I wonder what you think of Gabor Mate’s theory on ADHD, being a stalled development of the prefrontal cortex. He asserts that the causes can be healed and development restarted at any age. His research makes very good sense to me. I have ADHD and autism. My biggest challenge is poor executive function. Am I creative? Yes! Do I think big, out of the box ideas? Yes! Am I good in a crisis? Certainly! However I cannot pick up the spoon that fell on the floor days ago. Instead I pass it every time I go to or from the kitchen, saying, I need to pick that up but never doing it. My poor executive function doesn’t allow me to take the initiating steps to see through the big creative ideas I imagine, much less the everyday tasks needed for successful living. Executive function that should’ve developed in my prefrontal cortex when I was little, didn’t.
Adulting is often very like school. I must pay bills on time, get my car inspected, oil changed, change the filters on my AC, repair my home, cut the grass, take out the trash… in a regular timely manner. But I cannot. I struggle greatly to keep up with these necessary tasks, and suffer as a result. It all makes sense in the context of his theory. And I’d like to believe, as he does, that I am not doomed to this struggle forever, that I can advance the development of my prefrontal cortex so that like one of his patients said, my life won’t be just [an unlimited graveyard of brilliant but unrealized plans and ideas].
I believe it’s the “highly sensitive” aspect that predisposes certain people to develop ADHD, that you are partly describing as positive characteristics. I believe it’s being a highly sensitive person that gives us the sensitivity, creativity, deep thought, empathy, and many other characteristics errantly attributed to ADHD. I only attribute the hyperactivity (most commonly in body for males and in mind and speech for females), and poor executive function to the condition of ADHD. Im thinking the two correlated conditions are conflated. I wonder what you think of this?
Chrisi, I don't know the answer to your question, but I must say this. You have, here, written a coherent, well-thought out, grammatical, carefully spelled three paragraphs. That takes executive functioning. I dare say you could pick up that spoon on the kitchen floor, but it's just not a big priority for you to do so. In contrast, writing this was a priority that grabbed your interest.
If only I could figure out how to manage things that are not exciting or that don’t come as easily to me as the flow of words. As a contrasting example, though, to the excitement or wanting it badly enough thought; I am a craftsperson, but if I have to read or watch directions… that is, if I cannot intuit the process, I cannot make myself do it. This kills me. Or if I’m missing, say, the thread I know I need for the quilt I really want to work on… well, that’ll never happen. One more thing I stare at longingly but never again touch. This happened in this specific case for 7 years, until my mom offered me her old sewing supplies, in which was just the thread I needed for the quilt I immediately started working on again. I can’t seem to initiate the tiny steps it takes to do even things I’m dying to do, which leads to immense frustration and shame.
Also, in my case you’re dealing, too, with Autism. These two commonly mask some of each others symptoms. Making us difficult to diagnose. That could very well factor in, here.
So… I still hope that Mate is correct in his thinking that, as you say, ADHD is not a disorder, but rather a reversible developmental delay.
I have ADHD and I’ve started to realize the best way to handle the adulting things that I struggle with is by outsourcing it to someone else if possible. I tell myself “This is a medical Accommodation. Other people can save a lot of money by cleaning the house themselves, but I have a very high risk of the house being a neglected mess without a housekeeper.”. Not everyone can afford extra support around the house but even a little bit can help.
I even have some friends who hire a part time household “manager” who handles all of the things you mentioned on the list. A very organized SAHM can be a great person to hire for a few hours a week, esp if their kids are in school and they want some side income.
When I attended a support group for adults with ADHD I noticed for ppl in relationships, the women were stressed by how to manage everything (daily life) and the men were stressed because their spouses were getting fed up compensating for them all the time.
I'm certainly willing to believe that ADHD is overdiagnosed in kids who are simply not well-adjusted to the school system. Is this really enough to conclude that there's no such disorder as ADHD, though?
I think in defining the ADHD profile as a personality trait or a disorder, it matters greatly whether its traits - impulsivity, distractibility, difficulty following instructions - are ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic. They were certainly the latter for me.
Pre-medication, I failed college courses I chose for myself out of interest because I couldn't submit the written exams by the deadline despite my best efforts. I would miss events I really wanted to go to because I forgot when they were - I hadn't been able to hold the date in my mind long enough to write it down. I would be up until 3 in the morning crunching a work project that I'd put off until the last minute, and I love the work I do. I recall on one occasion I broke down in tears because I wanted nothing more than to take a shower and go to bed, but I kept getting distracted in the process of going to take a shower.
If a little kid has papers and social gatherings and showers pushed on them without regard for their own desires, sure, it's understandable if their attention goes elsewhere and they put it off. I agree with being cautious about medicating that away. But when it's someone trying and repeatedly failing to accomplish things they want to do because distraction and impulsivity gets in their way, the label of an attention disorder becomes helpful.
Thank you for these thoughts, Kim. My point is that the defining characteristics of ADHD exist across people to a matter of degree. There is no clear demarkation between those who "have" it and those who don't. In this sense it is like other personality characteristics, such as introversion. Many people, myself included, have problems in certain contexts because of introversion, but most of us can manage it by choosing the careers and situations we enter. There are, however, a small percentage of people for whom introversion is so strong that it is problem in any social setting, no matter the context. Similarly with impulsiveness.
I agree that ADHD isn't a distinct thing that you can draw a clear line between people who "have" and "don't have." However, if excessive worry (generalized anxiety disorder), excessive shyness (social anxiety disorder), and excessive low mood (major depression) constitute mental disorders, I see no reason that excessive impulsiveness, which can be equally as distressing, cannot.
I thought the diagnostic criteria needed the symptoms to interference in different contexts? As an educator making referrals I’ve had pediatricians consistently not diagnose unless this was the case.
I agree very much with the wanting to and not being able to, for whatever reason. The immense shame following the constant inability, at least for me, should certainly be incentive enough, if it were just about wanting something badly enough. I very much want things managed in my home, to finish the endless art that once consumed me passionately… but I, in 40 years, cannot. My cleaning strategy, for instance, has to be just keep going, if you go long enough, eventually (like a month later) it’ll all get done. Because every single thing I pick up or notice or uncover diverts my attention. Nothing (except apparently well formed written arguments) gets fully done in my life.
Hey, I'm very very happy you brought this up. I'd love for you to read and give me your opinion about my experience with ADHD, as I have documented in these posts:
I'll talk about it in short here. I was a high-achieving student with some issues. But as I grew older, I couldn't focus and I was highly distracted. But I had good methods of study, so I managed my grades fine. When I started work though, I met my waterloo. Also, I couldn't learn to drive or be safe on the road.
People pointed to many different things when I sought help, and I fixed my mom-dad issues, my relationship issues, got a better job, a less stressful job.... and nothing helped. It felt like the issue was within me. So an ADHD diagnosis had me highly relieved.
But what I didn't like was how fatalistic the messaging then became - I didn't want to be on meds all my life, and feel like I was broken and there was nothing to help me. I had a few realizations when I started reading books about raising kids, including the Gabor Mate ADHD book someone else brought up.
Long story short, I joined support groups and read a lot of scientific papers on what helps and what doesn't, and discussed it with a lot of people. I took help from a qualified therapist, and I read a lot and worked on my own issues with a lot of reading.
I found that ADHD at its core is your brain on stress. It's not a personality trait. It's not a superpower. It's just your brain on stress. I ran many experiments on myself, and the bottomline really is if I'm stressed out or not.
My problem was, my stress was triggered by literally everything, due to growing up with an anxious mother.
I focused on problem-solving my stress, and came up with broadly 4 types of intervention:
* Physical: the book Brain Energy by Chris Palmer was pivotal for me, as was a paper by Julia Rucklidge at the University of Canterbury saying high doses of minerals reduced ADHD symptoms in kids. I started doing this, first with supplements, then diet, and then added exercise. I also fixed my sleep. My mind doesn't get triggered by stress as easily anymore. This was the foundation.
* Emotional: I did cognitive behavioral therapy to figure out patterns of thought that keep me stuck in stress. A lot of it was worrying about what others would think, or me suppressing my feelings because they weren't what others would want me to feel, and it kept coming out in other ways. I also grew to become better at advocating for my needs. This changed everything in leaps and bounds.
