteem and all that. Mostly he's aggressive, low patience, disobedient AF, requires a ton of attention.
A particularly telling thing is that when we take long drives we often listen to children stories. He can listen for them for hours no problem. But when a story stops and until another one starts, he gets really nervous, makes a bunch of noise, annoys his brother, like he can't be canalised if he's not focused.
But what strikes me is that he seems to have a bunch of other conditions that doctors dismiss as benign. He has low teeth mineralization, often small skin bumps around his joints. He has a geographic tongue. He had digestive track pain when he was smaller. He had discoloration on his cheeks. He is quite skinny while he eats normally.
ChatGPT told us he could have coeliac, but we blood tested for coeliac and it came back negative. We tried a gluten free diet for a bit anyway, and that didn't seem to change anything at all.
We're like very puzzled. It's pretty clear that a psy test will find something behavioral, but no one is going to look at any kind of mineral deficiency, or anyhting like that.
Posting this here, Idk why, I'm kind of clueless about what to do at this stage.
Autism has so many possible symptoms and associated problems that it's unlikely someone affected checks all the boxes.
One of the first signs I noticed in my childhood was that I was asking myself why everyone treated me differently for no apparent reason, and I would say that is a pretty clear indicator for autism as it stems from neurotypical social interactions being more or less a foreign language, and both sides subconsciously recognize that.
> Mostly he's aggressive, low patience, disobedient AF, requires a ton of attention.
I happened to be friends with someone who'd fit that description, the way he behaved at home with his parents was genuinely crazy. But then turned out shockingly normal years later. Sometimes it really is just a phase I guess.
I am at the intersection of these three things. Which intersection? Well, it's hard to know, that's the point.
But I've found this particular new-ish lens extremely illuminating, and it hasn't yet entered common parlance, so I post here in the hopes its helpful for others. After many years of hearing "tropes" from all 3 categories and having them only ~kinda feel like they fit, this was the one that made my jaw hit the ground and go holy shit, this is me, this is the thing that, if you understood it about it me, makes all the convoluted fuckery in my life click elegantly into place:
*Pathological Demand Avoidance*, or the more modern "friendlier" backronym, *Persistent Drive for Autonomy*.
Both are accurate, I find the former more accurate, if notably "harsher". But that's just my flavor of inner voice (how apt, for this topic).
Here are some random links I only skimmed, you can find sources that resonate with you in particular.
One example of a way this manifests in me personally, and how it relates to the intersection of the 3 things in the title:
I was massively stressed by a partner's attempts to get me to do things like clean out the garage, etc. I'd catastrophisize about the amount of time it would take, and spend the entire time in a sour mood, squirming for ways to get out of it. What ended up helping a great deal was explicitly setting time boxes at the outset, such as we will spend exactly three hours on this and stop at the three hour mark no matter what. Being able to "see the exit" in advance (and trust that it would be honored) pretty much completely resolved the issues.
* It has hints of helplessness/trappedness/persecution avoidance that feel like they could relate to growing up trapped in a house with a violently abusive father.
* It has high seeking for routine, predictability, and certainty that feel like they could be autism-coded.
* The "this genuinely feels in my body like the task will be forever" has time blindness, task-abandonment and followthrough issues that present like ADHD.
What is the actual balance of those 3 things in contributing? IDK, and it's probably different in various situations.
But for me, the PDA angle fits like a glove, and was the first mental model that succinctly encapsulated what it actually felt like in my head.
> This rise in interest and, at times, conviction, is challenging clinicians
and resources.
There you go. Seems like the academics are either pressured to gaslight people managing ADHD and autism or jump on bandwagon hoping a department notices and perhaps provide funding or other jolly.
They should get fucked with this harmful "research".
There’s more money to be made with a pill for a thing called adhd than there is if such a thing doesn’t exist.
I’m not sure what people will even need the fucking adderral for now anyway now that the computer programs like a drugged out maniac now for us anyway.
You don’t have adhd. It was always insane to expect humans to program like a fucking machine. You’d have to take a drug to do shit like that and that’s the sad truth of the software industry.
The children are so broken that their parents and entire community give them status and money for actually doing this (taking drugs to make money in the world).
Your dealer (the pharmaceutical industry) will never make you feel bad about this (enter media planted articles), thus, here you go, feel good about doing the wrong thing because … uh, you are a victim.
God sees through ALL bullshit, especially the ones we tell ourselves.
The medicine isn’t bad for people who need it. Most parents are trying to do the best for their kids. They’re trying to find ways to help their kids. In many cases these medications are extremely helpful to people who need them.
Most parents are corrupted with the academic pursuit such that they seek better and better results and are now drugging their children (rather, that is a well known thing, so much so that the fucking children grow up and give it to their children with the same mental corruption of academic excellence - it’s godless shit).
God is god dude. Nothing is god, not your parents, not their “doing what is best” excuse, nothing. They are playing god. No one is getting away with this bullshit in the end, because it’s a lie, and God knows and cares.
Thank you. There is no adhd , there is simply a drug that people resorted to when the sinful academic shitheads created a fucking impossibly ridiculously unnecessarily competitive and elitist institution that they force people to worship - Education.
This happens because most parents are godless. They don’t actually know what God wants from them and thus follow what this world tells them to follow, and this world is evil. This evil world tell them to enslave their children and feed them drugs for “education”, this is insanity.
> A diagnosis of ADHD or autism in adulthood often leads to incredible relief and grief in processing all the moments of being blamed and shamed for what was assumed to be a lack of effort, laziness and/or defiance.
I never understood this sentiment. It's just who I am and always have been. And I learned to deal with the circumstances. I don't understand why it makes people feel better to have a diagnosis they can blame.
Perhaps it's a generational thing? I know as a manager it's pretty common for reports to cite them having ADHD as why they can't do this or that. Meanwhile I mentally roll my eyes thinking, "no shit, me too, but I manage to get this done"
Think of growing up feeling inadequate. Even in the eyes of your parents. Then learning that you don't suck and were completely undeserving of being mistreated as a child.
(No child is deserving of being mistreated but that's a whole other bag of worms)
100%. And this has been repeated generation after generation. Its just that in the past 50 years we have started caring and being kind towards ourselves and it has shown tangible results in the progress of human civilization as a whole.
But some regions/cultures are lagging (but catching up fast) as per my experience living in 5 states across 3 countries spanning two very different continents.
This logic doesn't make sense though. What does "learning you don't suck" mean? You still do "suck" but whatever definition was being used at the time. You still didn't do your homework or stay calm in class, that actually happened. It had consequences.
The only way it does make sense is if you think the consequences should be different because some doctor give it a name. But then you say nobody should have been treated that way regardless of the diagnoses. If the diagnoses doesn't matter why does it matter?
As someone who definitely has dealt with all this for my entire life I've found it much easier to just focus on behavior and consequences and alternatives. Trying to place it all in a moral/medical framework is a black hole. If your actions hurt others or otherwise have negative results you have to address that.
Some people were abused in various ways in an “attempt” to get them to stop presenting those traits. Calling friends parents, teachers, etc about thing that really should have been private (if not in fact grounds for CPS interventions), physical abuse to try to “break habits”, physically breaking objects associated with the child's special interests, etc.
Learning that you were not, in fact, a horrible and wicked child that your parents had to endure is life changing.
Imagine some people have been calling you "crazy" all your life, in a bad way, and then, at 40 years old, you do something that you expect the other person to think is crazy and they just say instead: "ah, don't worry, that's normal to do if you have adhd", and then it suddenly clicks that you are NOT crazy and have never been your entire life, you just had a condition you didn't know about and people were ignorant, and acting like this is completely normal given the condition.
It's like being forced to write with your left hand the entire life, and suddenly you realize that you are right handed, and it's ok to be right handed too...
You saw the part where I said I dealt with the same thing, right? I don't have to imagine. And I still don't understand why people feel relieved. It doesn't change the fact of the matter of my situation, and I still have to deal with it the same as I always have. And no, I never use it as an explanation or an excuse to other people, it's just something I need to deal with.
> I still have to deal with it the same as I always have.
For me it was very different. Once I considered possible audhd, and knew what my triggers are and what is expected or not, my life is a lot easier and happier. I don't have to pretend anymore, and I no longer feel bad for being myself.
I am ok sitting in a corner in a crowded social environment and not feel weird about it. Even more, I meet more people who feel the same, so it leads to better relationships and more easy-going conversations, instead of forcing myself to be social for example.
The inability to understand or empathise with others is indeed a neurodivergent trait. Some people get comfort from it, some don't. People are different and have different outputs for the same input.
Yes, and that wasn't my point. Except for one case who was definitely abusing the situation, I never once revealed that my inner monologue was pointing out that I have the same issues they do but I don't use it as an excuse for not getting my work done.
> but I don't use it as an excuse for not getting my work done.
Maybe it's not just a label as your are painting it, but rather a complex situation over ones entire life with many layers, which cannot be easily understood in a short time (and much less in a manager-employee conversation).
