ADHD: Why Am I Like This? Part 4: The Invisible Wound

Author’s Note:

You may have noticed that I changed the title of this series.

As I have written these articles and received thoughtful feedback from my dear readers, the larger picture has gradually come into focus.

What began as an attempt to better understand ADHD has evolved into something more personal: an exploration of the ADHD experience through the lens of my own life.

My hope is that, when completed, these articles will form the foundation of a book:

Why Am I Like This?

ADHD, Family Chaos, and Other Clues

To keep the series consistent moving forward, I will generally follow a simple format:

1. Observations

2. Personal stories

3. Research and references

4. Conclusions and insights

As the series grows, I hope these pieces continue building toward a larger understanding of ADHD, family dynamics, self-esteem, relationships, and the many clues that shape who we become.

If nothing else, perhaps my investigation will help a few readers better understand their own.

And if a literary agent or publisher happens to be reading this, I am not above accepting professional encouragement. 😉

Now back to our regularly scheduled investigation.

In Part 1, we explored genetics.

In Part 2, we examined prenatal influences.

In Part 3, we looked at childhood stress and family dynamics.

But none of those factors fully explain one of the most common experiences shared by people with ADHD.

The feeling that something is wrong with them.

Not wrong with their attention.

Not wrong with their organization.

Wrong with them.

The Verdicts We Hear

Many people with ADHD grow up hearing the same messages over and over again.

"You have so much potential."

"You need to apply yourself."

"Why can't you just focus?"

"You forgot again."

"You weren't listening."

"You need to try harder."

The problem is that most children do not hear these statements as observations.

They hear them as verdicts.

Some children struggle with math.

Some children struggle with reading.

Children with ADHD often struggle with receiving a constant stream of feedback that suggests they are somehow failing at being a person.

Not because they lack intelligence.

Not because they lack effort.

But because the things that seem effortless for others often require tremendous effort from them.

Looking back, it turns out my experience wasn't unusual. Researchers have found that children with ADHD receive significantly more corrective feedback than their peers. Over time, those experiences can shape self-esteem, self-confidence, and identity.

A child may initially think:

"I forgot my homework."

Years later, the message becomes:

"I am irresponsible."

The forgotten homework was the event.

The identity was the wound.

One memory has stayed with me to this day.

I remember my grandmother telling my parents, while I was standing there, that I was a hyperactive child.

Looking back, she may have been making a simple observation.

At the time, it didn't feel that way.

It felt like I was annoying.

Children rarely hear labels as information.

They hear them as descriptions of who they are.

The adults in the room may have been discussing my behavior.

I was learning my identity.

The Batman Wallet

I remember another example from my own childhood.

When I was young, I lost my Velcro Batman wallet during a family trip to Hershey Park (it wasn’t the first time).

To everyone else, it was a funny story.

For years afterward, family members would bring it up and laugh about it.

The lost Batman wallet became part of my reputation.

Evidence that I was forgetful.

Careless.

Distracted.

The kind of person who would lose his head if it wasn’t velcroed to his shoulders.

Nobody intended to be cruel… probably.

But children are constantly collecting evidence about who they are.

What adults experience as a harmless joke, a child may experience as confirmation of their identity.

I wasn't just the kid who lost a wallet.

I slowly began to wonder if I was just the kind of person who can’t hold on to anything important.

Gifted but Not Valuable

The strange thing is that my childhood was not defined entirely by failure.

Academically, I usually did quite well.

I was frequently on the honor roll.

Good grades came relatively easily to me.

Yet those accomplishments did surprisingly little for my self-esteem.

In my family, intelligence was not viewed as an especially important quality.

In fact, I was often discouraged from taking pride in my academic achievements.

My parents were of the mind that celebrating those accomplishments might make my brother and sister, who struggled more in school, feel bad about themselves.

The intention was a sort of kindness, just not towards me.

The lesson I absorbed was something else.

Success was not something to be proud of.

Achievement was something to downplay.

Attention was something to avoid (hilarious in retrospect when you consider my father was a musician and my mother was a drama queen that required all the attention).

Looking back, I realize this created a strange contradiction.

I received enough positive feedback to know I was intelligent.

I received enough negative feedback to wonder whether that intelligence mattered.

As a result, I grew up with an oddly unbalanced view of myself.

I thought I was gifted.

I wasn't sure I was valuable.

People are perfectly capable of carrying two contradictory beliefs for decades.

I certainly did.

Research on self-esteem suggests that children build their sense of self not only from criticism, but also from how their strengths are acknowledged and reinforced. When achievements are minimized, ignored, or treated as unimportant, children may struggle to integrate those successes into a healthy sense of identity.

In hindsight, the problem was not that I lacked accomplishments.

The problem was that I never learned that I was allowed to do something with them.

The ADHD Contradiction

This process can become especially damaging because ADHD is often inconsistent.

Someone who cannot focus on a math assignment may spend six straight hours researching Roman warfare, guitar pedals, conspiracy theories, or the mating habits of deep-sea squid.

The child notices this inconsistency.

The adults notice it too.

And everyone arrives at the same conclusion.

"If you can do it sometimes, you should be able to do it all the time."

Makes sense right?

Unfortunately, that is not how ADHD works.

The result is that many people with ADHD grow up feeling lazy, broken, irresponsible, selfish, immature, careless, or weak.