* Environmental: I found that I could work cognitively demanding jobs if it was restricted to 8 hours a day, so I had time to eat and sleep well. I could work boring jobs all day if needed. But I couldn't do both, so I'm looking for a career change. I also had to work on boundaries with my mom, so her stress wasn't affecting me. And I worked on having lots of friendships so I could unload my stress regularly without needing therapy just to be myself.
* Skills: I started bullet journaling. I worked on several goal-setting methods to manage my motivation. I spend a lot of time taking classes so I could be more efficient at work. I seek help with having better social skills so I can navigate stressful situations better and get favorable outcomes.
So now I do not have ADHD symptoms anymore unless I'm made to work long hours in an unfriendly environment. But I also know how to avoid those environments.
So I don't believe ADHD is a personality trait. It's a condition induced by mismanagement of stress, and it can be cured by helping people address things that are stressing them out.
I'll also talk about kids and ADHD diagnoses here.
My daughter is highly energetic from the womb, and I was worried she had ADHD (this was before my healing arc). But I realized my husband was highly energetic, and so was his father, and neither of them have any problems with focus or attention, be it on boring tasks or exciting tasks.
At the same time, I saw my daughter's friends, mostly boys, get into the pipeline that would lead to them getting diagnosed with ADHD.
What I noticed in those families:
* Dad worked long hours, mom was left alone to manage.
* Single mom.
* Children too close together.
* Mom had anxiety.
There's a subreddit for parents of kids with adhd, and the ones who are getting diagnosed early also are from these backgrounds, in addition to parents being divorced, blended families and other such situations.
I also have the example of my own mom to go by (she is now a very involved grandma).
The core problem for children is - if they constantly feel like they are "bad kids" because their actions trigger intense emotions in their parents.
It's normal to be triggered if your kid breaks your favorite vase or something, but very small things, like a toddler refusing to leave on time were causes for the parents to have extreme emotional reactions.
This isn't restricted just to parents - within a week of being with my mom, my daughter began exhibiting "ADHD" symptoms - because my mom just has a very stressful vibe around her, despite her boundless love and affection.
The biggest culprit I'd point to are daycare teachers, and I suppose schools too. They cannot seem to manage all the children in the class, and if things go wrong, they blame the child more than they change their approach. They carry tales to parents, and first-time parents, especially, tend to be more anxious about whether they are doing things right, and they tend to pass on that stress to their children.
Erica Komisar has talked about this in detail - children need minute-by-minute soothing. Some children are more easily stressed out because of having the short allele on the serotonin receptor gene mutation (httlpr). If they are subjected to constant stress without enough soothing at early ages, their amygdala burns out, and they become bad at managing stress.
Highly active children tend to get much more flak from adults around them, and end up more stressed out.
My daughter is highly active, and the thing I tried most to do until about age 3.5 was to insulate her from unsoothed stress. No daycare. No punishing. No timeouts. If she cried, I'd talk to her about it later. This was not easy and it led me to having to quit my job. But what's the point of privilege if we don't use it?
We ensured we were always calm around her and helped her talk through any big emotions - naturally, with empathy, not from social media scripts. And to ensure that, it meant both mom and dad had to be highly involved, and we got childcare too whenever we could.
She feels emotions much more strongly, so from age 1 to 2.5, my primary job was to help her understand and deal with her own emotions, while I was a calm presence to guide her through it, not someone having my own emotional nonsense. I didn't lose it even if it was hard. I told myself it didn't matter if the house was a mess, didn't matter if we had to leave the mommy and me class early, my backache from being alert when she was climbing tall play structures would go away with some stretches.
We kept her at a small home daycare with attentive, loving and mature teachers over the big preschool with school readiness. The one thing we didn't want is her ever getting termed as a 'bad kid' or a 'naughty kid'. It felt like the perception is what leads to stress.
We got a lot of flak for being accommodative of our daughter, because "are you going to keep doing this when she's fifteen?". But no, a 3 year old is not a 15 year old.
Now she's 5. I compare her with her energetic little boy friends. Those boys are unfortunately getting diagnosed with ADHD. I've talked to those moms and told them their sons are perfect and they just need someone friendly to help them understand rules, or to have more flexible rules, and to not label them. But of course, I'm just a mom with a wild little girl, not a preschool teacher, so I'm not taken seriously.
I just talk about my experience so if it resonates with anyone else, I want to know what part is just me and my family and what part is more generalizable.
Thanks for sharing your story. I wish I had taken your approach this when my kids were little. My son was so energetic and emotional and my husband and I did not cope well and unfortunately shamed and over-disciplined him, which just made his behaviour more difficult. A lot of this was because of my own shame around feeling judged by teachers and relatives. I wish I could go back with the knowledge I have now! Both my kids (one with ADHD traits, one not) are now benefiting from more empathy and less judgement. This is my primary work right now - I , too, chose to quit work so I could focus on managing myself and genuinely supporting my kids.
This makes sense. I also wonder, though, if you achieved, in all of that work, exactly the healing Gabor Mate claims possible, but, are still a “highly sensitive person” (as he explains is a predisposition to ADHD). Which would still lead you to rapidly become burnt out under “normal” stress levels. I’m very curious, as you’ve read Scattered Minds, if you think that could be, at least in part, the case.
So a lot of my work has just been on understanding what this "sensitivity" is. Let me try to explain what I've found.
At its core, it definitely has to do with the serotonin receptor gene mutation I talked about (httlpr). But this means your body has to keep making serotonin more. For which you need more iron and zinc in your gut. I get this using supplements and daily salad. I can literally feel the difference between a salad day and skipped-salad day - I don't think negative thoughts to the same extent on a salad day.
But there are other things that lead to this sensitivity. When your brain is working perfectly, it's inhibiting a lot of crazy thoughts. When it's not working properly, all the crazy thoughts have nothing inhibiting them and they go wild. I noticed that there are some b-vitamins whose deficiency causes sensitivity to sounds, sensitivity to touch. Some vitamins and minerals help you sleep better. So if you're lacking in these (and also iron as I mentioned before), you'll feel much much more highly sensitive.
A lot of how you approach stress is taught to you by your caregivers at an early age. I realize this was broken for me, so a lot of my efforts with my daughter have been to help her manage negative emotions in a better way.
I also realized the difference between mentally healthy people and mentally ill people is mentally healthy people realize when a situation is unhealthy for them and leave. Or have healthy boundaries. Or navigate it in a healthier way. I was not doing that. I was staying in stressful situations because I felt like I had to or I was weak. In a mentally healthy state, when I flash back to earlier stressful situations, it hits me I'd deal very differently now, mostly with trying to leave earlier, or asking for more help, or identifying what was troubling me and working on that. Instead, I was being quite haphazard about coping, which was worsening the stress and putting me in situations that repeatedly retraumatized me.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me a lot with this.
Scattered Minds is a great book to start with. But there's a lot of gaps in it, and they can be worked through with the latest research. I find Gabor Mate's work to be highly handwavy. It can be better.
There are books on Highly Sensitive People (there's a whole series), and there's also The Orchid And The Dandelion. I find they don't connect this to either of the things I've mentioned, i.e. specific genetic mutation, or vitamin deficiencies.
If you read my posts, you'll see I started with Scattered Minds, but then I found it wanting in terms of solutions, and looked all over for what could help. What I've found is that ADHD patterns are highly rooted in patterns of low-key shittiness from your caregivers that start at an early age and then get reinforced throughout childhood. I've found it can be worked through, but it needs work on those four-fold aspects I mentioned.
Given the experience in my family, I definitely think you’re on to something here. My question is - what do I do when I’m the anxious mother? My ADHD husband does not come across as particularly anxious, but his mother absolutely is, and I see this repeating. I very much believe that my sweet boy has absorbed a lot of my anxiety, even before he was born. We are working on reflex integration, emotional regulation, and all sorts of things. He’s a great kid, smart as a whip, so kind and encouraging, but I worry (ha!) that I’ve broken him forever. Where do we start?
I'm not a therapist or anything, just an anxious child of an anxious mom, so take what i say in the light of that.