We're talking about a circumstance where it's something I personally have dealt with, for longer, often decades longer, than the people who are complaining about it to me. It's not as if I don't understand the situation.
> We're talking about a circumstance where it's something I personally have dealt with, for longer, often decades longer, than the people who are complaining about it to me. It's not as if I don't understand the situation.
I suppose that this is a clear case for the commonly used acronym here on Hackernews: YMMV (your mileage may vary (or the other that I forgot)).
Maybe you forgot that despite us being all human, part of the same species, living on the same planet: no individuals will have the exact same life, same thought process, same ability to deal, cope or handle adversity or environmental factors.
It feels wrong to read you saying that you are comparing yourself to others in such a manner...
I sincerely suggest that you try to be understanding of your reports instead of being mildly inconvenienced by their problems and labeling them negatively as you have suggested here.
People leave jobs because of bad management. Be better.
You did see that I had the same explanation and I don't use it to explain away poor performance, right?
And also pay attention to how I said I kept those thoughts to myself. I recognize that the younger generations seem to feel it's all quite alright, and I handle it appropriately in the contemporary style.
Sure you may have the same diagnosis as them, but you do not have the same life experiences.
Plus, isn’t this comment thread under a post regarding a link between ADHD and complex trauma? Complex trauma is… complex. I doubt that you share the same circumstances that resulted in the diagnosis that you and your reports both share.
This is what makes me doubt a lot of diagnoses today. The people who really have these issues/conditions seem to notice themselves in childhood before they even know what they are or what they're called. Leaving the reaction for the diagnosed to be mostly nothing in that they already know.
I'm sure it's very fun for everyone abusing adderall to get a doctor to believe their story (after all, they barely understand these conditions themselves), but it's a difficult life to have these conditions. Lot of what I hear described by the people self diagnosed or have a more "modern" (I'll just put it this way) diagnosis just sound like garden variety trauma due to less than tactful parents.
> The people who really have these issues/conditions seem to notice themselves in childhood before they even know what they are or what they're called
Yes. But when you don't know what it is you may start to believe that it's just you being lazy, stupid, slow, difficult, etc. Especially when everyone around you including teachers use these labels and you literally have no other information to base your views on. A mix of living with that for decades and being unable to know how life feels for other people can make you gaslight yourself very thoroughly.
A diagnosis is an acknowledgment of an authority on the subject that you are in fact not crazy and don't have to blame everything that happened on yourself.
> Leaving the reaction for the diagnosed to be mostly nothing in that they already know
I am glad for everyone who experienced it like that, but that's not a reason to diminish the significant effect for many others.
A lot of traditional ways of "dealing with circumstances" are very unhealthy (and often toxic) and have adverse effects on people around you. Unless your methods are deemed healthy by a mental health professional you can't be sure.
Sure, and I have plenty of unhealthy habits. But getting a Dx didn't lead me to say "oh my god, the sun is brighter, the air smells fresher, all is revealed!". My response was closer to "yeah, no shit".
I should add, even when I was in grade school it was discussed for me to get evaluated. But that was far enough back that it was just "hyperactivity" & before people started talking in terms of ADD, ADHD, and subtypes, and I didn't match the criteria back then. So it wasn't like it was a big surprise decades later when revised criteria started matching my phenotype
ADHD/ND here, and I really agree with this one quote from this piece:
> those most affected by executive dysfunction require therapy to be more directive, specific and accountable; that is, processing of past trauma and relational approaches are not sufficient. What often does not seem like trauma therapy at all can lead to great strides forward if it allows individuals to obtain a greater sense of structure and mastery in day-to-day life tasks
I've spent so much time in therapy doing the whole "let's go through your childhood and your past" and it was just not effective in tackling what I really needed. It's remarkable how many licensed therapists just didn't know how to deal with this. I'm sure it's really helpful for some people, but outside of increasing some basic awareness about how my family of origin resulted in present-day behaviors, I definitely reached diminishing returns on that route.
As skeptical as I am of AI as an interventional tool for "reaching our most effective selves", I can't help but feel that if it can be wired up to do the appropriate "micro-interventions" that reflect OP's insight ("directive, specific and accountable ... to obtain a grater sense of structure"), we might see 'ADHD' become a thing of the past (at least for the people that share my phenotype of it). It's my hope at least...
Thank you for sharing your experience. I feel similarly
On a tangent, this makes me think about the explainability of ai models. In a way, discovering our childhood trauma and the way it affects us, is akin to searching for explainability
However, in practice, the best way to overcome whatever we want to overcome, might not be to first have an explanation of why/how it happened
Why are you sure it's really helpful for some people?
Before psychology you had religion, even in the oldest form of Christianity, orthodoxy, you are not too dwell on the past, not to blaim others.
I doubt it really truly helps anyone to dig up the past
Logged in just to say, for me reaching into my past has been one of the most transformative and healing acts I've ever done.
I have a friend, next alcoholic, she was recently reading through her old journals to try to figure out her life. What happened? She told me that she had a really strong impulse to start drinking again.
In my opinion, you gain nothing from looking at trauma or trying to see some psychological way to get out of it. The only cure is to forget about it.
Extrapolating from a single anecdote seems like poor judgment.
What have you found that’s worked for your own executive dysfunction?
Acceptance of the fact that I will always have executive function difficulties and there is nothing that can really improve it. It's not the realization I wanted to have, but it is one I wish I learned earlier.
ADHD here, as well.
> it was just not effective in tackling what I really needed.
That's how I would summarize my experiences with psychotherapy too. I think the only thing I have truly learned from therapy is what I feared most. There ain't much in this universe that can truly help with ADHD. Medications and other interventions barely move the needle for me. Seriously, I am at the point in my life where I am basically done fighting the condition. It's a Sisyphean effort that's mostly fueled by arbitrary societal expectations and my own egotistical desires and insecurities.
> I'm sure it's really helpful for some people
It’s not. There’s no evidence that it has any beneficial effects on anything other than the therapists wallet.
ADHD is an entirely made up diagnosis. There’s no evidence that any of this nonsense is real in any way shape or form.
It’s one thing: a lack of discipline.
In the same way that drowning is a lack of air, yes.
Each begets the other. Trauma and abuse is in many ways (socially) hereditary but often enhanced by neurodivergence. In a brain with sensory sensitivities outside the norm, connection can be difficult (even between ND people), and from that disconnection often arises the sorts of overwhelms in both caregiver and child that make for neglect out of overwhelm or explosive situations.
Couple that with just plain generational trauma - physical punishment that ND people are more sensitive to, the high prevalence of CSA, and a world that doesn’t even try to make any accommodations and you find it more rare to find neurodivergent people who are untraumatized.
One result mentioned here but worth highlighting is the capacity to dissociate and the existence of dissociative disorders. Many people in this cohort also find they have the ability to structurally dissociate as a coping mechanism of last resort - an outsized percentage of people diagnosed with OSDD, DID, and DDNOS are neurodivergent, and among social groups of neurodivergent people often dissociative people will tend to attract - it’s nearly to the point that “capacity to dissociate” could itself be a neurotype. Anyway it’s a fascinating line of study, and if I didn’t have folks w dissociative disorders in my life I might doubt their existence.
Disassociation can be a useful thing to be able to do, sometimes. Under certain circumstances you can be better at dealing with dangerous, stressful situations, for example.
It's generally maladaptive but there's a reason the brain does it.
I've heard this term "trauma" a lot in the past few years, and often in context where I didn't initially think that word applied in the situation it was used. It's caused me to think about my own childhood and wonder, with that modern understanding of the word, did I experience "trauma"?
I wasn't sexually abused, I wasn't neglected, I wasn't wanting of love. I was however often scolded to a point where I felt horrible about myself. Scolded to a point where I didn't even feel like I could exist without disrupting the world. At times yes, physically scolded but nothing so extreme as to leave a mark.
To be fair to my parents I was a very high energy and "difficult" child. Big emotions. I was always the problem.
Obviously compared to some upbringings this was a walk in the park. But it really did have an impact on me and who I grew up to be. In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I've had a myriad of mental health issues throughout my adult life, ranging from low severity to medium, and on some rare occasions high. Genetics? Upbringing? Modern life? All of the above?
What you are describing is emotional neglect and a failure of parenting.
You were meant to learn to recognize and name that energy and emotionality, and then learn to sit with it and develop adaptive coping strategies as needed, not maladaptive ones like negative self-concept and emotional repression.
It can take quite a long time to realize all of this and unlearn the patterns, and unfortunately, first line therapies like CBT are possibly detrimental for these issues.
Edit: also, you need not be fair to your parents. They are meant to adapt to parenting you, even if you were legitimately overactive or overemotional. Instead, you adapted to them.
> They are meant to adapt to parenting you, even if you were legitimately overactive or overemotional. Instead, you adapted to them.
That's just your own projection. Both sides adapt, and you haven't heard the other side yet.
Since children turn into adults, and not the other way around, I'd say that children adapt much more than parents.
