Beyond ADHD
Healing Trauma and Retraining the Nervous System
An ADHD diagnosis can be a catalyst for something deeper: a pathway to healing trauma and retraining your nervous system. It can free you from being stuck in the past, blocked in the present, and afraid of the future.
The Impact of Trauma
Trauma changes who you are.
It rewires how you think, feel, act and respond. It alters your nervous system’s sense of safety, defaulting you to survival mode.
Everyday situations others find easy can cause overwhelming anxiety. You may avoid things. Cope with addictions and other numbing behaviors. Struggle to regulate emotions. React without control. Miss out on life or sabotage opportunities for success and happiness.
You may be constantly restless. Hypervigilant. Unable to concentrate, plan, or decide. Disconnected from yourself. Unsure of who you are or what you want. Unable to relax.
And it takes a toll, mentally and physically. Chronic stress can lead to anxiety, depression and even heart disease.
Trauma is not only psychological. It’s physiological. It affects your mind and your body.
We build workarounds to survive: rationalising and masking. But the dysregulating nature of trauma keeps us frozen, unable to revisit the cause. It becomes hard to separate truth from the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
You can end up living as a bundle of coping mechanisms. Avoidant, self-sabotaging, people pleasing. Doing what you must to survive but never thriving. And not understanding why.
A nervous system leaving your needs unmet. Robbing you of the agency to meet them.
Unable to be vulnerable. Unable to be you.
You survive. But inside, you wither.
ADHD and Trauma Overlap
ADHD — “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” — goes far beyond attention issues and hyperactivity. Its symptoms often mirror those of trauma.
Being impulsive and restless, problems concentrating, being hypervigilant and highly sensitive to criticism, failure or rejection. Difficulty making decisions, lacking motivation and desire. Anxiety and depression come along for the ride too.
It can be hard to separate especially given ADHD and trauma frequently co-occur.
ADHD is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. One of which is thought to be trauma, activating genes that irreversibly alter brain chemistry and structure.
But trauma also impacts the same regions of the brain.
And having ADHD itself can be traumatic, arising from stigma, a sense of shame from problems performing in school or work and leading to rejection and isolation.
The relationship is circular.
Trauma can cause ADHD symptoms. ADHD can also cause trauma.
Complicating this further, many people diagnosed with ADHD have also experienced trauma.
This is why a diagnosis can be life changing. Not just for managing symptoms but for starting the deeper work of healing.
The Catch-22 of Emotional Regulation
Trauma is the echo of something that overwhelmed your nervous system. It keeps it frozen at that point in time, scanning for similar threats and preemptively blocking the emotions involved. Switching into a fight or flight response as a defence mechanism. Automatic and involuntary. You have no control.
The only way to heal this is to feel the emotion.
But here’s the Catch-22:
Your nervous system won’t allow you to feel the emotion — because it thinks it’s protecting you. But you can’t heal without feeling it.
Many gain an intellectual understanding of how this affects them through therapy, journaling and reflection, but emotional breakthroughs remain elusive. You understand yourself, but are still stuck.
Awareness helps. But it doesn’t lift the block.
The nervous system doesn’t understand the passage of time or change in circumstances. That you may be stronger now. It won’t budge.
Without feeling the emotion, healing cannot begin. And you can’t learn to regulate the emotion.
You can’t regain control.
Diagnosis as a Catalyst
Healing trauma isn’t linear. It takes time. It takes many passes and it doesn’t happen all at once. It also takes courage.
People with ADHD and trauma develop masks and strategies just to survive. Over time it becomes hard to remember who you were underneath or even remember you are wearing a mask.
Healing involves unmasking and facing all the things you had to be and all things you had to do to survive. Then build a relationship with the real you beneath the mask. Someone who may seem like a stranger at first. Someone who may even frighten you.
The mask may feel safer than facing a mass of raw feelings and unmet needs. Like finding a prisoner who hasn’t seen the light of day for years. Or even decades.
That’s you. The real you. The work you have to do is to rehabilitate your real self back to health.
It won’t be easy,
Let go of the stories. Forgive the things you had to do to survive. Mourn the lost time. The missed opportunities. The regret.
Feel the anguish, grief and pain.
Your nervous system will resist. It’ll want to run, fight, or freeze. It’ll tell you these feelings will destroy you.
They will.
You have to face that head on. Face destruction.
A new you can’t be born otherwise.
For me an ADHD diagnosis was the catalyst. After years of therapy and self-help books, my diagnosis gave me permission to look where I couldn’t before.
But the diagnosis alone wasn’t enough. My nervous system still couldn’t allow any of this to start.