I feel like my life could have changed at any point if my mom just decided to stop having extreme reactions to things. She still hasn't decided that, and every time I'm around her, all my worst tendencies come back.
So I'd suggest you and your husband work on your tendencies that might cause a stressful environment at home. This doesn't mean you're doing anything malicious, but it's just the patterns we carry with us.
I'm a very anxious sort, quick to snap, haranguing my kid till she complies.... my husband is the exact opposite of that, very calm, so I was able to change how I reacted to things with my husband's guidance. He tends to go too far with the chill, which typically would trigger me to be even more anxious, but since we're aware of the pattern, we're able to sit down and talk about it and work on being better.
Our kid is now starting kindergarten, so this might change, but our attitude so far has been that nothing matters as much as learning focus and calm. Other stuff is important, like learning good habits, or being on time to things, but there's plenty of time to learn these things and everything doesn't have to happen right away. It seems to work best when we prep our kid ahead of time. The lessons seem best imparted ahead of time, when we're calm and nothing is at stake, like talking about how it's important to wear clean clothes daily, and telling stories to that effect and such the evening before. Not right before we have to leave.
Giving everything extra time helps greatly. Having more help and support than you need helps greatly. These also just reduce anxiety for me - having my husband available to support me, and having a few hours of paid childcare, even when I was a SAHM. This is not easy for everyone, but it feels like most of us can try finding some tradeoff if they are in this situation.
Spending a lot of time with our kid also seems to help - it makes us more confident in our kid's abilities and we're much less stressed out about making everything work right away, and we see the timeline of change.
But yeah, your first port of call could be your own anxiety triggers and figuring out what could help that, even if it's something that seems like a crutch or asking for too much help from others.
Peter this is really great food for thought. And, I want to add that oftentimes the rigidity and control that make traditional schooling difficult for those with ADHD neurotypes also make many facets of adult life extremely taxing as well. Play and freedom are so important for all humans, especially those who may be a little more hunter/gatherer than farmer!
edit to add: my own family has a long and storied relationship with ADHD; my mother now identifies herself as ADHD and my father certainly has much of the *personality* aspect and yet none of the dysfunction. I am in a similar boat with my father; I am highly creative, very vibrant, prefer fast-paced, energetic, but I am also extremely organized and have worked creatively to learn many executive functioning skills that my siblings for example seem not to be able to attain as easily. Is there a mechanism from personality through trauma which turns a type into a dysfunction?
I agree. If I were being cared for by my parents still, not having to adult, I would thrive as my unschooled children now do. But the current state of society means that my adult life is very akin to school, therefore I struggle.
Additionally Mate discusses what unhealed type A, non type A’s, and healed ADHD looks like. You may be in one of those categories while your family members are in others.
In the 2010s, Silicon Valley self-help gurus became obsessed with Stoicism - and their podcasts enthusiastically recommended that everybody should practice the philosophy as a path to a more fulfilling life. The one-size-fits-all advice has always chafed at me, because it ignores the fact that different minds are built differently. My experience is that people with ADHD-like traits are likely to find philosophical Hedonism a better fit for a fulfilling life.
I remember school as a form of mild psychological torture. And I was in grade school in the 70s! Reading Play Makes Us Human has helped me understand the horrifying extent to which mainstream education systems have only gotten more abusive in their mission to torturously jam the square peg of Hedonist mind-builds into the round hole of Stoic Common Core.
Fortunately, adulthood has been kinder to me. After laboriously proving myself to the Stoic scientific establishment in young adulthood, I finally reached the green pastures where my day-to-day work mostly involves chasing whichever ideas happen to give me pleasure that day. Hedonist nirvana!
The freedom to follow my interests sometimes pays off in ways the Stoic establishment can appreciate, but the paper successes come with a hidden asterisk. I'm proud of the fact that I'm constantly foaming with outside-the-box ideas, but I'm also keenly aware of the fact that I have trouble seeing which of the shiny ideas are good enough to be worth working on. Even when I can recognize which ideas humankind would want me to pick up the pipette and actually test, it's a real struggle to suppress my impulse to get bored and move on before the project is completed. I think partly in pictures, and a mental image for my career is looking back on a woodland hiking trail and seeing that it's littered with half-eaten candybars. Without Stoic team members to steer me, I'm pretty much a propeller without a boat.
I see this type of thing as the true soul of workplace diversity - at least in the lines of scientific research I'm most familiar with. A team of Stoics slapping each other on the back about their meritorious credentials and the virtue of their disciplined work ethic is a boat without a propeller. Whereas a team that includes individuals with more than one kind of mind-build - individuals whose schooling taught them how to respectfully engage each other's strengths and take up the slack of each other's weaknesses - can excel.
Stronger together, as the saying goes! Stronger when one type of mind is tortured into pretending to be the other type of mind is definitely not how the saying goes.
Thanks for this thoughtful newsletter! Sharing another current source that I think you will also find quite interesting: “Distractibility and Impulsivity in ADHD as an Evolutionary Mismatch of High Trait Curiosity” (Le Cunff, 2024). Context 100% matters for how the behaviors associated with ADHD are described. There is nothing inherently problematic with ADHD symptoms, rather the problem lies in cultural reactions to the behaviors following from a rigid interpretation of what appropriate behaviors are in school, as an example. I am all- for stopping the pathologizing and instead embracing ways to support diverse presentation of traits. Doing so helps everyone, “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical” alike.
This chimes very much with what I have been thinking for years and what the book Empire of Normality crystallised for me - I have written about it here:
It baffles & saddens the heart that a child's placid acceptance of the factory school environment is considered 𝙣𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙡. The cane & whip were banned in the Danish educational system in 1963. But now there's ritalin.
"Upon stumbling upon the particular mix which we now know as Ritalin, they [chemists] administered it to rats and noticed that they became more manageable, calm, and even focused. So naturally they believed calm rats could equal calm humans." is.gd/U3CfEO
Although, it appears Danes a less eager to dope their kids than Americans [is.gd/qpxB4t].
Perhaps there was never a golden age for children in general, Huckleberry Finn days seem ideal having lived as a child on the Ohio River, & if I had to pick another time, as a lifetime sailor, it might be the Viking era. I quote at length from Irina-Maria Manea (4 Mar 2025) Childhood in the Viking Age, World History Encyclopedia, is.gd/1HJlcH,
the article is full of other rich insights.
"Unlike in a medieval monastery, where formal schooling was emphasised, Old Norse education was primarily practical and oral. Boys and girls learned skills relevant to their roles through observation and hands-on experience. Sons of chieftains or warriors were trained in combat, legal matters, and leadership, while daughters of prominent families learned how to manage estates and oversee large households.
However, although literacy was rare, some education did involve learning runes. Poetry and storytelling played a crucial role in preserving knowledge. Children who showed poetic talent could gain significant prestige, as composing verse was highly valued. For example, Egill Skallagrímsson, at the age of three, was already composing poems, and his grandfather rewarded him with food for his efforts. This suggests that intellectual ability, especially in poetry and rhetoric, was recognised and encouraged from an early age, even if the story is, of course, embellished to make him look larger than life.
While children were expected to work and prepare for adult responsibilities, they also engaged in play. However, even their games reflected the expectations of their society. Physical games often resembled combat training, such as wrestling, mock battles, and sports involving strength and endurance.
These were not purely for entertainment but were seen as exercises to develop fighting skills. One childhood game would have involved building small turf houses, mirroring adult dwellings. This was seen as a way for children to familiarise themselves with domestic and architectural skills. It also served as a form of role-playing that reinforced social structures.
The sagas actually tend to condemn deviant behaviour, with some children criticised for being too unruly or disruptive. Again in Egils saga, Egill's father initially refused to bring him to a feast because he believed the boy was incapable of behaving properly in a formal setting.
Even with children, there were still expectations of decorum, especially in public and social gatherings."