Can you give an example "their side" that explains the outcomes the parent comment expressed?
For me, making a distinction between the big Trauma with a capital T and little trauma with a lowercase t has been helpful. Any experience that has a lasting negative impact on you could be considered a trauma, but only very extreme stuff - violence, sexual abuse - would count as Trauma.
A car accident is a car accident. Sometimes they are fatal, sometimes the paint gets scratched. People sometimes get long term health effects from a fender-bender.
I almost feel like we need a different word that doesn’t have the confusing association. Like scratching your car (‘little t’ trauma) vs smashing the frame (big ‘T’ trauma).
I think there's a degree of some people being maybe genetically predisposed to having more serious adverse reactions to trauma as well. An obvious example is when it leads to psychosis. So the objective reality of what happened is not necessarily the only thing which factors into how it affects somebody's functioning.
I don't disagree with that at all, but I do think that line of thinking about ones own issues can lead to a sort of self-blame - thinking things like: if I were stronger I wouldn't have been hurt by that neglect or mistreatment. No question, who you are has a huge impact on how something effects you, but nobody reacts well to e.g. neglect or mistreatment. I might end up with depression, while my sibling ends up with anxiety. That's our predisposition interacting with the objective reality, but neither outcome shifts the blame for the neglect or mistreatment to us. I know that's probably not what you were trying to say, but I do think that idea is one possible place downstream of what you are saying.
> nobody reacts well to e.g. neglect or mistreatment
Maybe, but some people react by becoming stronger and some react by breaking down and failing. Regardless of other effects like depression, anxiety, paranoia etc., being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know? If you ended up weaker then sometimes nothing can convince you that's what was best.
> being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know?
That feels like a tautology. From context, you've defined stronger to mean better. So of course in that case stronger is better. But in reality stronger isn't always better. If you come to a chess match being able to bench more than your opponent, are you better at chess than them?
If there are tradeoffs, and there are always tradeoffs, then you can't actually say stronger is better. The neglect of your parents might make you more independent and you might find that helps with your work life, while at the same time it makes your personal relationships harder. Which of those do you happen to value more?
Which is not to say you can't personally find value in and appreciate even the negative the experiences that made you who you are. But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
> But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
Oh neglect is terrible; simultaneously the worst and the least recognized type of abuse.
My point is that adaptations to abuse vary enough that some can be more "desirable" than others (in addition to being more fit for the environment / the world at large in some cases), and someone stuck in a "worse" one could end up longing for a "better" one. Though, sometimes I long for "worse" ones myself as someone who feels "better" than I should be, so maybe the grass is just always greener.
I don't think "weak" and "strong" are useful in this discussion without defining them carefully. The way most people seem to get through these things is by becoming more thoughtful and emotionally mature. This is what is generally meant by "weak" in these conversations. "Strong" leads to pills and bottles and painful deaths trying to fight the feelings down.
Consider two approaches: one is to spend hours ruminating on your experiences every day to form insights and approaches to tackle new problems and make new progress. The other is to panic at the slightest sign of anything, compartmentalize everything and get stuck in fruitless thought loops constantly, making very little progress to integrate information or have insights. Say both of those take the same immense amounts of energy, but maybe the former would have a better shot at fighting active abuse, you know? In my experience, calculated thought is far superior to fruitless panic. In this way one could be considered "stronger" than the other even though both are technically undesirable (because constant rumination over everything is actually terrible, for example).
Real example based on real self-doubt across multiple friends I know.
You seem to be talking past me.
I'm trying to say that the reason it's not defined carefully is because people who worry about this don't usually have concrete objective definitions. "Stronger" sounds better to someone who hates that they're "weak", because the costs are less obvious. (Consider breaking down in front of everyone all the time, embarrassing yourself constantly, never knowing what to do, irritating everyone by being inconsolable, etc. vs always being composed, manipulating situations to avoid embarrassment, always being prepared with plans and never depending on others. Despite the fact that the former is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely.)
One aspect of trauma is the helplessness of it: it's not just how severe the physical reality is, it's also about the inability to do anything about it (and the internalization of that inability).
The classic example is a child who drew a picture shortly after 9/11. The picture included people floating down the building on (I believe) balloons or umbrellas. Obviously unphysical; but the child imagining ways (however fantastical) that could have helped was a factor in reducing that child's trauma.
On a therapist can tell you whether you personally have trauma, but the lessons you took away from your experiences certainly sound like it to me.
Sounds a lot like CPTSD, which is more about symptoms and responses you have now caused by the continuous situations like you describe. It’s older and there’s been progress on the definition since it came out but Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (and website) is a good resource for the differences between this type of effect form upbringing vs single event traumas.
Personally since reading it and working through my own responses I’ve grown in leaps and bounds where previously I would’ve described myself exactly how you did.
> In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I'm kinda confused. Is that the good impact you think that had in you? Why?
I guess I just mean that nothing is completely black and white.
I learned to regulate my emotions, one way or another. Did it possibly (likely?) also have a long lasting negative effect on aspects of my mood, motivation, focus, etc.? I think there's a good chance.
Thanks, I understood that better. I hope you get to learnt (or are in the never ending process of learning) to understand and express your emotions in a helpful and productive way.
I have lots of problems understanding my feelings (good old alexithymia) and it's always been an struggle for me to understand or communicate how I feel or what bothers me.
OPs description resonates with me as well, and the impact is complex, and in my case, probably more good than bad. There is a romantic notion that childish energy shouldn’t be suppressed, but childish energy is what broke my toys (and my body), and I have expensive toys now (motorcycles, house, etc.)
I have found in my own life that the practice of emotional regulation has made me a pretty good diplomat in difficult situations. Sitting down, shutting up, and following the rules when I want to yell at people is the essence of de-escalation.
Well, I feel emotional regulation is different to shutting down you emotions and your energy.
Emotional regulation is a great thing to work with (I should keep on it), but I think it's very important to do it, not like "my emotions don't belong here, I'm not valid", but knowing the differences between different people, learning how different people behave and express themselves, and finding ways of moving your emotions to different places that help you express yourself and transmit your needs. And you don't have to do it the same way than everyone else (that's one of the most important things I've learnt since my diagnose a couple years ago).
For what it's worth I was a similar kind of child. My problems entirely went away with about 10 (or more) hours of exercise a week. This required a hobby I cared about and the right kind of friends, but since then things have been smooth
Yeah so I think when most people these days say trauma, they simply mean "An ongoing emotional overreaction due to a past negative experience." I think that's a super useful concept.
In your case I'd just ask myself "Do I still feel like I'm a bother in situations where I know I'm not because of X?" And if so, it can be productive to see if you can change that directly or indirectly.
Your comment reads like a case study from "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" by Pete Walker. Many of his studies focus on childhood experiences that are overall "happy" but fall short of "emotionally fulfilling".
This is utterly ridiculous. To be healthy we have to have an emotionally fulfilling, not just happy, childhood? How did we ever survive as a species?
How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
In my honest opinion, no one wants to look at genetics because it scares the hell out of them. But it’s most likely it’s complex genetics, not complex PTSD.
Scolding has been found to have pathways to some really bad things.
It doesn’t have to be the wrist experience to childhood to guarantee crippling adulthoods.
It’s not about little or big trauma, the focus on what any trauma did to the brain is what’s important because the fingerprint and footprint of trauma can be unique and underdeveloped the brain in certain areas regardless of source.
Very similar experience here. It was my mum doing the scolding and I learned 3 things as a child:
1) love is conditional on behaviour - pleasing mum was the primary goal above everything else.
2) when I had been “bad”, only the most extreme contrition on my part unlocked the love I needed (as a highly precocious and literate child I’d write little suicide notes for her to find apologising for being so useless. I was single-digit age).
3) The dissonance between the private incessant scolding and the public display of praise led me to develop a rich, secretive inner life, and become adept at hiding maladaptive behaviour. I became a skilled liar and dissembler.
Suffice to say that this did not do me any favours in life. For the longest time I was able to “fake” being a successful, functioning, and sensitive person. But in reality I was throwing mental landmines into my own future that I eventually stepped on, resulting in addiction, depression, anxiety, almost constant suicidal ideation, a painful divorce (due to my own behaviour), and the estrangement of my adult children. I broke down a couple of years ago, landed in a psychiatric clinic, and started unraveling the effects of a lifetime of living with this baggage. I’m now 61 and have had two of the hardest, most challenging, most heartbreaking, yet also most happy and serene period of growth ever. I feel I’m finally coming into my own and the power my childhood trauma has held over me is broken.
Formally diagnosed two years ago as ASD, ADHD.
Have you read the PDF? It is whichever of the choices explains your lack of success in the real world, and this then brings relief from blaming yourself for that.
Really, that's it. Read the PDF.
The article even acknowledges that psychiatrist answer is wrong, and that all of the above are on a spectrum and nobody is ADHD-free or 100%-autist. This is not a problem because the answer is not meant to be correct, but only to be helpful and to "alleviate shame to enable people to achieve their fullest potential".
