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Comment by scyzoryk_xyz | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like a chunk of what I experience on a regular basis, used to be more intense (now in my 30’s).

I know many creatives/artists who harness such traits to their advantage. I suspect more people experience reality like this than would openly admit. This is what I understand as “privacy” in my own way.

ADHD was my diagnosis, what I learned is that for everyone with the disorder a completely different set of traits manifest themselves. Different experiences lead to different coping strategies, which in turn develop different personalities and values depending on the experiences with success/failures/traumas. Because of this treatments vary. For some it’s medication, for others it’s something else. Treatment is a big word too - what if along with the things you don’t like there are parts that make you who you are. You don’t want “treatment” to kill those off.

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If part of who you are is in direct response to significant and ongoing unresolved trauma (by whatever source), if resolving that might result in that part ending up ‘killed off’ - or at least changed - no?

Hypervigilance, at least?

If nothing changes, nothing will change.

I've actually experienced this. I was diagnosed bipolar after a rather severe psychotic break. Up to that point I had defined my life as being a terrible person striving to become better.

Medication very quickly showed me I was not a terrible person, but that I was suffering severely from mania and even more dangerous paranoia.

As I stabilized, everything that defined me was stripped away, leaving an empty husk. I very quickly realized as traumatic at this was, it was a start to healing and an enormous opportunity. During that process, I got to choose who I would become.

Now, a few years later, I'm happy with who I am and plan to keep improving. Medication has allowed me to sit down and focus on creative things instead of being overwhelmed and scared all the time.

Thank you gor sharing this. I'm glad you found a way through. It must have been extremely difficult to confront and accept these realities. Seems pretty brave to me.

I’m not sure I’m brave. I deal with all kinds of mental bullshit every single day. Navigating it is as natural as breathing.

I like to compare what happened to a paint clay pot being thrown at a wall. There was no “me” anymore. Shortly after that happened, I did the obvious thing. I sat down on the floor and gathered up all of the pieces. Then I sorted through them and decided which ones I liked. Then I looked at a few other pots to fill in the gaps. Then I glued it all back together, kind of like Kintsugi.

That’s the only approach I considered. Giving up or letting someone else take responsibility never occurred to me.

Or you wouldn't let yourself see them, because you knew giving up meant destruction (or turning into something terrible), and no one else could be relied on to take responsibility in a way that would help you - or doing so could/would be used to hurt you. So you did what needed to be done. As scary as it might have been, if you'd allowed yourself to think about it.

That meets the definition of brave to me, personally. My apologies if this disrespectful.

Good job, and respect.

Not sure I catch your meaning there, but agree, I guess?

Where is the threshold of significance for the trauma is the question. And it’s a philosophical one, really. Individual.

If something needs to change then yeah, have to work on that one. I don’t know about being “hyper vigilant” though - that doesn’t sound like a good life to be living.

If someone is in a state of pain, unwillingness to change their circumstances or their responses to circumstances will stop them from leaving that state of pain. It’s hard to not call our personalities ‘responses to circumstances’ to some level.

There is no objective measure for ‘serious’ or not trauma, near as I can tell. It’s usually subjective measures like pain scales, or subjective judgements like level of dysfunction in daily life.

A veteran who physically attacks anyone wearing a uniform is a pretty easy diagnosis, compared to say an outwardly successful executive who has managed to hide his severe alcoholism. Both have issues.

Hypervigilance can also be known as ‘noticing things others don’t’, ‘being exceptionally very aware of others needs’, ‘being able to read people’s minds’, ‘seeing it coming before anyone else’, etc.

It’s adaptive when the environment has unpredictable and real threats. A soldier in a war zone who notices that twig snap in the background and wakes up is adaptively hyper vigilant. It can (and often does) keep him alive.

A leader (or follower) who notices their boss is going insane before it’s too late to get away, or that one of their folks is acting weird before they can betray the group? Similar.

