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.
What does this mean? Do you mean the congenital aspects of a disorder?
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.
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:
I have read some books about Darwin evolution and to me the new fact was that some fish while are being recognized as the same species are actually acting like different species diverged based on their diet and behaviour - those fishes that had mainly carnivorous behaviour diverged from rest of those that had more plant based food. And they are on a path of becoming species. Microbiology and other things with chemistry simply would not help with anything here, as the main object of their differences is in the way how their brains are working - why with equally equipped "tools" they behave differently and that eventually lead to their evolution to different species. This is applicable to neurodivergent people - we are diverging into different species, though because we still have sex with each other that affects whole humanity. Nothing to do with environment effects, that you are offering as a cause - I do eat the same products, but I look on world differently, apparently more wiser than average human, but that comes at the cost of making social connections, because essentially as a new species we are aliens among humans, but eventually there will be further adaptions, that will make us better at connections and who knows maybe even better than how humans are able to connect with each other. It is just how human evolution works.
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.
It's generally maladaptive but there's a reason the brain does it.
I'm mainly talking about stuff like: the maximum age supposedly being 6–9, the strict separation into "ANPs"/"EPs"/etc, and stuff like that, being unsupported at best. I do think disorganized attachment itself is one of the more plausible theories for how structural dissociation happens, but I generalize it more to any incompatible information instead.
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
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.
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?"
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
The support I need is just to have NORMAL people around that I can mirror and be part of normal society, and not just traumatized people or criminals(which can be the same as well).
While I support free will, but cannabis changes brains - and people, that have killed certainly can't claim that they had any beneficial effects from smoking cannabis. And as someone that have heightened senses, I also have negative bias towards cannabis use in public. Also, I have tried it - it did not made me feel better, but worse - I felt even more stressed. I would rather be drunk, than smell cannabis around 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.
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.
I’m not going to speak for anyone else, but if I forget a thing and “fixing” it is as simple as saying sorry and doing it the next day, I’ll do it. And I will keep doing it on a loop if need be _because I care_.
And that’s often the easy sign for this stuff. Did your parents forget and _not even try_ to show that they care?
It’s the sheer indifferent callousness that stands out starkest to me. It doesn’t take much, I’ve found, for people to state outright “you’re wrong to expect me to care about you.”
I will say that my eldest, and otherwise wonderful and engaging daughter is having a hell of a time at her school right now, and schools and SEN provision and, honestly, competence, are highly variable, and I’ve been surprised at how large the differences can be.
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.
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 think it just irks me that everybody thinks it's so bad this boy's birthday was forgotten, while not knowing anything about it. I have friends that take their kids to out-of-school care at 7:00, pick them up again 18:00 all week, so they can put them to bed and that's it. But hey, they have a nice birthday right? Lot of presents! We have always made it a point to have someone at home (early on it was also the grand parents), someone to pick them up from school, no day-care, we have a drink with them ask them about their day, help them go to friends etc. But heavens forbid if I'd forget a birthday (which honestly could happen without my partner here, although with smartphones nowadays it'd indeed be a big oversight.)
You’re not a dick and you weren’t being a dick, I totally agree about writing on the internet - it’s tricky to feel and to tell, and I imagine I must be insufferable at times.
I can see your point now and I think we might agree on more than either of us first thought. I can see how much you care for your family in every word you’ve written, and I’d be a bit surprised if one of your kids was at home, told you it’s their birthday, and your reaction would be to laugh about it, and then carry on with your day as normal with no further reaction or acknowledgement of it.
So - Ii’s not about remembering, or about the card or presents or cake: it’s what you do with the information in front of you. From the sounds of it you’re demonstrating your care brilliantly every day.
(I have the same type of brain wiring you’ve described, incidentally. My extremely accepting wife would ask me to buy her some flowers, nothing showy, just something to brighten up the house and remind her of me. And I’d hear that as “she wants me to remember to buy her flowers sometime” and file it away. And several years later we figured out that gap in our communications and nowadays, when it’s important enough to her that she asks me to buy her flowers - I buy the flowers. Turns out that that was all it took to demonstrate that I care.)
