When speaking of biology, the trait associated with attention deficit disorder is the inability to habituate to unnecessary data. A fundamental aspect of sleep is to determine what resources we give our attention to or not. Removal of unnecessary information is necessary for our cells, but also for our memories. When we don’t sleep or are born with a sensory integration disorder, or have a myriad of other medical or social problems, we cannot habituate to unnecessary information. These different pathways can create the familiar symptoms of ADHD.
Attention-deficit symptoms are further compounded by the environment’s reaction toward the person deemed attention deficient. The environment can cause and exacerbate ‘inattention’. The child who is ‘inattentive’ must now, in turn, deal with the environment’s poor reaction to the inattentiveness, often exacerbating the situation. An environment that causes inattentiveness also compounds it. This cause-effect-cause-effect cycle leads to the personality type ascribed to those with ADHD (rejection sensitivity, complexes about making mistakes).
There is attention there; it’s just not being diverted to the pleasure of the environment.
Often, attention is directed internally, manifesting in fantasy or dream-like states. A desperate attempt to continue living as a non-participant because reality is disorienting. Often, inattentiveness is a result of chronic post-traumatic dissociation.
Learning comfortably doesn’t exist when we are acclimated to paying attention in a world of high stress and emotional output. “Comfort” to many is merely a time to rest until the next unpredictable stressful event. In this fashion, we can understand procrastination; inducing stress as a means of attention heightening. When they become parents, their children often feel like they have to bug their parents to fulfill basic needs. These children grow up with personality traits: We can understand the frustration of confused managers who find themselves feeling the need to stress others to gain attention. We can also then understand the manner in which some people speak, often initiating a conversation angrily because doing so gingerly never garnered sufficient attention.
One concept to consider: Roles are the opposite of potential.
A person/child who accepts or is expected to fulfill rigid roles will lose learning potential. The brain stops looking for new ways to resolve problems, critically think, or be aware of different ideas. There is no point if such thinking won’t be considered by or useful to others.
Take, for example, the child of an easily shamed parent. The parent may want to maintain the aura of being in control to avoid the anxiety of losing control. If the anxiety of being found out and disrespected by their child is high enough, the parent may needlessly prevent the child’s potential awareness of a parent’s flaw by preemptively calling out flaws in the child’s behavior. The child will begin to become too self-conscious and eventually, self-doubting. The self-doubting mind is then unable to feel that information perceived without the approval of others as valid.
Why do parents do this with their children? Because they were made defensive by their parents or their peers, often leading to maladaptive behaviors that, ironically, also avoid its very improvement. This sets up a recipe for engaging in defensive behaviors toward everyone they encounter, including their children.
If this often happens, severely enough or early enough, the child will begin to engage in ‘passenger seat syndrome’ where they start glazing over details because being aware of inconvenient facts leads to disapproval.
Something happens to our executive functions (think executing tasks) located predominantly in the prefrontal cortex when a life is lived in the passenger seat, when one’s perspective isn’t taken into account, and when one is at the mercy of environmental upheaval.
The consequences of having to shut down attention to inconvenient facts can carry on for life, effectively causing atrophy of parts of the brain we associate with executive function and ADHD. If severe enough, this can manifest as depression. If light enough, it is perceived as inattentiveness or spaciness (dissociation). Regardless, these areas can be re-awaken by dopamine/norepinephrine-based medications.
It is a natural inclination to become hyperactive when we aren’t extended the comfort of being aware of inconvenient facts. Children, in a normal attempt for new information input, show a natural heightening of activity to ‘cover more ground’ so they are able to learn. If the parents are unable to match this curiosity, or they live in a neighborhood that disallows this natural curiosity, the children are labeled hyperactive.
Further, if children are suppressed from exercising their inclination to investigate, their biology will wait and expend that need in a safer environment. This leads to different behaviors in different contexts.
Attention deficit patients often feel like they can only pay attention when ascending from a position of stress vs leaping from a restful baseline. In a sense, the procrastination described can be seen as a type of sabotage where ‘getting out of trouble’ is the defacto stimulant. But when not in trouble and restful, they find themselves too unmotivated. It is this trait that relates to the idea that when an attempt was made as children to explore or push boundaries, these attempts were squashed as being ‘too disruptive’ by overworked/overwhelmed parents.
In short, those diagnosed with ADHD have something, but as the overly broad name suggests, we don’t know what it is. Often, diagnoses stop investigations because they make people feel better. Diagnoses should represent mere hypotheses that should be discarded when a more accurate explanation is encountered.
Attention deficit disorder is really something that includes biological causes, but not all biological states are inborn. The environment, the reaction of the patient to the environment, and vice versa regarding inattentiveness, all lead to inattentiveness, and the biological picture is described as ‘ADHD’.
Studies that show a genetic predisposition to ADHD are likely not able to account that the entire family is influenced by unrecognized quirks of family culture and generational trauma. These often contaminate studies looking for genetic disposition.
Perhaps the name “Syndrome of symptomatic attentional deficiency and its related physical manifestations not yet specified” is better.