Scaffolding the Nervous System
My life has been shaped by complex trauma from childhood. This has held me back in life. Then my ADHD reframed everything. It seemed to describe and make sense of all the things I’d struggled with my whole life.
Suddenly the missing pieces fell into place. Like a plot twist rewriting my life story.
At first I didn’t want a lifetime of pain and struggle explained away by a diagnosis for some condition or disorder. I didn’t want it to minimise what I’d overcome and what I’d achieved despite odds.
But then I came around to seeing it as a blessing. A gift. Somewhere I could place all my anger and blame. Something I could rage against at first. Something I could battle. Personifying it as a secret villain hiding in plain sight my whole life.
I could say to myself: of course it had been ADHD all along. The cause of all my pain and misery.
This was all aided by stimulant medication giving an increased sense of motivation, wellbeing, alertness and focus. I turned this focus inwards and looked over my life.
I could sit with thoughts and feelings. Relive, process and feel. Accepting that it wasn’t my fault. Or my parents’ fault. Or anyone else’s. It simply… was.
Which meant I could finally forgive and let go.
Medication didn’t heal me but it did scaffold my nervous system. It gave me the strength to do the work. It broke the Catch-22 of emotional regulation.
It gave me the capacity to feel what had long been blocked. And once I did, I began to heal. Bit by bit. Emotion by emotion.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The floodgates opened.
And then I was finally free.
I could move onto retraining my nervous system. Strengthening the system that had previously failed me. Tried to protect me but instead had kept me prisoner.
I did this during a transitional period when I didn’t have external commitments. I was able to make time to work in seclusion. Then I emerged from my cocoon. Ready to go back out into the world.
Reborn.
Unmasking and Retraining
The next phase of healing was retraining. It was time to test my nervous system in the real world. To run experiments, get data, test boundaries and learn.
I put myself in situations which would previously make me mask on reflex or people please… and I was able to observe and catch myself about to do these and more.
I could pause and choose differently. Set boundaries. Say “no.” Acknowledge and prioritise my needs.
I could take risks and when things didn’t go as I’d intended, the blow was cushioned. No longer crushing. Which meant I could come back quicker, take even bigger risks. Feeling more secure and confident after each experience. More myself..
This is what medication helps with. It doesn’t remove fear but it does give you the strength to face it. To push.
Like going to the gym: medication is the energy drink and the protein shake. But you still have to do the reps.
Retraining your nervous system means teaching it what safety looks like now, not what it learned in trauma. You’re updating its data with lived experience. That’s what the experiments are for. Learning to regulate emotions.
The medication doesn’t do the work for you. It gives you a boost but you still have to put in the time and face the challenges in order to grow stronger.
Strengthening. Repairing. Rebuilding. Growing.
Think of it as a training montage.
And that’s what unlocks your life. Opens you to purpose, connection, and joy.
A safe nervous system changes everything. How you think, feel, respond. It’s the foundation of thriving.
To stop living in fear. To have your needs met. To be in control of your life.
Beyond Labels
Of course ADHD is real. It’s a part of me. But unknowingly using it as a pretext for healing trauma was the best trick I ever played on myself.
It wasn’t ADHD all along. Not all of it. But it’s what I needed to believe to get started. And it doesn’t invalidate anything I shared or spoke about on my journey. It is all still true. I do have ADHD. It is managed. Managing it was a part of healing the trauma.
By the time I realised all this, the work was done. What had been healed couldn’t be unhealed. What had been forgiven could not be unforgiven. What was let go could not return.
My trauma is healing. My nervous system is being retrained.
That was the point all along: to be free.
To go beyond the diagnosis. Beyond ADHD. Beyond trauma.
To live.
ADHD, PTSD, complex trauma are all useful labels. They can help with understanding but they also reduce and confine. They don’t define us. Nor are any of us only what happened to us.
Who we are is what’s underneath. Creative, joyful and full of life.
In time, as the dust settles, I may learn more about what was ADHD and what was trauma.
But the healing was never about answers.
It was about questions. The journey. The process.
Healing and emotional regulation were the friends I made along the way.
To Safety
This journey is about reclaiming your power. Your agency. Your ability to feel joy.
Sometimes a boost is needed to kickstart that. This is where the medication helped me. Over time I want to explore other solutions like mindfulness, breathwork, yoga and others.
It all comes down to safety.
A safe nervous system is everything.
Reclaim yours.
Start living.
What will you do to achieve it?
What are you afraid of?
What do you have to lose?
If you’re navigating the complexities of ADHD and trauma, know this:
Healing is possible.
Support is available.
You are not alone.
Thank you for reading.
