ADHD is a trauma response. An inherited trauma response. We are programmed by genetics and family trauma carried through the generations to keep busy so that we don’t have time to examine what is happening underneath. We just keep flitting, being busy, doesn’t matter what with, just don’t stop. Because if we stop, the thoughts come. And the thoughts are not good thoughts. They challenge us, tell us that we are in the wrong job, with the wrong person, living the wrong life. We have been conditioned to believe that these thoughts are not true, so they must be wrong. If all our ideas of what an ideal life looks like come from someone else’s opinions then we are unlikely to find our true path. I am not you. My life will not be yours. My path will not be yours. But there may be elements of my life that will feel like where yours wants to be. Learning to navigate what to take, what to try and emulate, and what to leave at the door; that is a massive challenge, and one that we are not often ready for. When our concepts of true self and ideal self are so far removed from one another, we cannot see a way to link the two.
So we drink, we take street drugs, we develop compulsive behaviours, we dissociate. Finding different ways to slow our brains down to the point where they are quiet. Anything to stop us from looking at ourselves and why we feel this way to begin with.
Being so busy that we don’t have time to work out what we are so afraid of that we are trying to avoid. Or why we are trying to avoid it.
The medication can turn us into zombies, if it is too strong. On the outside, the person looks like a better fit for society, but inside they are incapable of thought, another way of dissociating from life. But if the medication is a good fit, we get to focus on the tasks we are trying to avoid. We get to rewire our brains, to learn what it feels like to relax. We get to learn that it’s ok to be alone with our thoughts, and to slowly unravel and unpick them, one by one.
And our solace can be our salvation. Movement meditation might be the way to allow our thoughts to be free. Simple activities which don’t require a lot of mental activity, this is how our thoughts find us. The movement releases the doubts and the negativity, and we get to sit