ADHD & Hypersensitivity & Empathy

According to this article on ADDitude, being hypersensitive is common among adults with ADHD. 

Hypersensitivity — also known as being a “highly sensitive person” (HSP) — is not a disorder. It is an attribute common in people with ADHD. Symptoms of hypersensitivity include being highly sensitive to physical (via sound, sight, touch, or smell) and or emotional stimuli, and the tendency to be easily overwhelmed by too much information. ...

According to Elaine N. Aron, who wrote the book The Highly Sensitive Person, 15 to 20 percent of the population is born with a high level of sensitivity.

The article further says: 

Psychologist and ADHD coach Michele Novotni, Ph.D., says she sees higher levels of physical sensitivities and emotional reactivity in her ADHD clients than in the general population. She told me about a client whose manager made an unkind, unfair remark at work. A person without ADHD may have let the words bounce off of him, but her client, who has a high level of sensitivity, ended up in tears.

The article has also listed simple but very good strategies to cope with hypersensitivity - I can recommend reading them!

As for me, I am a HSP and an Empath, and according to katieturnerpsychology on Instagram a majority of Empaths tend to also be HSP (but not all).

My sense of smell usually isn't that good, but I can smell hydrogen cyanide, and this year the river in my city smells different, more algal, but I seem to be the only one who can smell the difference from previous years.

My sense of taste also usually isn't that good, I can't taste the difference between chicken and turkey, and I can't taste where and how a wine was grown, but I can taste the difference between water from different districts in my city or from different bottlers.

Today I am walking barefoot at home for the first time in decades. As a child, I only walked on tiptoes because though I love the feeling of carpets, I can't stand the feeling of wooden or stone floors.

At the same time, I am very helpful, sometimes absorb emotions, and have a strong energy sensitivity as well as intuitive awareness.

Also, Introverts often have those traits, that's why I am following some Introvert groups on FB, which is sometimes helpful and often highly amusing! 😁

I found this and I think it shows in a very comprehensive way, what the difference between an Empath and HSP:

tbc.

Childhood Trauma

(Both pics are from the FB group "Childhood Trauma Disorders (Understanding, Coping, Healing)" that I can really recommend)

Looking back, my parents and my sister were toxic.

My dad was at work all day, and when he was not, he either read or watched the news or spent his time in his study. My mother was always in the kitchen. She cooked well, but none of the dishes explained why she was in the kitchen all the time. 

My sister was always grumpy and constantly had anger fits. As a kid, she bruised herself and said the kids at school hit her to make our mom feel sorry for her. My mum saw her doing that in the rear window of the car, but never said anything and never thought of sending her to a doctor.

All doors in the far too big apartment were closed. Conversation, if they ever took place, always took place in private. When the whole family was together, we only talked about politics or where taught things. If my dad didn't tell a funny story from his job then we never talked about anything else. We never talked about school (going to school with ADHD in the 1980s and 1990s - yay!),  fun things, boys, being in love, being love sick, clothes, make-up, movies etc. Being intellectual was THE thing, in my family, so when I was 12+ I read Hermann Hesse, Berthold Brecht, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and the like. We, as a family where only light hearted, at Christmas Eve but also this moment didn't last past that evening. When my mother cried because of my father, I brought her tea and a sandwich. When my grandma was in a coma, I was told to not show sadness and when she then died, no one cared, if I was sad.

Until this day I do not know which childhood illnesses I had, why I received a blood transfusion under the age of 3, why I almost drowned, which intestinal disease I almost died from etc.

Our mum let us alone for more than an hour when I and my sister were 2 and 4. We only know because our parents told the story on family gatherings as a moment of being proud of my sister. Proud of being 4 and being able of reading the time - 1 hour - and dialing my dad's office number (☏ - on those old phones). They told the story in such an amusing and proud manner, that the reaction to the story was always the same: all laughed and where proud of my sister!

No one ever asked where my mother was, if we were really alone or with some stranger who might have dialed the number, how my dad reacted to finding out.

My mother was FB friends with the cousin who sexually abused my sister under the age of sex being allowed in my country and who tried to also seduce me. I didn't allow him and told my mother. She didn't react at all, she didn't even look at me. 

When I started dressing like a punk-goth mix with 13 and got my first tattoo with 15, started drinking alcohol and smoking weed every day all day long and dropped out of school when I was 15, no one cared or bothered. My parents preferred that I just smoke weed and drink alcohol every day all day long rather than do vocational training, because for my "intellectual" parents a vocational training was primitive.

When my sister claimed that our dad sexually abused her as a child a few years ago, they became all kind and loving, gave her all their money and goods and spent all birthdays and holidays like Christmas with her. Most of my life, my mum was a typical Stepford Wife. All was good, nothing bad ever happened. All was hid in the back of her heart and mind and of course she broke.

I wasn't worth fake love, money, goods, even when I was almost homeless and couldn't afford food, because I was always the black sheep, rebellious, cheerful, caring, doing my own thing - even as a kid - and when I was 15, my mother told me she was jealous of me, because my father liked me so much.

Looking back I am glad, I didn't get all that my sister got, because with it they spun a spider web around my sister and kept her trapped in the web as long as they were alive.

My parents never talked about their childhood. I believe both were traumatized themselves, but though this may be one of quite a few reasons for their behaviour, it is no excuse! Also the decades they were born in and grew up are a reason, but not an excuse! Others of their decades managed to break experienced and inherited trauma!

(The pic is from the FB group "Black Sheep of the Family" that I can really recommend.)

When I started talking about it, I noticed no one believed me. Psychiatrists and former friends looked at me, as if I was making it all up. Of course it cannot be true. A man with that kind of job and his wife cannot be like that. All upper middle class families are of course perfect Stepford families!

But that no one believed me doesn't mean, the things never happened, and so I had to find my own way to overcome and heal. I started reading on psychological websites and became part of groups on FB. Some traumas are healed and some are still healing. 

It costs so much energy, that I do not have enough energy to deal with the kindergarten that offices in my city often are. So while I am often struggeling job-wise, though I love working and want to work, I am healing psychologically.  

So if you have also experienced same or similar: don't give up! Don't ever give up!

Be stubborn, don't let the abusers win!

There is no handbook for healing, but don't compare your (path to) healing with the (path to) healing of others. Some heal faster than others, some fully heal, some never fully heal. Others might not have experienced what you have experienced, others are not you!

Having ADHD and Trauma is a double burden and costs so much energy, but don't ever forget to pamper yourself and also have fun, because you are so worth it (and it also helps with healing)!

Winnie Pooh and Different Mental Disorders