I am this. I feel the ADHD description is all wrong though. I id as AuDHD. Was a “gifted” child. Basically we are just sensitive and are challenged to live against ourselves in unhealthy circumstances. Plus a few other things. Like all things, these tendencies are both a weakness and strength. Can be dangerous not to know though. An interesting and creative life results if you refuse to accept others' silly unhelpful labels and tap in and respect your requirements for healthy thriving. ❤️🙏🏾❤️🥳☮️🤩👀
mmmm i cannot share photos here, but i am an artist and play is a guiding principle in a manifesto that I have never written. Play is an essential practice for ALL AGES! ALLLLL AGES to hold onton yourself and your values and change and take lightly and deal wtih things and laugh and add perspective, because as we all know, organisation and sight is a matter of distance. In adhd due to interestingand very fluid notions of time and our excessively flamboyant glorious curiosity and kinaesthetic natures and need to follow our own paths regardless we can fall into anxiety when we look at things too closely and then comes the obsessiveness and need for material hoarding. It all goes togetherrrrrr. Neurodiversity is a gift that shifts the world into more compassionate practices and togtherness. We need more unschooling, democratic schools and practices to foster emotional maturity and intelligence. Ppl who are at a loss with Adhd kids/ppl are those unable to manage their emotions, which is very dangerous and no good at all as leads to abuse of power and great cruelty and division. In capitalism ppl love to blame and use fusion and also point fingers attributing FAR too much responsibility to individuals (aka skapegoating) instead of looking at their contexts. Nothing exsists outside of itself gosh!!! so silly, everything is about rapport as we are a relataionship-based and skills-based species. Anyways here is an image of me playing as an adult and artist in "Context, is everything" I encourage you all! https://annajmcintyre.com/en/
I was diagnosed as a kid and drugged. Ritalin was a zombie drug and a personality suppressant. What nobody talks about is the appetite suppression effects of ritalin that lead me to gain about 50 pounds the year I got off the drug. I have carried those 50 pounds around ever since.
Yes, appetite suppression is one of the many effects of these amphetamine and amphetamine-like drugs. I'll describe other harmful effects, both short term and long term, in my next letter.
I decided as part of tackling addiction I would begin lifting weights. The weight lifting was also physical therapy, but my thinking was to rebuild mental pathways in relation to stress and reward. (Luckily, I enjoy weight lifting)
Context is everything. Interesting fact that ADHD began to take off in the 90s, along with the rapid rise of cellular technology which excites the nervous system and creates a calcium imbalance via voltage-gated calcium channels (our nerves use calcium to fire) (Pall, M.)
Concurrent with the large number of mothers leaving their infants to join the workforce, not present to complete child rearing patterns necessary to proper brain development. (According to Mate)
My lived experience of adhd is genuinely the reverse of the archetype of ‘impulsive boy’ you describe. Also, the casual focus on adhd as a problem for mostly boys is…frustrating. I invite you to speak to adults with adhd who are currently active in the community. The community at large is very occupied thinking and talking about adult diagnosis, and the underdiagnosis of women.
I was a gifted child. I excelled in school, I was an obsessive reader, I never needed to study, and I went to an Ivy League school. It was when I left the structure of high school and living with my parents that my symptoms began to cause problems, though I resisted diagnosis at that time. By the end of college, despite starting medication for my anxiety, I was routinely late with major papers, sometimes fighting my brain for hours and days before finally /starting/ an essay five minutes /after/ it was due. I graduated.
And then I…flopped? To say I have done nothing as an adult in the past decade would be a lie, but despite my best efforts (I should say, despite my best effort to make any effort whatsoever) my career (my passion, to be clear) only sometimes provided enough money to live on and I never excelled. I relied on my parents for rent for years. Now, hilariously, and to my own embarrassment, I’m more productive and effective as a SAHM than I ever was as an independent adult.
The through line of my life is the presence or absence of structure. When there was intense structure and community support I was fine (well, also unhappy, but fine) and when I was left to my own devices I fell apart. Having a toddler imposes a lot of structure, fyi.
It took years after diagnosis before I was willing to start meds, and they have changed my life. During the recent shortage, I wondered to my husband if it was worth all the trouble and the back and forth, and his panic reaction said it all. The biggest effect took some time to appear, and it is simply that I am no longer experiencing daily mental self flagellation. I’m no longer constantly fighting myself. Sitting somewhere, scrolling or reading or playing a phone game, simultaneously screaming in my own mind that if I don’t [fill in the blank] then [terrible immediate consequence]. I hated myself. I wanted so many things, I wanted to do right by others and by myself, and it was agony because I just never did.
This doesn’t fit your archetype. And honestly, I’m deeply stung by the idea that if only I had just *cared more* about *my deeply desired art career* I might have been better at having one. People with ADHD hear this all the time, and unfortunately it’s not true. If only I *cared more* about my partner I would have remembered to move the laundry like I promised I would, or similar. I tried! I cared! I wanted to! But I still didn’t do it.
I am also curious what support these anecdotal impulsive boys who became successful symptom-free-ish adults had in their adult lives. Do they have partners or parents who keep the dishes clean and the drivers license renewed? Do they have employers who don’t particularly care about timeliness? has the end of rigid schooling meant they now have no problem doing the regular chores of life?
Having said all this, I am sympathetic to your way of thinking. Modern schooling is much worse for the adhd or adhd-lite mind. ADHD is over-diagnosed in children. But I think ADHD does describe a real disorder beyond the boundaries of personality, and I think a not insubstantial portion of the population is affected. (What causes it etc etc is another question). I also think that even the simple impulsive personality you describe will not just stop having problems existing in our society once he is free from school. The adult world is only somewhat more friendly to this archetype than schools are. Just the diagnosis can help. The medications can help. The community of other people who are Like This can help. Coaching, books, therapy, strategies—the name ADHD has a use for the many many people who find themselves unable to function at a maintenance level in school or in life.
While it’s worth investigating deeply into what this phenomenon really is, please don’t dismiss those adults still struggling with ADHD as trivial.
Wow, this is so spot on. Thank you for these powerful insights. I am a former Speech Therapist (and now Home Educating mum) so have been involved in many diagnostic assessments/differential diagnoses of ADHD and other conditions. I just published this article yesterday which touches on many of the same themes and points you have raised - https://essencealigned.substack.com/p/is-it-time-to-rethink-the-term-special
Also, I think my daughter (7, never been to school, early childhood intermittent hearing loss) may have been suspected to have ADHD type "difficulties" if she were at school, but out of that context we just honour who she is and what she needs i.e. a lot of movement, short bursts of activity and frequent gear shifts, hands-on, practical, creative activities led by her changing interests. She cannot focus for long on structured/academic - I literally see her nervous system become completely overwhelmed and she will be physically exhausted - so we don't make her. She is brilliantly creative and bright in so many way and I'm so grateful we are free of the system which I'm sure would have crushed her self-esteem by now.
A refreshing view of ADHD that makes sense in so many ways. As someone diagnosed when it was "hyperkinesis of childhood" and was fortunate that my parents insisted I be directed into the arts instead of special classrooms or medications. And I thank the classroom teachers who lifted me up along the way...and then I achieved a BFA (arts), a masters in art therapy and then clinical mental health counseling, and then a PhD researching the arts in health and wellness. And then a 3.7 million dollar grant to investigate expressive arts therapy in classrooms. Just wow, what a life for an ADHDer.
Chrisi, I have been on panels seated next to Gabor, listened to the bit about stalled development...and trauma being a cause of ADHD and more. I did grow up in a nurturing family, but with financial challenges and more, but never felt unsafe or deprived. And my pre-frontal cortex must have been okay because I graduated 5th in a class of 500 in high school (albeit I did my share of time in after school detention for various antics). Did Gabor do actual research? I sure cannot find any, but he is a "thought leader" of sorts and does inspire discussion. But on the stalled pre-frontal cortex, maybe for some, but I prefer the explanation provided here by Dr. Grey for many reasons.
I wonder what you think of Gabor Mate’s theory on ADHD, being a stalled development of the prefrontal cortex. He asserts that the causes can be healed and development restarted at any age. His research makes very good sense to me. I have ADHD and autism. My biggest challenge is poor executive function. Am I creative? Yes! Do I think big, out of the box ideas? Yes! Am I good in a crisis? Certainly! However I cannot pick up the spoon that fell on the floor days ago. Instead I pass it every time I go to or from the kitchen, saying, I need to pick that up but never doing it. My poor executive function doesn’t allow me to take the initiating steps to see through the big creative ideas I imagine, much less the everyday tasks needed for successful living. Executive function that should’ve developed in my prefrontal cortex when I was little, didn’t.
