Navigating ADHD in Childhood and Adolescence

Around seventh grade my home situation became volatile and chaotic. Stress is a gate keeper for learning. With undiagnosed ADHD, I went from the label of “gifted and talented” to the labels “low performing and oppositional” seemingly overnight. I was often hyper or hypo focused, truly didn’t understand or hear, had social challenges, and learned to trust that my voice didn’t matter. Not a single adult asked about my: social world, belief in myself, perception of how others perceived me, how I understood the “present moment,” or inquired about possible learning challenges or neuro-atypical biology. The feedback I did experience was that I was “lazy, apathetic, dumb, and wasting my potential,” and inquiries were made about whether I was abusing substances (I was not). Children with ADHD’s brains often revert to “fight/flight/ or freeze” under these conditions and when the reptilian brain takes over: no learning takes place, no problems can be solved, and empathy and attachment to others becomes difficult. ADHD most often manifests as a marked discrepancy between Ability and Performance and the impact of that experience tends to last a lifetime (Estimated that depression and anxiety co-occur in 40-50% of persons with ADHD).

As I launch my full-time private practice, I am dedicating myself to a specialization in working with these folks. People a lot like me!