ADHD: Nature, Nurture Or Trauma? Where does it come from?

I decided to write this post because this is something lots of my ADHD coaching clients wrestle with, especially early on in their awareness journey (I know I did) - Just where does ADHD come from? Is it inherited? Is it learnt behaviour? And does childhood trauma play a part?

It's the old nature versus nurture debate that explores how much of someone's traits and behaviours are determined by genetics (nature) versus their environment and upbringing (nurture), as well as the trauma associated with nurture and adverse childhood experiences.

So, where do we begin? Well, I can only offer my subjective point of view, based on years of introspection and self-examination. Discovering I still had ADHD (and it wasn't something I grew out of in adulthood - as Doctors originally believed) in my 40s, made me feel naive and stupid for not realising it was there all along. When the penny finally dropped for me, and I started to understand why my life had taken some difficult turns, it became the start of what has been a fascinating healing journey.

IN THE LAST 7 YEARS, UNPACKING MY ADHD "KNOWING" AND THEN DIAGNOSIS, I'VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME OVERTHINKING...

And a lot of time ping-ponging between the questions: Do I have ADHD?, Don't I have ADHD?, Do I actually have symptoms - doesn't everyone have difficulty focusing these days? Is it just trauma? Is there any difference between ADHD and trauma? Did I get it from my parents? Do nature and nurture play a part, and to what extent?

Ultimately, once I was diagnosed with ADHD-Combined type (hyperactivity, impulsivity and innatentiveness), my thought process then became - 'I'm high-functioning' (which means my symptoms, whilst they debilitate me, don't stop me from having a 'good enough' life - for those who created the bar), so do I even need to worry about it anyway? Should I, or even could I, try to ignore it? (the old 'there are plenty of people who are worse than me, so I should suck it up' thought process).

SO, HERE ARE MY ADHD NATURE VS. NURTURE VS. TRAUMA THOUGHTS

Disclaimer.... these thoughts are purely from lived experience, watching my ADHDer child grow up and knowledge I have gained along my Neurodivergent journey. These are my thoughts and do not necessarily reflect the current scientific or medical understanding of neurodivergence. Please bear this in mind as you read this.

ADHD is at least 60% heritable, possibly 80%

That said, according to twin studies, which have been repeated regularly, ADHD is 50-70% heritable and may even be up to 80%, which means if a couple has two children and one of those parents has ADHD, then at least one of their children will also have ADHD. In my case, I am certain that my mother has ADHD, and to be fair, she self-identified this to me, too.

You just have to observe her to see - she's 75, and I joke that she probably hasn't sat down for longer than 15 minutes since she was at school! She likes to be on the go, always busy, constantly, and has a very active mind. She's continually listening to the radio while thinking and waxing lyrical about politics, all while doing household chores in her retirement.

As a child, I remember she'd go to work doing physical labour (she was a housekeeper at a 50+ bedroom hotel). She would be on her feet all day, then come home and spend the next 4 to 6 hours cooking, cleaning, and 'doing'. She never took a break, never had a sit down and a 'cuppa' - she isn't a great fan of rest.

I ALSO THINK MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, WHO SADLY PASSED AWAY RECENTLY AT THE GRAND OLD AGE OF 99, PROBABLY HAD ADHD TOO

She brought me up in my younger years, I remember she used to go to work at 5:30 am (she had two cleaning jobs), she would put in a shift until noon and then she would come home, collect me from school, make lunch, and cook dinner for six people, and then clean her own house and do her shopping/laundry/gardening every day.

In her spare time, she would decorate - wallpapering, painting, the works. She'd start one room, then suddenly go, 'I'll just redecorate the whole house on my own,' and it would be done in a matter of weeks (although the finishing touches would never be done, and the brushes would be on the kitchen drainer for weeks - definitely a sign of ADHD). In the evenings, she would take courses in cake decorating or flower arranging, and, like my mum, she never really stopped; by the time she actually stopped working, she was already 88!

The signs were there - my gran's house was always cluttered, with stuff everywhere, and every drawer you opened was full and a mess, and you couldn't find anything. I am certain that in today's world, she would have been diagnosed with ADHD Combined-Type.

Returning to my thoughts about whether ADHD is something you're born with or a learned behaviour, I didn't have any female role models around me to show me that stopping, pausing, and breathing were good things to do. So I guess rushing around and being busy are also learnt behaviours for me, and the jury's out on the nature-versus-nurture argument. Still, I'm certain that my eldest son was born with a difference that I didn't see in the other babies he went to nursery with. He took hours to fall asleep at night and only slept for short periods, remaining restless. He also went from 0 to 60 mph when he learned to crawl, doing laps of the house for hours on end. He was so different from my friends' babies and also from my second son, who came along 3 years later.