So there isn't even an answer.
Which, judging by your post, I'm guessing you will find a deeply unsatisfying way to look at the world, as you sound like someone with a positivist view (facts are correct and everything is true or false, you either have ADHD or not, and even on a spectrum there's a number. But there isn't)
HN guidelines
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Got it.
> A diagnosis of ADHD or autism in adulthood often leads to incredible relief and grief in processing all the moments of being blamed and shamed for what was assumed to be a lack of effort, laziness and/or defiance.
This is definitely a factor for me when I tried to get diagnosed (which failed lol), because my parents whom caused my trauma would obviously refuse to blame themselves for my emotionally stunted development
Exact same thing happened to me, and yet it was never cracked open. I am pretty much the only person that knows the truth, that I don't have this constellation of diagnoses but that they were a coverup for the abuse foisted upon me by my own family.
Sadly it is still (and probably will be) too easy to deflect responsibility and have everyone believe their side. They will probably pass on with nobody realizing what they've done to me. It took me long enough for me to realize my own situation, was how severe it was. I hope more people wake up to the fact that people like me are out there.
The false diagnosis is a perfect distraction for you to continue to blame yourself for all your faults while they get away with everything, for decades. That lost time will never come back.
I find this fascinating. "Relief and grief", but one way or another, you were always in trouble or being blamed for being "you".
The thing we call ADHD is just one phenotype amongst thousands. Every behaviour has a cause, and anyone out there who has been through a childhood with traumatic experiences and feelings of guilt and inadequacy need to understand that they don't need to be told that they have the currently-fashionable condition in order to forgive themselves.
This sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be: What if I said that this happened because you had Mercury in Taurus? The point is here that nothing is your fault. Conversely, everything is; this mirrors the free-will vs predestination paradox.
> you were always in trouble or being blamed for being "you".
And the solution in the article is: how do best make them conform, and “do a bunch of work on themselves” so they are not like themselves, but more like the average.
I simply wrote to the psychiatrist a note that whatever my parents say, they'll make themselves look good, and therefore will paint a rosy childhood for me. I guess it also helped that my then partner was there and told her of how my parents told a "funny story" that made his parents gasp in horror.
Yep, the specialists having interviews with multiple different people from your environment (friends, partners, siblings...) help a lot to differentiate what's real and what not. Also, it's usual that once you pass your twenties you stop living with your parents and/or start shielding them a bit of your struggles, so they don't have the full view of your day to day "fight".
In my case they had interviews with two exes (who are two of my best friends), my sister and my parents.
What was the funny story.
It was the story of how my brother was asked at school to draw a picture of his last birthday when he was about 5ish and drew stick figures carrying building material because we were building something in the yard and my parents forgot his birthday.
I think it’s the fact they think it’s funny is the real problem. Some people make mistakes, my wife and I don’t care about anniversary dates. But if some one is hurt, brushing it off and disregarding their feelings and your role in causing the hurt is abusive because it undermines the persons safety and connection with the world and other people.
Good grief. I read your comment and … the levels of parental neglect wrapped up in your single story are overwhelming me.
I’m sure you don’t need validation from random internet strangers, but as one with a similar enough childhood, I wanted to share that it’s a thoroughly shit club to be in.
I thought it was a funny story. Only forgetting a birthday once seems like a success to me. We forgot Christmas and other holidays multiple times growing up. Just celebrate the next day/weekend. Besides, doing fun things with family is way better when it's not peak crowd season, which is always the case during holidays, or birthdays that land on weekends/early summer. I've even forgotten my own birthday countless times, starting way before I was an adult.
My wife and I have forgotten our own anniversaries and other events, so now we have reminders in our shared calendar so we don't forget to celebrate, mostly because it's embarassing to tell family that we both mutually forgot about our anniversary than that it actually bothers us. We have date night weekly anyway (and family night weekly)
Sadly it wasn't one birthday. Mine was near Christmas, so everybody remembered it (although I also hated it, because it was a dog and pony show to make everybody see what great parents they were), while my brother's was somewhere around April and thus was almost always forgotten.
Just an anecdote, but my mother forgot my 11th (I think) birthday, I’m 44 now and I think in just the last year or two she mentioned again she still feels guilty about it.
In her defense, I had my birthday party just a few days before and it was an unusual year in that school had started by (maybe even on) my birthday.
I remember feeling a bit disappointed on the day, but certainly not distraught or traumatised. I also never found myself randomly thinking about the incident after except for when my mom mentions it or from stories like this.
My point is that it depends on the person on how big a deal it was. Also, perhaps the parents do feel guilty about it, hence sometimes sharing it as a “funny story”, but I wouldn’t know.
My own 6 year old child seems to be neurodivergent (I suspect I am too) and is struggling a bit with pre-school, even now at a bridging school.
We first had to confront it about 2 years ago when the highly regarded mainstream school she was at said she would have to repeat the year.
At least for me as a parent, the possibility that my child won’t grow up to be a self sufficient is terrifying, so it was quite a bit to come to terms with.
Fortunately we weren't in denial and she’s getting exceptional assistance, but some parents definitely find themselves in denial when confronted with this situation.
It does depend a lot on the person, but it also depends on the parents. If they acknowledge it and attempt to make it right, that's one thing. However, if they just brush over it and don't acknowledge the child's loss, then it's a totally different case.
I could absolutely forget my kid's birthdays. Even though I love them dearly. It's just a round around the sun and culturally made important. Idk what else was going on but building something in the yard together with your parent sounds like fun to me.
Or, this was sarcasm?
Anyway I don't like birthdays myself. I don't like getting presents, I don't like giving them. If you want something just buy it. Why this weird ritual??
> Why this weird ritual??
It's a once a year reminder that people are happy that you exist.
Sometimes children can feel like maybe their existence makes their parents lives worse, so it is important for them to be reassured that that is not the case (even if it is).
It's also just a fun thing to do. For some kids it's one of the few times per year they're allowed to go wild with sweets, so it's something they look forward to.
> If you want something just buy it.
Kids also often do not yet manage their own finances, so they don't have the freedom to just buy the things they want.
Never forget to see the world from the viewpoint of your children, too. Birthdays are very important to them, because they grow up in a culture, and neither they nor you can avoid that. By being dismissive about what is important to them, you confuse and alienate them. My parents were very dismissive about school, and that made my whole school time a bad experience for me.
Well luckily my wife is always on the ball. But I tell them I love them almost everyday. I really hope they will forgive me my chaotic mind. If a child has to get all their sense of value from a single day a year something's very wrong. I get all your points, it's important but not that important.
> If you want something just buy it. Why this weird ritual??
Or make it, as was my case growing up, when my parents couldn't afford what I wanted anyway.
Money isn't an issue now, so gifts are definitely annoying. I'm not going to wait a month to maybe get the correct drill bit/appliance/etc. I'll just get the correct one now, and play a game or go into town with me on/near-ish my birthday
I usually have to work to get past the feeling that what I went through wasn't enough to recognize that it not being as bad as what someone else went through doesn't mean my thing wasn't bad. This is one where I get to be on the other side with a "funny story" my parents liked to repeat about that time when I was a baby and they were so tired of the crying that they considered tossing me off a bridge.
As an adult, I understand that kids can be really difficult and some dark stuff crosses your mind, and that alone doesn't make you a bad parent. As a kid, the constant retelling piled on to all the other neglect and very justified fears of abandonment.
Which is all to say your feelings about this are valid.
I just said they didn't believe in ADHD, which in my case - their darling wilted hothoused angel - is true. Relying on a generation that stigmatises autism/ADHD for informant reporting is nuts anyway.
Not sure if you noticed the play. You don't have ADHD or autism, you just suffered from trauma.
Government doesn't like that "too many" people want to get support, so looks like they reach for academics.
Same crap they did with cannabis and others when it was impacting certain interests.
> You don't have ADHD or autism, you just suffered from trauma.
Yeah that's exactly what I'm saying, but more specifically I wanted to relieve myself of blame through a label my parents could more easily empathize with
Well, adult treatment paths for complex ptsd are definitely much more resource intensive than adhd (medication) or autism (congrats for getting the diagnosis and good luck). So I don't think this can be what the article is about. It may not be well-covered by insurance, though, and thus not as much pursued (as compared to treating the superficial symptoms of depression, anxiety etc), especially as evidence for positive outcomes and standardised treatment is much more lacking.
It can be both. It frequently is when you're trying to navigate a condition and everybody is downplaying it or just pointing it as your fault for being stupid or lazy. And, yes, years of that (frequently involuntary) gaslighting creates trauma.
I’m sure a lot of people seeking an ADHD / Autism diagnosis after “discovering” they “totally have it” after seeing a video on social media do not in fact have ADHD / Autism.
this dismissive attitude, with the scare quotes, is so bizarre to me.
to make an analogy to physical health:
someone has chronic gastrointestinal pain, but they just live with it and have never talked to a doctor about it.
they watch a video from someone talking about having chronic GI pain and getting diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
they go to a doctor and say "I think I have ulcerative colitis"
the doctor runs tests, and they come back negative.
