this-sure-is-a-blog:

doomhamster:

star-anise:

doomhamster:

jumpingjacktrash:

the-real-seebs:

That’s sort of the impression I’ve gotten. Like, I don’t deny that I see it in a lot of ADHD people, but I also see it in a lot of others.

i do have it, but when i try to unpack it, it doesn’t go back to ADHD, it goes back to emotional abuse in school. and for me it’s very centered around situations that came up back then.

like, i have no problem with romantic rejection. when i’d ask someone out and get turned down, i was just disappointed a normal amount, and could still be friends with them, and could let it go. maybe after a weekend of ice cream and playing with the dog, if i really really liked them. so basically, a healthy and reasonable response to getting turned down for a date.

whereas when i bring a problem with peers to an authority or regulatory figure – or just someone i expected to be above it – and get told it’s my own fault, whether that’s true or not, my autonomic nervous system goes into Robot Rampage Destroy Everything Mode, and i lose the ability to think. emotional regulation is a thing of the past. it took until my 40′s to learn to not respond at all until the sirens stop going off. i do not expect to ever be able to respond gracefully in the moment.

not that that comes up a lot anymore, now that i don’t work outside the home. not a lot of instances for a house husband/writer to get smacked down by bosses. really, most of those situations i’m sensitive to just don’t come up much anymore.

tl;dr: yeah, you’re right, it’s not ADHD, it’s PTSD.

Hmmm. @star-anise, any thoughts? Seems like it could be pretty hard decoupling ADHD – or any kind of neurodivergence really – from PTSD in any case, given the kind of treatment disabled people usually go through… 

Yeeeeah I’ve got no firm answers. PTSD stemming from childhood, and ADHD, are really hard to untangle at present and I suspect it’ll only get moreso as new research comes in. It’s all kind of vague and interconnected and the word “implicated” starts to feel really useful here.

A lot of researchers are starting to point to ADHD itself as being intensely connected to poor environment and lack of parental attunement during ages 0-3 which prevents proper brain development in areas to do with reward and self-soothing (see Gabor Maté’s Scattered Minds for a summary) which people think means “everyone with ADHD was abused as a child” and is more like “kids with biological vulnerability to ADHD need special attention during infancy and their parents need extra support.”

And then having ADHD makes you more likely to be rejected as a child because of behavioural issues, and also less resilient when it happens, because of trouble with emotional regulation and self-soothing. So even if you don’t buy ADHD as a form of Developmental Trauma Disorder, ADHD in children creates an underlying predisposition for PTSD around social situations (and also academic environments).

So Dodson is seeing something real with the huge number of ADHD adults with rejection-sensitive dysphoria—but I would direly love to see more research on it as an independent phenomenon, and in people who don’t have ADHD. (And I’m about to dive into a bunch of literature on Avoidant Personality Disorder, so I might even find it!)

Thanks a lot! And yeah, the idea that “poor environment = abuse” is one I personally don’t like much. I mean, abuse did play a part in why my childhood was often tough – but even if my dad had been a perfect human being, there was just so much he and mom didn’t KNOW, that they couldn’t have known back when, that could’ve helped them provide a better environment for me.

Regarding ADHD and rejection sensitivity:

I’m glad that some people are finally recognizing this instead of automatically reblogging whatever Tumblr claims about the subject. Rejection sensitivity is extremely common, especially among psychiatric samples, and there’s no evidence that it’s uniquely related to ADHD. If anything, it’s related to anxiety, attachment disturbances, and past social experiences. To be clear, the concept originated with Karen Horney, a neo-Freudian, and had nothing whatsoever to do with ADHD. It’s also been examined by other well known attachment researchers (x).

It is true that ADHD (and executive dysfunction in general) can lead to trouble inhibiting reactions, calming oneself once upset, and switching emotional tracts. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that people with ADHD are more sensitive to rejection, merely that once they are upset, it’s harder to return to baseline, and they might be more likely to react in ways that they’ll later regret. Ruminating can also increase rejection sensitivity, but rumination is a common feature of anxiety and depression as well.

Regarding ADHD and PTSD:

It has been shown that not only do adults with ADHD have a higher rate of PTSD than controls, so do their relatives (x). One major reason for this may be that ADHD can increase children’s risk for experiencing trauma or other negative events due to impulsive actions, peer rejection, or neglect or maltreatment from parents who don’t know how to handle the child. Another major reason may be that individuals with ADHD (and executive dysfunction in general) often have difficulty regulating their emotions and lack healthy coping mechanisms for handling stress, increasing the impact of traumatic events. Finally, ADHD is often comorbid with disorders such as depression and anxiety, and these are also associated with a higher risk of PTSD (x).

That said, there are concerns that PTSD can be misdiagnosed as ADHD because of overlap in symptoms (e.g., dissociation can be confused for inattentiveness or hypervigilance for hyperactivity, and both ADHD and PTSD can involve increased emotional reactivity; x). As well, I want to make sure that it’s clear that ADHD is primarily not comorbid with PTSD. Lifetime prevalence of PTSD for individuals with ADHD is still “only” in the range of 10% (x) to 26% (x). That’s high, but it still means that the majority of individuals with ADHD will never meet the clinical criteria for PTSD.