COMING TO ADHD AND TRAUMA. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

Once I had a psychotherapist say to me, ADHD and trauma - what's the difference? Which, at the time, completely baffled me, but I now get what they're saying. If you're traumatised as a baby or small child, then the trauma symptoms you experience are very similar to ADHD symptoms. I think that, as the frontal lobe grows, the baby's brain tends to develop more quickly in other areas to ensure safety.

I can understand some of the symptoms of ADHD through a trauma lens. For instance ADHDers don't have trouble focusing, we have difficulty narrowing the amount of information we take in - I describe it like I've got a 270 degree vision (eyes in the back of my head!) and a lot of the time, I'm aware of what is happening around me (not just wants in front of me), even something happening on the other side of the room that's unrelated to what we're doing. One of my ADHD strengths is that I can hold a conversation with someone while still listening to another person!

Symptoms of trauma can be similar to ADHD

I'm also very aware of people's energies when I walk into a room (for example, I can instantly tell if something has happened in a previous meeting), and I can quickly read the room. I can even sense that something might happen before it does, it's a sixth sense - (a very strong intuition of people's impending fears and anxieties).

Now, if you think about these traits from a trauma lens, they're very useful, aren't they? You can imagine, as a baby or small child, being completely dependent on your parents and unable to protect yourself in any way, that becoming hyper-vigilant and hyper-sensitive in a non-safe environment would be very useful. You might develop in that sense quite quickly, so there are some similarities there that make sense. But if you look at the ADHD phenotype (as mentioned in the brilliant book "ADHD - A Hunter in a Farmer's World" by Thom Hartmann, it also makes sense that an ADHDer would be more aware of their surroundings and alert to changes in their environment, as living as a nomadic hunter is a very perilous sort of life.

SO, MY QUESTION IS... DO ADHD SYMPTOMS WORSEN DUE TO NURTURE AND CAN PARENTING EXACERBATE ADHD OR EVEN TEACH CHILDREN TO MIMIC ADHD BEHAVIOURS?

I will caveat what I'm about to say - without wanting to blame anyone, as it's not helpful, and I definitely know myself through having years of systemic therapy, how inter-generational trauma and psychological difficulties are passed down from parent to child.

Think about the generational trauma caused by both World Wars and other traumatic events of a similar or larger scale - we are probably all affected by it still today, as most of us are only here because our grandparents survived it. Yet they probably witnessed the horrors and felt the pain, too.

It must be accepted that, in most cases, there is no place for blame in these situations, but many of us struggle with what to do with the knowledge that our parents didn't make us feel safe as children or smacked us (which was common in the 80s) or had their own mental health challenges. This is especially difficult if we have great relationships with our parents now. I think a really good thought is that they were doing the best they could with what they knew or their resources at the time.

I know my parents were in their 20s when they had me, and for me to think I could have had children in my 20s is insane (I had both of mine around 40). Still, things were very different in the 70s, and parents often didn't give their children as much focus and time as we do now, which could lead to abandonment trauma, but equally, some children had a lot of great experiences.

WHAT I WILL SAY, BEING AN ADHDer PARENT MYSELF, IS ONE OF THE THINGS I STRUGGLED WITH WHEN MY CHILDREN WERE SMALL WAS STAYING IN ONE PLACE AND JUST NOTICING THEIR ACTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS

Paying attention to the small changes and what they were learning was so hard - I found these things totally understimulating for me and used to switch up activities a lot, getting out more and more toys.

I stayed as active as I could because it was so difficult to rest.

Being a new mum, I found that I couldn't sit still for long. So, a lot of the activities I did with my babies were out, and about, pushing the pushchair on a walk or going to classes like baby sensory classes, which then became overwhelming for my senses, so I can't imagine how my hypersensitive ADHD baby must have felt.

Also, I was working in an investment banking environment shortly before I had children, and I was used to a loud, bustling trading floor with a lot going on. I was do-do-do all day, so I found it quite difficult on maternity leave to relax much - I was worried about the impact of taking the time out would have on my business, feeling bad for not being able to stay on top of the house and that’s without all the other anxiety that health visitors and society puts on you to be the perfect 'earth' mother and do everything naturally!! 

I was definitely lacking the inner peace and confidence that I would have liked to be my version of a great mum, and was probably rushing around at 100 miles per hour as usual (as I was used to in work), which perhaps isn’t conducive to learning how to regulate their nervous system for a small person. 

That said, I am certain my eldest boy (who has ADHD) was born with it. As soon as he could crawl, he was crawling repeat circuits of the house non-stop, like a Duracell bunny.

