What is ADHD and what is it not?

ADHD is something that you’re born with it doesn’t have an onset unless the onset is in the womb. Typically, it’s a combination of something that happens in the womb or just genetics or combination of the two. Several areas of the brain have to be affected in order for someone to exhibit enough symptoms to meet criteria for ADHD. If something happens in someone’s life, then there are symptoms afterwards it may be better attributed to whatever that thing was. So, if someone has a head injury or concussion then they present with symptoms that look like ADHD, it might be more from a traumatic brain injury or TBI.

Finding a therapist for your ADHD

With an ADHD diagnosis therapists will try to rule out anything else that could be contributing to those symptoms. That could be a head injury, sleep problems, PTSD, or dissociation. There’s a lot of things that therapists look at, because distractibility although we can experience that from depression or anxiety is different with ADHD. ADHD presents in a different way it’s not just being distracted in the moment, there is a lot more to it.

If you are concerned, you may have ADHD there are resources such as ADHD online therapists on like psychology today. You’ll want to find someone that’s going to take time to rule stuff out because symptoms don’t necessarily mean an ADHD diagnosis.

In a person with ADHD there are 80 percent more dopamine receptors, so task initiation becomes very difficult. Since there’s less dopamine to begin with and then once you get started all the dopamine is vacuumed up and it’s really hard to keep going. Often times it gets the point with task management procrastination that at the very last moments there’s a surge of adrenaline. That stimulant kind of helps it’s kind of like Adderall or methylphenidate.

These are the ways that ADHD might be different. There’re issues with time management, there’s issues with working memory. Switching tasks for someone with ADHD can be very hard. This may not necessarily be the case with someone that just has distraction issues. Staying on task, then switching can open the door for things to steal your attention.

For example, all the different sounds in the background happening all at once can seem intense when you’re trying to focus on one thing. That is one aspect of what ADHD might feel like. There will be later posts going more in depth on symptoms of ADHD.