do you have short bursts of motivation, then need a long break to recover from what you did? do you have problems with focusing hour-long at a specific task? do you feel like napping at random times throughout the day?
well, that’s because you’re an apex predator. a lion can only sprint for 1 km before it needs to cool down, or its body would overheat.
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well, that’s because you’re an apex predator. a lion can only sprint for 1 km before it needs to cool down, or its body would overheat.
Humans are pretty much the opposite as endurance hunters. That antelope that can sprint away from the lion is quietly chuckling to itself having gotten away from a slow human, when the human jogs into sight, so it sprints again. Thinks it’s gotten away, and the damn human jogs into view again, throws a pointy stick at it, oweee, sprints again. Human comes jogging along, sprints, jogs, sprints, jogs, antelope collapses from exhaustion, blood loss and heatstroke, human eats. Super effective strategy for humans, apex as hell. We’re hairless and sweat just so our bodies don’t overheat while hunting.
Confused deer bleating
Nah I’m pretty sure it’s just ADHD. Autism’s special needs sibling.
Hence the popular belief that people with ADHD were the glorious hunters while everyone else was the lowly gatherers.
Might I introduce you to the hunter versus farmer hypothesis
lol exactly what i meant
I like this theory but considering the very high correlation with adhd and Adverse Childhood Experiences, the huge overlap between adhd and autism, and also between adhd and ptsd, and how much difficulty clinicians have telling all these conditions apart, I think adhd is far more likely to be a ‘default’ trauma response prevelant in folks genetically predisposed to autism.
And the fatigue and other autoimmune issues which we [adhd/asd/ptsd] also seem to commonly deal with is likely just the toll all this stress has on our bodies.
(I’d link more stuff but I’m getting tired again, papers on all the interesting bits are easily searchable though)
It can be all of the above!
That’s the w o n d e r f u l thing about disorders (rather than diseases). A disorder is just any embodied experience that’s unpleasant or makes your life harder.
So it: 1) doesn’t need a single, unambiguous, canonical cause; and 2) is (at least partially) culturally-defined.
You can imagine a society that caters more towards ADHD and doesn’t even treat it as a disorder, and instead identifies (our society’s) neurotypical executive function as a disorder.
We have to keep in mind that no scientific field is purely descriptive. Yes, even the hardest of the hard sciences have some normative component. (Lookin at you, math and physics — but especially physics.)
So when we talk about disorders, it’s not just about biological function. It’s also about everyone’s favorite thing: politics! Salient example: Homosexuality is a disorder, until it’s not.
adhd is genetic, not a trauma response. this just sounds like someone cherry picking evidence to support their “its the parents fault” bias and couching it in the language of science to seem more valid. it also, disgustingly, implies that adhd can be “cured” by addressing the underlying trauma. im honestly offended you would spread this trash.
I like this theory but considering the very high correlation with adhd …
First of all, my wife has a cPTSD associated with social anxiety and depression diagnosed, and we suspect she might also have ADHD and chronic fatigue, because some of her issues could not be explained by cPTSD and depression alone. And I believe that all my friends with diagnosed ADHD talked about some ACEs… So it would fit into my personal anecdotal evidence.
But… Phew, where do I start? … I have to admit, I only looked at the abstract, methods and results, but from looking at just these aspects, this study you linked seems to be very weak.
- They only looked at caregiver-reported ADHD.
- One explaining factor was whether they had a public health insurance. Maybe because those without one can’t afford it and private ones don’t cover the diagnostic? Just an idea, of course.
- I somehow don’t trust caregiver-reported data to be free of biases. Are parents with undiagnosed ADHD exactly as likely to correctly report their children’s ADHD? If it’s undiagnosed, their children’s issues might just appear normal to them. Are parents working to jobs to get by or even parents with untreated trauma directly subjecting their children to ACEs likely to notice their children’s ADHD? I’m an engineer, not a social scientist or expert in medicine, but somehow, I believe that some scepticism towards the underlying data is in order.
- “race” was an explaining factor. That might actually support the “hunter-gatherer vs. farmers” hypothesis, because farming developed in very different paces in different regions and that hypothesis assumes that ADHD was an adverse factor in natural selection in these communities. But as always, “race” is scientific bullshit because it mixes up and oversimplifies so incredibly many economic, cultural, political and biological factors that might actually have an influence.
Honestly I just linked one of the first studies I found. I did a deep dive on this a couple of years back and had a huge amount of studies saved at one point, there’s been quite a few papers on this so if you’re interested it’s worth looking up.
- They only looked at caregiver-reported ADHD.
I think adhd is far more likely to be a ‘default’ trauma response prevelant in folks genetically predisposed to autism.
Absolutely not. If the correlation is causal, it goes the other direction (i.e., it’s hard to get through the developmental period as a neurodiverse person without trauma).
how much difficulty clinicians have telling all these conditions apart
Clinicians who have difficulty telling them apart should recuse themselves from attempting to tell them apart. Unfortunately for clients, insurance (at least in the US) requires a diagnosis for treatment, so if you don’t have a diagnosis yet, you’re gonna get a quickly determined one by a clinician who’s doing it because they’re required to rather than because they actually know what they’re doing
And the fatigue and other autoimmune issues which we [adhd/asd/ptsd] also seem to commonly deal with is likely just the toll all this stress has on our bodies.
This is at least partially true, but also outside my wheelhouse so I don’t intend to get into it, but I wanted to balance my comment a little instead of just calling out the parts where you’re wrong
Source: Am therapist who specializes in ASD & ADHD and also has ADHD, ASD, & cPTSD
If the correlation is causal, it goes the other direction (i.e., it’s hard to get through the developmental period as a neurodiverse person without trauma).
And [my theory is] some neurodiverse people develop adhd in response to this trauma. (Is that not what I wrote? Apologies if not, it was my intention but communication isn’t my strong suit.)
I’m not in the US or in the medical field, so my experience with clinicians, diagnosis and the audhd and mental health system and community is likely quite different to yours, but I agree that diagnosis should be avoided by imcompetant doctors.
Sadly it’s basically impossible to call out incompetence as a patient, especially if you’re dealing with the NHS psychiatric services.
And [my theory is] some neurodiverse people develop adhd in response to this trauma. (Is that not what I wrote? Apologies if not, it was my intention but communication isn’t my strong suit.)
No yeah I understood you. I should have been more specific and said that it’s hard to get through the developmental period as a person with ADHD or ASD without developing trauma. That’s what I meant by the causation going the other way. Growing up in a modern neurotypical world with an ADHD brain can itself be a traumatic experience
I’m not in the US
I imagine it’s similar in most places, that they have to give a diagnosis in order to provide any treatment
Sadly it’s basically impossible to call out incompetence as a patient
Yeah :/
I thought it was just my adhd
I don’t think that’s how stone age human hunting worked…
