Many parts of the human brain have a role to play in the regulation of emotions. One of the main areas is the limbic system, but the expression of these emotions is determined by the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of our executive functions that help us with planning, organising, recalling memories, socialising and regulating emotions. The prefrontal cortex communicates with the limbic system via ‘frontal-limbic-loops’, usually to work out an appropriate emotional response. The connection to these limbic loops in ADHD are weak, think of it like picking up a lot of noise on a radio receiver. You can’t hear the message properly, so it sounds very fuzzy. This fuzziness leads to people with ADHD having less regulation of emotions, which makes them experience intense emotions, which makes it harder to brush off getting offended by them, especially if they are deeply personally affected by them.
It’s not just being offended they have a problem with but even little annoyances can build up overtime to explode into a meltdown. When it comes to day to day conversations with people having intense emotional reactions can make people with ADHD interpret what was said very differently, often becoming personally insulted and responding with anger. This is most often because of seeing things inblack and white, or getting stuck on specific details rather than seeing the full picture, and may also include a temporary reduction in empathising, overlooking certain details, making assumptions, jumping to conclusions, taking things personally which then leads to explosive outbursts.
But you can learn to manage reacting this way using what I call the ‘Pause, Think and Respond’ method.
Understanding Human Behaviour
The first tool you need at your disposal to manage your emotional reactions is to first learn about how and why people do the things they do. This should then make it easier to understand that all people have their own feelings and desires that differ from yours and because of a different life experience they may react to things differently than you would. We’ve all been exposed to different things growing up, even for those you may have a lot in common with.
It may seem simple but even neurotypicals seem to forget this fact. Social media, especially in those online communities, has made us stick to our own tribe with our own specific language, and we expect others to talk the same and think the same. We expect them to just know it without explaining it.
I’m not going to go through everything I’ve learned about human psychology, instead, I’ll instruct you to carefully study the words people use and how they say them, especially how they respond to things. Don’t respond back immediately but question why they are expressing those emotions. Read popular psychology websites to get some context behind them.
If you’d like me to write a more detailed post about this in the future just ask.
Pause, Think, Respond
I developed the Pause, Think, Respond method (PTR) as a way for myself to control my PDA Autism outbursts. Those with PDA can interpret even innocuous words as a threat. It then triggers severe anxiety and often the person will react in the way you would if you were being insulted. This can happen several times a day so it becomes very exhausting, both mentally and emotionally.
So, imagine if you heard someone say something that you interpret as ableist, but this person doesn’t know they are being or even what the term means. But you don’t know this either. You could lash out at them because they are nothing but a disabled hating fascist (or something) to you. Or, you could pause, consider that they might not realise what they’re saying so you carefully think about how to best respond to them.
Or someone says something to you that instantly angers you. You can shout and insult them, or you can pause, spend some time thinking over it, and you might find that they probably didn’t intend to.
You can use this method in multiple ways. If you keep in mind that certain news is presented in a way to rile you up, you can challenge that by seeking out more details to the story to get the full facts. Then there’s less need to join in on the backlash.
It’s Nothing Personal
It’s important in our interpretation of what’s said to not just get stuck on specific words that may offend us. I’ve seen this all the time in neurodivergent spaces. People zero in on a term that may be offensive to them, or they have strong feelings about because they relate it to a personal experience. So they can’t let it go. They respond to just that part of dialogue, even if it wasn’t really part of the point the person was talking about.
Try not to take things said too personally. Usually, people are speaking in general terms and aren’t aware that it may be reminding you of a past trauma.
You can take some things said emotionally. There is nothing wrong with being touched by a sad story, or relating things to a childhood experience, or being so overwhelmed with joy or feeling a strong connection to someone over a shared interest or similar experience. But if your emotions are causing you great stress and that stress is just going to result in you lashing out at someone it’s better to exercise some self-control.
It’s also important to not make everything about our neurodivergent condition. When people omit disabled people from what they’re talking about it’s usually because they’re not aware that disabled people are affected by this certain issue, not that they don’t care. Here is a good opportunity to gently fill in the gaps.
So, this part was very short to the point. I’ll elaborate on how you can understand people more by building empathy skills and also explain some social issues that are specific to people with ADHD and how to overcome them, in Part 4.
PDA Rebellion 