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ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

claimingattention.substack.com

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Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#81

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

jancsika wrote: post #64

> Worse, it left me with a debilitating emotional and intellectual dependency on their approval. I'm not a therapist, but maybe one can back me up: The "thing" driving this emotion is essentially hard-coded in the author at this point, from early childhood. More central than rationally spelunking into the nature of what they currently consider "breakage," the author would be better off acknowledging and accepting (i.…

> The "thing" driving this emotion is essentially hard-coded in the author at this point, from early childhood.

I'll respond to this indirectly. I eventually learned that healing isn't restoration. We improve our being by layering better thinking over scarred ground.

The bad layers never go away. However, we can draw on better layers to improve our behavior. With enough layers we hope to stop perpetuating our parent's flaws.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#82

Post by methyl »

pugets wrote: post #58

My experience with my ADHD diagnosis and the 25 years of Adderall that followed have left me jaded at the state of psychiatry. The focus of my attention does indeed change at a rate which is faster than average. If something can distract me from a task, then it usually does, at least for a few moments. But why is this classified as a deficiency and a disorder? In other words, why is directed attention considered the…

> But why is this classified as a deficiency and a disorder

I think it’s because it’s outside of your control. Ideally you would be able to choose which impulses you want to respond to, and with ADHD that’s extremely hard.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#83

Post by godelski »

lqet wrote: post #15

> John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down perfectly captured this when he noticed that schools, another place where authority figures hang out, ruthlessly disciplined any child who tried to assert individuality. There has been an interesting result recently, which was discussed here [0]. In an online game where participants had to forage for resources, people with attention deficits scored higher, because they preferred…

  > People with ADHD - and their parents and teachers - should therefore embrace their individuality as a kind of reservoir talent in the human gene pool.
Being a researcher with ADHD I find academia very very weird. I feel like my ADHD (and others I know) should be a superpower. Loving to dig down into rabbit holes and a bunch of different topics, which can allow connecting different things. Not needing reasons to go down the rabbit holes, but just because. Meaning you explore things others don't.

But actually academia is incredibly stressful and feels hostile. There's the publish or perish, so you can't go down the rabbit holes and deep dive. You don't have time to dig deep. Dealing with review is crazy as you have to argue to people who don't care that your stuff matters even though no one can tell if it does or not and you should just pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake. (We used to not review this way. We used to check for errors and plagiarism and if not, publish). Everything is just hyper metric focused even though everyone knows the metrics mean so little to the actual end goal they are everything to your survival goals. The goals are at odds and I don't think anyone wants to do anything about it even though many will admit it.

I know some people will say I'm naive to think academia should work that way but I think that's naive, so we'll have to agree to disagree. I think academia should be about pursuing knowledge and giving people the environment they need to do that, with the trade being teaching the future generations.

To be honest it feels the world is becoming more hostile to me. There is becoming less flexibility. Fewer opportunities to explore and hire punishments for doing so. Its harder to take things apart (physical or code) as the gardens close more and more. Harder to fix things, harder to make things to things I want (for utility and for fun). It literally feels like the walls are closing in and there's not enough adderal that can fix that.

I think you are right that the chaos helps escape local minima. If I've learned anything in my studies it's that noise is essential in optimization theory. It is also a measurement of error or uncertainty. So unless you can measure something to infinite precision then you should be incorporating noise into your models

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#84

Post by drawkward »

galleywest200 wrote: post #52
jader201 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging to the status quo I get what you’re saying, but parents of ADHD children are looking to help them become adults that can function in society and be independent without the struggles that are often accompanied with ADHD: addiction and self-destructive choices. A lot of the t…

Maybe it is just my subjective experiences in life and who I happened to meet, but people most would classify as "seekers and misfits" tend to have smiles on their faces more often than people who look just like everyone else.

But which way does the causality run?

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#85

Post by swayvil »

__rito__ wrote: post #50
lqet wrote: post #15

> John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down perfectly captured this when he noticed that schools, another place where authority figures hang out, ruthlessly disciplined any child who tried to assert individuality. There has been an interesting result recently, which was discussed here [0]. In an online game where participants had to forage for resources, people with attention deficits scored higher, because they preferred…

There are already some research hinting that ADHD in human population helped human civilization progress. [0][1] [0]: https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/evolution [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/21/adhd-may-hav...

