Is It ADHD — Or Is It Attachment Trauma?

Have you noticed the huge rise in the diagnosis of ADHD?

It’s everywhere — in adults, in children, on social media, in therapy rooms. And while it’s often discussed through the lens of ‘neurodiversity’ or executive dysfunction, there’s something deeper going on that rarely gets named.

The Root Cause of ADHD
ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, but in many cases, what’s really going on is the result of unresolved, early attachment trauma, and for the majority of people, it’s more accurate to describe it as:

ATTACHMENT DEFICIT

In a very small nutshell:

• The psyche developed without a secure attachment figure — someone who could consistently regulate, attune, and protect.
• There were multiple sustained periods of intolerable pain or stress, so the system fragmented in order to survive.
• These fragmented parts became hyper-vigilant, and being still or at rest felt unsafe.
• By adulthood, this becomes a way of life — fast-paced, scattered, always ‘on’.

As a culture, we like to give palatable names to things we don’t want to face — and mental health diagnoses have become a socially acceptable way of masking deeper truths.

Even ‘neurodiversity,’ while helpful in some contexts, can sometimes act as a palatable blanket for what is, at its core, profound and unresolved attachment trauma.

Real Healing Is Possible

Therapies that address the root — not just the symptoms — can support us to come back into the body, out of self-preservation, and into the present moment. Modalities like:

• IFS (Internal Family Systems)
• CRM (Comprehensive Resource Model)
• DBR (Deep Brain Reorienting)
• SE (Somatic Experiencing)

It does take time. But the nervous system is designed to heal.

A great resource is Gabor Mate’s Book: – Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

You’re Not Broken — You Adapted

I invite you to pause, take a deep breath, and notice what part of you is speaking if you say, ‘It’s my ADHD,’ as if that defines the whole of who you are.

Part of what’s affecting attention, focus, and emotional regulation is physiological, and often tied to industrial and pharmaceutic

Chapters

• 0:52 The ADHD epidemic explained
• 3:04 Understanding attachment trauma as the root cause
• 5:48 Healing pathways beyond labels
• 9:09 Compassionate approach to recovery
• 13:12 Nutrition, toxicity and holistic healing
• 17:35 Taking responsibility for our health

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

Hello, hello, welcome to the podcast. So today I'm talking about a hot topic of ADHD. So is it ADHD or is it attachment trauma? So there is a huge and I mean huge rise in the diagnosis of ADHD. Not sure if you noticed, but it's just everywhere. It's in adults, children, social media, therapy rooms. Oh my God, hashtag ADHD. And well, I'm really really happy People are no longer scared to talk about their mental health.

Speaker 1: 1:06

I think it's fantastic. I think it's really fantastic. Something's going on underneath it all and, like usual, our human consciousness progresses in a very kind of messy way and it's kind of fabulous. But I think it's really important to talk about what's going on underneath it. That is rarely getting named. The information is out there, but it's just not being talked about. As usual, we're talking about the symptoms, we're talking about the labels, we're talking about how we adapt to that, and it ain't going to work. We've got to address the root cause. So it's often getting discussed through the lens of neurodiversity or executive dysfunction, and that really stays at the level of symptoms. It's just a nice palatable way to say what the root cause is really.

Speaker 1: 2:08

So what I've found for most people is the root cause of ADHD is attachment trauma. So let's have a look at what that means. Adhd stands for attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, but in many cases what's really going on is the result of unresolved early attachment trauma early including in the womb and birth and young childhood. And so for the majority of people, adhd is more accurately described as attachment deficit, a deficit of attachment, and the result is hyperactivity, a hypervigilant nervous system. So this is, in a very, a hypervigilant nervous system. So this is in a very, very small nutshell, just to put this on a podcast and just be nice and precise and clear about it.

Speaker 1: 2:59

So, in a very small nutshell, the psyche developed without a secure attachment figure. That's kind of therapy speak, for the parent or the carer just was not resourced enough, had their own unprocessed trauma and couldn't consistently regulate, attune and protect the child. There would have been multiple and sustained periods of intolerable pain or stress. So what happens is our psyche, our system, fragments in order to get through so that our circuits aren't blown. So we don't want to be present for what's intolerable, so we go off, we dissociate and fragment. So these fragmented parts then become hypervigilant. They're watching out for us, they're trying to protect us so that we can get away should anything like that or similar to it happen again. And so this hypervigilance becomes a way of being and we can't be still or at rest in our own self, in our own body, because that feels unsafe. We have to be hyper aware, hyper, hyper vigilant. So by adulthood this just becomes a way of being.

