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ADHD is a learned emotional defense not a choice, defect or deficit. |
(Read #24-4 as introduction first) Once an ADHD child is aroused by feelings of anxiety and anger, his ability to learn attentional avoidance increases while his ability to learn math, spelling and the like declines. This happens in a two-stage process.
First, the child experiences both the discomfort of the emotion as well as its negative effects on his performance. And he is overwhelmed by this experience.
Second, he learns to escape this noxious experience through attentional avoidance. Although avoidance feels better in the short run, performance at home and school soon deteriorates.
Fragile Thoughts, Powerful Emotions
The heat of such emotion easily disrupts the calm, cool, and fragile mechanism of human rationality. In fact, emotional responses are much quicker and forceful than logical responses. Emotional responses are instantaneous, whereas a logical consideration of data, options, and a decision will take at minimum a few seconds and may take years.
If the emotional response happens first, the rational response won’t materialize. If the rational chain of thoughts is already in progress, it will be preempted by the mobilization of emotion.
That’s why the experience of “blanking out” in an emotionally laden situation, particularly, angry confrontations, is common. In the heat of battle, we’re suddenly inarticulate. Later, after emotions have cooled, we have greater access to our intellectual abilities. All the things we wish we had said become obvious.
In the heat of battle, did we develop a neurological abnormality, ADHD, or a learning disability? No! No more than the ADHD child does in the classroom. Rather, our emotional arousal temporarily supplanted our intellectual process. In adults, we talk about it as “blanking out”, but for children, it is a diagnosis of ADHD. For the ADHD child, the classroom represents the heat of battle. The Nintendo game represents performance after the emotions have cooled off. Just because a child’s cognitive ability is preempted by anger or anxiety, it most certainly does not mean he has a neurological defect or disability.
If the emotional response happens first, the rational response won’t materialize. If the rational chain of thoughts is already in progress, it will be preempted by the mobilization of emotion.
That’s why the experience of “blanking out” in an emotionally laden situation, particularly, angry confrontations, is common. In the heat of battle, we’re suddenly inarticulate. Later, after emotions have cooled, we have greater access to our intellectual abilities. All the things we wish we had said become obvious.
In the heat of battle, did we develop a neurological abnormality, ADHD, or a learning disability? No! No more than the ADHD child does in the classroom. Rather, our emotional arousal temporarily supplanted our intellectual process. In adults, we talk about it as “blanking out”, but for children, it is a diagnosis of ADHD. For the ADHD child, the classroom represents the heat of battle. The Nintendo game represents performance after the emotions have cooled off. Just because a child’s cognitive ability is preempted by anger or anxiety, it most certainly does not mean he has a neurological defect or disability.
Emotions and Rational Decisions
Smoking is a good adult example of how emotions subvert the most well intended rational intentions.
Everyone knows the dangers of smoking. There are frequent articles decrying smoking in all manners of periodicals. Most smokers can articulate this well. But when deep in the throes of a nicotine fit (i.e., negative emotional arousal), the smoker’s rationale, knowledge, training, beliefs, intentions are overpowered by the craving for nicotine.
This desperate need for a nicotine fix drives behavior; the fragile cognitive processes don’t. So the smoking goes on. The smoking persists despite the rational, mental acknowledgment that smoking is hazardous to one’s health and perhaps even fatal.
These same arguments apply to other dysfunctional behaviors — such as obesity, alcoholism, child abuse, or stress.
Similarly, emotional responses also wreak havoc on the child’s ability to follow through on rational intentions and agreements with others. If simple cognitive knowledge and choices do not change these negative choices in adults, how can we expect like strategies to change ADHD behavior? That is essentially what we are expecting of children when we talk to them about their “bad choices” to punch a friend, hop around the room, or not do their work.
What consequences can a child’s “bad choices” have that compare with the potentially fatal choices adults make? If adults cannot control their own emotionally driven behavior, how can we expect it of children?
The only difference is power. Adults have the power to impose strategies on children. If children cannot make these ill conceived strategies work, then adults have the power to impose diagnoses on children and drug them.
Once a child is emotionally aroused by, say, a parent’s words, a math book, or a teacher (as opposed to a craving for a cigarette), it is almost impossible for him to access logical abilities. The quiet and fragile insights and persuasive arguments that he has appreciated, understood, and agreed to are inaccessible because of emotional arousal. Emotions rather than reason are dictating action. This is often labeled impulsiveness and irresponsibility rather than emotionally driven behavior.
To deal with this impulsive behavior, the underlying emotions must be extinguished. Once negative emotions are extinguished, then cognitive understanding and resolve are much more likely to control behavior.
Clinically, the causal link between the anger and anxiety and the academic performance deficits are very clear. When this anger is extinguished by Computer Aided Emotional Restructuring (CAER), these children can perform as well in the classroom as in Nintendo. The child moves from a state of anger and anxiety to one of ability to attend normally — where he can access the same intellectual capabilities he possesses while playing Nintendo.
Everyone knows the dangers of smoking. There are frequent articles decrying smoking in all manners of periodicals. Most smokers can articulate this well. But when deep in the throes of a nicotine fit (i.e., negative emotional arousal), the smoker’s rationale, knowledge, training, beliefs, intentions are overpowered by the craving for nicotine.
This desperate need for a nicotine fix drives behavior; the fragile cognitive processes don’t. So the smoking goes on. The smoking persists despite the rational, mental acknowledgment that smoking is hazardous to one’s health and perhaps even fatal.
These same arguments apply to other dysfunctional behaviors — such as obesity, alcoholism, child abuse, or stress.
Similarly, emotional responses also wreak havoc on the child’s ability to follow through on rational intentions and agreements with others. If simple cognitive knowledge and choices do not change these negative choices in adults, how can we expect like strategies to change ADHD behavior? That is essentially what we are expecting of children when we talk to them about their “bad choices” to punch a friend, hop around the room, or not do their work.
What consequences can a child’s “bad choices” have that compare with the potentially fatal choices adults make? If adults cannot control their own emotionally driven behavior, how can we expect it of children?
The only difference is power. Adults have the power to impose strategies on children. If children cannot make these ill conceived strategies work, then adults have the power to impose diagnoses on children and drug them.
Once a child is emotionally aroused by, say, a parent’s words, a math book, or a teacher (as opposed to a craving for a cigarette), it is almost impossible for him to access logical abilities. The quiet and fragile insights and persuasive arguments that he has appreciated, understood, and agreed to are inaccessible because of emotional arousal. Emotions rather than reason are dictating action. This is often labeled impulsiveness and irresponsibility rather than emotionally driven behavior.
To deal with this impulsive behavior, the underlying emotions must be extinguished. Once negative emotions are extinguished, then cognitive understanding and resolve are much more likely to control behavior.
Clinically, the causal link between the anger and anxiety and the academic performance deficits are very clear. When this anger is extinguished by Computer Aided Emotional Restructuring (CAER), these children can perform as well in the classroom as in Nintendo. The child moves from a state of anger and anxiety to one of ability to attend normally — where he can access the same intellectual capabilities he possesses while playing Nintendo.
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