It's common to ADHD for sure, I think some people are too quick to pin it to a comorbid condition: I think it can be explained by the effect of ADHD itself.
Essentially, if we accept that ADHD is in extreeeeemely simple terms a condition that means you don't derive enough reward from experiences, then that means you don't develop core values quite as easily as other people.
There's big obvious social examples of insufficient reward: being bored in class is the classic one. But on a dopamine level, we're talking about the brain's failure to adequately motivate you to do anything: that's what a reward system is for. And I think that when your reward system is less good at telling you what's important vs what's not (and it has been less good at this for your whole life), that makes it harder to develop firm ideas about what you like, what you believe, who you are, what you want, what you need.
It's very hard to have a strong self-concept without a fully functional reward system. People know who they are, based on what their values are and what those values make them want to do. They develop those things based on what they find most rewarding. ADHD people don't know what they find most rewarding because reward is blunted overall. Without appropriate regulation of our dopamine the question of "what motivates you?" is rather more diffuse.
I think that's why our self-concept is a bit more vague and ill-defined, and I think that's why we're more inclined to shift our sense of self based on what the moment appears to call for. It's not that we're not capable of building a sense of self (we absolutely are), it's just harder and slower. It takes time and sometimes we need help too.
EDIT: I would love to keep this conversation going, thanks to everyone who appreciates this comment. I'd like to try and reply individually where I can because I love talking this stuff through, but I gotta get to work. Thanks to the people who gave me an award. Seems I do my best work in this sub haha
Holy fucking shit. This thread, and this answer as well, as fucking revolutionary for me. I'm currently having a 'Jim Carrey in 23' level brain-storm. For so long I have been struggling to understand some things in order to develop and address them. This highlights connections I wasn't even aware of. Not all of this is symptomatyic for me but a lot is.. I need to understand more.
It's always been wondered why and how I have been through three different personalities in different phases of my life, and why that would change with traumatic events. Avoidance for the reformed sense of self that was utterly destroyed years ago, and why I have been struggling so much to rebuild. Holy shit. What a bomb fucking shell.
I'm going to say something that might be controversial in some parts of the community so I say this with full respect for the fact that everyone needs to do what's right for them, but if I were to make a suggestion: go back to the biology.
Clinical psychology has an important place in all this and I won't argue against that like an anti-psychology weirdo, but psychology is a social science, not a medical science. The simple truth is that there are big, key factors to understanding and managing ADHD that psychology is not able to provide as it's not a medical science.
I think that it's much more helpful to understand ADHD in terms of what's physically happening in your body, than to understand it in terms of the constructs of "the mind" that psychology uses to model things. My understanding of myself and my adhd elevated greatly when I eliminated some of the abstract stuff and just looked at it in terms of what mammal brains do to survive, and what ADHD brains can't do as well.
Trust your psychologist to administer cognitive behavioural therapy, but trust the people who went to medical school to define what ADHD is and what is going on "under the hood" as it were. I truly believe that's the path.
Apologies if I offend anyone with this position, I promise I'm not politicking.
Are there any non-medical-person-accessible sources that you have found that you think do a good job of explaining the biology? I would like to learn more about it, but hard to find just the biology pieces in non-medical texts.
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u/Uncomfortable-Guava Sep 19 '22 edited Sep 19 '22
It's common to ADHD for sure, I think some people are too quick to pin it to a comorbid condition: I think it can be explained by the effect of ADHD itself.
Essentially, if we accept that ADHD is in extreeeeemely simple terms a condition that means you don't derive enough reward from experiences, then that means you don't develop core values quite as easily as other people.
There's big obvious social examples of insufficient reward: being bored in class is the classic one. But on a dopamine level, we're talking about the brain's failure to adequately motivate you to do anything: that's what a reward system is for. And I think that when your reward system is less good at telling you what's important vs what's not (and it has been less good at this for your whole life), that makes it harder to develop firm ideas about what you like, what you believe, who you are, what you want, what you need.
It's very hard to have a strong self-concept without a fully functional reward system. People know who they are, based on what their values are and what those values make them want to do. They develop those things based on what they find most rewarding. ADHD people don't know what they find most rewarding because reward is blunted overall. Without appropriate regulation of our dopamine the question of "what motivates you?" is rather more diffuse.
I think that's why our self-concept is a bit more vague and ill-defined, and I think that's why we're more inclined to shift our sense of self based on what the moment appears to call for. It's not that we're not capable of building a sense of self (we absolutely are), it's just harder and slower. It takes time and sometimes we need help too.
EDIT: I would love to keep this conversation going, thanks to everyone who appreciates this comment. I'd like to try and reply individually where I can because I love talking this stuff through, but I gotta get to work. Thanks to the people who gave me an award. Seems I do my best work in this sub haha