Are you more likely to cut someone out entirely of your life than resolve a conflict? Is this especially true when that person is questioning how your ADHD behaviors arise or whether your disorder is even real? It turns out, this type of response to conflict may be another symptom or expression of your ADHD itself.

People with ADHD are struggling to get the right quantities at the right times of important chemicals, such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, to the parts of their brains responsible for focus and control, such as the motor cortex and the prefrontal cortex. This can lead to two unfortunate outcomes impacting conflict resolution.

First, people with ADHD are more likely than neurotypical people to ruminate or have obsessive thoughts about a conflict, betrayal, or hurt feelings. This creates stronger neural pathways in the brain connected to the experience, therefore making the memory stickier and harder to release later on. Second, people with ADHD are more likely than neurotypical people to exhaust or deplete their available stores of helpful chemicals, such as dopamine and serotonin, which are needed to think through a more tempered approach to conflict resolution.

The stigma surrounding ADHD is highly prevalent, so when the hurt feelings are about the disorder itself, members of the Recoop community tell us these conflicts can be especially triggering and lead to quick reactions, including canceling the person from their lives. One approach that can improve outcomes for conflict resolution, especially for the all-too-common conflicts surrounding ADHD itself, is to work from a script or prepared set of responses to memorize ahead of time or ones to which you can refer if a conflict arises.

One of our favorite response types you can use the next time you experience conflict as a person with ADHD or get challenged about the nature of ADHD is to invoke a metaphor. One common scenario is a neurotypical person comparing their everyday struggles to ADHD:

“Saying that you’re ADHD because you have multiple browser tabs is like saying that you’re a diabetic because you had two pieces of cheesecake and now your body is jittery from sugar.”

“Saying that you’re ADHD because you forgot your keys is like saying that you’re blind because you close your eyes to sleep at night or know what it is like to sit in a wheelchair because you sit at a desk 8 hours a day.”

What essentially that person is doing is simplifying a disorder down to a choice or preference. People who speak to the stress and the impact on their lives (e.g. behind in school because reading more than 1 page per sitting is impossible) tend to be the ones with the disorder whereas people who speak to their preferences (e.g. find the topic boring so stop reading) are more often neurotypicals with a blindspot in their language.

You can also consider adding to your response:

“ADHD is a clinically diagnosed disorder that a professional therapist can detect through a process described in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly referred to as the DSM”. 

For reference, here is the DSM’s criteria for diagnosing ADHD.