Mental Health
The ADHD Myth — Exploring Perspective, Diagnosis, and the Tao Te Ching
A Different Way of Looking at Diagnosis
As most of you know, I am a psychologist, and one of my modules was diagnostics. The examples I was given in a test: ADHD, Autism, Anxiety. I personally know people with ADHD/ADD, I've worked with and have friends with or without an official diagnosis. Ironically, I worked with two people with ADHD — one was so fast, their speech, actions, everything about them was in fast forward; the other, completely the opposite, so laid back. At school, I won't say how many years ago 🙂, lots of people were put on Ritalin.
What struck me to write this post most likely will not be what you expect. I ask you to just read with an open mind.
As a psychologist and researcher, you come across a lot of information. A common theme is that one person can "prove" something and another can "disprove" it. I could talk a lot about this, but this is not the time.
Aside from being a psychologist, I am also interested in, and have studied, other ways of healing, being, and living — energy, indigenous, other cultures, other countries, spirituality.
Looking at a different perspective
I've also read interesting books on WW2 — like Asperger's children, the Spanish taking over areas in South America and what happened to the Andean people, and others. The recurring theme is separation, denying differences in people, and power. We could talk about the witch trials, "no blacks, Irish, or dogs", the class system — the list goes on and on.
Just to give an example, I know someone who was depressed, but she was diagnosed with anxiety, and she became the anxiety. It really didn't help her, because she was focusing on the wrong thing.
If you'd like to read more about the power of diagnostics, look up Drop the Disorder — they have books too. Read people's stories from the other side.
One of the questions I asked a few years ago was: how did Germany, and the rest of the world, get people to do the horrible things they did? Hans Asperger was a psychologist whose job was to care for the children later named after him — and he was directly involved in sending them, along with Jewish people, other religious groups, gay people, the "slow," and the disabled, to their deaths. Categorization wasn't incidental to what happened — it was the mechanism. Your diagnosis, your label, your category, decided your destiny.
In my next newsletter, I'll speak about a German who did something kind, and saved the life of a POW — it's from the life story of David Chetlahe Paladin, quite remarkable.
What is perspective?
The answer, I think, is that everything is perspective. If we all lived in a tall apartment block, the people on the ground floor would see one perspective, and the higher up you went, the more you'd see. The east side would have a different perspective from the west side, or the north or south. I haven't watched the Channel 4 documentary, but I have spoken with quite a few psychologists and psychiatrists who see the other side — another reality.
I do understand that people are struggling. I know how hard it is to live in this current world. But I've also learned that focusing your solution on the external isn't going to help you. I know lots of people who, after the "honeymoon" period of a diagnosis, have ended up right back at the beginning. I want to stress that everyone is different. Nothing is black and white.
Diagnosis, labelling, disorders — these are all external. We could call it categorisation. In WW2, this categorisation meant your destiny was determined by the category. This isn't new — it goes back further than most people realise. The early 1800s saw the rise of the first state-run asylums and the beginnings of psychiatry as a formal institution, built to manage and contain "difference." Around the 1830s, the statistician Adolphe Quetelet introduced the idea of "the average man" — using statistics to define what counted as normal, and by implication, what counted as deviant. That's arguably the moment "normal" became a number you could fall outside of. Phrenology and physiognomy followed close behind, literally measuring people's skulls and faces to sort them into categories of character and worth. In the society of the past 200 years, which we are still living, people were not allowed personal power. Our medical system even is based on the past, our beliefs, and many other things are all from the 'old' world.
My perspective
My argument is: we don't need to be separated, just individually appreciated. I understand this is a BIG mindset shift for a world that has always known itself as separated, categorised for a history of 200 years.
That's one of the shifts we're going through at a cosmos level right now — from what some call Tribal Power to symbolic from masculine and war to feminine and love, from material to natural. The Andeans speak of the Pachacuti — the world upside down.
I'd like to share this passage from the Tao Te Ching, chapter 18:
When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear. When the body's intelligence declines, cleverness and knowledge step forth. When there is no peace in the family, filial piety begins. When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born.
To explain: the Tao (道), "the Way," is the natural order underlying everything — the way things actually work when nothing is forcing or interfering with them.
If I use kindness to translate this passage: when something has to be actively cultivated or insisted upon, that's a sign the natural version of it has already been lost. Genuine kindness doesn't know itself as "kindness" — it's just how a person moves through the world. The moment kindness becomes a virtue you have to practice, name, or perform, it's already become a substitute for something that used to happen on its own. The same goes for justice, loyalty, morality itself: they get codified into rules and ideals precisely at the point where the underlying wholeness they were meant to preserve has broken down.
The underlying wholeness has gone. We are living that same pattern right now. We have to conform to checkboxes, use certain words to be found and accepted by AI or systems, just to get a job or be seen on social media. We are living in a mechanical world where if you don't pass the "algorithmic" check, you are cast aside — the same logic of categorisation, just wearing a different uniform.
Going Forward
Going forward, each of us needs to stand up against the mechanical, the expected, the following of the norm.
In one of the books I read, it said that we all think Hitler or the Nazis are to blame. The reality is false. Each of us is to blame, for not using individual thought, critical thinking. It's easy — I, myself am guilty of this — to get caught up in the themes, fashions, and expectations. However, with awareness, comes knowledge, and with knowledge comes change. So, in a way it makes sense that there are threads that are preventing real awareness. I'm not talking about some of the stupid things on social media. The things that matter are not visible, and this too has been going on for hundreds of years — outside thought is not permitted. People that do speak their minds openly, well, they are very brave, Like this psychologist speaking about the Myths of ADHD. If we allow more individual thoughts, that too would make a difference. Instead of only this is right and this is wrong. Be open to difference.
Going forward, we should show forgiveness and appreciation to the past, for guiding us through big lessons. Learn from the lessons, and leave the past behind. Create a new, better future. A design never seen before, but with beautiful possibilities. Not perfect, nothing is perfect.
This is something I am very passionate about. If you would like to learn more, I will happily answer any questions.
Read this with an open mind. I do not know everything — I have one perspective. Let my perspective offer light into others.