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)
That is, they chose to make a bigger deal over celebrating the dead, than they did their living child.
In my case they had interviews with two exes (who are two of my best friends), my sister and my parents.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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"
(No child is deserving of being mistreated but that's a whole other bag of worms)
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?)
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Would a valid example of this be the ADHD tag on twitch streamer channels?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
In some areas and circumstances, your response can be problematic. You didn’t say what you do besides mentally rolling your eyes, but as an example: management ignoring an employee sharing a recognized disorder and requesting reasonable accommodation is the basic premise for a lawsuit.
I’m not saying this is happening here, but this is the kind of scenario management needs to be aware of and prepared for, specifically.
More generally, I would hope managers would be empathetic, but I also understand that this is rarely to never on the job description.
Edit: I see in another part of the thread that you seem to know all this, so nevermind. But I’ll leave this for others to understand that there is a responsibility, here.
Learning that you were not, in fact, a horrible and wicked child that your parents had to endure is life changing.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
When I search for 'bidirectional causality' I get a lot of scientific results. Are those all wrong?
> 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.
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.
At the same time not having any definitive sign pointing to parents being the cause of behavioral issues later in life and reluctance to talk about family issues is a reason why the effects of this kind childhood trauma occur and nobody realizes or talks about it. That was certainly the case for me for far too long. I framed my issues myself in terms of medical disorders, not an upbringing that nobody should have to suffer through, largely because of the messages society gave me when I was younger and more impressionable. One is not always preventable, but there is no good reason the other should ever have to happen.
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”
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."
This sounds like a great way to implant false memories
The therapeutic relief comes simply from listening to your gut/subconscious and feeling the emotions that that brings up. Being a loving friend and parent to that part of yourself. You can do that effectively without pretending that you can know if the impressions are literally true or if that message your getting is simply the best way for it to express the emotions it's holding onto.
Again, you can maintain your integrity while being empathic and loving and listening to the message.
Many psychologists who belong to different schools of thought – e.g. CBT, positive psychology – don't agree those practices are helpful and don't agree with their theoretical underpinnings
There is a lack of high quality empirical evidence for both the safety and efficacy of the kinds of practices you advocate, and also for the theories which motivate them. By contrast, more mainstream approaches such as CBT have significantly better empirical support
Every person with headache I met had painkillers.
Therefore their pain is caused by painkillers.
Daft.
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 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.
The instinctive behavior (on average) of girls seems to be more compatible with living in boxes and following ostensibly (from the child’s perspective) arbitrary rules.
The boy could have a very different experience from the girl by running into disproportionately more <behavioral correction>, and however healthy <behavioral correction> is in the family system (and wherever else they are exposed to) could determine whether the child more exposed to it has issues while the child less exposed to it wouldn’t, despite living in the same environment and being treated the same relative to their actual behaviors.
I’m not asserting that this has happened in your case, by the way, your account of the situation just doesn’t rule it out. I wonder if you’ve considered this?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Is it? That’s a theory, but for the vast majority of human history there was a very different pattern and I don’t think we’ve changed enough since then evolution-wise to have instincts for a completely different life pattern.
Like, in hunter gatherer bands, there aren’t really “parents” in the modern sense through a child’s development. And then they don’t start relying on their peers, they’ve been with a mixed age group of siblings and cousins since the age of 3 or so. And then they slowly transition into being a member of the adult male or female group.
I don’t really know how what you’re describing would map into instincts from that ancestral life pattern.
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.
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.
Also, TikTok is addictive, but not media that our brains consume.
To be fair, I have no problems with focusing at all, even with all the distractions, but the main problem is with mood, that is blocking me to want to do something and focus on it.
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.
- 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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Interesting, I thought that Asian countries are the most hostile countries towards neurodivergent people.
Not black or white thus can't or can dis/agree with you on this.
I only shared my own person opinion there.
