ADHD and Trauma
23 2018-01-15 by KarmaPolice777
I have a theory that ADHD or the symptoms associated with this disorder, namely an inability to pay attention for long periods of time, is caused by trauma. It makes sense that it's mostly children that are diagnosed with ADHD because that's around the time when our minds are the most vulnerable and susceptible to it. This can come in many different forms whether it's from the violent images we see on tv, even cartoons(Disney comes to mind) that may have some subliminal messages hidden within them, from seeing our parents fighting, from parental mistreatment(abuse/neglect), from teachers, bullying, you name it.
My theory comes from the observation of infants/children and how aware/conscious they are from the moment they open their eyes. They generally require very little effort to sustain attention for long periods of time as they will often fixate on seemingly simple things and be mesmerized by it for hours. So it's my belief that we all start out as masters at focus and concentration, consciousness/awareness being our most natural state. Unfortunately, this is also what makes them so very susceptible to trauma as they will directly experience and absorb, with an undivided focus and attention, any experience that comes before them. You might have heard the phrase, children are like sponges as they will absorb just about anything.
Ideally, children will be protected and only be around positive influences and we see how this manifests in those children who are raised by loving and sensible parents. These children bloom both physically and psychologically, having been shielded against traumatic influences. However, we live in a rather chaotic world where this isn't always the case(to put it lightly.) So imagine what happens to a child, who is pure undivided awareness, when he for example experiences his parents screaming at each other, when his father/mother is cruel to him, when peers bully them, or when they see violent images on television? Just like the term trauma implies, it breaks the child, namely their ability to be conscious, stay present, pay attention. They no longer wish to absorb anything else and would much rather just disengage into their own minds.
So where the conspiracy comes in is that Big Pharma wittingly or unwittingly like to treat symptoms rather than the cause. I really don't think it's that hard to connect these two(ADHD and Trauma) so I'm going to guess that it's the former. We as a society also need to do a better job in ensuring that the least amount of children will be exposed to traumatic events, recognizing that they are incredibly fragile, especially at certain ages. And instead of throwing pills at our traumatized kids, not to mention amphetamines, we need to advocate for the treatment of the causes of these symptoms through alternate, well-researched methods.
I'm sure lots of us heard of the Indigo Children or Empaths that are being born among us in recent times. I wonder if these children are not the most at risk as they are presumably much more sensitive to the rest of the population. Perhaps there is even a premeditated attack specifically aimed at this group as TPTB fear the great potential these children have if they are protected and nurtured in the right way. When I look around and see the depressed, the anxious, the suicidal ones, the ones with personality disorders and those on a cocktail of medications, I wonder if I'm not seeing the heroes and the heroines that didn't make it. Not to say that those in this group cannot bounce back in the most epic-est of ways.
In conclusion, as all changes we wish to see in the world, we must start with ourselves. And we may not have influence over all of the children in the world, but we can ensure that our own children will never have to experience anything so traumatic that they will no longer want to pay attention to anything anymore. And most importantly, we must ensure that we have not unwittingly become the source of our own children's trauma through our own unregulated actions such as having violent fights with our spouses in front of them or misusing our positions of authority by treating them in an undignified manner. While I acknowledge that being the perfect parent is virtually impossible according to any measure, especially in the hustle and bustle of today's society's demands and expectations, if there's one thing that we cannot compromise, it is the safety and well-being of our children. Let us give them the proper attention that they deserve.
37 comments
1 MKULTRAserialkillers 2018-01-15
I wish I wasn’t fucking blasted or I’d seriously discuss this. You aren’t wrong.
passes out
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
lol, hopefully you drank some water before bed.
1 yreyes-7 2018-01-15
Very well written. I've never thought about this but it could certainly be possible!
1 potatosurplus 2018-01-15
My theory is that screen time plays a big role. Mediation is a cure though. It can literally reset your brain. I've experienced this first-hand.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
Good point, switching from channel to channel for hours on end, can't be good for the attention span of a developing child... or any adult for that matter. We also have to be mindful of the time we spend on newsfeeds or sites like Reddit.