Speaker 1: 4:17

As I've said, it's. It's it looks kind of fast paced, scattered, always on multiple things on the go and really struggling to focus and be present in one's own body basically. So in summary, yeah, what we often call ADHD or ADD, it may be attachment trauma or even CPTSD, which is complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So PTSD is one incident and complex is a number of repeating incidents that they basically stack up on each other. Trauma sticks to trauma. Anyway, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't want to focus on the what's happened bit too much because I realise it's distressing and attachment trauma is so widespread much because I realize it's distressing and attachment trauma is so widespread that you know I don't want you sitting there kind of too triggered really. So that is it in a nutshell. I hope I've put it in a digestible way and I have written it out on the blog post as well so that you can go back if you need to just read through it a few times and digest each bullet point. But a really good resource is Scattered Minds the Origins and Healing of ADD, by Gabor Mate. So he details, you know, the origins of it and the healing of it, and he's got lots of experience too. So that's a great book to read. I've put that in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Okay, so I've laid out somewhat of a healing path here also, and yeah, the first part of that is naming the truth, because as a culture, we do like to give palatable names to things we don't want to face and, in general, mental health diagnoses have become a very socially acceptable way of masking the deeper truth. Even neurodiversity is becoming so popular now, and while it is helpful in some contexts and it helps schools particularly adapt to kids that are experiencing different things, it can also sometimes act as a very palatable comfy blanket for what is, at its core, a profound and unresolved attachment trauma. So I don't want to pathologize about people here. It's just about naming the truth so that we can point ourselves towards the healing, so real healing is genuinely possible. There are ways through, and the ways through are numerous and those are the sort of therapies or things that address the root cause. We're not talking about the symptoms. The symptoms are the end result of attachment trauma. What we want to treat is the root cause, which is attachment repair. So these are kind of ways of working that can support us to come back into our bodies, that can support us to come out of like a self-preservation and predominantly protective state and just into the present moment. So modalities like internal family systems, therapies like to acronym themselves. So if you're a therapist I'll give you the acronym here. So it's internal family systems. That's known as IFS. Comprehensive resource model that's known as CRM.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Deep brain reorienting, dbr. That's really good for getting attachment shock out. I quite like that. For attachment shock, the fight flight freeze response that we've all heard about. Shock comes before that. So you've got pre-shock everything's okay, but something energetically is felt. Then you've got the shock the actual thing has happened, the disruption, attachment disruption, and then you've got the response of fight flight freeze. So DBR helps get underneath that. That's nice. And then SE somatic experiencing Lots of people have heard of that.

Speaker 1: 8:29

That's Peter Levine's developed modality and that's really just really attuned into the body. Lots of listening, lots of room and space to unwind and come back to the present. So those are all body-based. So if you're dealing with ADHD, you've got to deal with the body. So, yeah, these approaches help us meet and integrate parts of ourselves that had to fragment and adapt in order to tolerate disconnection, stress, chaos and, basically, the absence of security. I want to emphasise that it does take time. Designed to heal. Our psyche is designed to heal and there's always a longing to come back home, even if we can't access it in our daily conscious awareness.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Okay, so I want to be very clear that if you or a family member or someone close to you has a diagnosis or a self-diagnosed many people self-diagnose themselves or their parents. That's what I wanted to say. Actually, if you are experiencing that in any way, I want to reassure you. You're not broken. It's not a permanent state of being. You're just in an adapted state. So if you hear anyone or even yourself saying, oh, it's my ADHD, I just invite you to take a deep breath, take a pause and just ask in your heart like what part of you is saying that, because it doesn't define the whole of who you are, so it might be just a part of you that wants to skim over the root cause.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Wanting to skim over the root cause within yourself is understandable, because the perception is, if you access the root cause, that is intolerable pain, that it's not going to be tolerable, it's going to be awful. And the reality is when we, when we are in a more resource state, when we are in a more adult state and we're with someone, we can access what was previously unbearable in a way that we, the pain, comes out and our system starts to relax, starts to come back home to our body. So it's really clear for me to really clear, it's really important for me to say that really clearly to you so that you understand even though you might be scared of getting underneath the label that actually you've already made it through, you're already out of it, you're already long past that situation, so it will become accessible. I just recommend those therapies I said earlier. They are listed in the show notes and, yeah, it's definitely possible.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Not a disorder or a diagnosis. And you're not permanently stuck. Even though it can feel perpetual and overwhelming and like you're just going round in loops again and again, you're not permanently stuck. Your system adapted the best way it could, and the brain is malleable. Circuits can rewire, safety can be restored, presence can return. Safety can be restored, presence can return. So developing like a compassionate way to understand ourselves and get some nice body-based tools for relating to ourselves really really do go a long way. Okay, one more thing Good nutrition matters. One more thing Good nutrition matters. Part of what's affecting attention and focus and emotional regulation is actually physiological.