Adulting is often very like school. I must pay bills on time, get my car inspected, oil changed, change the filters on my AC, repair my home, cut the grass, take out the trash… in a regular timely manner. But I cannot. I struggle greatly to keep up with these necessary tasks, and suffer as a result. It all makes sense in the context of his theory. And I’d like to believe, as he does, that I am not doomed to this struggle forever, that I can advance the development of my prefrontal cortex so that like one of his patients said, my life won’t be just [an unlimited graveyard of brilliant but unrealized plans and ideas].
I believe it’s the “highly sensitive” aspect that predisposes certain people to develop ADHD, that you are partly describing as positive characteristics. I believe it’s being a highly sensitive person that gives us the sensitivity, creativity, deep thought, empathy, and many other characteristics errantly attributed to ADHD. I only attribute the hyperactivity (most commonly in body for males and in mind and speech for females), and poor executive function to the condition of ADHD. Im thinking the two correlated conditions are conflated. I wonder what you think of this?
Chrisi, I don't know the answer to your question, but I must say this. You have, here, written a coherent, well-thought out, grammatical, carefully spelled three paragraphs. That takes executive functioning. I dare say you could pick up that spoon on the kitchen floor, but it's just not a big priority for you to do so. In contrast, writing this was a priority that grabbed your interest.
Touché
If only I could figure out how to manage things that are not exciting or that don’t come as easily to me as the flow of words. As a contrasting example, though, to the excitement or wanting it badly enough thought; I am a craftsperson, but if I have to read or watch directions… that is, if I cannot intuit the process, I cannot make myself do it. This kills me. Or if I’m missing, say, the thread I know I need for the quilt I really want to work on… well, that’ll never happen. One more thing I stare at longingly but never again touch. This happened in this specific case for 7 years, until my mom offered me her old sewing supplies, in which was just the thread I needed for the quilt I immediately started working on again. I can’t seem to initiate the tiny steps it takes to do even things I’m dying to do, which leads to immense frustration and shame.
Also, in my case you’re dealing, too, with Autism. These two commonly mask some of each others symptoms. Making us difficult to diagnose. That could very well factor in, here.
So… I still hope that Mate is correct in his thinking that, as you say, ADHD is not a disorder, but rather a reversible developmental delay.
I have ADHD and I’ve started to realize the best way to handle the adulting things that I struggle with is by outsourcing it to someone else if possible. I tell myself “This is a medical Accommodation. Other people can save a lot of money by cleaning the house themselves, but I have a very high risk of the house being a neglected mess without a housekeeper.”. Not everyone can afford extra support around the house but even a little bit can help.
I even have some friends who hire a part time household “manager” who handles all of the things you mentioned on the list. A very organized SAHM can be a great person to hire for a few hours a week, esp if their kids are in school and they want some side income.
When I attended a support group for adults with ADHD I noticed for ppl in relationships, the women were stressed by how to manage everything (daily life) and the men were stressed because their spouses were getting fed up compensating for them all the time.
I'm certainly willing to believe that ADHD is overdiagnosed in kids who are simply not well-adjusted to the school system. Is this really enough to conclude that there's no such disorder as ADHD, though?
I think in defining the ADHD profile as a personality trait or a disorder, it matters greatly whether its traits - impulsivity, distractibility, difficulty following instructions - are ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic. They were certainly the latter for me.
Pre-medication, I failed college courses I chose for myself out of interest because I couldn't submit the written exams by the deadline despite my best efforts. I would miss events I really wanted to go to because I forgot when they were - I hadn't been able to hold the date in my mind long enough to write it down. I would be up until 3 in the morning crunching a work project that I'd put off until the last minute, and I love the work I do. I recall on one occasion I broke down in tears because I wanted nothing more than to take a shower and go to bed, but I kept getting distracted in the process of going to take a shower.
If a little kid has papers and social gatherings and showers pushed on them without regard for their own desires, sure, it's understandable if their attention goes elsewhere and they put it off. I agree with being cautious about medicating that away. But when it's someone trying and repeatedly failing to accomplish things they want to do because distraction and impulsivity gets in their way, the label of an attention disorder becomes helpful.
Thank you for these thoughts, Kim. My point is that the defining characteristics of ADHD exist across people to a matter of degree. There is no clear demarkation between those who "have" it and those who don't. In this sense it is like other personality characteristics, such as introversion. Many people, myself included, have problems in certain contexts because of introversion, but most of us can manage it by choosing the careers and situations we enter. There are, however, a small percentage of people for whom introversion is so strong that it is problem in any social setting, no matter the context. Similarly with impulsiveness.
I agree that ADHD isn't a distinct thing that you can draw a clear line between people who "have" and "don't have." However, if excessive worry (generalized anxiety disorder), excessive shyness (social anxiety disorder), and excessive low mood (major depression) constitute mental disorders, I see no reason that excessive impulsiveness, which can be equally as distressing, cannot.
I thought the diagnostic criteria needed the symptoms to interference in different contexts? As an educator making referrals I’ve had pediatricians consistently not diagnose unless this was the case.
I agree very much with the wanting to and not being able to, for whatever reason. The immense shame following the constant inability, at least for me, should certainly be incentive enough, if it were just about wanting something badly enough. I very much want things managed in my home, to finish the endless art that once consumed me passionately… but I, in 40 years, cannot. My cleaning strategy, for instance, has to be just keep going, if you go long enough, eventually (like a month later) it’ll all get done. Because every single thing I pick up or notice or uncover diverts my attention. Nothing (except apparently well formed written arguments) gets fully done in my life.
This resonates with my experience very much, Kim.
Hey, I'm very very happy you brought this up. I'd love for you to read and give me your opinion about my experience with ADHD, as I have documented in these posts:
https://lila2.substack.com/p/how-i-cured-my-adhd-with-zero-meds
https://lila2.substack.com/p/adhdsct-is-a-stress-issue-not-a-broken
I'll talk about it in short here. I was a high-achieving student with some issues. But as I grew older, I couldn't focus and I was highly distracted. But I had good methods of study, so I managed my grades fine. When I started work though, I met my waterloo. Also, I couldn't learn to drive or be safe on the road.
People pointed to many different things when I sought help, and I fixed my mom-dad issues, my relationship issues, got a better job, a less stressful job.... and nothing helped. It felt like the issue was within me. So an ADHD diagnosis had me highly relieved.
But what I didn't like was how fatalistic the messaging then became - I didn't want to be on meds all my life, and feel like I was broken and there was nothing to help me. I had a few realizations when I started reading books about raising kids, including the Gabor Mate ADHD book someone else brought up.
Long story short, I joined support groups and read a lot of scientific papers on what helps and what doesn't, and discussed it with a lot of people. I took help from a qualified therapist, and I read a lot and worked on my own issues with a lot of reading.
I found that ADHD at its core is your brain on stress. It's not a personality trait. It's not a superpower. It's just your brain on stress. I ran many experiments on myself, and the bottomline really is if I'm stressed out or not.
My problem was, my stress was triggered by literally everything, due to growing up with an anxious mother.
I focused on problem-solving my stress, and came up with broadly 4 types of intervention:
* Physical: the book Brain Energy by Chris Palmer was pivotal for me, as was a paper by Julia Rucklidge at the University of Canterbury saying high doses of minerals reduced ADHD symptoms in kids. I started doing this, first with supplements, then diet, and then added exercise. I also fixed my sleep. My mind doesn't get triggered by stress as easily anymore. This was the foundation.
* Emotional: I did cognitive behavioral therapy to figure out patterns of thought that keep me stuck in stress. A lot of it was worrying about what others would think, or me suppressing my feelings because they weren't what others would want me to feel, and it kept coming out in other ways. I also grew to become better at advocating for my needs. This changed everything in leaps and bounds.