The programmer who can’t get to sleep because they’re constantly trying to figure out why they think something is going wrong is maladaptively hyper vigilant.

But that could be because they aren’t being allowed to see what is wrong, not because there is nothing wrong. Or maybe it is because they’re overused to solving problems, and lack of a problem to solve is concerning.

It’s the state of always noticing what is going on around you and who is doing what, and frankly hyperfocus could be a part of it too.

That’s turning all that energy into what has been identified as the actual problem/threat (at the moment). Think tunnel vision.

Focus is nothing if not ‘removing undesired/confusing data from the picture’ after all.

Trauma reactions tend to be things like Hypervigilance, or complete tuning out/dissociation, or hyper aggressiveness (always fighting everything, even when it makes no sense), or extreme manipulation (as the threat was someone who could not be directly fought/won against). Each of these have corresponding disorders on various axis, though they aren’t called out as such near as I can tell.

Ah I see, so you’re saying hyper-vigilance can be a personality trait of sorts that emerges in someone in response to trauma. In some cases it can be extreme, in others much more mild?

I can see how this can relate to the very start, the OP. The tendency to daydream or creative trait as an overfit of sorts?

Interesting examples, can relate to IRL stuff going on for me ATM.

Exactly. If the trait has evolved as a legitimate (though potentially as an excessive/not-nuanced) response to an ongoing threat and/or has other uses, it can be very threatening to consider no longer having it. Someone who gets PTSD in a warzone due to a bomb going off, is going to take awhile to calm down enough to not consider bombs everywhere. If really traumatized and they can't process the experience well (keep trying to avoid it), it may be never.

It can even be legitimately dangerous to try to remove it blindly, if the actual circumstances aren’t considered. Maybe they're on a bombsquad. Or live in Afghanistan.

Or things like exposure to it makes a lot of money, and they’ll have real consequences if their spending/financial obligations aren’t adjusted. Or rejection of what they're being exposed to will make them a target for punishment or death. Suddenly deciding to not be a killer/thug without having a really good exit strategy first isn't a good plan for a member of a violent gang.

Or a key relationship seems to/actually requires it, and it will cause worse problems if that isn’t addressed.

Adjusting the response, taking a closer and less pain driven look at it can give options and help adapt and reduce the pain.

Most folks seem to get into these states because they’re trying harder to make what they can see work, and ignoring the pain (or can’t figure out why they’re feeling pain for various reasons). The trauma reaction is so severe it is getting them stuck through it's side effects.

For extreme creativeness (perhaps due to a need to escape a terrible environment), maybe it could be ‘losing the muse’, and hence their ability to earn a living or be famous or whatever their goal is.

For extreme aggressiveness, (perhaps due to a need to fight back against constant physical threats), it could mean losing a job or being killed/replaced if a real threat shows up - say if someone is a professional fighter, soldier, cop, gang member/leader, etc.

For extreme avoidance or manipulation (due to say an overpoweringly powerful threat in childhood), it could mean picking a direct fight they definitely won’t win.

For example, a NEET trying to go out into the world after a decade of isolation cold turkey, or a traumatized child of a powerful business magnate trying to recognize what he's dealing with, or a hapless middle manager pushing back against an experienced (but toxic) executive. They are NOT going to have a good time if they don’t take a nuanced approach. And a nuanced approach is exactly what is hardest with a non-adaptive trauma response.

Techniques like CBT can help untangle the confused thoughts and figure out how much can be dialed back or let go of and how much is worth/needs to be kept.

It allows the maladaptive to start to become adaptive.

Interestingly, CBT is about as effective against ADHD as it is with PTSD/Trauma.

EMDR might also worth considering based on what seems to be coming up, as it is quite effective with Trauma but hasn’t been well explored for ADHD near as I can tell.

Edit: I actually looked up EMDR for ADHD, and while not applicable with some co-morbidities, I definitely am not the only one starting to notice this connection. It is indeed promising in many cases [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9961224/#:~:tex....]

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