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hey there everybody and welcome to this video on trauma-related symptoms today we're talking about restlessness and hyperactivity you know it's not just something that you see with ADHD
and unfortunately a lot of people with ADHD may be misdiagnosed because their
restlessness and hyperactivity and difficulty concentrating may actually be trauma symptoms
why would you develop those symptoms as a result of trauma when I was a young girl I played tennis
and when you play tennis if you watch a tennis match the tennis players are never
standing still flat-footed just holding their racket they're always bouncing on their toes
whether they're at the back or at the front at the net they are always bouncing on their toes
they're always primed waiting for waiting to respond to wherever that ball is going to go
and restlessness or physical irritability we're not talking as much about emotional irritability
but just kind of being fidgety and unsettled or Restless or hyper even hyperactive can be
symptoms or ways that that the body manifests its desire you if you will the nervous system
manifests its desire to stay primed to stay bouncing on the balls of its feet so it can
more effectively respond to threats when they come it got caught what we call flat-footed uh
before when they experience trauma so now the body says no that's not going to happen again
I'm going to make sure I stay on alert so it can be more difficult to sit still
another reason it people may have difficulty with concentration attention and hyperactivity is
because when they slow down they think when they slow down they feel and it can be so overwhelming
and so overpowering when those thoughts and those memories start to come back that
it feels safer to stay active to stay moving all the time because then they don't have to think
so there can be various reasons for the hyperactivity and I've
said in many videos it's important to step back and look at behaviors
on an individualized basis and say what is that behavior communicating what is the goal
of that behavior in this person at this time is it helping them avoid thinking or feeling is it
helping them stay primed and ready to defend themselves from attacks is it something else
if it is one of the first two then it's likely the result of a trauma and we can look back and
say when did these symptoms start did they start after a trauma did they start during childhood
in which the person was experiencing one or more adverse childhood experiences and that can be kind
of Insidious those adverse childhood experiences like having someone in the household that has an
addiction or a mental illness or caregivers getting a divorce there's a lot of stuff and
there can be good days and there can be bad days and there's no one day there's no one situation
that you can kind of point to and go that's when it all started it's that gradual buildup
of distress that gradual buildup of feeling hopeless and Powerless and trapped that makes a
lot of adverse child childhood experiences end up causing complex PTSD and trauma-related symptoms
so the main takeaway is if you're experiencing hyperactivity or restlessness
don't automatically assume it's ADHD or Mania or something else it could be a lot
of different things but I encourage people to step back and say what is
this Behavior accomplishing for me at this time and what might have caused it