* Environmental: I found that I could work cognitively demanding jobs if it was restricted to 8 hours a day, so I had time to eat and sleep well. I could work boring jobs all day if needed. But I couldn't do both, so I'm looking for a career change. I also had to work on boundaries with my mom, so her stress wasn't affecting me. And I worked on having lots of friendships so I could unload my stress regularly without needing therapy just to be myself.
* Skills: I started bullet journaling. I worked on several goal-setting methods to manage my motivation. I spend a lot of time taking classes so I could be more efficient at work. I seek help with having better social skills so I can navigate stressful situations better and get favorable outcomes.
So now I do not have ADHD symptoms anymore unless I'm made to work long hours in an unfriendly environment. But I also know how to avoid those environments.
So I don't believe ADHD is a personality trait. It's a condition induced by mismanagement of stress, and it can be cured by helping people address things that are stressing them out.
Lila, thank you for sharing your story and thoughts on this.
I'll also talk about kids and ADHD diagnoses here.
My daughter is highly energetic from the womb, and I was worried she had ADHD (this was before my healing arc). But I realized my husband was highly energetic, and so was his father, and neither of them have any problems with focus or attention, be it on boring tasks or exciting tasks.
At the same time, I saw my daughter's friends, mostly boys, get into the pipeline that would lead to them getting diagnosed with ADHD.
What I noticed in those families:
* Dad worked long hours, mom was left alone to manage.
* Single mom.
* Children too close together.
* Mom had anxiety.
There's a subreddit for parents of kids with adhd, and the ones who are getting diagnosed early also are from these backgrounds, in addition to parents being divorced, blended families and other such situations.
I also have the example of my own mom to go by (she is now a very involved grandma).
The core problem for children is - if they constantly feel like they are "bad kids" because their actions trigger intense emotions in their parents.
It's normal to be triggered if your kid breaks your favorite vase or something, but very small things, like a toddler refusing to leave on time were causes for the parents to have extreme emotional reactions.
This isn't restricted just to parents - within a week of being with my mom, my daughter began exhibiting "ADHD" symptoms - because my mom just has a very stressful vibe around her, despite her boundless love and affection.
The biggest culprit I'd point to are daycare teachers, and I suppose schools too. They cannot seem to manage all the children in the class, and if things go wrong, they blame the child more than they change their approach. They carry tales to parents, and first-time parents, especially, tend to be more anxious about whether they are doing things right, and they tend to pass on that stress to their children.
Erica Komisar has talked about this in detail - children need minute-by-minute soothing. Some children are more easily stressed out because of having the short allele on the serotonin receptor gene mutation (httlpr). If they are subjected to constant stress without enough soothing at early ages, their amygdala burns out, and they become bad at managing stress.
Highly active children tend to get much more flak from adults around them, and end up more stressed out.
My daughter is highly active, and the thing I tried most to do until about age 3.5 was to insulate her from unsoothed stress. No daycare. No punishing. No timeouts. If she cried, I'd talk to her about it later. This was not easy and it led me to having to quit my job. But what's the point of privilege if we don't use it?
We ensured we were always calm around her and helped her talk through any big emotions - naturally, with empathy, not from social media scripts. And to ensure that, it meant both mom and dad had to be highly involved, and we got childcare too whenever we could.
She feels emotions much more strongly, so from age 1 to 2.5, my primary job was to help her understand and deal with her own emotions, while I was a calm presence to guide her through it, not someone having my own emotional nonsense. I didn't lose it even if it was hard. I told myself it didn't matter if the house was a mess, didn't matter if we had to leave the mommy and me class early, my backache from being alert when she was climbing tall play structures would go away with some stretches.
We kept her at a small home daycare with attentive, loving and mature teachers over the big preschool with school readiness. The one thing we didn't want is her ever getting termed as a 'bad kid' or a 'naughty kid'. It felt like the perception is what leads to stress.
We got a lot of flak for being accommodative of our daughter, because "are you going to keep doing this when she's fifteen?". But no, a 3 year old is not a 15 year old.
Now she's 5. I compare her with her energetic little boy friends. Those boys are unfortunately getting diagnosed with ADHD. I've talked to those moms and told them their sons are perfect and they just need someone friendly to help them understand rules, or to have more flexible rules, and to not label them. But of course, I'm just a mom with a wild little girl, not a preschool teacher, so I'm not taken seriously.
I just talk about my experience so if it resonates with anyone else, I want to know what part is just me and my family and what part is more generalizable.
Thanks for sharing your story. I wish I had taken your approach this when my kids were little. My son was so energetic and emotional and my husband and I did not cope well and unfortunately shamed and over-disciplined him, which just made his behaviour more difficult. A lot of this was because of my own shame around feeling judged by teachers and relatives. I wish I could go back with the knowledge I have now! Both my kids (one with ADHD traits, one not) are now benefiting from more empathy and less judgement. This is my primary work right now - I , too, chose to quit work so I could focus on managing myself and genuinely supporting my kids.
This makes sense. I also wonder, though, if you achieved, in all of that work, exactly the healing Gabor Mate claims possible, but, are still a “highly sensitive person” (as he explains is a predisposition to ADHD). Which would still lead you to rapidly become burnt out under “normal” stress levels. I’m very curious, as you’ve read Scattered Minds, if you think that could be, at least in part, the case.
So a lot of my work has just been on understanding what this "sensitivity" is. Let me try to explain what I've found.
At its core, it definitely has to do with the serotonin receptor gene mutation I talked about (httlpr). But this means your body has to keep making serotonin more. For which you need more iron and zinc in your gut. I get this using supplements and daily salad. I can literally feel the difference between a salad day and skipped-salad day - I don't think negative thoughts to the same extent on a salad day.
But there are other things that lead to this sensitivity. When your brain is working perfectly, it's inhibiting a lot of crazy thoughts. When it's not working properly, all the crazy thoughts have nothing inhibiting them and they go wild. I noticed that there are some b-vitamins whose deficiency causes sensitivity to sounds, sensitivity to touch. Some vitamins and minerals help you sleep better. So if you're lacking in these (and also iron as I mentioned before), you'll feel much much more highly sensitive.
A lot of how you approach stress is taught to you by your caregivers at an early age. I realize this was broken for me, so a lot of my efforts with my daughter have been to help her manage negative emotions in a better way.
I also realized the difference between mentally healthy people and mentally ill people is mentally healthy people realize when a situation is unhealthy for them and leave. Or have healthy boundaries. Or navigate it in a healthier way. I was not doing that. I was staying in stressful situations because I felt like I had to or I was weak. In a mentally healthy state, when I flash back to earlier stressful situations, it hits me I'd deal very differently now, mostly with trying to leave earlier, or asking for more help, or identifying what was troubling me and working on that. Instead, I was being quite haphazard about coping, which was worsening the stress and putting me in situations that repeatedly retraumatized me.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me a lot with this.
Scattered Minds is a great book to start with. But there's a lot of gaps in it, and they can be worked through with the latest research. I find Gabor Mate's work to be highly handwavy. It can be better.
There are books on Highly Sensitive People (there's a whole series), and there's also The Orchid And The Dandelion. I find they don't connect this to either of the things I've mentioned, i.e. specific genetic mutation, or vitamin deficiencies.
If you read my posts, you'll see I started with Scattered Minds, but then I found it wanting in terms of solutions, and looked all over for what could help. What I've found is that ADHD patterns are highly rooted in patterns of low-key shittiness from your caregivers that start at an early age and then get reinforced throughout childhood. I've found it can be worked through, but it needs work on those four-fold aspects I mentioned.
Wonderful! Thanks for opening more doors for me!
Given the experience in my family, I definitely think you’re on to something here. My question is - what do I do when I’m the anxious mother? My ADHD husband does not come across as particularly anxious, but his mother absolutely is, and I see this repeating. I very much believe that my sweet boy has absorbed a lot of my anxiety, even before he was born. We are working on reflex integration, emotional regulation, and all sorts of things. He’s a great kid, smart as a whip, so kind and encouraging, but I worry (ha!) that I’ve broken him forever. Where do we start?
I'm not a therapist or anything, just an anxious child of an anxious mom, so take what i say in the light of that.
I feel like my life could have changed at any point if my mom just decided to stop having extreme reactions to things. She still hasn't decided that, and every time I'm around her, all my worst tendencies come back.
