Is it ADHD, trauma, or the job? And how do you tell the difference? I'm Cinnamon, and this is After the Tones Drop. Do you constantly lose your keys but remember every detail of a traumatic call? Do you explode at a report delay but can forget what day of the week it is? If so, you might have ADHD. You might have trauma, you might have both. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the messy intersection of trauma and neurodivergence in the first responder world and how your survival strategy might be showing up as symptoms. Hey, it's Cinnamon, and welcome back to After the Tone Strap. This episode is for the folks who feel like their brain only works in chaos. For the people who can run an emergency scene like a boss, but can't make it to a dentist appointment on time to save their life, you're not alone. And more importantly, you're not broken. ADHD is often undiagnosed, especially in adults, especially in women, and especially in first responders. And trauma symptoms, they often mimic ADHD so closely that it's like looking in a mirror. So let's unpack this overlap and we're going to do it with compassion, clinical insight, and a little bit of real talk. So I want to do a symptom-by-symptom breakdown because this is where it gets confusing, but it's also enlightening. So we know that ADHD has some pretty standard traits. And ironically, there is a trauma mimic that goes along with each one of them. So the first is distractability, right? We have a cultural phrase for it. It is called scroll. And many of us are guilty of it. It can look like something else getting our attention because it's more interesting or because we can't control it. Something very similar that is trauma-related is hyper-vigilant scanning. So there's a difference between me seeing something move and it catches my eye, or I see something interesting, most of the time it just takes moving and it catches my eye. But if you think about hyper-vigilant scanning, if you're scanning the room, you're not scanning for something that moves or is interesting. You're scanning for a threat. But it can look the same if you're having a conversation and the person you're conversing with is not making eye contact or is looking at everything but you, or is going, uh-huh, uh-uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, yeah. Which, you know, I have a friend, Larry, many of you know him, who loves to like track my eyes. So if I'm not looking at him, he'll like bob and weave until I realize what he's doing and I start looking at him in the eye. So yeah, distractability can look a lot like hypervigilant scanning. The second ADHD symptom that has a trauma mimic is impulsivity. And it can look like this knee jerk reaction. A lot of times it's what we say before we think. So we've got impulsivity and it looks like fight or flight response. We have forgetfulness as far as an ADHD trait, and what the trauma mimic looks like is actually dissociation, where I didn't forget something, I wasn't mentally present when you told me that information. And how many people have gotten into a fight with their spouses going, you did not tell me that I did not know. And the other person, I swear I told you. And you're like, I have zero recollection. You know, usually if you tell me something and I forget, you say it again, and I'm like, oh yeah, I remembered. But when you aren't present for the conversation mentally because you're dissociating, then it's gonna look like forgetfulness. We also have task paralysis, where there's just so many things to do that we can't do any of the things, and that can mimic shutdown or freeze. And fidgeting, one of my favorites, because I am a huge fidgeter. If you are one of my clients, you already know this fact, and you could probably answer it on a trivia night. What is the primary way that cinnamon fidgets during session? Anyone what you would hear the entire Southwest region of Ohio going, she plays with her hair. And it's something that I don't even realize I'm doing, but I've been doing it since I can remember, since I was little. I would suck my thumb and I would play with my hair. I stopped sucking my thumb, but I still play with my hair. And sometimes you may even find me playing with someone else's hair. I have been known to grab a hold of some other, like usually woman's hair, and it's long, and I mess with it. But that fidgeting can just be a nervous system overload, and your body is in that fight or flight response. And the fact that you're sitting there and not getting up to run or getting up to fight, your body is like, what are you doing? You're gonna get us killed. And so that's why we often see people's knees bouncing or their legs are going or their hands are constantly busy. When you're living in a high stress environment, especially one where people's lives depend on your reaction time, your brain starts to adapt. And you might look forgetful, but you might actually just be overloaded. You might seem impulsive, but your system is just reacting kind of like it's under siege. And trauma and ADHD both impact executive function, right? They both mess with your memory, time management, and attention. And they both leave you asking, why can't I just do the damn thing? But here's the kicker: your chaos might have kept you alive. You learn to move fast, you learn to read a room in