I get that it's tempting to say "oh this person was misled by a video on social media"
but, the pain they were feeling was real. even if they jumped to an incorrect conclusion about its cause.
and after those negative tests, they can work with their doctor to find out "ok, what else might be causing my symptoms?"
Yes and a lot of folks do too, it’s not useful to make sweeping statements either way.
Who knows? At least a YT video puts them in the direction of getting a proper evaluation after potential decades of struggling and not knowing "what's wrong with me", etc.
Yes? That why you go to a certified professional to see if you have it.
Diagnosis isn't 'read online.'
Of course. You know better other people minds than they know themselves. Why being spiteful? Are you jealous that someone is disabled?
A somewhat common sentiment I've heard among those with autism and ADHD is that an untraumatised autist or ADHDer doesn't exist. The literal statement obviously isn't true, but a lot of the downwind effects of it are.
Most people are diagnosed with autism or ADHD because they have problems due to trauma, or they have problems which gave them trauma, or them having these problems made them more sensitive, which in turn traumatised them when it wouldn't have done the same to others. Many of the diagnostic criteria are trauma responses or otherwise external signals which have very little to do with the internal experience of actually having autism or ADHD.
What does a well-developed, untraumatised person with autism or ADHD even look like? We can make some broad statements based on assumptions, but many of those people won't even be diagnosed, since they've never had reason to. What made life work out for them isn't an active area of study, since finding that group of people is close to impossible.
I have schizophrenic disorder and OCD and most likely undiagnosed Asperger‘s because I’m an old fuck.
I continue to be traumatized by my disorder. In fact, I’m currently homeless living on disability with my mental illness and also connective tissue disorder.
You can’t have these disorders and not be traumatized, at least not at the level of disorder I have. I was a brilliant child and a brilliant college student, but had psychosis that made me drop out and having me change my major every other year. I still manage to graduate on the Dean’s list though it took me seven years.
So yeah, still traumatized by my family just not wanting to talk to him anymore because I remind them too much of my nephew who died by suicide. And that’s literally the truth. I didn’t do anything to them. I’ve never heard anyone in my life or even punch someone.
I was relentlessly bullied in junior high through high school not only by fellow students but also by my brothers all older than me. Mostly due to the fact that they had mood disorders as well.
But I know trauma isn’t the cause of my disorder. I know it cause I see it in my genetics. I’m a genetic freak and I can’t get anyone to care about it. And that further is a trauma. The sense of being alone and ignored even though you’re highly intelligent. I mean, I taught myself genetics and have conversations pretending I’m a scientist all the time with people who write all these studies it only falls apart when they ask me what school I went to, and I finally tell them the truth. Then they just stopped talking to me. That’s crazy right? That’s trauma. Anyway, just venting.
ADHD and Autism here. The only thing that has worked for me, and I'm strictly speaking of the ADHD part, has been medication. Everything else has been a waste of time. As for trauma, I strongly believe the correct causal relation is ADHD exposes you to increased chances of trauma. Not the other way around.
Because this is a technical article with nonstandard jargon, I'm going to state the most important piece of tacit knowledge that I know psychology professionals have but do not communicate to laymen (I personally came across it somewhere when reading the complete works of Eric Berne, but I can't recall exactly where).
Any apparent disorder in a person or persons has to be decomposed into the innate parts that existed prior to birth and the environmental experiences that happened afterwards as a prerequisite for any kind of theorising to give useful results instead of noise. They call this the diathesis-stress model and it's easily overlooked.
> the innate parts that existed prior to birth
What does this mean? Do you mean the congenital aspects of a disorder?
Not necessarily. Diathesis is a broader term that includes congenital aspects, maternal stressors and various toxin exposures, among other things.
For example, restricting the range of discourse to the purely congenital excludes things like fetal alcohol syndrome, the ages of both parent's gametes and pre-natal exposure to endocrine disruptors. However, in everyday usage, the diathesis refers primarily to those of the symptoms in the physiology, psychology and behavior of the subject that aren't attributable to life experiences (good and bad) rather than the microbiology specifics that act as carriers for any specific cause.
What's important above all else for the psychiatric practice is effective decomposition of any disease into parts that are amenable to study and treatment, rather than comparison to the hypothetical of what kind of "peak" may be achievable for a specific genotype if everything else went well.
This may be useful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis-stress_model
The environmental values of the living hood of where the child is to be born in to; is an element I would add to how I intercept it.
Those who are to be born in to an abusive environment may be more prone to continuing the traits of abuse than those who come from reasonable families.
The whole ADHD and trauma link is very interesting. I'm not a scientist, but from personal experience every single person I've met with ADHD has had severe childhood trauma. So it really makes you wonder if that old theory is right about childhood trauma triggering an overload to a child's flight or fight response, which leads to ADHD.
Especially when the trauma involes a caretaker. Parents are like a child's image of god, and for one to turn against the child is devastating.
Almost no parent is ever going to admit their own behavior triggered their child's ADHD or depression. But if they did, then they did. It can still happen.
I know plenty of people with ADHD diagnosis and normal childhoods without any unusual trauma. Most of them also have comorbidities (stuff typical to autism spectrum, learning or motor function difficulties).
I think ADHD is something you are born with, but there are many other things that can cause similar difficulties, including trauma. And as the linked article mentions, neurodivergent children are more likely to have parents who suffer from similar difficulties, which may increase their chance of suffering some sort of childhood trauma.
Likewise, but also I've got boy-girl twins. They're 9 now, but we're pretty sure we could tell he had ADHD at six months old (on a waiting list to see if he's autistic too). She's never shown any sign of either. As twins, they've been raised together, I can't think that he suffered any more trauma than she did.
I also thought I had a relatively normal childhood but it turns out those long episodes of terror and anxiety at home and school, later repressed through a slew of coping mechanisms, were -if perhaps "normal" enough- definitely not healthy :)
I have some friends that had hard experiences growing up from their parents because of their ADHD. ADHD effects kids earlier in development and requires some extra attention from parents (who also may have ADHD). It might be more likely that kids with ADHD have trauma because of their parents reaction to it.
For what it's worth I know people with ADHD who have no evidence of childhood trauma.
I'm saying this to offer an honest counterpoint to your anecdote. I don't think you meant to imply that ADHD is entirely due to trauma, but in fairness to parents it's probably worth entertaining the idea that some kids are just born that way.
I believe current research results indicate about 75-80% of ADHD can be attributed to genetics. In other words there are room for other factors but genetics clearly dominante in our current understanding of ADHD.
> I'm not a scientist, but from personal experience every single person I've met with ADHD has had severe childhood trauma
I have an ADHD diagnosis. The only particularly traumatic thing in my childhood was my parents getting divorced when I was a teenager because my mother had an affair. I already had some symptoms of it before that happened. Prior to that, my parents might not have been the best parents you could possibly have, but they didn’t do anything that would merit the label “severe childhood trauma”
"Trauma" is a very bad name because it sounds violent and extreme, so you can easily think it doesn't apply to you. In actual fact, it can be caused by something as routine as "sleep training" where infants are left to cry themselves to sleep, or being snapped at for expressing emotion, all before the age of 5. The years before 5 are foundational, but you usually no not have memories earlier than 5 so it's very hard to say definitely what happened especially when causes for trauma are relatively routine.
You need a trusted therapist to guide you into exposing what the subconscious mind is holding onto from infancy. It is subtle, deep, difficult, rewarding work. But I do think people discount trauma because it sounds scarier than "someone snapped at me in frustration as an infant for expressing some emotion and I learned to disconnect from myself."
> You need a trusted therapist to guide you into exposing what the subconscious mind is holding onto from infancy.
This sounds like a great way to implant false memories
There have also been studies showing that ADHD and autistic individuals are more likely to develop PTSD from traumatic experiences than others. Not to mention the rate of comorbidity can be fairly high, hypothesized for a variety of reasons.
Too much heritability for trauma alone to be the whole story. It's likely genetics produce latency and environment triggers, if trauma is indeed a big part of the picture.
I've heard it described as, "Nature loaded the gun, nurture fired it."
this is simply not true, and there's tons of scientific evidence of the contrary. ADHD makes you vulnerable to abuse because generally speaking people have a hard time dealing with the foibles of ADHD people. That makes you a target. We know that from science, there's no point in theorizing. ADHD is mostly genetic, highly hereditary and both under diagnosed and under treated. That's all there is to it.
You are arguing that childhood trauma doesn't have a causal relationship to ADHD?
I would argue the relationship is in the other direction. People with ADHD often have childhood trauma caused by the way others treated their ADHD symptoms in childhood.
Why not bi-directional?
because science says it's not how it works.
Huh, can you tell me the name of the rule?
When I search for 'bidirectional causality' I get a lot of scientific results. Are those all wrong?