So I'd suggest you and your husband work on your tendencies that might cause a stressful environment at home. This doesn't mean you're doing anything malicious, but it's just the patterns we carry with us.
I'm a very anxious sort, quick to snap, haranguing my kid till she complies.... my husband is the exact opposite of that, very calm, so I was able to change how I reacted to things with my husband's guidance. He tends to go too far with the chill, which typically would trigger me to be even more anxious, but since we're aware of the pattern, we're able to sit down and talk about it and work on being better.
Our kid is now starting kindergarten, so this might change, but our attitude so far has been that nothing matters as much as learning focus and calm. Other stuff is important, like learning good habits, or being on time to things, but there's plenty of time to learn these things and everything doesn't have to happen right away. It seems to work best when we prep our kid ahead of time. The lessons seem best imparted ahead of time, when we're calm and nothing is at stake, like talking about how it's important to wear clean clothes daily, and telling stories to that effect and such the evening before. Not right before we have to leave.
Giving everything extra time helps greatly. Having more help and support than you need helps greatly. These also just reduce anxiety for me - having my husband available to support me, and having a few hours of paid childcare, even when I was a SAHM. This is not easy for everyone, but it feels like most of us can try finding some tradeoff if they are in this situation.
Spending a lot of time with our kid also seems to help - it makes us more confident in our kid's abilities and we're much less stressed out about making everything work right away, and we see the timeline of change.
But yeah, your first port of call could be your own anxiety triggers and figuring out what could help that, even if it's something that seems like a crutch or asking for too much help from others.
Peter this is really great food for thought. And, I want to add that oftentimes the rigidity and control that make traditional schooling difficult for those with ADHD neurotypes also make many facets of adult life extremely taxing as well. Play and freedom are so important for all humans, especially those who may be a little more hunter/gatherer than farmer!
edit to add: my own family has a long and storied relationship with ADHD; my mother now identifies herself as ADHD and my father certainly has much of the *personality* aspect and yet none of the dysfunction. I am in a similar boat with my father; I am highly creative, very vibrant, prefer fast-paced, energetic, but I am also extremely organized and have worked creatively to learn many executive functioning skills that my siblings for example seem not to be able to attain as easily. Is there a mechanism from personality through trauma which turns a type into a dysfunction?
I agree. If I were being cared for by my parents still, not having to adult, I would thrive as my unschooled children now do. But the current state of society means that my adult life is very akin to school, therefore I struggle.
Additionally Mate discusses what unhealed type A, non type A’s, and healed ADHD looks like. You may be in one of those categories while your family members are in others.
In the 2010s, Silicon Valley self-help gurus became obsessed with Stoicism - and their podcasts enthusiastically recommended that everybody should practice the philosophy as a path to a more fulfilling life. The one-size-fits-all advice has always chafed at me, because it ignores the fact that different minds are built differently. My experience is that people with ADHD-like traits are likely to find philosophical Hedonism a better fit for a fulfilling life.
I remember school as a form of mild psychological torture. And I was in grade school in the 70s! Reading Play Makes Us Human has helped me understand the horrifying extent to which mainstream education systems have only gotten more abusive in their mission to torturously jam the square peg of Hedonist mind-builds into the round hole of Stoic Common Core.
Fortunately, adulthood has been kinder to me. After laboriously proving myself to the Stoic scientific establishment in young adulthood, I finally reached the green pastures where my day-to-day work mostly involves chasing whichever ideas happen to give me pleasure that day. Hedonist nirvana!
The freedom to follow my interests sometimes pays off in ways the Stoic establishment can appreciate, but the paper successes come with a hidden asterisk. I'm proud of the fact that I'm constantly foaming with outside-the-box ideas, but I'm also keenly aware of the fact that I have trouble seeing which of the shiny ideas are good enough to be worth working on. Even when I can recognize which ideas humankind would want me to pick up the pipette and actually test, it's a real struggle to suppress my impulse to get bored and move on before the project is completed. I think partly in pictures, and a mental image for my career is looking back on a woodland hiking trail and seeing that it's littered with half-eaten candybars. Without Stoic team members to steer me, I'm pretty much a propeller without a boat.
I see this type of thing as the true soul of workplace diversity - at least in the lines of scientific research I'm most familiar with. A team of Stoics slapping each other on the back about their meritorious credentials and the virtue of their disciplined work ethic is a boat without a propeller. Whereas a team that includes individuals with more than one kind of mind-build - individuals whose schooling taught them how to respectfully engage each other's strengths and take up the slack of each other's weaknesses - can excel.
Stronger together, as the saying goes! Stronger when one type of mind is tortured into pretending to be the other type of mind is definitely not how the saying goes.
Thanks for this thoughtful newsletter! Sharing another current source that I think you will also find quite interesting: “Distractibility and Impulsivity in ADHD as an Evolutionary Mismatch of High Trait Curiosity” (Le Cunff, 2024). Context 100% matters for how the behaviors associated with ADHD are described. There is nothing inherently problematic with ADHD symptoms, rather the problem lies in cultural reactions to the behaviors following from a rigid interpretation of what appropriate behaviors are in school, as an example. I am all- for stopping the pathologizing and instead embracing ways to support diverse presentation of traits. Doing so helps everyone, “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical” alike.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-024-00400-8Distractibility and Impulsivity in ADHD as an Evolutionary Mismatch of High Trait Curiosity | Evolutionary Psychological Science
This chimes very much with what I have been thinking for years and what the book Empire of Normality crystallised for me - I have written about it here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/fwhittaker/p/shifting-the-paradigm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1as3ji
It baffles & saddens the heart that a child's placid acceptance of the factory school environment is considered 𝙣𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙡. The cane & whip were banned in the Danish educational system in 1963. But now there's ritalin.
"Upon stumbling upon the particular mix which we now know as Ritalin, they [chemists] administered it to rats and noticed that they became more manageable, calm, and even focused. So naturally they believed calm rats could equal calm humans." is.gd/U3CfEO
Although, it appears Danes a less eager to dope their kids than Americans [is.gd/qpxB4t].
Perhaps there was never a golden age for children in general, Huckleberry Finn days seem ideal having lived as a child on the Ohio River, & if I had to pick another time, as a lifetime sailor, it might be the Viking era. I quote at length from Irina-Maria Manea (4 Mar 2025) Childhood in the Viking Age, World History Encyclopedia, is.gd/1HJlcH,
the article is full of other rich insights.
"Unlike in a medieval monastery, where formal schooling was emphasised, Old Norse education was primarily practical and oral. Boys and girls learned skills relevant to their roles through observation and hands-on experience. Sons of chieftains or warriors were trained in combat, legal matters, and leadership, while daughters of prominent families learned how to manage estates and oversee large households.
However, although literacy was rare, some education did involve learning runes. Poetry and storytelling played a crucial role in preserving knowledge. Children who showed poetic talent could gain significant prestige, as composing verse was highly valued. For example, Egill Skallagrímsson, at the age of three, was already composing poems, and his grandfather rewarded him with food for his efforts. This suggests that intellectual ability, especially in poetry and rhetoric, was recognised and encouraged from an early age, even if the story is, of course, embellished to make him look larger than life.
While children were expected to work and prepare for adult responsibilities, they also engaged in play. However, even their games reflected the expectations of their society. Physical games often resembled combat training, such as wrestling, mock battles, and sports involving strength and endurance.
These were not purely for entertainment but were seen as exercises to develop fighting skills. One childhood game would have involved building small turf houses, mirroring adult dwellings. This was seen as a way for children to familiarise themselves with domestic and architectural skills. It also served as a form of role-playing that reinforced social structures.
The sagas actually tend to condemn deviant behaviour, with some children criticised for being too unruly or disruptive. Again in Egils saga, Egill's father initially refused to bring him to a feast because he believed the boy was incapable of behaving properly in a formal setting.
Even with children, there were still expectations of decorum, especially in public and social gatherings."
