Genuine question: are ADHD people inherently disabled in developing self-discipline due to their brain wiring? [I mean disabled in the sense of "they need external assistance or must put way more effort", in the same way someone with a muscular disorder might need a cane or put way more effort into walking.]
Yes, they are inherently disabled. Medication can help, but even with strategies, tactics, and therapy, there is still brain chemistry at play. Medication can help, but has its trade-offs and isn't a silver bullet.
Self-discipline is also more costly. You can brute-force your way through tasks with ADHD, but it is more taxing on your overall energy. Those with ADHD typically experience impulses often and it's harder for them to ignore. Forcing yourself to ignore them requires extra energy. It's not sustainable to do all the time. It's hard for those without ADHD to truly understand what that's like.
In addition to impulsivity, executive dysfunction affecting starting tasks or work is also a big challenge.
I don't think this is true about brain chemistry or that ADD is a life-long disability. Just speaking from experience here, I was diagnosed with ADD as an adult in my mid-20s and then started using IFS therapy (parts work) a couple years later for childhood trauma. After two years of IFS therapy my ADD is pretty much non-existent and my executive functioning is better than most people I know.
My hunch is that for a lot of people, ADD is a result of growing up in a home that felt unstable so they never gained a basic internal sense of stability that you need for things like task switching or staying focused.
You can't generalize your experience (trauma mimicking ADD symptoms) to 'ADD [is not] a life-long disability' -- people have symptoms for different reasons and there are biomarkers for ADD.
Which specific ADHD biomarkers are you referring to? There are some promising areas for research but I'm not aware that any are yet accepted for clinical purposes.
IMHO many people with ADHD diagnose has really some kind of PTSD that started when they were children. And I believe that kind of condition is treatable. It would need a long therapy of course and a lot of changes in life. And I say this as a person with ADHD diagnose.
(I'm not GP.) I don't think the question here is whether trauma is mimicking ADHD or ADHD is a result of trauma, either in general, or in any particular case.
I think people lean into the personality traits, 'neurotype', cognitive styles, talents, and inherent tendencies they have as kids when it comes to coping with trauma. You use the tools you have. If you have ADHD and a situation is unbearable, hyperfocus is a tool you have— or at least a pattern you can fall into— that can prevent you from being overwhelmed by the feelings that weigh on you when that situation is on your mind. It would be shocking to me if ADHDers didn't often end up relying on features of ADHD to adapt to traumatic situations.
These things are interrelated in people who have both, and I don't think it's generally easy (or necessary) to pick apart 'which is which' when it comes to a specific behavior or experience.
Internal Family Systems therapy is a form of therapy that uses the idea of different "parts" of ourselves, and postulates that we can heal these different parts of ourselves by accessing an inner source of compassion underneath all these "parts" - suppressed emotional pain, defense mechanisms, coping mechanisms, etc. I've found it to be the most effective form of therapy for healing anxiety, depression, and childhood trauma, when combined with other mind-body practices.
IFS is the "Internal Family Systems" model of psychotherapy. I'm coincidentally in the midst of reading No Bad Parts, which was written by the originator, and covers the basic ideas behind the practice and gives some instructions for exercises. I've enjoyed the book so far.
This is sort of non-descriptive. Every time you are happy, sad, angry, afraid, bored, tired; that's brain chemistry at play. Brains are electrochemical computers.
Putting myself into a situation where I have no choice would mean being constantly in grave danger (financial, social, or relationship). If I fail once, it may have a catastrophic impact on my life. The worst part is that I may fail due to external factors that I have little control over (e.g., getting a huge loan to force myself to work, while experiencing a serious injury that prevents me from working for months). Anything other than looming doom wouldn't work on me.
I, a non-ADHD person, do not have to put myself into situations where I have no choice but to do the thing I need to do. I simply see I need to do something and then do it. Does this strongly deviate from how I described a disability above? (the inability to do something without extra assistance or significant extra effort)
I've seen ADHD person explain this as having every reason to do the task, know that they need to get started now, and yet, just can't get around to do it. I've certainly felt that in some scenarios in my life. It's like getting the timing to start doing the task is impossible and everything else, no matter how mundane, seems safer and more fulfilling to do.
It's like you are missing the drive to get that thing done to the point that your brain just tricks you into thinking that anything remotely productive seems more important and better to get started on now than the actual task. To me this is a rare occurrence, hence why I think I am not a ADHD person.
The problem to me is that this difficulty is hard to differentiate from self-discipline.
I suspect you will be less likely to feel that inability to get around to do the tasks that you know to be important to do it if you fail in a way that life itself, the universe, hurts you for the failure, as opposed to your boss saying "you're fired for showing up late".
I also suspect that some people use religion to fix this: Like picturing a higher being looking down and saying "Wherefore dost thou not now do that which thou must? Else, I shall smite thee from the heavens or cause thee great trouble in the afterlife."
"Just not getting round to it" is what my ADHD often feels like. Let's say I have to mail a package at the post office. I've got to write the address, pack it all up and then take it to the post office. At 9am in the morning I genuinely feel like I'm on the cusp of doing it. I glance at my watch "Oh, it's midday, better each lunch". No to worry, I'll get the package done right after lunch. 4pm rolls around and I realize that I might miss the closing time of the post of office so I rush to tape it up, write the address and hurry down there. I send it just in time. At any time of the day you could have asked me "Are you going to send that package now?" and I would honestly say "Yes, right away!" but somehow it doesn't happen. On one level I know myself well enough to have seen this play out hundreds of times, but I still think this time will be different. It still feels like I'm just about to send that package.
This happened on a much larger scale when I was in university. I had 18 months for my dissertation. Each week that went by I planned to write a small chunk of it, just to get going. In the end I wrote the entire thing a week before the deadline with my professor literally sitting next to me making me do it.
> I suspect you will be less likely to feel that inability to get around to do the tasks that you know to be important to do it if you fail in a way that life itself, the universe, hurts you for the failure, as opposed to your boss saying "you're fired for showing up late".
This is true up to a point. What ADHD people need is consequences ASAP. Your boss checking in on you every hour and providing constant pressure is much more effective than a meeting at the end of the month where your boss blows his top and fires you because you've done very little.
> I've seen ADHD person explain this as having every reason to do the task, know that they need to get started now, and yet, just can't get around to do it. I've certainly felt that in some scenarios in my life. It's like getting the timing to start doing the task is impossible and everything else, no matter how mundane, seems safer and more fulfilling to do.
To the ADHD sufferers out there ... would you say this describes one of the most predominant symptoms? Would you say someone who reads this and says, "That's me," likely has ADHD?
Meh, I find it hard to differentiate this from just laziness. Im sure almost everyone has shit they dont want to do because they don't want to do it.
My thing is mostly that there is SO MUCH i want to do. I need to read this book, I need to practice this guitar, I need to respond to this email, I need to schedule an appointment.
Its not a matter of singular things that cause me issues, I just want to do so many things that I just kinda shut off.
That's my main challenge. Stuff I know I need to do, and often times they're not hard or time consuming. But for whatever reason I just can't seem to be able to get started. (after getting started things are often fine. In fact hard to stop)
Agreed, it's so easy to blame your problems on the circumstances and feel good about it. Some people were just taught to always be victims (which is sad), and others just power through their weakness and eventually comes up on top.
Stoicism tends to be a difficult way to live but it does compensate in the long term.