100%. it's genetic, what's unclear about that?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8328933/
From that meta article:
> For most people with ADHD, many genetic and environmental risk factors accumulate to cause the disorder.
i.e., for most people, there is no singular cause.
An experience that produces grit and resilience in one person, in another produces visits to a mental health practitioner 20 years later. The practitioner is confused and writes an article: did the event produce the long-delayed visit, or the person’s inherent way of interacting with the world?
To state the question correctly, is to imply the answer. Declaring all events that subjectively motivate a mental health visit as “trauma” is to allow private realities and have the patient determine the standard of care. Factually, we all know that if someone insists on holding onto a minor slight for an extended time, this is rarely about the event itself. The mental health community got waaaayyyy off track with this radical expansion of the concept of trauma.
> every single person I've met with ADHD has had severe childhood trauma.
Every person with headache I met had painkillers.
Therefore their pain is caused by painkillers.
Daft.
This article is important to me and I need some help understanding it correctly. Am I correct in my understanding that it is basically saying that getting a proper adhd/autism diagnosis is helpful for people? Or that people with complex trauma should or shouldn’t be diagnosed with adhd or autism? I’m sorry, this is a bit confusing to me.
It's an article with no clear conclusion it's normal to feel confused.
My read of the article is balancing the fact that there's a lot of overlap between CPTSD/ADHD/ASD in the symptoms (emotional dysregulation, hyperarousal, etc) and in hereditary factors (undiagnosed parents causing trauma more often on average). Also that traumatic childhood experiences are more likely to stick around as CPTSD in adulthood if there's also neurodivergence.
The author says there can be incredible relief to be correctly diagnosed with ADHD/ASD, so obviously she says it's helpful.
But she also warns that wrong treatment can often happen (eg. Giving stimulants to perpetual fight or flight PTSD brains), or inneffective therapy.
Relief if correctly diagnosed, decades of wasted effort if incorrectly diagnosed. Especially if the underlying issue lies elsewhere, but is ignored in favor of the mistaken one.
Through a quick read I understood...
- People with ADHD and Autism have higher probabilities of childhood trauma and abuse. They might seek a diagnose in adulthood and that can bring them relief and be helpful.
- People with non-ADHD/autism related childhood trauma are more likely to perceive themselves as being neuro divergent. They might have executive disfunctions, and try to find an ADHD diagnosis (that could probably get, as it matches their symptoms) but as of today seems like there isn't evidence (yet) that ADHD stimulant medication helps with non-ADHD executive disfunctions.
- Hence, is important for professionals to verify the history of the patient and make sure they had ADHD symptoms when they were children (that would confirm ADHD), and if not, maybe try to find different psychotherapeutic treatments that would be more helpful to their complex PTSD.
> as of today seems like there isn't evidence that ADHD stimulant medication helps with non-ADHD executive disfunctions
Because there is not much research into that, not because research presents evidence against.
"More research is needed to determine whether executive dysfunction in adults with complex PTSD who did not present with ADHD symptoms as children respond to and tolerate ADHD medications."
Ah yeah, that's why I was noting there isn't evidence that it helps (and not "there is evidence that it doesn't help"). I'll try to edit and add a "yet" to make it clearer.
I think it says that psychologists/psychiatrists do not really know what to do when adhd/autism symptoms overlap with childhood-rooted complex ptsd/trauma in adult patients and more research is needed. That's how I read it mostly.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4340974/
Although diagnosis relies on observations made while patients are awake, the prevalence of sleep disturbances in individuals with ADHD is reported to be in the range 25–55 % (Corkum et al. 1998; Hodgkins et al. 2013; Owens 2005; Sung et al. 2008). In a recent Australian study, 62 % of children with ADHD had moderate or severe sleep problems and 22 % took sleep medications during the 1-week observation period (Efron et al. 2014). Indeed, high nocturnal activity and disordered sleep were defining characteristics of ‘hyperkinetic reaction in childhood’ or ‘attention deficit disorder’ in earlier versions of the DSM (American Psychiatric Association 1980; Barkley 1990; Sadeh et al. 2006; Spruyt and Gozal 2011).
My hot take is that *a ton* of ADHD cases is primarily lack of restorative sleep due to sleep disordered breathing, that is suffocating in sleep. Brain does not enjoy suffocating so people tend to wake up. Every couple minutes. Whole night. Without actually being aware that they do. They feel tired and brain fogged, lose concentration easily, have poor impulse control and so on. Even "mildly" disordered breathing in sleep causes frequent microarousals that fragment sleep and basically obliterate its restorative quality.
> My hot take is that a ton of ADHD cases is primarily lack of restorative sleep due to sleep disordered breathing
Uh huh. Explain the completely opposite reaction to Amphetamines and basically being impossible to become addicted to them. Explain the altered brain structure.
Everyone has a 'hot take,' it's amazing that they all lead to it not being a thing.
Now let me help you, the sleep disturbances are the hyperactivity of the brain not letting you go to sleep until you hit complete exhaustion and the dysregulation of the circadian rhythm.
So what if few people started to "misperceive themselves" as ADHD? Why it's considered a reason for panic?
The increased awareness genuinely helps to many others. I suspect there's widespread denial do be untangled, too.
Because it's widely but not overtly discriminated against and in some cases you can't get into certain professions at all.
Unless you get quite lucky, it can be extremely difficult to hold down long-term employment, build stable relationships, or get anything done, and in some places it's very difficult to get treatment.
It makes life more difficult than it needs to be unless it doesn't.
No, thanks, I have my own
I have dozens of peoples of genetics from 23andMe.
There is no way anyone can tell me there is not a large genetic risk factor in developing ADHD and autism. Because I see it in the genetics of people who have ADHD and autism. The most frequent polymorphisms I found in ADHD belong in a gene called DDC or dopamine decarboxylase.
Does trauma play a role? Probably. But genetics amplifies the risk that trauma will initiate these disorders..
I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type and OCD and I see those in my genetics as well. And my childhood was traumatic as all get out. But that’s also because my disorder is genetic, and my mother and brothers were also mentally ill.
It’s not nature or nurture, it is always nature and nurture.
I think another cause is our media environment.
Assuming ADHD is to some extent a chemical thing (I.e. brain didn’t properly develop impulse control or attention span or whatever), we now live in a world that enables those exact things.
If you lived in a world where the principal media were written articles/books and long-form TV shows/movies, your brain was still trained to focus.
Most media is now basically an ADHD simulator, with constant context switching, intense stimuli etc. which only reinforces whatever ADHD traits one may have.
I would guess it’s somewhat similar to the interaction between smoking and asthma.
ADHD results in a dopamine imbalance which results in the sort of novelty seeking behaviors they tend to exhibit.
Part of pubescence is incrementally transferring your reliance on your parents to reliance on your peers. Which is why teenagers test boundaries constantly. They have to divorce from their parents incrementally, and on their own timeline, not the parents’. Your brain has reward systems to encourage that, but can also be hijacked by substances, which is why we pay special attention to substance abuse in children. But there are many reasons for children to fail to socialize, some of them environmental, and a biological drive to fill that with something (including The Internet and “engagement” in particular) if it can’t be filled with social safety. And once it has begun it can be a feedback loop of intentionally choosing one over the other.
There are some models of addiction medicine that say that people with hope and connection have a much easier time giving up physical addictions than people who don’t. There isn’t enough stick in the consequences of addiction to get you out of the cycle. You need carrot to transition, and the bigger the carrots the easier the journey.
> There are some models of addiction medicine that say that people with hope and connection have a much easier time giving up physical addictions than people who don’t. There isn’t enough stick in the consequences of addiction to get you out of the cycle. You need carrot to transition, and the bigger the carrots the easier the journey.
I totally agree with this. And I think this is the part that's easy to miss in the narrative around how trauma and ADHD connect. Wherever ADHD traits originate, someone's desire to change matters.
If you love your job, but inability to concentrate is hampering performance, you're much more likely to WANT to change than if your job is merely a nuisance required for economic sustenance.
Yes, our modern world is perfected to provide as much distractions to ADHD brain as possible, while working life has become more mentally demanding. Lots of people who struggle now would have done okay 50, 100 years ago when there were less distractions, and larger share of population did physical jobs instead of knowledge work.
Exactly. Even if we assume the distribution of traits on the ADHD spectrum in human brains has been constant over the last 100 years, today's media and work enablements have massively increased the share of people (and part of the spectrum) for whom ADHD traits inhibit their way to live the way they'd like to.
Meh, I think this is the impression people who don't have it tend to get, or maybe it's like that for some people deep into the hyperactive dimension. While I do find some of it problematically engaging for a little while, I think it's the people around me who don't have ADHD that get more fixated on that stuff. It wouldn't be as chronic as it is if it wasn't much more broadly appealing than there exists a population of people with ADHD.
For me, I need something more deeply stimulating and long-form. A good weekend outing for me is a 14 hour hike with a sketchy scramble. I don't get any value out of constant context switching, constant bright flashing lights like rythym games or any of that, and I'm way more comfortable than most literally just sitting quietly and thinking.
