Taylor Smith, CMA, is a multifaceted Certified Medical Assistant. ADHD is a particular topic of interest due to having the disorder herself.
In addition to the far reach of ADHD into a person's workplace life and social life, all of the problems and ramifications that can come from this can lead to a person feeling pretty crappy about themselves. It's not an easy life to lead when you know that you're different from others, when you don't function quite like others. It's hard for ADHD people to separate themselves from the disciplinary actions they may face at work, or when they're younger, at school, due to incidences of behavior, or constantly overlooking something. It's hard for ADHD people sometimes to make and keep friends. They're just naturally boisterous, sort of almost socially dominating people, and it can lead to a point where somebody goes from being boisterous and socially dominating, and realizing that that's not working in terms of a social life, to being scared of other people, scared of rejection, and over all feeling terrible about themselves. This is where depression and anxiety figure in as comorbidities in ADHD. People become depressed because they can't maintain jobs, maintain social lives, they don't know what's wrong, and they don't know how to fix it. People become anxious because they begin to anticipate problems in social settings, in workplace settings. They feel, again, something's wrong or they don't know how to fix it, and that triggers anxiety and a low self-esteem. It's not uncommon for people with ADHD to report, overwhelmingly over other symptoms, that they have low-self esteem and can trace it back to childhood when their initial problems began. And again too, this is where substance abuse figures into ADHD. People have depression, anxiety, low self-esteem; they go reaching out for something to medicate that, and often it can result in a substance abuse issue.
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