I am this. I feel the ADHD description is all wrong though. I id as AuDHD. Was a “gifted” child. Basically we are just sensitive and are challenged to live against ourselves in unhealthy circumstances. Plus a few other things. Like all things, these tendencies are both a weakness and strength. Can be dangerous not to know though. An interesting and creative life results if you refuse to accept others' silly unhelpful labels and tap in and respect your requirements for healthy thriving. ❤️🙏🏾❤️🥳☮️🤩👀
mmmm i cannot share photos here, but i am an artist and play is a guiding principle in a manifesto that I have never written. Play is an essential practice for ALL AGES! ALLLLL AGES to hold onton yourself and your values and change and take lightly and deal wtih things and laugh and add perspective, because as we all know, organisation and sight is a matter of distance. In adhd due to interestingand very fluid notions of time and our excessively flamboyant glorious curiosity and kinaesthetic natures and need to follow our own paths regardless we can fall into anxiety when we look at things too closely and then comes the obsessiveness and need for material hoarding. It all goes togetherrrrrr. Neurodiversity is a gift that shifts the world into more compassionate practices and togtherness. We need more unschooling, democratic schools and practices to foster emotional maturity and intelligence. Ppl who are at a loss with Adhd kids/ppl are those unable to manage their emotions, which is very dangerous and no good at all as leads to abuse of power and great cruelty and division. In capitalism ppl love to blame and use fusion and also point fingers attributing FAR too much responsibility to individuals (aka skapegoating) instead of looking at their contexts. Nothing exsists outside of itself gosh!!! so silly, everything is about rapport as we are a relataionship-based and skills-based species. Anyways here is an image of me playing as an adult and artist in "Context, is everything" I encourage you all! https://annajmcintyre.com/en/
I was diagnosed as a kid and drugged. Ritalin was a zombie drug and a personality suppressant. What nobody talks about is the appetite suppression effects of ritalin that lead me to gain about 50 pounds the year I got off the drug. I have carried those 50 pounds around ever since.
Yes, appetite suppression is one of the many effects of these amphetamine and amphetamine-like drugs. I'll describe other harmful effects, both short term and long term, in my next letter.
I decided as part of tackling addiction I would begin lifting weights. The weight lifting was also physical therapy, but my thinking was to rebuild mental pathways in relation to stress and reward. (Luckily, I enjoy weight lifting)
I have a random bit of cross-pollination to offer: Thom Hartmann has some great posts on this topic:
https://www.hunterinafarmersworld.com/p/why-school-breaks-the-hunters-spirit
Context is everything. Interesting fact that ADHD began to take off in the 90s, along with the rapid rise of cellular technology which excites the nervous system and creates a calcium imbalance via voltage-gated calcium channels (our nerves use calcium to fire) (Pall, M.)
Concurrent with the large number of mothers leaving their infants to join the workforce, not present to complete child rearing patterns necessary to proper brain development. (According to Mate)
Someone needs to have a chat with ADHD menopausal women. You'll soon find out how much of a disorder it is.....
As one of those, I agree and also is it only that?? I wonder. The post above about the brain on stress makes a lot of sense to me.
My lived experience of adhd is genuinely the reverse of the archetype of ‘impulsive boy’ you describe. Also, the casual focus on adhd as a problem for mostly boys is…frustrating. I invite you to speak to adults with adhd who are currently active in the community. The community at large is very occupied thinking and talking about adult diagnosis, and the underdiagnosis of women.
I was a gifted child. I excelled in school, I was an obsessive reader, I never needed to study, and I went to an Ivy League school. It was when I left the structure of high school and living with my parents that my symptoms began to cause problems, though I resisted diagnosis at that time. By the end of college, despite starting medication for my anxiety, I was routinely late with major papers, sometimes fighting my brain for hours and days before finally /starting/ an essay five minutes /after/ it was due. I graduated.
And then I…flopped? To say I have done nothing as an adult in the past decade would be a lie, but despite my best efforts (I should say, despite my best effort to make any effort whatsoever) my career (my passion, to be clear) only sometimes provided enough money to live on and I never excelled. I relied on my parents for rent for years. Now, hilariously, and to my own embarrassment, I’m more productive and effective as a SAHM than I ever was as an independent adult.
The through line of my life is the presence or absence of structure. When there was intense structure and community support I was fine (well, also unhappy, but fine) and when I was left to my own devices I fell apart. Having a toddler imposes a lot of structure, fyi.
It took years after diagnosis before I was willing to start meds, and they have changed my life. During the recent shortage, I wondered to my husband if it was worth all the trouble and the back and forth, and his panic reaction said it all. The biggest effect took some time to appear, and it is simply that I am no longer experiencing daily mental self flagellation. I’m no longer constantly fighting myself. Sitting somewhere, scrolling or reading or playing a phone game, simultaneously screaming in my own mind that if I don’t [fill in the blank] then [terrible immediate consequence]. I hated myself. I wanted so many things, I wanted to do right by others and by myself, and it was agony because I just never did.
This doesn’t fit your archetype. And honestly, I’m deeply stung by the idea that if only I had just *cared more* about *my deeply desired art career* I might have been better at having one. People with ADHD hear this all the time, and unfortunately it’s not true. If only I *cared more* about my partner I would have remembered to move the laundry like I promised I would, or similar. I tried! I cared! I wanted to! But I still didn’t do it.
I am also curious what support these anecdotal impulsive boys who became successful symptom-free-ish adults had in their adult lives. Do they have partners or parents who keep the dishes clean and the drivers license renewed? Do they have employers who don’t particularly care about timeliness? has the end of rigid schooling meant they now have no problem doing the regular chores of life?
Having said all this, I am sympathetic to your way of thinking. Modern schooling is much worse for the adhd or adhd-lite mind. ADHD is over-diagnosed in children. But I think ADHD does describe a real disorder beyond the boundaries of personality, and I think a not insubstantial portion of the population is affected. (What causes it etc etc is another question). I also think that even the simple impulsive personality you describe will not just stop having problems existing in our society once he is free from school. The adult world is only somewhat more friendly to this archetype than schools are. Just the diagnosis can help. The medications can help. The community of other people who are Like This can help. Coaching, books, therapy, strategies—the name ADHD has a use for the many many people who find themselves unable to function at a maintenance level in school or in life.
While it’s worth investigating deeply into what this phenomenon really is, please don’t dismiss those adults still struggling with ADHD as trivial.
Wow, this is so spot on. Thank you for these powerful insights. I am a former Speech Therapist (and now Home Educating mum) so have been involved in many diagnostic assessments/differential diagnoses of ADHD and other conditions. I just published this article yesterday which touches on many of the same themes and points you have raised - https://essencealigned.substack.com/p/is-it-time-to-rethink-the-term-special
Also, I think my daughter (7, never been to school, early childhood intermittent hearing loss) may have been suspected to have ADHD type "difficulties" if she were at school, but out of that context we just honour who she is and what she needs i.e. a lot of movement, short bursts of activity and frequent gear shifts, hands-on, practical, creative activities led by her changing interests. She cannot focus for long on structured/academic - I literally see her nervous system become completely overwhelmed and she will be physically exhausted - so we don't make her. She is brilliantly creative and bright in so many way and I'm so grateful we are free of the system which I'm sure would have crushed her self-esteem by now.
A refreshing view of ADHD that makes sense in so many ways. As someone diagnosed when it was "hyperkinesis of childhood" and was fortunate that my parents insisted I be directed into the arts instead of special classrooms or medications. And I thank the classroom teachers who lifted me up along the way...and then I achieved a BFA (arts), a masters in art therapy and then clinical mental health counseling, and then a PhD researching the arts in health and wellness. And then a 3.7 million dollar grant to investigate expressive arts therapy in classrooms. Just wow, what a life for an ADHDer.
Chrisi, I have been on panels seated next to Gabor, listened to the bit about stalled development...and trauma being a cause of ADHD and more. I did grow up in a nurturing family, but with financial challenges and more, but never felt unsafe or deprived. And my pre-frontal cortex must have been okay because I graduated 5th in a class of 500 in high school (albeit I did my share of time in after school detention for various antics). Did Gabor do actual research? I sure cannot find any, but he is a "thought leader" of sorts and does inspire discussion. But on the stalled pre-frontal cortex, maybe for some, but I prefer the explanation provided here by Dr. Grey for many reasons.