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adhd is fundamentally an emotional problem. ppl online talk about "rejection sensitive dysphoria" & "emotional dysregulation" as if they're symptoms, but they're closer to the cause. speaking as someone who's struggled with adhd-pi symptoms for 30 years:
>shit happens to you as a kid
>being a kid with no coping skills, you're overwhelmed with painful emotion
>you don't get the emotional support you need from your parents
>you start to develop low self worth (as a kid with a simplistic view of the world, you assume your parents lack of interest in your emotions is somehow your fault for not being good enough)
>so you cope by closing yourself off to the painful emotions
>unfortunately it's all one valve, now you've accidentally closed yourself off to life-affirming, motivation-inducing positive emotions too (joy, admiration, desire etc)
>now you have no desire for anything in particular, other than a vague yearning for comfort (aka mother-love)
>without emotion, your world becomes gray, uninteresting
>now you have trouble "paying attention" because you have no desire
>motivated attention is what tells your brain that something is important enough to remember
>without interest in the world around you, memory problems start to develop
>you build up a catalog of failures and disappointments, which aggravates your lack of self-worth
>you try to compensate by throwing yourself into "projects"
>these "projects" are doomed to fail bc they're motivated by insecurity instead of desire, and because you cannot cope with the inevitable emotional fallout of confronting difficulty
>you develop addictions to sources of easy comfort (food, vidya, porn, scrolling, booze, weed)
>instead of doing the scary work of releasing & learning to deal with emotion, you vaguely intellectualize it as a "brain problem" and pop stimmies to feel good about staying on top of your laundry for once