All the great inventions, great art, great ideas. ADHD. Nobody else has the focus.

In ancient times the Raja Yogis (basically wizards) preferred to recruit from those with ADHD. They called them "habitually one-pointed".

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#86

Post by jmholla »

spudlyo wrote: post #71

I retired from the industry a bit over a year ago, which led to some tension between my wife and I; these kinds of drastic lifestyle changes can be hard on a couple. We ended up seeing a couples therapist who, among other observations, strongly believed I suffered undiagnosed ADHD. So, in my mid 50s, having already in my own mind succeeded at life, I saw a specialist for an official diagnosis. After filling out sever…

You are not just your ADHD.

It sounds to me you just have a name for the weight you've been unknowingly fighting your whole life.

I don't think any of that other stuff is true, either. Your life with ADHD gave you a perspective others don't get which likely informed and encouraged those assessments, but that doesn't make them wrong.

Lot's of people live great live swith untreated ADHD. And it looks like you have to, you just didn't know that's what you were doing.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#87

Post by Viliam1234 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #19
hkpack wrote: post #2

The person blaming his parents because they tried to do their job of, well, parenting a child with ADHD. I’ve read that psychotherapy is much more difficult when there is no-one to blame. So it might help for him, until he will have his own kids with ADHD and fail in a completely opposite way. I would not recommend anyone to blame parents of neurodivergent kids, as it is a very difficult job to do right.

From the article: > Instead, they relied on discipline as the only solution: withholding rights, denying privileges, banning books outside the curriculum because they "caused inattention," cutting off the internet, locking TV channels with passwords, and limiting socialization during study time. I'm perfectly inclined here to agree with the author in blaming the parents for putting the child in a borderline abusive e…

Punishment should never be so big that it cripples the child. Social deprivation as a punishment (no socialization, no internet, even no books), how could that possibly not harm someone's development?

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#88

Post by TeMPOraL »

sibeliuss wrote: post #10
hkpack wrote: post #2

The person blaming his parents because they tried to do their job of, well, parenting a child with ADHD. I’ve read that psychotherapy is much more difficult when there is no-one to blame. So it might help for him, until he will have his own kids with ADHD and fail in a completely opposite way. I would not recommend anyone to blame parents of neurodivergent kids, as it is a very difficult job to do right.

The point is: there isn't a "right" way. That's exactly what the author is trying to say. By failing to recognize the ways in which they were different, they forced a mode upon them and here we are. A whole medicalized generation addicted to stimulants trying to fit in where in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging…

> had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging to the status quo.

It's definitely interesting to read stories about such people, especially those that lived long ago or are fictional characters in the first place. The notion of being a misfit is romantic and gratifies our imagination. However, what those "misfits" and "rebels" actually were is people who suffered, or caused everyone around them to suffer, or both. Few of them, or those in their proximity, enjoyed their fate.

Are such people important to society? In some cases, yes. Do I want to be such an important person? No thank you, I'll happily read about them on the news.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#89

Post by olddustytrail »

SteveNuts wrote: post #55
sibeliuss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is: there isn't a "right" way. That's exactly what the author is trying to say. By failing to recognize the ways in which they were different, they forced a mode upon them and here we are. A whole medicalized generation addicted to stimulants trying to fit in where in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging…

> The point is: there isn't a "right" way. I can tell you at least one “wrong way” though, which is to completely ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s what my parents did and it’s extremely frustrating to deal with as an adult. Logically I understand there’s no value in living in the past, but the “what if” thoughts will nag me forever. What if instead of failing out of high school and getting a GED, I coul…

Well why don't you go to the college of your dreams now? Or does it only work when other people work and pay for it?

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#90

Post by Viliam1234 »

o11c wrote: post #49

I must disagree with this very strongly; this attitude of "the problem isn't me, the problem is other people" is exceedingly harmful. You cannot blame others for their (alleged) inflexibility when you yourself are incapable of flexibility. Consider: you fly to the UK and try to drive on the right side of the road like you always have. Do you have the right to blame everyone for driving toward you? Or should you adapt…

> Yes, the rule is arbitrary, but that doesn't make it valueless.

We need to distinguish between the rules that make sense (everyone driving on the same side of the road) and those that don't (everyone writing using the same hand). Often the existence of the former is used as an excuse for the latter.

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