The Implications Behind ADHD Symptoms

    With the immense number of changes that have directly affected our lifestyles in the past two years, it has been difficult for many to adapt to these changes while maintaining their focus on the important aspects of their daily lives. These issues have been especially apparent in those who have been diagnosed with ADHD. Those who struggle from ADHD tend to become too distracted and forgetful, which can lead to many difficulties with the structure of their lives. There are many important aspects in our lives that depend on our focus, including schoolwork, jobs, and relationships. ADHD patients experience difficulties with maintaining their focus on these factors while understanding that their life depends on these components, which often creates moments of frustration and low self-esteem when they have trouble completing their tasks.

    The plethora of moments of frustration that ADHD patients endure stem from their desire to complete important tasks but have difficulties with focusing on those tasks and finishing them in a sufficient amount of time. When they start noticing the abnormal number of hours and lack of focus towards their tasks, they start attaining low self-esteem, believing that they will never be able to provide sufficient production. As their frustrations strengthen, they lose patience in the process, constantly taking notice of their susceptibility to being distracted and of the prolonged number of hours that they are spending on important tasks. Many ADHD patients experience feelings of boredom, anxiety, confusion, and anger with taking care of their errands. In the article “Navigating My Son’s A.D.H.D. Made Me Realize I Had It, Too,” journalist Heidi Borst details her journey of being diagnosed with ADHD through witnessing her son’s battle with the disability. She describes her son’s moments of frustration with completing his math problems, explaining that even though the work was easy for him, it still took an immense amount of time to complete them due to his susceptibility to being distracted, making him feel bored and angry. It is frustrating for many ADHD patients that although their errands may be simple to them conceptually, it still takes a substantial amount of time to complete them due to their lack of focus on those tasks.

    Not only does ADHD affect one’s ability to complete important tasks and meet important deadlines, it also directly affects one’s ability to maintain a healthy relationship. ADHD patients are not the only group who can feel frustrated from their symptoms, their spouses are also capable of becoming frustrated from dealing with their partner’s inability to complete certain tasks because of their disability. In the article “A.D.H.D. Can Strain Relationships. Here’s How Couples Cope,” reporter Christina Caron details her study with couples who have been affected by the adverse effects of ADHD, including a couple in which the girlfriend, who went by Ms. Salamis, described her experience with her partner, who went by Mr. Lawson, with ADHD as “like living with a child” as there were an immense number of chores and major events that she had to take care of on her own due to Mr. Lawson’s tendency to become more forgetful. Whenever Ms. Salamis conveyed her frustrations to Mr. Lawson, he would become confused and defensive since he is not aware of how his forgetfulness is affecting his partner mentally.

    The experiences that revolve around ADHD partners providing inadequate support for chores and important errands are not the only causes of frustration for a couple: many partners feel frustrated from a lack of expressional love from the ADHD partner as well. The article proceeds to describe an ADHD patient’s transition from showing intense focus towards their loved one to expressing little to no focus, making the partner feel unloved in the process. Although people with ADHD can focus intently on things that interest them, the interest that one shows in a certain object or area can fade away as time progresses, and that is often the case with a person with ADHD towards their partner. It is difficult for a couple involving an ADHD and neurotypical partner to maintain a healthy relationship as there can be growing frustrations between the two partners regarding the lack of expressional love and general support for different chores and errands.

    The effects of ADHD prompt an important question: what are the cognitive explanations for these effects? Dr. Jasmine Kwasa recently provided a seminar for her article “Top-down Attention Modulates Auditory-Evoked Neural Responses in Neurotypical, but not ADHD, Young Adults,” detailing the results that individual ADHD participants provided in spatial attention tasks compared to neurotypical participants. The participants were instructed to put on a pair of headphones and report back the words that they hear. There were two types of attention that the participants were instructed to use: focal attention, which is simply just listening to the words that are presented in the center, and broad attention, which requires one to switch to the words that are conveyed to their left ear when there is an interrupter, which can arrive early, late, or never. The results from her and her colleagues’ experiments show that people with ADHD modulate neural responses less than neurotypical participants, suggesting that those with ADHD have lower cognitive flexibility. It is difficult for ADHD patients to immediately adjust to different circumstances, especially when they are already fixed, or have intense interest in a particular area.

    With these adverse effects of ADHD in mind, what are workable solutions that can minimize the difficulties that an ADHD patient can face? The first step is for people with ADHD to be aware of their habits and understanding that there are genuine issues with their cognitive abilities. The next step is to act and figure out ways to tackle those issues that they are dealing with. From there, they can try a variety of methods that can minimize their struggles, which can include seeking a professional and taking proper medications for their symptoms. As Caron and Borst emphasized, there are many moments of frustration that can transpire from ADHD effects, but it is important to actively find solutions to minimize the chances of the symptoms negatively altering the structure of one’s life.

References

Borst, Heidi. “Navigating My Son's A.D.H.D. Made Me Realize I Had It, Too.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/well/family/ADHD-adults-women.html.

Caron, Christina. “A.D.H.D. Can Strain Relationships. Here's How Couples Cope.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Feb. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/well/mind/adhd-dating-relationships.html.

Kwasa, Jasmine A., et al. “Top-down Attention Modulates Auditory-Evoked Neural Responses in Neurotypical, but Not ADHD, Young Adults.” 2021, https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.11.430824.