1 garyp714 2018-01-15
Absolutely true. Meditation and chanting are literally exercise for your brain that resets the 'fragmentation' that occurs in our perceptive filter (eyeballs to brain) that is caused by the things that fragment us: emotional triggers, violence, anger, shame, abandonment,etc.
Chanting for me (after like 20 mins) helps me get clear in my mind and quiets the chattering.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
That's actually really interesting. Can you elaborate on that or is that the jist of it?
1 garyp714 2018-01-15
I can but probably better if you get it straight from the textbook. There's a 9 page PDF here that is a copy from a Couples Therapy textbook from a program at UCLA (Good Parent Messages):
https://www.reddit.com/r/AdultChildren/comments/4rgden/the_good_parent_messages/
Basically it uses what we know about how our perceptive filter (eyes to brain) affects what we see and understand and when that filter gets triggers it gets fragmented which then 'muddies' the new information coming to us.
Note: that PDF is bad on the first page but worth the effort to understand. The three sets of mantras and characteristic were the basis of my full body, full life therapy:
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1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
Very interesting, thanks for the link. I'll check it out.
1 potatosurplus 2018-01-15
I also recommend looking into sensory deprivation tanks. I wasn't able to meditate but the tanks kind of force you into it.
1 980ti 2018-01-15
Figuratively*
1 Killmerightmeow 2018-01-15
I was always sooooo ahead of the class on so many levels starting at pre-k. My mom said she never had to even try and teach me anything bc I was already right on top of what she introduced so fast that she found letting me explore/learn on my own to be much more beneficial. She followed Montessori learning and let me outside, play in the dirt and examine anything and everything. I learned how to cook for myself and she trusted me by 4-5 and I was reading my moms college textbooks and soaking up words I barely understood with a dictionary right beside me to figure shit out.
I'm not bragging bc I don't even think I'm that 'smart'. I can't do math to save my life, and it takes me a while sometimes to grasp the broad concept of things and apply it to whatever it needs to be applied to, but I'm intuitive and driven to figure things out so much that I just lowkey don't stop looking into things. Even now. I keep my roommate up all night throwing random facts out at him that I've gathered from multiple articles to make sense of events and shit.
She also said she put me on Ritalin when I turned 4-5 because I was too much. This was in the 90's too when it became widespread. Always into anything and everything. Wouldn't stop talking/asking questions that she didn't want to or couldn't answer. I always wanted to help other people/animals/the envirmebta out. I was calling her out at 5 for littering, begging her to let me give the $1-2 dollars I had accumulated to the homeless person and would bring any and all strays to the yard to feed/beg her to take them to the vet so they could be healthy.
She was also 21, a single mother who lived with her mentally ill mother and her sister had an addiction issue. Those are the people I grew up around and I learned from them how hard it is to be in their situation and I tried to help/understand them from such an early age. My aunt never once treated me like a child when it came to the adult world bc she knew I was more in tune with things.
So, I was diagnosed with ADHD and Oppositional behavior disorder bc I never let a teacher or another adult talk down to me. I found it rude and belittling. If I understood somthing better than they thought I did I would speak up and try and advocate for myself, but blah blah respect they're right and I'm wrong so I would be sent out of the classroom or to my room and completed the task 10fold what they had expected. Maybe I was argumentative and didn't trust their judgement due to past trauma so always tried to figure out exactly what they were doing and where they were coming from, but I didn't need to be medicated on 30mg ritalin and then sleeping pills to calm me down afterwards. Fuck them. I needed communication skills and some mutual respect.
But my point is, I've never heard of indigo children until now. I don't think they possess any supernatural powers of telepathy to become empathetic, but I think some children due to nature, the first few years of their life and so on really are much more empathetic and gifted bc they want to understand the world. They know what it's like to be sad. In pain. Struggle. No one wants to every deal with any of that. They want to help. Everyone I speak in-depth to tells me I'm going somewhere great and am going to help out so many people. Everyone but the people in my family.