Speaker 1: 12:48

So this bit of the podcast is from my own experience, my own training, my own clinical practice. This bit about nutrition is sourced from Anthony Williams work, so I have put the link in the show notes for about what I'm about to say. And it's not, it's really not pretty, but we need to be talking about it. So, yeah, part of what, what is affecting our brains basically, is often tied to industrial and pharmaceutical toxicity, our allopathic Western medical system. I've never heard them named that. I mean I understand there are some really cool doctors, but the system in its entirety it doesn't name that it's. It's just so much easier to label it a disorder, prescribe a pill or blame the person. I just psychiatry rarely helps really, unless you've got a really good shrink. Um, I mean they. Yeah, the system sucks, to be honest, I just don't like it. Uh, it's unhelpful.

Speaker 1: 13:51

I've met people that have been given a diagnosis of, you know, mental health diagnosis and no explanation that there might be a root cause. It's just a pill and thank you very much On you go. I'll see you in three months and we'll review the dosage. It's awful. We're basically medicating people that are traumatized and offering no help, or six weeks of CBT and depending on who you get, that might be helpful, but it's nowhere near enough for attachment trauma or CPTSD at all. Anyway, that's that side of it.

Speaker 1: 14:36

But our health, or more accurately, the treatment of symptoms rather than root causes, it's just big business. It's huge. Huge profits are made every single day from people being ill and the industry is definitely not going to investigate or expose itself because that would result in loss of money, liability payouts, etc. The same old fucking story. It's been going on for centuries. It goes on with women and their hormones dragging themselves and their wombs to the doctor's office who haven't a fucking clue what the menstrual cycle really is and about reproductive health. It's pointless, it's harmful. I just think it's time to take charge of our own bodies and our brain and our mental health and address the actual root cause.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Anyhow, I've put the link in the show notes to the blog post about healing ADHD with nutrition and PS. Little PS from me. If you do have ADD or ADHD or know someone that does, and are experiencing issues with your menstrual cycle, this is common, hmm, I wonder why. Common, hmm, I wonder why. So the link I've put in the show notes on healing ADHD with nutrition will also help your menstrual cycle, because toxic heavy metals can also get into our reproductive system. I've I've been meeting women that are bleeding for seven days. Bleeding for seven days, five days, heavy bleeding for four days, like this is not okay. This is not normal. That is not a normal length cycle at all. We don't have to put up with that crap, but we do have to clean our bodies and that is our responsibility. So anyway, I won't go on too much of a rant with it, because I do feel a bit ranty today, but get the toxic heavy metals out and it's not going to only help your brain, it'll help the menstrual cycle.

Speaker 1: 16:41

I've taken that I mean I've done that heavy metal detox several times over periods of months and I do. I do feel clearer and brighter in my brain and my periods now are. I just had my period, actually, and it lasted just over 24 hours pain-free, nice, fresh blood, nice flow. I rested for a day and it was complete. I've got a little bit of spot in either side, but what a joy Like we don't need to martyr ourselves anymore and just struggle on.

Speaker 1: 17:23

But we do need to do some work on our emotions and the root causes and nutrition, and I I've been I'm not great at nutrition, by the way, as well. I'm not that consistent and I've had my own relationship to look at and I'm still looking at with food. So, uh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying to sit here on my little um, what do you call it? Elevated chair, whatever it is, but let's get hold of it, let's take responsibility, is what I'm saying. So, yeah, my conclusion is that ADHD is mostly attachment drama or CPTSD. Okay, I hope that was super helpful for you. I'd love to hear how that landed with you. Please do leave me a review in Apple podcasts. You can actually leave a comment in Spotify or you can go over to Instagram and I've I've put a post up on ADHD, or shall I call it attachment deficit disorder, and comment on there. But yeah, I'd love to hear your experience and how it lands. All right, I will see you next time.