I think the big divergence between how I respond to my environment and how normal people respond to their environment is that normal people tend to be problematically attracted to artificial gamified stimulated experiences, like academics, slot machine style social media, scary movies, sports, stuff like that. My biggest difficulty is that I just don't really care about arbitrary competition, benign social threats, existential danger etc.. I'd much rather be in a position where I'm actually in real danger if I mess up, or if I write some program incorrectly and risk leaking sensitive data. That's where my brain works at its best.
Right now I'm hesitating to go back to school because I have no idea if I—as a man in his mid-thirties—will be able to trick my brain into being stressed appropriately when exams come around, at least enough to show up and complete them.
I do have ADHD, and inability to control my attention is a big issue for me.
What you describe sounds like you have the condition managed extremely well and perhaps don't tend too far into the hyperactive dimension of it.
i apologize for my use of AI but this is such a big topic in my family I needed to make an image to send around; https://i.imgur.com/Oyaivfl.jpeg
I see a lot of myself in this.
i don't understand the downvote. i'm printing this out and putting on our fridge. we have 4 kids all with ADHD autism but trying hard not to complex trauma them.
No one wants to take the time to read something you didn’t take the time to write.
Apparently you didn’t even proofread it, and in all likelihood it’s not just the orthography that’s incorrect in it.
Hey, I didn't downvote you, but you may want to correct some spelling before you do that. A random paragraph: https://imgur.com/a/FXOZ3JZ
I kind of think, any scrapbook/sheet you may compile yourself would have a much bigger impact. The effort you put in give it importance for the children as well, this is how humans work :)
Must be challenging, and I'm rooting for you.
lol got it: https://i.imgur.com/WypRMww.png
Updates:
https://imgur.com/a/3xzbW6B
https://i.imgur.com/Gm6GHSi.png
https://i.imgur.com/4pGdaFU.png
Take it with grain of salt.
UK, EU, America has different societal values. I never had an issue with ADHD growing up in Asia. Nobody friggin cares. It's only western people making a huge deal outta nothing.
I consider my ADHD as a weapon because I can take it down a notch with medicine when I need to focus, but for other things like gaming, I can use my aDHD for better perf.
Shit's nothing.
ADHD is spectrum, just because it doesn't bother you so much doesn't mean there aren't those with more severe symptoms. Studies say that ADHD is way more prevalent among prison populations, for example. I would say ending up in prison, homeless or a drug addict due to untreated severe ADHD is a pretty big deal for those people.
>> I never had an issue with ADHD growing up in Asia. Nobody friggin cares. It's only western people making a huge deal outta nothing.
Interesting, I thought that Asian countries are the most hostile countries towards neurodivergent people.
Good point. stereotypical but can't disregard it as there are people who do make a fuss about it.
Not black or white thus can't or can dis/agree with you on this.
I only shared my own person opinion there.
I didn't get which is which at last.
Does anyone know of any good study linking ADHD to underlying physical condition, like chronic inflammation or coeliac?
My kid has some form of behavioral disorder but it doesn't really check all the boxes of any known condition. He doesn't have attention problems. He's very active, but not unmanageable. I don't think he's autistic, though he's socially awkward. He's very defiant with adults, so OCD does match (though that doesn't help much). Definitely very low self-esteem and all that. Mostly he's aggressive, low patience, disobedient AF, requires a ton of attention.
A particularly telling thing is that when we take long drives we often listen to children stories. He can listen for them for hours no problem. But when a story stops and until another one starts, he gets really nervous, makes a bunch of noise, annoys his brother, like he can't be canalised if he's not focused.
But what strikes me is that he seems to have a bunch of other conditions that doctors dismiss as benign. He has low teeth mineralization, often small skin bumps around his joints. He has a geographic tongue. He had digestive track pain when he was smaller. He had discoloration on his cheeks. He is quite skinny while he eats normally.
ChatGPT told us he could have coeliac, but we blood tested for coeliac and it came back negative. We tried a gluten free diet for a bit anyway, and that didn't seem to change anything at all.
We're like very puzzled. It's pretty clear that a psy test will find something behavioral, but no one is going to look at any kind of mineral deficiency, or anyhting like that.
Posting this here, Idk why, I'm kind of clueless about what to do at this stage.
> We're like very puzzled. It's pretty clear that a psy test will find something behavioral,
> Posting this here, Idk why, I'm kind of clueless about what to do at this stage.
It’s tough, but you already know what you need to do.
Autism has so many possible symptoms and associated problems that it's unlikely someone affected checks all the boxes.
One of the first signs I noticed in my childhood was that I was asking myself why everyone treated me differently for no apparent reason, and I would say that is a pretty clear indicator for autism as it stems from neurotypical social interactions being more or less a foreign language, and both sides subconsciously recognize that.
> Mostly he's aggressive, low patience, disobedient AF, requires a ton of attention.
I happened to be friends with someone who'd fit that description, the way he behaved at home with his parents was genuinely crazy. But then turned out shockingly normal years later. Sometimes it really is just a phase I guess.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8328933/#S20 might be a good starting point here?
I recommend seeing a specialist for a proper diagnosis. It'll be worth it.
I am at the intersection of these three things. Which intersection? Well, it's hard to know, that's the point.
But I've found this particular new-ish lens extremely illuminating, and it hasn't yet entered common parlance, so I post here in the hopes its helpful for others. After many years of hearing "tropes" from all 3 categories and having them only ~kinda feel like they fit, this was the one that made my jaw hit the ground and go holy shit, this is me, this is the thing that, if you understood it about it me, makes all the convoluted fuckery in my life click elegantly into place:
*Pathological Demand Avoidance*, or the more modern "friendlier" backronym, *Persistent Drive for Autonomy*.
Both are accurate, I find the former more accurate, if notably "harsher". But that's just my flavor of inner voice (how apt, for this topic).
Here are some random links I only skimmed, you can find sources that resonate with you in particular.
https://childmind.org/article/pathological-demand-avoidance-...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4820467/
One example of a way this manifests in me personally, and how it relates to the intersection of the 3 things in the title:
I was massively stressed by a partner's attempts to get me to do things like clean out the garage, etc. I'd catastrophisize about the amount of time it would take, and spend the entire time in a sour mood, squirming for ways to get out of it. What ended up helping a great deal was explicitly setting time boxes at the outset, such as we will spend exactly three hours on this and stop at the three hour mark no matter what. Being able to "see the exit" in advance (and trust that it would be honored) pretty much completely resolved the issues.
* It has hints of helplessness/trappedness/persecution avoidance that feel like they could relate to growing up trapped in a house with a violently abusive father.
* It has high seeking for routine, predictability, and certainty that feel like they could be autism-coded.
* The "this genuinely feels in my body like the task will be forever" has time blindness, task-abandonment and followthrough issues that present like ADHD.
What is the actual balance of those 3 things in contributing? IDK, and it's probably different in various situations.
But for me, the PDA angle fits like a glove, and was the first mental model that succinctly encapsulated what it actually felt like in my head.
cool
> This rise in interest and, at times, conviction, is challenging clinicians and resources.
There you go. Seems like the academics are either pressured to gaslight people managing ADHD and autism or jump on bandwagon hoping a department notices and perhaps provide funding or other jolly.
They should get fucked with this harmful "research".
Sounds like you were abused as a child and you find this upsetting.
More like government doesn't want people to get support they need.
There’s more money to be made with a pill for a thing called adhd than there is if such a thing doesn’t exist.
I’m not sure what people will even need the fucking adderral for now anyway now that the computer programs like a drugged out maniac now for us anyway.
You don’t have adhd. It was always insane to expect humans to program like a fucking machine. You’d have to take a drug to do shit like that and that’s the sad truth of the software industry.
The children are so broken that their parents and entire community give them status and money for actually doing this (taking drugs to make money in the world).
Your dealer (the pharmaceutical industry) will never make you feel bad about this (enter media planted articles), thus, here you go, feel good about doing the wrong thing because … uh, you are a victim.
God sees through ALL bullshit, especially the ones we tell ourselves.
The medicine isn’t bad for people who need it. Most parents are trying to do the best for their kids. They’re trying to find ways to help their kids. In many cases these medications are extremely helpful to people who need them.
Is that honest?
Most parents are corrupted with the academic pursuit such that they seek better and better results and are now drugging their children (rather, that is a well known thing, so much so that the fucking children grow up and give it to their children with the same mental corruption of academic excellence - it’s godless shit).
God is god dude. Nothing is god, not your parents, not their “doing what is best” excuse, nothing. They are playing god. No one is getting away with this bullshit in the end, because it’s a lie, and God knows and cares.
Thank you. There is no adhd , there is simply a drug that people resorted to when the sinful academic shitheads created a fucking impossibly ridiculously unnecessarily competitive and elitist institution that they force people to worship - Education.
This happens because most parents are godless. They don’t actually know what God wants from them and thus follow what this world tells them to follow, and this world is evil. This evil world tell them to enslave their children and feed them drugs for “education”, this is insanity.