As soon as we got the toys out, he was already bored with sitting too long in the same spot, and much more interested in trying to climb into the cupboard with the cleaning products. From a young age, he loved running, scooting, or cycling. He just really wanted to be on the move all the time - basically using his limbs in any way, and he had excessive stamina - he never said “I am tired, can we go home, Mummy”, not even once!

I do think that my eldest son was hyperactive from birth; he really struggled to sleep, and then he would wake up multiple times. So, we just went out every day by 9 am because he needed a change of scenery or to be physically somewhere, or he would have a meltdown and cry a lot.

Apart from the anxieties of being a first-time mother, I think I was the same with both children, and my second son has never shown any ADHD hyperactive symptoms (that I identify with anyway).

WHILST I CAN UNDERSTAND THAT MY ADHD SYMPTOMS WERE PROBABLY CHALLENGING MY PARENTING...

I have a strong view on heritable ADHD, but I can also see where nurture would play a part, and trauma, too. And I would say many ADHDers have experienced childhood trauma just from getting told off 20,000 times more than a non-ADHD child by the time they are 10!

I also think this is two-fold, on the one hand, lots of people experienced childhood trauma from an attachment styles perspective, a high proportion of us grow an insecure attachment, and that's probably due to how our parents were when we were young, which explains why over 50% of the population has that anyway. So you can also see how ADHD babies might be more grizzly and sleep less. My son had colic for five very long months, which caused him to scream for three hours every night between 10 pm and 1 am, which was really difficult to deal with.

It's not an ideal environment for bonding if you're not self-connected, which a lot of ADHDers aren't, as this is how emotional disregulation shows up. Then it's more challenging to connect with a baby fully. So maybe trauma is passed down through generations as an interruption of that connection. It can also perpetuate because of ADHD children, particularly hyperactive ADHD children, who are more challenging, which puts a strain on the parent-child relationship. For ADHD Children, the combined type often runs away physically and spends less time with their parents and the predominantly inattentive type spends more time in their heads, which means ADHD children will have less opportunity for connection with their parents. Parents will find it more challenging to connect with their child. Both of them would exhibit behaviours that would be viewed as 'not normal'.

Every criticism over time can become trauma we carry into adulthood.

Also, society's expectations that all children will sit still at people's houses, socialise well with other children and family members, and behave at parties don't help. For hyperactive children, it can become frustrating, and they can 'act out' - I know my son was a nipper, biter and fighter as a toddler.

My eldest was often sat in the corner on his own, when I picked him up from the nursery, he was constantly told off at home for breaking things, kicking things, not doing as he was asked and reactions to this behaviour is where small acts of criticism and all those tellings off mount up over time to create what is known as "small T" trauma.

They create wounds in a child's personality, self-esteem, and self-worth, and sometimes this also causes issues with their identity and relationship with themselves, leading them to become highly critical.

SO, TO ANSWER THE QUESTION OF ADHD - IS IT NATURE OR NURTURE, OR EVEN TRAUMA? I THINK ALL OF IT'S ALL OF THE ABOVE.

I think we need to move beyond this discussion and accept that no one thing is to blame for this condition. However, it will continue to move through generations, and we need to think about how we will prevent future children from having the same experiences we might have had.

How can we move away from the negative connotations of ADHD and learn to validate children so they work with their brains, explaining to our kids why they might be feeling so frustrated and bored? We need to support their experiences so they can understand themselves and go on to harness the symptoms sooner, without blame but with responsibility.

I think diagnosis is crucial in young people and in young children to help them early on. Schools should conduct across-the-board assessments from year 1 to identify executive function challenges earlier and support children from a younger age. It's just ludicrous that there's an agenda at the moment in terms of trying to make neurodivergent people feel like they're asking for something over and above what they should be. Whole generations have been blind to their difference!

I think we have to accept that people are different and there's a high proportion of the population (at least 20% from the last statistics) who show signs of neurodivergence. If we believe that everyone is a really important part of society and that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, nurtured, and brought up in a way that benefits them, regardless of difference, we will have more compassion in general.

I also want to point out that the proportion of women with neurodiversity, particularly ADHD, in prisons is ludicrously high, and I think making a societal change now will lead to a better future for us all and a better world in general.

How might you incorporate these thoughts into your own ADHD story and the future ones of your children?

Warmest wishes (be gentle)

Nat x

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ABOUT ADHD CAREER COACH NAT HARRISON

OF AYAMA COACHING

ADHD Career Coach Nat Harrison

Hi, I am Nat. I help people become more fulfilled and happy in their working lives by aligning their careers or businesses with their skills, values, and interests and helping them overcome barriers to making the desired change.

I am also a certified Specialist- ADHD coach. I work with neurodivergent people who want to harness their brains for the better and improve their relationships with themselves.

Book a FREE consultation below if you would benefit from coaching on your work-life.

Book Your Consultation Here

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