Why more adults are asking if they have ADHD or autism — and why the answer is often complex trauma

I've heard this term "trauma" a lot in the past few years, and often in context where I didn't initially think that word applied in the situation it was used. It's caused me to think about my own childhood and wonder, with that modern understanding of the word, did I experience "trauma"?

I wasn't sexually abused, I wasn't neglected, I wasn't wanting of love. I was however often scolded to a point where I felt horrible about myself. Scolded to a point where I didn't even feel like I could exist without disrupting the world. At times yes, physically scolded but nothing so extreme as to leave a mark.

To be fair to my parents I was a very high energy and "difficult" child. Big emotions. I was always the problem.

Obviously compared to some upbringings this was a walk in the park. But it really did have an impact on me and who I grew up to be. In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.

I've had a myriad of mental health issues throughout my adult life, ranging from low severity to medium, and on some rare occasions high. Genetics? Upbringing? Modern life? All of the above?

Each begets the other. Trauma and abuse is in many ways (socially) hereditary but often enhanced by neurodivergence. In a brain with sensory sensitivities outside the norm, connection can be difficult (even between ND people), and from that disconnection often arises the sorts of overwhelms in both caregiver and child that make for neglect out of overwhelm or explosive situations.

Couple that with just plain generational trauma - physical punishment that ND people are more sensitive to, the high prevalence of CSA, and a world that doesn’t even try to make any accommodations and you find it more rare to find neurodivergent people who are untraumatized.

One result mentioned here but worth highlighting is the capacity to dissociate and the existence of dissociative disorders. Many people in this cohort also find they have the ability to structurally dissociate as a coping mechanism of last resort - an outsized percentage of people diagnosed with OSDD, DID, and DDNOS are neurodivergent, and among social groups of neurodivergent people often dissociative people will tend to attract - it’s nearly to the point that “capacity to dissociate” could itself be a neurotype. Anyway it’s a fascinating line of study, and if I didn’t have folks w dissociative disorders in my life I might doubt their existence.

> A diagnosis of

ADHD or autism in adulthood often leads to incredible relief and

grief in processing all the moments of being blamed and shamed for

what was assumed to be a lack of effort, laziness and/or defiance.

This is definitely a factor for me when I tried to get diagnosed (which failed lol), because my parents whom caused my trauma would obviously refuse to blame themselves for my emotionally stunted development

A somewhat common sentiment I've heard among those with autism and ADHD is that an untraumatised autist or ADHDer doesn't exist. The literal statement obviously isn't true, but a lot of the downwind effects of it are.

Most people are diagnosed with autism or ADHD because they have problems due to trauma, or they have problems which gave them trauma, or them having these problems made them more sensitive, which in turn traumatised them when it wouldn't have done the same to others. Many of the diagnostic criteria are trauma responses or otherwise external signals which have very little to do with the internal experience of actually having autism or ADHD.

What does a well-developed, untraumatised person with autism or ADHD even look like? We can make some broad statements based on assumptions, but many of those people won't even be diagnosed, since they've never had reason to. What made life work out for them isn't an active area of study, since finding that group of people is close to impossible.

Because this is a technical article with nonstandard jargon, I'm going to state the most important piece of tacit knowledge that I know psychology professionals have but do not communicate to laymen (I personally came across it somewhere when reading the complete works of Eric Berne, but I can't recall exactly where).

Any apparent disorder in a person or persons has to be decomposed into the innate parts that existed prior to birth and the environmental experiences that happened afterwards as a prerequisite for any kind of theorising to give useful results instead of noise. They call this the diathesis-stress model and it's easily overlooked.

The whole ADHD and trauma link is very interesting. I'm not a scientist, but from personal experience every single person I've met with ADHD has had severe childhood trauma. So it really makes you wonder if that old theory is right about childhood trauma triggering an overload to a child's flight or fight response, which leads to ADHD.

Especially when the trauma involes a caretaker. Parents are like a child's image of god, and for one to turn against the child is devastating.

ADHD and Autism here. The only thing that has worked for me, and I'm strictly speaking of the ADHD part, has been medication. Everything else has been a waste of time. As for trauma, I strongly believe the correct causal relation is ADHD exposes you to increased chances of trauma. Not the other way around.