It’s godless.
> A diagnosis of ADHD or autism in adulthood often leads to incredible relief and grief in processing all the moments of being blamed and shamed for what was assumed to be a lack of effort, laziness and/or defiance.
I never understood this sentiment. It's just who I am and always have been. And I learned to deal with the circumstances. I don't understand why it makes people feel better to have a diagnosis they can blame.
Perhaps it's a generational thing? I know as a manager it's pretty common for reports to cite them having ADHD as why they can't do this or that. Meanwhile I mentally roll my eyes thinking, "no shit, me too, but I manage to get this done"
Think of growing up feeling inadequate. Even in the eyes of your parents. Then learning that you don't suck and were completely undeserving of being mistreated as a child.
(No child is deserving of being mistreated but that's a whole other bag of worms)
100%. And this has been repeated generation after generation. Its just that in the past 50 years we have started caring and being kind towards ourselves and it has shown tangible results in the progress of human civilization as a whole.
But some regions/cultures are lagging (but catching up fast) as per my experience living in 5 states across 3 countries spanning two very different continents.
What about before? When and why did we stop caring I wonder.
A diagnosis did not alter my thinking in this regard whatsoever. That's part of what I was saying I don't understand.
The main issue with undiagnosed ADHD is, that people assume they can solve your issues with ideas don't work for people with ADHD.
So, your life is sprinkled with unhelpful people that mean well but think you're just not listening to them.
And you yourself think, your too dumb or lazy or whatever to get things done consistently.
The you find out it's ADHD and you learn different methods to get things done. Which is nice.
But it's also very sad if that happens years after childhood. Because you realise, you might had a more successful life if you knew earlier
Other humans brains work differently than yours. What didn’t work for you did work for them.
> A diagnosis did not alter my thinking in this regard whatsoever.
YMMV, maybe other individuals need confirmation/closure on the topic in their lives to help them move onto the next chapter? Knowledge is power.
(Post-comment reflection: this is needed in a lot of other aspects in life, why not here as well?)
What does a diagnosis have to do with any of that? How is that a whole other bag worms, that’s exactly the topic at hand.
This logic doesn't make sense though. What does "learning you don't suck" mean? You still do "suck" but whatever definition was being used at the time. You still didn't do your homework or stay calm in class, that actually happened. It had consequences.
The only way it does make sense is if you think the consequences should be different because some doctor give it a name. But then you say nobody should have been treated that way regardless of the diagnoses. If the diagnoses doesn't matter why does it matter?
As someone who definitely has dealt with all this for my entire life I've found it much easier to just focus on behavior and consequences and alternatives. Trying to place it all in a moral/medical framework is a black hole. If your actions hurt others or otherwise have negative results you have to address that.
Some people were abused in various ways in an “attempt” to get them to stop presenting those traits. Calling friends parents, teachers, etc about thing that really should have been private (if not in fact grounds for CPS interventions), physical abuse to try to “break habits”, physically breaking objects associated with the child's special interests, etc.
Learning that you were not, in fact, a horrible and wicked child that your parents had to endure is life changing.
Imagine some people have been calling you "crazy" all your life, in a bad way, and then, at 40 years old, you do something that you expect the other person to think is crazy and they just say instead: "ah, don't worry, that's normal to do if you have adhd", and then it suddenly clicks that you are NOT crazy and have never been your entire life, you just had a condition you didn't know about and people were ignorant, and acting like this is completely normal given the condition.
It's like being forced to write with your left hand the entire life, and suddenly you realize that you are right handed, and it's ok to be right handed too...
You saw the part where I said I dealt with the same thing, right? I don't have to imagine. And I still don't understand why people feel relieved. It doesn't change the fact of the matter of my situation, and I still have to deal with it the same as I always have. And no, I never use it as an explanation or an excuse to other people, it's just something I need to deal with.
> I still have to deal with it the same as I always have.
For me it was very different. Once I considered possible audhd, and knew what my triggers are and what is expected or not, my life is a lot easier and happier. I don't have to pretend anymore, and I no longer feel bad for being myself.
I am ok sitting in a corner in a crowded social environment and not feel weird about it. Even more, I meet more people who feel the same, so it leads to better relationships and more easy-going conversations, instead of forcing myself to be social for example.
The inability to understand or empathise with others is indeed a neurodivergent trait. Some people get comfort from it, some don't. People are different and have different outputs for the same input.
Sounds like bad management. Explanations aren't excuses, they're simply the reason something happens.
ADHD is often an executive function disorder. As a manager, have you offered them an accommodation?
Lots of “I” statements from you and not a whole lot of understanding.
> have you offered them an accommodation?
Yes, and that wasn't my point. Except for one case who was definitely abusing the situation, I never once revealed that my inner monologue was pointing out that I have the same issues they do but I don't use it as an excuse for not getting my work done.
> but I don't use it as an excuse for not getting my work done.
Maybe it's not just a label as your are painting it, but rather a complex situation over ones entire life with many layers, which cannot be easily understood in a short time (and much less in a manager-employee conversation).
We're talking about a circumstance where it's something I personally have dealt with, for longer, often decades longer, than the people who are complaining about it to me. It's not as if I don't understand the situation.
> We're talking about a circumstance where it's something I personally have dealt with, for longer, often decades longer, than the people who are complaining about it to me. It's not as if I don't understand the situation.
I suppose that this is a clear case for the commonly used acronym here on Hackernews: YMMV (your mileage may vary (or the other that I forgot)).
Maybe you forgot that despite us being all human, part of the same species, living on the same planet: no individuals will have the exact same life, same thought process, same ability to deal, cope or handle adversity or environmental factors.
It feels wrong to read you saying that you are comparing yourself to others in such a manner...
Once again, explanation ≠ excuse.
I sincerely suggest that you try to be understanding of your reports instead of being mildly inconvenienced by their problems and labeling them negatively as you have suggested here.
People leave jobs because of bad management. Be better.
You did see that I had the same explanation and I don't use it to explain away poor performance, right?
And also pay attention to how I said I kept those thoughts to myself. I recognize that the younger generations seem to feel it's all quite alright, and I handle it appropriately in the contemporary style.
Sure you may have the same diagnosis as them, but you do not have the same life experiences.
Plus, isn’t this comment thread under a post regarding a link between ADHD and complex trauma? Complex trauma is… complex. I doubt that you share the same circumstances that resulted in the diagnosis that you and your reports both share.
Even some other people with ADHD seem to treat it like a trait, and not like a disorder.
This worries me.
Also, what's so noble about hiding own struggles?
And also, why shouldn't I be relieved when I understand a big factor in my struggles?
This is a very confusing comment.
> Even some other people with ADHD seem to treat it like a trait, and not like a disorder.
Would a valid example of this be the ADHD tag on twitch streamer channels?
Perhaps you should not be a manager beyond rote supervisory responsibilities if you cannot understand this aspect of people.
Did you miss the part where I have the same circumstances as them?
Same condition maybe, but circumstances? Doesn't sound like it.
This is what makes me doubt a lot of diagnoses today. The people who really have these issues/conditions seem to notice themselves in childhood before they even know what they are or what they're called. Leaving the reaction for the diagnosed to be mostly nothing in that they already know.
I'm sure it's very fun for everyone abusing adderall to get a doctor to believe their story (after all, they barely understand these conditions themselves), but it's a difficult life to have these conditions. Lot of what I hear described by the people self diagnosed or have a more "modern" (I'll just put it this way) diagnosis just sound like garden variety trauma due to less than tactful parents.
> The people who really have these issues/conditions seem to notice themselves in childhood before they even know what they are or what they're called
Yes. But when you don't know what it is you may start to believe that it's just you being lazy, stupid, slow, difficult, etc. Especially when everyone around you including teachers use these labels and you literally have no other information to base your views on. A mix of living with that for decades and being unable to know how life feels for other people can make you gaslight yourself very thoroughly.
A diagnosis is an acknowledgment of an authority on the subject that you are in fact not crazy and don't have to blame everything that happened on yourself.
> Leaving the reaction for the diagnosed to be mostly nothing in that they already know
I am glad for everyone who experienced it like that, but that's not a reason to diminish the significant effect for many others.
A lot of traditional ways of "dealing with circumstances" are very unhealthy (and often toxic) and have adverse effects on people around you. Unless your methods are deemed healthy by a mental health professional you can't be sure.
Sure, and I have plenty of unhealthy habits. But getting a Dx didn't lead me to say "oh my god, the sun is brighter, the air smells fresher, all is revealed!". My response was closer to "yeah, no shit".
I should add, even when I was in grade school it was discussed for me to get evaluated. But that was far enough back that it was just "hyperactivity" & before people started talking in terms of ADD, ADHD, and subtypes, and I didn't match the criteria back then. So it wasn't like it was a big surprise decades later when revised criteria started matching my phenotype
Then you don't have a good therapist.
Then you don't have adhd
sure thing, mr scotsman