My mom never let me cry unless I was just crying to get out of something or doing something really wrong. Someone in my family was always there to talk/play with me when I was a baby. It's attachment parenting. Your child is more confident and independent if they're secure and happy from a young age. They trust that when they need you, you'll be there so they go off on their own and explore. Then that freedom may become too much for the parents, esp back in the 90s when your neighbors kid now sat still and watched the tv or drew bc the adderall was keeping them focused.
Today all you see are kids who are left to cry if out, are placed in front of a tv or a tablet and sometimes get very little attention. They act out. Become over active. Are moody, depressed, and then the parents punish them from the devices and comfort they've now always only known and they're now part of the generation on adhd medication.
Adhd medication is just pharmaceutical meth. It's easy, cheap, and almsot any pediatrician in low income areas will prescribe it bc the overworked, stressed and not really ready to be a parent parents go to them with their kids behavior. Then the adhd adds more problems. They get diagnosed with bipolar, bpd, depression, anxiety as they age to treat the side effects. Then it's a compound of meds.
It's disgusting.
Adhd meds show an increase in GABA which is what p much controls impulses. Lack of impulse control is found in almsot any personality disorder. I take a med that reduces my GABA receptor and that's all it does and it's a lovely medication. There are more natural remedies that I'm too lazy rn to look into, but it all lowkey adds up.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
All very interesting thoughts and I agree with you. You certainly sound like an empath/indigo but the labels are not important anyway. I hope you can continue to make a positive impact on the world. I'm sure you will based on what I read.
1 Minstrelshoe 2018-01-15
When I think about traumatized, ADHD kids, it's usually the ones with a poor background and family with little to no education that seem to get this disorder the most. They may also have trouble with reading and writing. I don't think their trauma makes them a "gifted" child. Unless getting into fights and acting out are considered to be beneficial to society.
1 garyp714 2018-01-15
I think you may be talking about PTSD. IMHO, ADHD and being unable to focus is a symptom of a person suffering from long term PTSD. Especially if you take into account that PTSD isn't a single thing but a long continuum of effects and levels.
I personally was a child of alcoholic parents and that alone creates a ton of traumatic moments which will form habits in the child who has to adapt to these micro traumas Since I went into therapy, started getting consistent exercise, chant, meditate, etc I can mitigate my PTSD which are habits like isolation, social anxiety, online addiction, unable to socialize, date, plan out a career. Latch Key is one of the biggest societal maladies affecting modern children.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
To be more specific, it's actually called complex trauma when it happens historically, from early childhood. As opposed to PTSD which is a singular event, c-PTSD is when one traumatic event from childhood(even infancy when a mother is not an adequate caregiver) sets a trajectory for a future set of traumas.
I'm glad you found a way to address and heal from your experiences. I think it's awesome that you found the fortitude to turn it around.
I didn't know what latch key was so I had look it up. And neglect is a form of abuse so this certainly qualifies as such. We are going backwards when parents have to work so much that they can't even spend time with their own children. It just becomes about survival at that point which it shouldn't be. There definitely has to be changes at the macro level in order for parents to be placed in a position where they can properly raise their children. Although there is progress in this area as it relates to changes in policy regarding maternal/paternal leave, I worry that it still doesn't address the issue at the core.
1 garyp714 2018-01-15
And to drive it home, a very common survival technique for children facing violence is a pretty robust habit of checking out mentally and 'going up in their head' and into a fragmented state. They literally check out to avoid the drama (parents drunken fighting, violence) and then that becomes a habit that stays until adulthood. Learning to 'stay in my body', stay present and stay in the moment was a very difficult thing as an adult but I did it for the most part in that I can recover quicker.
Multiple fragmentations layer on to set in heavy depression.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
Great points about checking out and escaping to our heads(so we don't have to feel anymore.)
