Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?
I’m working through something. It’s a riddle I’ll never solve, but I keep gathering clues. I want to know if my preverbal and childhood traumas caused my ADHD, or if my ADHD is hereditary. There’s robust evidence for both sides of the argument.
To add some context for you in this getting-to-know-me stage of our journey together, I was adopted when I was two weeks old. Until two years ago, I had no idea there was this thing called pre-verbal trauma. I’d never heard of this before.
I’m a journalist and I love doing research, but I intentionally avoided researching any of the traumas that touch on my personal history. I dislike pain.
A friend sent me a video link featuring British psychologist Paul Sunderland titled Addiction and Adoption. I don’t have addiction issues, per se (outside of binge-eating and over-shopping, so okay, maybe I do have some…)
…but drugs, alcohol, gambling, and sex addictions were never my jam. I don’t like feeling physically out of control. It turns out, there’s a massive tribe of adoptees with addiction and lifelong, trauma-driven issues. In fact, there’s a book the experts deem the adoptee psychology bible called The Primal Wound* authored by an adoptive mother named Nancy Verrier that specifically explains this pathology.
I literally wept on and off in waves for two days after I watched that Paul Sunderland video.
For anyone adopted following me, it’s imperative that you watch this video. You will gift yourself with the self-forgiveness you are owed. It will recontextualize your entire life’s history. Here’s one quick example: Paul Sunderland said their research found that adoptive parents commonly reported that their newly adopted infants would cry for six weeks straight when they brought them home. This research mirrored the running “funny story” in my adoptive household. My older brother—also adopted—asked my parents if they could return me for a different baby that didn’t cry so much…because my mom said I didn’t stop crying for six weeks.
I paused the video for a moment to sit still with that information…eyes leaking.
I have this hunch. I think that many adoptees have ADHD from this preverbal trauma. I don’t have research to back my theory, but I believe I’m onto something. ADHDers are pattern detectors. The symptoms Paul Sunderland described adoptees having in his video overlapped many of the symptoms ADHD expert Dr. Russell Barkley explained in his important video, 30 Essential Ideas You Should Know About ADHD. And Dr. Russell Barkley also stated in this video that while heredity is common, trauma can cause ADHD. Author Gabor Mate says trauma is the cause of ADHD.
Heredity Clues
The day after I turned 40, I met my biological family for the very first time. My parents Tom and Linda Turner were married when I was born that April morning as Annie Turner. Two weeks later, I would become Denise McDonald.
I was the fourth-born. I had three older siblings, one sister and two older brothers. My bio-parents divorced shortly after I was born, but they were on friendly enough terms with each other to join us for my first bio-family reunion.
This was cathartic for me.
Chris, my bestie since seventh grade, joined me on my archaeological dig for answers. This was information I’d longed for my entire life.
Once I met my family in person, I gravitated toward my brother Vince, who is 18 months older than me. He is the most like me in temperament. We’re both pranksters. And Vince shares my ADHD. I wish I knew for sure if his came from trauma.
After I was adopted out and my parents divorced, my mom met a man she wanted to marry, but he didn’t want children. She solved that problem by shipping my sister off to live with an aunt in Ohio. She sent my two brothers to live with her neighbor, their quasi-babysitter, who was moving to St. Louis. My dad remained in Illinois, working at a paint factory to send child support in two directions.
Mom’s love life impacted her kids. My brother Vince stopped speaking for an entire year. The babysitter alerted my dad that Vince needed to see a shrink. There wasn’t enough money, so it never happened.
My mom finally persuaded her fiance’ to accept her three children, and she gathered them back up to live with her and her new husband in Illinois. The new step-dad was cruel. He drank. He did drugs. He killed the family dog with his shotgun in front of my brothers because it was “barking too loud.” Trauma, trauma, trauma.
My adoptee reunion was no Norman Rockwell painting. I no longer speak to my sister. She is too broken.
I didn’t speak to my bio-mom Linda again until many years later, when I learned she was dying of lung cancer. I flew alone to Albuquerque to make amends with Linda. Gain closure. Help her truly rest in peace. During that final face-to-face meeting in my mom’s hospital room, I asked her some pointed questions. I was playing ADHD detective, seeking any clues that pointed to hereditary evidence.
My brothers had given me some. They described how our mother would routinely nap during the middle of the afternoon. Exhaustion is common for undiagnosed ADHDers, especially women, because estrogen drops exacerbate the exhaustion.
My mom would get bored and act impulsively. She painted footsteps going up the basement stairs, just because. She painted her kitchen cabinets Barbie pink.
My brothers described my mom’s emotional dysregulation. Linda could fly off the handle with fiery rages over the slightest provocations, yet remain perfectly calm in identical situations.
As I sat bedside with Linda, holding her hand, I asked if she ever experienced this build-up of creative anxiety. It’s something I deal with. For me, it’s like a cobra squeezing me with so much tension, I feel like I will burst into a million pieces if I don’t create a painting or write a story, right in that exact moment, regardless of where I am. She had it, too. She told me that whenever she felt like that, she would go outside to find some flat rocks to paint on. (Mom was a frustrated artist and her sister was a journalist for an Indiana newspaper, so my life’s work has been a natural progression.)
When my mom was young, her dad abandoned her family to become a hobo, riding on the trains for few years. That could point to ADHD symptoms like emotional dsyregulation. ADHD overwhelm. Escapism.
Linda’s brother Jim Miller became a muralist in L.A., estranging himself from the family; no one had heard from him or been able to find him in 50+ years. My mom’s mother was so abusive, my mom had little to do with her after she left home. Can trauma be passed down? Was this epigenetics?
SINS OF THE FATHERS
Could it be a coincidence that…
My sister gave up a daughter at birth in the 1980s
My brother Vince impregnated a girlfriend when he was 15 and the teen mother relinquished the daughter at birth
My oldest brother abandoned his firstborn daughter from the time she was a baby until she was in her 20s
My parents each married and divorced three times; my siblings each married and divorced three times
If this family trauma and ADHD stems from epigenetics, I’m breaking the cycle.
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