If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.
Lyall Watson
Memes.
As I’ve said before, they’re like the bumper stickers of the internet. Not a lot of room for context or nuance.
There’s a lot of ADHD memes, probably made by people who were supposed to be doing something else at the time. For those of us with ADHD, they can be a source of amusement and comfort (yay! it’s not just me), for those with other neurological differences they can be a source of amusement, comfort, and confusion (yay! it’s not just me…wait, what?), and for neurotypical people, they can be a source of amusement, confusion, and disbelief (everybody’s like that now and then) before they go back to teasing people for being “weird” because clearly everybody is not like that, or you’d give us a break.
The internet is a mixed bag. Just as it helps people build connections or find information, it can be used to perpetuate misunderstandings or spread misinformation. Don’t get me started on social chameleons co-opting the challenges of people they bully. It’s a disorder, not a personality.
The other week the topic of self-diagnosis came up on Twitter. I said it’s only a problem when people claim to have ADHD but say it isn’t a problem. There’s a big difference between someone who thinks they have ADHD and meets clinical criteria but hasn’t received a formal diagnosis for whatever reason (fear, lack of access, misdiagnosis, etc.) and someone who claims to have ADHD with the intent of diminishing the disorder. If you say you have ADHD and in the next breath say you’re just fine, I’m giving you the side eye because you’re either in denial, or you don’t have ADHD.
In order to receive a diagnosis of ADHD, you need to experience ‘x’ amount of symptoms to such an extent it negatively impacts life on a regular basis (and whether you live in a capitalist society, or not). I look at it like this: everyone coughs or sneezes now and then. We don’t all cough or sneeze so often it interferes with life. If it does, something’s wrong. Even with treatment, ADHD symptoms remain. The severity is simply reduced. My understanding from people who take stimulants is the ADHD fog returns once the stimulant wears off. I didn’t even know there was a “fog” until the nonstimulant I take cleared mine – to an extent. Nonstimulants aren’t as potent, but at least mine works more or less consistently. It’s why I can put these thoughts into something passably cohesive rather leaving them to meander and trip over each other in my brain like I used to meander and trip through the world (okay, still some meandering, but a lot less tripping).
The other issue is people confuse symptoms with the diseases or disorders that cause them. To an outside observer, anorexia, an overactive thyroid, and cancer may look the same. The causes are different so treatment is different (in the case of cancer, treatment contributes to weight loss). Going back to my original analogy, symptoms like coughing and sneezing can be traced back to any number of causes. It can be environmental, like poor air quality. It can be allergies, and require removing the allergen and/or taking medication. Or it can be a cold, and require different medication to alleviate symptoms (personally I take ibuprofen to reduce swelling in my sinuses, but otherwise cold medicine makes me feel worse). Nobody would ever suggest dust, colds, or allergies don’t exist (I don’t think). Mental health shouldn’t be treated any differently. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all physical. Anything relating to the nervous system is just trickier since it’s the most complex and least understood – and in charge of everything else (yikes!).
This discussion comes up a lot in ADHD and autism groups, especially since some people have both, and there can be similarities in how they present externally. They share a lot of the same comorbidities like learning disorders or auditory, visual, and sensory processing disorders. A lot of women with ADHD were misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder first, and found little to no relief from medication until they sought re-diagnosis. People with untreated/undertreated ADHD can develop anxiety, depression, or both. If a doctor treats the anxiety or depression, but not the underlying ADHD, patients continue to struggle whereas treating the ADHD may resolve anxiety and depression.
Just as memes and online quizzes are no substitute for a medical diagnosis, even medical professionals make mistakes due to everything from personal and systemic biases to the sheer complexity of the human body. We’re even learning trauma not only rewrites our brains but the DNA we pass down to future generations. If it seems like there’s an uptick in mental disorders and illnesses, it could be due to that, a bi-product of socio political and environmental conditions, or it may simply be correlated to greater knowledge.
There’s still so much knowledge to seek; for now, trial and error, weighing the risks vs. rewards, and empathy for ourselves and each other is all we got.