I think this happens the same way with adults who experience trauma. Probably why therapist are always asking, how something makes us feel. They are trying to redirect our attention away from our head and back into the body.
1 venCiere 2018-01-15
Yes, fried brains from aluminum and mercury in vaccines. It’s not just autism that results. Tip o’ iceberg.
1 TheRadChad 2018-01-15
Always been a big believer that leaving your children alone at night causes trauma. Every moment until he falls asleep he thinks he lost his mother. I don't know what could cause a bigger trauma, but up till grade 8 I'd have to sleep in my mothers room at times, or being at school wondering if my parents got in a accident in their way to work. Always wondering what might of happened to my parents.
I no longer have those thoughts, but the anxiety is still there. Honestly I got a terrible concussion and lost almost all emotional feelings and nervousness until last year when my father got cancer I was struck with all my anxiety again. I still have it and honestly I love it, it makes me feel alive compared to feeling like a zombie. Anxiety can somehow keep me up for 30hours if I got a big test coming up, it's a hell of a drug.
Ain't no way I'm going on drugs for it, buy adderol during exams and I have no stress. Never would I give my kids ADHD Meds or smart meds after having tried them for 3 days in a row myself. I couldn't imagine what 1 week alone would do.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
I was pretty shocked at a practice called "self-soothing" where parents do not respond to their children's cries at night. Sounds like a pretty cruel thing to do to an infant.
About your reframing of anxiety as beneficial, I'm glad you found a way to internalize it in a positive way. I do suggest you try to find somewhat of a balance, if I may. Feeling anything when you were in a state of numbness could feel like a good thing but I don't think you have to necessarily feel anxious all the time either.
1 TheRadChad 2018-01-15
Thank you! I want to get into meditation as well, heard many great things about it.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
Meditation is awesome. Try finding a community that will help you through the process. r/meditation and r/awakened are both pretty great. Wish you luck!
1 980ti 2018-01-15
It's not a mystery why ADHD exists. Your hypothesis is an uneducated guess you've dreamt up. Be realistic. There are people who can productively imagine, and there are those that stifle true education with self invented platitudes about how things really work.
This behavior is common in children and those who have mental inefficiencies.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
Not sure why this post has triggered you but after doing a little googling, it appears as though my thoughts are not merely "self-invented platitudes" but legitimate concerns shared by other health care professionals.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/how-childhood-trauma-could-be-mistaken-for-adhd/373328/
1 do-lop-qol-ob 2018-01-15
This is what I was thinking while reading through this.
There's not a semblance of any actual information in that entire post. OP was making statements about babies and their ability to focus without an ounce of credibility behind it, drawing a shaky conclusion, using that shaky conclusion to support more baseless assumptions, and then repeating for a novel of a post.
It's an interesting question, but an hour of research stops OPs argument on arrival.
ADHD has been strongly linked to genetics. If you genuinely have ADHD, it's more likely than not that one of your parents do too.
Suggesting things like "we're master's at focusing" when we're children is so blatantly wrong, and to suggest that trauma is the reason some end up with ADHD is like saying that being scared of a bug on the ground is what made us want to walk. We were master's at crawling, but the trauma got us walking.
It's a fun idea and I'd humor it as a stoner thought, but this has no basis in reality.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
While ADHD has been linked to genetics, there is also strong correlation between ADHD and Trauma.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/how-childhood-trauma-could-be-mistaken-for-adhd/373328/
Even all of these cases are attributed to a misdiagnosis(confusing PTSD with ADHD which is highly unlikely), one of the most direct symptoms of childhood trauma is dissociation which virtually has the same effect as the symptoms needed to be observed(according to the DSMV) for an ADHD diagnosis to be made. So while not all causes of ADHD may come as a result of trauma, it can be argued that many cases of childhood trauma will cause ADHD in their subjects.
1 TheJesusFattener 2018-01-15
Perhaps.
