Reconciling ADHD and complex trauma.

I recognize this is a very heavy topic that may cause self doubt in people or just be too plain triggering - please be mindful of your emotional and mental boundaries if deciding whether you want to participate. My intentions are not to hurt anyone, only to have nuanced, exploratory conversations.

TRIGGER WARNING: vague mention of CSA, child abuse, religious trauma, grooming, emotional incest, and sex trafficking.

I’ve had classic ADHD symptoms my whole life and had to, in the last four years, go through proving over again that I have ADHD because my cPTSD was too hard to ignore. Mine is pretty intense: I am a victim of CSA by one parent, was emotionally and mentally groomed by another who also s**ually abused me by trafficking me to men online for a few years. There was also emotional incest involved for at least a decade from both parents.

My executive functioning issues were chronically punished via 2-4 hour interrogations in my room, sometimes multiple times a week. I had a step parent threaten to send me away if I didn’t behave, lied about talking to all my HS teachers about my grades to intimidate me, made s**ual comments about my body directly to me or my bio parent. I had a parent trash my room and try to choke me because I was just a messy kid, failing all my classes all the time, failed to do everything all the time. This same parent would leave voicemails on my phone screaming at me.

Religious trauma, cult trauma, need I say more. I’ve been through the wringer. I’m gonna be 38 this year and I’ve only been free from all my abusers for about 11 years. It’s been hard to recover from it all and know that my cPTSD has caused so much of my dysfunction while being told I obviously also have ADHD.

And I’m like…. Do I though? I know complex trauma like this can cause neurodivergence and I’ve no doubt about that. One of the most important questions, though, when seeking out this kind of diagnosis is figuring out if ADHD was always there or if it’s something else. For me, my trauma started as young as 3 or 4, could’ve been younger but I just can’t remember (thankfully); both my parents were also clearly neurodivergent, but they also went through really bad s**ual trauma in their young lives, abuse, abandonment, neglect….

Like, how to reconcile? Perhaps I’m thinking too hard about it, but for me, I cannot ignore the nuance and complexity that is my life. For others it really is a very simple conclusion, but I don’t think my experience, my history is unique, sadly. Because if it really just the trauma, then that may also mean I can’t access certain resources for my lifelong symptoms, regardless of how hard I recover from my cPTSD, that will not go away. My working memory is shit, my executive functioning is always shit; I have a learning and comprehension issues, auditory processing disorder, impulsivity, perseveration, disorganized attachment, all the things.

Can anyone relate to this? I’m not asking for details, but sometimes I just feel so isolated by what I’ve gone through and I’m just learning to be more transparent about it all. Thank you 🙏