milliseconds, and you learn to anticipate danger, to stay in motion and to keep all the plates spinning. That's not dysfunction, that's adaptation. But here's the truth survival mode is a great short-term strategy. It is terrible long-term housing. You're not lazy, you're maxed out, you're running a six-alarm fire in your head while trying to find your damn keys. Who else does that? I lose my phone, I lose my keys, I lose my AirPods, I lose my AirPod case. I actually own two pairs of AirPods, one that's supposed to stay in my office, one that can travel with me. And that's not counting the third pair of AirPods in my drawer that I've already replaced by the time that I found them. So if you've never felt safe enough to slow down, if stillness feels more threatening than movement, that's not weakness, that's trauma physiology. So let's throw in a controversial but important perspective. So, Dr. Gabor Mate, he's a physician and he's a trauma expert, and he argues that ADHD isn't a disorder at all. He sees it as a developmental and adaptive response to early stress or unmet needs, which, you know, makes perfect sense. He says that ADHD is not a genetic disease, it's a response to an environment that didn't allow the child's brain to hang on, hold it, here we go, to develop in a relaxed and attentive way. I'm gonna say that again. ADHD, according to Dr. Gabor Mate, is not a genetic disease, it's a response to an environment that didn't allow a child's brain to develop in a relaxed and attentive way. Can we just say ACEs? No, not everyone agrees with him, and that's okay. Even if you believe ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder and also see trauma as an amplifier, both ideas can coexist. I'm in that camp. But Gabor Mate's view matters because it opens up some space to ask certain questions. One, where did this start for me? My mother loves to say, you were fine till you were five. Maybe somebody should have asked me what happened when I was five. We can say, what was going on in my childhood? How did I learn to operate this way? That kind of reflection is where real insight and healing begins. So let's play a little game. You might be ADHD if you've walked into a room and forgotten why you were there twice before coffee. You forget important dates, but can remember the license plate of the drunk driver from a call in 2014. You start five tasks and finish none. You interrupt people, not to be rude, but because you might forget what you were going to say, or you just got so excited to connect. You organize your paperwork at midnight, or not at all. I don't, I don't know, I don't know who does that. I don't know who does that. You're always 10 minutes late or 30 minutes early because you don't trust time. Let's be honest. There is a thing called time blindness where we do not accurately measure how long something will take us. I am so tie-blind. But if any of that feels too real, welcome. You're not alone. Some of the best of us fall into those categories. But here's what I want you to know: you're not defective, you're adaptive because your brain, for whatever reason, either genetic disorder, operational system difference, or trauma response, you've learned how to work in a world where you don't have the same skill set as everybody else. So you've adapted and you've gotten this far. You don't have to know why your brain works this way to deserve support. Let me be clear. You don't have to know why your brain works this way to deserve support. Trauma, ADHD, at the end of the day, you still deserve support. It's okay to ask for a formal ADHD evaluation. I did it. I did it when I was in graduate school. I was that many years old that I didn't get it until I was 23. And it's okay to try medication or to explore nervous system work or both. And, you know, some of those options can include ADHD coaching, somatic therapy. One of my favorites is body doubling and other accountability tools. I can get so much more done when somebody is just simply in the room with me. Nervous system mapping, psychoeducation, two things are key here. It doesn't shame and it doesn't oversimplify. Because let's be honest, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD doesn't even come close to touching all of the ways that ADHD can cause fallout in our lives. So here's your reframe of the week. You're not broken. I feel like I'm going to be saying that every episode. You are not broken. You're patterned, and patterns can shift. Your chaos is not a character flaw. It is a survival strategy that worked and it's just simply asking to be updated. You deserve clarity and support and language that doesn't make you feel like you're a problem to be solved. So stay curious, stay compassionate with yourself. If you have a concern or a question, reach out to a professional, take care of yourself in the ways that you're learning how. And I'll see you next time. After the tones drop is shared for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes. It does not provide therapy, medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment, and listening does not create a therapist-client relationship. The views expressed are those of the individual speaking. If you need a firmware, please reach out to a 5512 or emergency services in a crisis. Our theme music is intentioned by AVI Noise, licensed through update.