Japan seems to have a similar problem, although a less extreme version.
I did really well up to college, but without the routine of school I ended up completely collapsing for my early twenties.
Then I got better at managing it over time, and that was fine.
Then I had multiple kids and then some chronic illness. It was at that point that I really felt the condition impacting me.
So, it's dangerous to generalise too early, I guess.
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.
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 still terrible at real-time conversations in person, having a weird speech impairment on top is not helpful either.
> 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.
"gets really nervous, makes a bunch of noise, annoys his brother, like he can't be canalised if he's not focused." could be autism or ADHD.
btw, ADHD doesn't mean "attention problems", it is much more complex than that and it can manifest in many different ways.
e.g. assuming he would have it, the listening provides a baseline level of stimulation, but as soon as it stops, there must be something to provide that stimulation, thus all those things.
if there's more behavioral stuff that you can recall, that would offer more clues.
The increased awareness genuinely helps to many others. I suspect there's widespread denial do be untangled, too.
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 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?
I'm kinda confused. Is that the good impact you think that had in you? Why?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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".
"My hypothesis is that that those who remain most affected by childhood trauma in adulthood and seek treatment for it represent a population more likely to have innate neurodiversity."
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.
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.
Perfect parenting, if such a thing exists, certainly has an economic minimum price.
And likely has a previous generation upraising requirement as well. There's a reason maladaptive cycles continuing down through generations happens: parents are often defined by their parents ad infinitum.
What matters as a parent is being the best you can be, and striving to be better than your parents were.
Fundamentally, parents exist to model behavior. Some parents model maladaptive or outright horrid behaviors more than others. But that's still modeling, and for a child with sufficient emotional intelligence that can be just as useful information when learning how to interact with the world and understand one's own emotions. But you can't do that if you just try to sweep it away and forget, just like you can't learn from your own mistakes by immediately burying them and moving on. Moving on is important, but you have to at least know what you're moving on from.
What's problematic is an obsessive focus on blaming parents and nurturing feelings of resentment.
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.
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.
Real example based on real self-doubt across multiple friends I know.
Both examples can be incredibly emotionally mature, they just express it in different ways.
>> "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 latter is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely, the former feels worse because everybody sees it as worse."
These are not emotionally mature ways of handling things. These are called maladaptive coping strategies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
Happy is how you're feeling in the moment. Emotionally fulfilling is how you feel about the whole of your situation. Does it feel right? Fair? Or are you constantly "glad it's not worse"? Remove fault and justification from the equation -- wouldn't it be more emotionally fulfilling if parents didn't yell at you? If they didn't make such a big deal out of spending money on you? You can be happy a lot of the time despite those, but they tend to leave a hole in you anyway. Emotional fulfillment is the relative lack of those holes, compared to the good.
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.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
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.
> 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...
If you can't help it anyway, would you rather have:
"non acceptance" and the workplace repercusions of the dysfunction.
"acceptance" and the workplace repercusions of the dysfunction.
Accountability, mostly. Either by gamification, for example a simple small whiteboard counting how often I did y (or not, that would be a strike). Couple with someone holding me accountable it works wonders, throw in a "punishment" or reward... Or, if that doesn't fit, deadlines (which maybe is just another kind of accountability...). Both made me finish my degree in time and with a very good grade (A in Americano?).
How to translate this into the workplace, I'm not sure. You might have a supportive workplace and can be open about it, which is what I did.
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
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.
Now we may have behaviors that were shaped by our trauma, but remembering our trauma, what does that do but reinforce the memory again and there force reinforce our trauma response?
All that has to be done is focus on your present date and your present reaction examine if that’s dysfunctional or not.
Because trauma affixes neutal pathways. You don't have to remember it to be affected, at all.
Does a car mechanic need a video of the crash to fix the car?
Past trauma can often be the root.
Failing to recognize it and reprogram that part of your brain leads to patching over symptoms, which... causes other issues.
Where this breaks down for some people -- not everyone has trauma, or at least severe enough trauma to need to deal with it.
