I hope things do indeed get better. With kids I think it may help if, when they reach an age that they understand they are different, that we educate them as to why they are different. Explaining in the most basic form what ADHD is and how it manifests. I believe understanding is key to improving. Relationships are difficult to understand with or without ADHD; however, if we can get the message across as to the ‘why’ child reacts or doesn’t react, that could help avoid a lot of pain and suffering in their future…

A lack of reciprocity and empathy is indeed a big problem in many relationships affected by ADHD.

There’s also the “high insatiabiity” factor that accompanies “low dopamine.” In other words, there can be a tendency to be rarely satisfied–or only in short bursts. It can take a lot of “reward” to register on the radar screen. If you don’t know this about yourself, you think that other people simply aren’t “doing it” for you. You don’t know that you have a too-high pleasure threshhold.

Moreover, given the famous ADHD “now and not now” sense of time, historical perspective can get lost in the mists, resulting in a “What have you done for me lately?” attitude.

The biggest problem, IMHO, comes when people with ADHD don’t know their own neurobiology and how it contributes to insatiability and low empathy or reciprocity. The biology itself can make for a very limited perspective–like going through life with blinders on, thinking everyone else has the problem. This is the nature of “denial.:”

As for empathy, some people with ADHD are absolutely convinced they have the empathy of a Mother Teresa, but some of their loved ones argue that yes, there’s something that superficially looks like empathy–for yet another stray dog, for the neighbor down the street whose house needs painting, and for everyone else but family members at home. That’s not true empathy.

Empathy is being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is difficult for many people with ADHD, because they often aren’t able to even empathize with themselves! They don’t empathize with their futures selves, for example, and the health or financial consequences of current actions.

Compounding this: Insatiability often leads pwADHD (people with ADHD) to keep trying to achieve more, higher, faster–often becoming workaholics, developing sports injuries, or taking too-risky financial bets–because they’re seldom really happy with their successes. At the same time, our rather narcissistic culture praises most the person who achieves, achieves, achieves. So, the draw is clearly there.

Anyway, my point is that the same characteristics that can dog a person with ADHD can dog his/her relationships. And it all just compounds and swirls.

Again, though, ADHD is a very complex situation. It’s a constellation of neurobehaviors, and you don’t need all of them to qualify, just a few. Add personality, family background, etc. and you get a real mosaic. No one-size-fits-all platitudes work with ADHD, IMHO.

~Bryan

Thanks for your comment!

~Bryan