I wonder how much of what I struggle with actually is trauma,
because I'm going through trauma therapy now,
and some of what I thought was ADHD actually was trauma.
Let's talk about ADHD and trauma.
The interesting thing is I was diagnosed with ADHD around the same time that I was going through some serious trauma.
My mom was in a car accident with a drunk driver. It was a head-on collision.
It was a car that I was supposed to be in. So I felt a little bit of survivor's guilt.
And then, two of my mom's friends died in that accident, and my mom was severely injured to the point where she would never heal.
And I lost my mom last year. And I probably wouldn't have lost her so soon if it hadn't been for this.
She had to be on some really heavy painkillers her whole life after that.
I didn't mean for this to be a therapy session. Sorry, Patrick.
My mom was in a hospital bed and my dad didn't know how to deal with it.
I started acting out a lot. I didn't know how to handle it.
My ADHD that had been so, you know, I hadn't been diagnosed because it had been so well managed before.
Like, yeah, I lost things all the time. I came home without sweaters,
I got distracted, I had trouble making friends, but I had this family that was so able to support me through all of this, that I was okay.
But after that happened it was so hard for me to focus on anything and the trauma and being yelled at for not being a good daughter. Right?
All my ADHD stuff that got in the way of me supporting my mom and my family
the way that I felt like, or they thought I was just supposed to.
I got a lot of judgment, too, of like, you're a bad daughter
and you should be doing more for your mom. You should be helping her.
And I was so angry and emotionally dysregulated.
And after that was when I got my ADHD diagnosis.
And there are some times where I'm like, I wonder if my ADHD wouldn't have been as bad if I hadn't also gone through that trauma.
I wonder how they affect each other.
I wonder how much of what I struggle with actually is trauma, because I'm going through trauma therapy now,
and some of what I thought was ADHD actually was trauma.
I definitely still have ADHD, but the trauma therapy is helping me cope.
Before addressing that, I think it's important to acknowledge, I love your vulnerability, Jessica.
I think it's what makes you so great and just how genuine and real you are. So thank you.
As far assessing for and diagnosing ADHD when there's a co-occurring traumatic event like that,
that’s where the history part is so important because,
you want to make sure you’re not labeling someone with a chronic disorder, when it was really an acute event that better explains what's going on.
And certainly PTSD will exacerbate that. I don't know how it couldn’t.
As far as how we go about assessing it, it's looking at history and making sure there was evidence of it before this event
and making sure that it's not completely or likely to be explained by PTSD or this traumatic event.
So, let's say you have ADHD and anxiety, or ADHD and depression, ADHD and PTSD, ADHD and other things,
can that actually make the ADHD worse or is it just harder because they're compounding?
It's an interesting question because therapeutically, I might challenge someone to think, well, is it worse or is it different? Like, why are we adding a label to it?
And objectively, sometimes it's worse, right?
So, you are anxious approaching a problem because I just have so much experience with struggling and reading, and I have to do this tonight.
And it's particularly hard because I have ADHD.
So certainly that can make stuff like that more difficult.
But maybe it just changes how you approach things.
Here's where they interplay for me personally:
I was talking to my trauma therapist and the interesting thing is, with ADHD, I'm impulsive, I'm hyperactive, I'm easily distracted,
I'm constantly seeking stimulation, like a lot of people with ADHD,
but I think it interplays with the trauma in the sense that, in relationships, I was essentially reenacting my trauma.
When all of that went down with my mom, my dad checked out like he couldn't handle it. It was too much for him.
He emotionally abandoned us, essentially.
He was there, but he he wasn't there.
And we think he had undiagnosed ADHD and depression as well.
So there are reasons why he couldn't handle it and why he couldn't be there for us the way that we needed him to.
But I saw that. I saw that my mom was still the one present in parenting us, even though her body was broken and my dad checked out.
And so I kept jumping impulsively into relationships thinking it was my ADHD.
Like, oh, why do I keep impulsively jumping in relationships that aren't good for me?
My trauma therapist was like you're reenacting your trauma.
You keep choosing people who are emotionally unavailable in some way, or who can't be there for you.
Not because they don't want to be, but because they're dealing with addiction, or borderline personality disorder, or depression, or whatever.
They're dealing with something that means they can't be there for you in the way that you need because you're reenacting your trauma.
And so even though it's my ADHD impulsivity going like, yes, as soon as I meet this person, I love you.
And you know, I just met you and I already love you with like Doug from Up.
It's still trauma that I'm reenacting impulsively, so, I don't know. I just think that's interesting.
I know we're getting to more of a philosophical conversation now, but...
That's what I love about our conversations is that they steer off, they come back. Yeah.
Yeah.