Long before they ever receive a diagnosis.

Long before they understand what is happening.

Long before they have a chance to defend themselves.

The Missing Memories

One discovery surprised me more than almost anything else.

For most of my life, my sister would tell stories from our childhood that I had absolutely no memory of.

She could recall details.

Conversations.

Directions to places from before any of us could drive.

Entire events.

Meanwhile, I often felt like large portions of my childhood had simply vanished or become hazy.

I assumed she had an unusually good memory.

Or that I had a particularly bad one.

When I began researching ADHD, I discovered that many people with ADHD describe similar experiences.

Attention plays a critical role in memory formation. If your attention is elsewhere when life is happening, fewer memories may be fully recorded in the first place.

The possibility of childhood stress adds another layer.

Researchers have found that chronic stress can affect memory processes and the development of brain regions involved in storing and retrieving memories.

I can’t know exactly why my sister remembers so much more than I do.

What I do know is that understanding ADHD helped me stop viewing those gaps as a personal failing.

They became another clue.

When Criticism Becomes Danger

As I continued learning about ADHD, I encountered a concept that immediately felt familiar.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, often called RSD.

Although RSD is not currently recognized as a formal diagnosis, many clinicians and researchers have observed that people with ADHD frequently report an unusually intense emotional response to criticism, rejection, embarrassment, or perceived failure.

I wrote a recent article with more detail on this phenomenon and will implement much of it in a future article in this series.

When viewed in isolation, this sensitivity can seem irrational.

When viewed through the larger picture of a lifetime, it begins to make sense.

Imagine spending years being corrected.

Years being told to try harder.

Years being reminded of things you forgot.

Years of disappointing teachers.

Parents.

Employers.

Partners.

Even yourself.

At some point, criticism stops feeling like information.

It starts feeling like danger.

The brain learns to anticipate rejection before it arrives.

Many adults with ADHD become people pleasers.

Others become perfectionists.

Some avoid opportunities altogether because failure feels unbearable.

Some become defensive.

Some become withdrawn.

Many cycle through all of the above.

Not because they are weak.

Because they adapted.

The same brain that spent years learning survival strategies in childhood continues using those strategies in adulthood.

Unfortunately, adulthood often presents a new challenge.

Relationships.

A forgotten anniversary.

An unfinished project.

An impulsive comment.

A missed deadline.

A spouse asking a perfectly reasonable question and you being afraid to answer.

For someone carrying years of accumulated shame, even minor criticism can feel much larger than the situation itself.

What appears to others as an overreaction is often the result of decades of emotional baggage arriving all at once.

This realization changed the way I viewed many of my own struggles.

For years, I assumed my emotional reactions reflected personal weakness. So I squashed them down deep. Never exposing that I cared or was capable of natural feelings.

Now I suspect many of them were learned responses.

Not signs of moral failure.

Not character defects.

Not proof that I was broken.

More clues.

More pieces of the puzzle.

Rewriting the Story

The most important lesson may be this:

Self-esteem is not built from what we believe about ourselves.

It is built from what we repeatedly experience.

And if a child repeatedly experiences failure, criticism, confusion, and rejection, those experiences eventually become part of the story they tell themselves.

The good news is that stories can be rewritten.

Not by pretending the past never happened.

Not by blaming parents, teachers, or genetics.

But by understanding what actually happened.

Understanding turns shame into context.

Context turns self-judgment into curiosity.

And curiosity creates the possibility of change.

The baton continues moving through the relay race.

But understanding gives us an opportunity to run our leg differently.

And that raises another question.

If years of criticism and rejection can shape how a person sees themselves, what happens when they begin seeing themselves clearly for the first time?

Can understanding ADHD become the beginning of healing?

In the next article, we will explore diagnosis, self-awareness, and the surprising emotional impact of finally discovering why life always seemed harder than it looked for everyone else.

Next:

Part 5: The Missing Instruction Manual - Receiving an ADHD Diagnosis

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References:

Barkley, R. A. (2015). *Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment* (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

Brown, T. E. (2013). *A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults: Executive Function Impairments.* Routledge.

Dodson, W. (2019). *Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria: Attention Deficit Disorder's Secret Pain.* ADHD Report, 27(3), 1-5.

Faraone, S. V., Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., et al. (2021). *The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-Based Conclusions About the Disorder.* Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 789-818.

McEwen, B. S. (2012). *The Ever-Changing Brain: Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms for the Effects of Stressful Experiences.* Developmental Neurobiology, 72(6), 878-890.

Orth, U., Robins, R. W., & Widaman, K. F. (2012). *Life-Span Development of Self-Esteem and Its Effects on Important Life Outcomes.* Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(6), 1271-1288.

Shaw, P., Stringaris, A., Nigg, J., & Leibenluft, E. (2014). *Emotion Dysregulation in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.* American Journal of Psychiatry, 171(3), 276-293.

Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S., & Halperin, J. M. (2010). *Developmental Phenotypes and Causal Pathways in ADHD: Potential Targets for Early Intervention?* Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(4), 368-389.

Biederman, J., Petty, C. R., Fried, R., et al. (2012). *Discordance Between Psychometric Testing and Questionnaire-Based Definitions of Executive Function Deficits in Individuals With ADHD.* Journal of Attention Disorders, 16(1), 17-27.