Poker Face

 If you search ADHD and empathy together, you'll find a lot of info about people living with ADHD struggling with empathy. You'll also find articles about ADHD causing more intense emotions, and more sensitivity. So how can we be both bad at emotions and more sensitive to them? 

Well, I want to start as always by defining. Empathy is defined in two parts, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I think in many cases, sharing is harder for me. As long as the emotion follows logic, I'm really good at breaking down and following along. But I'm very poor at showing emotion in general. So while I might understand the emotion, I am not great at copying it fully because I just can't force showing it. Just smile and wave is harder for me than for others. 

Those who know me personally might be arguing that at times I'm really good at matching emotion and being empathetic. I would argue that's due to a life of learning to mask and copy. Just being able to put on a show doesn't mean I am fully empathetic. I often find myself seeing some display of human stupidity and just not understanding how anyone gets to that point. So am I empathetic?

I think I am, often a bit more than some others. Because of my ability to see many perspectives of a situation and what if something to death, I am excellent at playing devil's advocate. As a kid, I got in trouble over something serious enough to have a 'talk' with mom and dad in the living room. When I got overwhelmed, my defence mechanism was getting giggly, which often made arguments worse. 

My mom got to the point of tears thinking I didn't care how this fighting impacted her. I didn't fundamentally understand why the issue impacted her and my dad and why it was such a big problem. But without understanding WHY it was so bad, I understood that it WAS that bad. I understood my mom getting so overwhelmed that she was in tears, even if I didn't agree or know why. 

Seeing her cry made me immediately start balling and running to her to hug and apologize. I still remember feeling that I didn't think I was in the wrong at the time, but regardless, to let her cry would PUT me in the wrong. So I empathized to what she felt and matched, even if I didn't agree with the reasoning. 

In this way, I think those with ADHD have a unique ability to empathize to many situations, even if they don't fully understand. I think this is why we are both bad at emotions and sensitive to them. We don't always understand what's causing the emotion, but we are able to recognize the situation and have spent our lives learning to mask and how to respond to those emotions. 

It's not that we don't feel, it's that we don't fully understand the feelings as well. We can see them, recognize them, and even react to them if we're good enough at masking. But often we're missing the deeper understanding of those emotions and their causes and effects. I believe this is why so many with ADHD find themselves struggling more with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. 

We get that 1+1=2, and we know the answer, but we need the teacher to tell us where the 1's came from, why are we adding, where to put the 2, and why is it '=' instead of just an arrow pointing to the solution? We can feel and emote, but we need that little bit of deeper WHY to really understand and be genuine.

With love and insanity equally,

J.M.