I would assume ADD is the sub conscious reeling in terror as we push ourselves through piles of bullshit we hate. As a result our minds wander and we have trouble focusing. The more you try to force it the worse it becomes.
The society we have allowed to be is not compatible with our natural biological instinct. Depression, ADHD, anxiety, sans the most extreme cases most of these problems are due to you’re own local environment.
Beyond my supposition here I’m also inclined to think any “illness” with results in treatment using amphetamines seems off.
Hitler and the Nazis loved amphetamine. Seems to be the social drug of choice in North Korea, allowed by the government.
If you have ever been around someone you know well, and they begin to take ADD meds you will notice a shift in their social personality. If they had it their way, we’d all be adderal zombies who never think to stop and question. Amphetamines erode the pieces of your mind that make you who you are.
1 KarmaPolice777 2018-01-15
I like what you said about ADD being the subconscious reeling in terror as we push ourselves to do things we hate. There must be a reason for the subconscious to respond in that way and I think it's close to what you said about those activities we are forcing on ourselves not being compatible with our natural biological instincts. Essentially that it's something that we probably shouldn't be doing to ourselves.
To tie this to amphetamines and how why it would be the drug of choice for a fascist government that would benefit from creating a population of zombies, I think it's important to consider what's actually happening when we take these drugs. It forces us to be able to do the things that our subconscious is rejecting but at what expense? It is most likely destroying the mind's connection to the subconscious which I believe is the bridge to the collective unconscious of humanity, the place where we higher functions like intuition and creativity reside. In essence, these type of drugs are cutting us off from what makes us human.
1 TheJesusFattener 2018-01-15
Yes. This is exactly how I see the situation.
1 mr3ric 2018-01-15
You should read, "The body never lies" by Alice Miller. To me it has always seemed that we live in a trauma-based culture in the same way a child lives with an alcoholic parent
link to book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001VLXNAQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
1 idgafabtwhatyouthink 2018-01-15
WELL SAID.
1 UgandanWarlord 2018-01-15
Hey I have ADHD (ADD to be exact) and was diagnosed last year (but looking back it's obvious that I had it throughout my life).
I can't speak for everyone, but I never really faced any trauma from my parents. I was nurtured very well and my parents didn't push me to my limits.
I feel as ADHD is more nature than nurture, as my dad (who never got diagnosed with ADD/ADHD bc he doesn't think he has it) exhibits incredibly similar habits that I have that also overlap with the disorder.
1 IveRedditAllNight 2018-01-15
I always tried unlocking the the mystery of my ADHD. Every.single.day. of my life for about 30yrs I thought about possibly causes.
One is; I believe it is highly possible that your trauma can be it. The reason being, is because, your mind is stuck on fight or flight mode most of the time and your looking for something to keep your mind off of it.
Another is breathing properly. The brain needs appropriate amount of oxygen and water to work optimally. I had asthma and sinusitis all my life and barely could breath or smell through my nose most of the time. I noticed that when my nose is clear for about 2 weeks and I knock out all my responsibilities I exibit no ADHD systems at all. My mind is calm and I focus on anything I out my mind to. Especially when I'm mediating for about 10 minutes a day a few times a week.
1 garyp714 2018-01-15
I can but probably better if you get it straight from the textbook. There's a 9 page PDF here that is a copy from a Couples Therapy textbook from a program at UCLA (Good Parent Messages):
https://www.reddit.com/r/AdultChildren/comments/4rgden/the_good_parent_messages/
Basically it uses what we know about how our perceptive filter (eyes to brain) affects what we see and understand and when that filter gets triggers it gets fragmented which then 'muddies' the new information coming to us.
Note: that PDF is bad on the first page but worth the effort to understand. The three sets of mantras and characteristic were the basis of my full body, full life therapy:
1 potatosurplus 2018-01-15
I also recommend looking into sensory deprivation tanks. I wasn't able to meditate but the tanks kind of force you into it.