Some people act like assholes because they were hurt when they were young. Others act like assholes because that's just how they decided to act.
If you want to fix the code, you need to go to the right line.
But if those are destructive memories, that you want to return to and that are at the base of your misery, then no - that is absolutely worst thing to return to, as there is nothing you can change there and the things that are affecting you are coming from that already. So, pretty much this is the reason why it is important for kids to have stable normal life.
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
> 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 have autism(high functioning version which is linked with ADHD) diagnosis and whenever someone is mentioning something from the past, I am adapting to it by mirroring it by remembering it and then dealing with it again. It just becomes a cycle of misery. It took me some time to realize, that it is best to not talk about your failures - there is nothing good from reliving them and it is much better to just concentrate on things you enjoy and love to do.
Any statistical case with story is anecdotal - it has additional value that it helps to understand cases. As no way specialists are able to figure this out without prior knowledge and experience and lacking those background stories and 100% failure from specialists in my case can be called as anecdotal, but that is a statistical fact that affects personally me.
Also, the story resonates with my observations that my parents had traumatic events, though I don't think that it is something that causes ADHD or neurodiversity, but rather stems from the fact, that people that are neurodiverse would experience harsher emotions and emotional trauma and give the same treatment to their children.
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.
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 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.
I think it’s a miracle that you’re still alive. I can relate to a certain extent.
It was during the last year of my education as a Systems Engineer, where I was hospitalized into a mental institution due to a failed suicide attempt. I was 19 at that time. There I got my first diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia (ICD-10, F20.0). Due to my persistent depressive mood and suicidal ambivalence (as I understood) it was revised to schizoaffective disorder (ICD-10, F25.1). Several antidepressants, mood stabalizers and antipsychotics were tried like: Escitalopram, Duloxetine, Sertraline, Lithium, Quetiapine, Haloperidol, Clozapine and Olanzapine (as far as I can remember) and also electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
By a coincidence, I was assessed for autism spectrum disorder, because my behavior couldn't still really be explained (myself was also unable). My parents also got interviewed. It has become apparent that my father is also on the spectrum. Autism spectrum disorder (Asperger syndrome ICD-10, F84.5) and with recurrent depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms (ICD-10, F33.3) were the diagnoses when I was transferred to a locked care facility after more than a year.
In the facility I had weekly therapy with my psychiatrist. He confirmed the autism diagnosis and additionally diagnosed a PTSD (ICD-10, F43.1), after I told him about situations in my early childhood and my time in high school. The psychiatrist told me that, people in the spectrum are often victim of abuse, because of a certain vulnerability malicious people (like NPD) make use of.
Today, 9 years later I am still living in the facility.
It does sound like we are similar, and frankly I wish I could be institutionalized as well. I have twice attempted suicide but managed to avoid ECT. I think scizoaffective is another name for complex Asperger's.
what country are you in? Just curious because I believe my illness comes from my mothers side, Finnish/Sami heritage.
@Telaneo >>>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 was diagnosed ASD quite late, but only because of circumstances, where I was sliding even further down. Before that I was surviving, sometimes struggling, but I did not thought it as something to blame others or even life circumstances, including traumatic events(like death of my dad, when I was small), but simply because I was different, but clearly that attitude can only last as long. So, yeah - it really depends on how you look at it - if you think that you have a trauma, then you can find it, especially when dealing with traumatic events in later life. But if you ignore trauma and as long as you ignore it - you can be trauma free. It is rather contradictory, but mind works that way - and even now only my mind is the wall, that stops me from going further, while before I was able to circumnavigate that wall. The "wall" in my case right now is understanding that there is lack of helpful people around, that I can call my own. No real friends, and loss of those that were thought to be friends and no means to bond with people to make friendship, especially when getting older.
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.
Any mental issue, symptom or disease lie on a spectrum, in terms of quality and severity. Psychiatric diagnoses are overlapping in more than 50% often making a single diagnosis incomplete.