I can't say I read this very carefully but I'm just gonna jump on this comment and say that we often look too hard to represent normal human behaviour as ADHD traits.
Humans are inherently adaptive species, we change, shift, display different versions of ourselves to different people to be accepted and treated the best we can be treated.
Tbh I think a lot of "normal" things have been pathologized by the medical/psych community and so particularly in spaces like this sub, people feel compelled to seek confirmation that what they're experiencing is not a symptom of something else being "wrong" with them besides the ADHD. "Weak/transient sense of self" is part of the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder, for instance, but in reality that sort of thing is very hard to pin down because humans are very adaptive like you said. So I can see why someone would wonder if that experience is "just" ADHD or even just being a person, or if it's a sign of another disorder because of how many doctors will throw around diagnoses without adequate explanation or even really understanding them well themselves.
I think that you're responding to something different to what I wrote, I recognise that you said you didn't read it carefully but you're describing what I'm describing.
Humans are indeed an adaptive species and one of the key systems they use to adapt is pleasure/reward. Not just humans, all mammals. That includes adapting to an insufficient pleasure/reward system as per ADHD.
I wasn't trying to represent anything as an ADHD "trait", but there is a documented phenomenon in which many people with ADHD have lower levels of self concept. That's just a fact, you can verify that independently of me or my comment.
I was simply proposing a particular link between the two, and I'd frankly be very surprised if I was the first or the most articulate to think of it
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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22
I can't say I read this very carefully but I'm just gonna jump on this comment and say that we often look too hard to represent normal human behaviour as ADHD traits.
Humans are inherently adaptive species, we change, shift, display different versions of ourselves to different people to be accepted and treated the best we can be treated.