ADHD: Why Am I Like This? Part 6:

In the previous article, I finally received an explanation that connected decades of scattered clues.

The diagnosis didn't solve my problems.

It simply gave me a map.

As I continued exploring that map, I discovered another pattern that had quietly shaped much of my life.

It wasn't forgetfulness.

It wasn't procrastination.

It wasn't distraction.

It was emotion.

Or, more accurately...

The intensity of emotion.

A Feeling That Didn't Fit the Situation

For most of my life, I believed I was simply too sensitive.

I cared too much.

Reacted too strongly.

Thought too deeply.

Someone could make an offhand comment that they forgot five minutes later.

I could spend five days replaying it.

Sometimes five years.

A disagreement didn't feel like a disagreement.

It felt like rejection.

A mistake didn't feel like a mistake.

It felt like failure.

Criticism didn't feel like feedback.

It felt like evidence that I wasn't enough.

Looking back, I kept asking myself the same question.

Why does everyone else seem to recover so quickly while I'm still carrying the conversation around like a backpack full of bricks?

That became another clue.

The Emotional Kid

One memory has stayed with me for decades.

When I was about eight years old, my mother had to leave my brother, my sister, and me in the care of my father while she stayed with her parents nearly 1,200 miles away for several months.

I don't remember every detail from that period.

I remember one moment.

Our house was full of adults.

I don't remember why.

I remember trying to express some concern to my father.

Instead of answering me, he turned toward the adults in the room and casually remarked that I had become much more emotional since my mother had gone away.

Everyone laughed.

I was humiliated.

Looking back, I don't think my father intended to hurt me.

He may simply have been making an observation.

His friends probably thought it was harmless.

Children rarely experience those moments as harmless.

I certainly didn't.

Something changed in me that day.

The Equalizer

As a child, I was naturally logical.

I enjoyed school.

I loved learning.

I was constantly looking for fairness.

My father even nicknamed me "The Equalizer" because I was forever pointing out things that weren't fair.

Ironically, looking back now, I don't think I was unusually emotional at all.

If anything, I probably handled my mother's absence better than either of my siblings.

What I was experiencing was exactly what most eight-year-old children would experience when their mother suddenly disappeared for months.

The emotion wasn't unusual.

The shame was.

The Wrong Conclusion

One thing I've come to realize is that children are incredibly good observers.

They're terrible interpreters.

An eight-year-old accurately observes what happened.

The adults laughed.

His father called him emotional.

But an eight-year-old doesn't yet have the life experience to understand why.

So he fills in the blanks.

If the adults laughed when I showed emotion...

Then showing emotion must be embarrassing.

That conclusion quietly followed me into adulthood.

I didn't stop having emotions.

I stopped trusting them.

I analyzed them instead of experiencing them.

Eventually, I convinced myself that I simply wasn't an emotional person.

For more than thirty-five years, I believed I lacked the normal emotions other people seemed to experience so naturally.

It wasn't until I was in my forties, during a self-guided EMDR session, that I looked at that memory again.

The breakthrough wasn't remembering what happened.

I had always remembered what happened.

The breakthrough was realizing that the eight-year-old who witnessed it had reached the wrong conclusion.

For the first time, I looked at that little boy with the compassion and perspective that nobody in the room had given him that day.

He wasn't weak.

He wasn't overly emotional.

He wasn't broken.

He was an eight-year-old boy whose mother had suddenly disappeared for months.

His feelings made perfect sense.

That realization became another clue.

What the Research Says

As I dug deeper, I discovered researchers have spent years studying emotional regulation in people with ADHD.

Although emotional dysregulation is not one of the official diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5, a growing body of research suggests it is one of the most common and impairing features of ADHD.

Researchers have found that people with ADHD often experience stronger emotional reactions, have more difficulty calming themselves once upset, and recover more slowly after emotionally charged events.

This wasn't me being dramatic.

It was another clue.

One that researchers now believe deserves far more attention than it has historically received.

The Smoke Detector

One analogy helped me understand what I was experiencing.

Imagine a smoke detector that works perfectly.

It detects danger.

The problem is that it cannot distinguish between a house fire and burnt toast.

It screams with exactly the same urgency for both.

Living with ADHD can sometimes feel like living with that smoke detector.

The emotion itself isn't fake.

The alarm is real.

The problem is that the intensity doesn't always match the situation.

One critical comment.

One delayed text message.

One awkward conversation.

One forgotten invitation.

My brain often reacted as though my survival depended on it.

A Better Response

Understanding my emotional brain didn't make me less emotional.

It made me less afraid of my emotions.

I slowly began realizing that feelings are information.

Not instructions.

I could acknowledge the alarm without assuming the house was on fire.

Sometimes the smoke detector was right.

Sometimes somebody had simply burned toast.

Learning the difference became one of the most valuable skills of my adult life.

I'm still learning.

The Next Clue

Once I understood that my emotions often arrived before my logic, I began noticing another strange pattern.

Motivation.

Or, more accurately...

The complete lack of it.

How could someone capable of working sixteen-hour days on one project struggle to spend fifteen minutes doing something equally important?

That question became another clue.

And in the next article, we'll investigate one of the most misunderstood parts of ADHD.

Not laziness.

Not discipline.

Motivation.

Next

Part 7: Why Can't I Just Do the Thing? The Dopamine Mystery

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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.

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.

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

Surman, C. B. H., Biederman, J., Spencer, T., et al. (2013). *Understanding Deficient Emotional Self-Regulation in Adults With ADHD.* *Postgraduate Medicine*, 125(4), 110-118.