eli5: How does ADHD/ADD create “emotional dysregulation”?
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As someone with ADHD, imagine a web: you are like the spider, sensitive to all strands (aka: all stimulus) and someone has started tapping every one simultaneously at times. It jumbles up a whole host of cognitive functions, but it’s kind of like a superpower in someways.
Emotional dysregulation is not unique to ADHD, and not all people with ADHD have emotional dysregulation as a symptom.
Any situation or condition that puts the brain and body under prolonged or intense stress can produce emotional dysregulation: sleep deprivation/fatigue, hormone imbalances, anxiety, sensory overload, chronic pain, or childhood trauma, just to name a few.
People with ADHD also tend to experience these stressful situations / conditions more than average. Sleep disorders and anxiety, for example, are often co-morbid with ADHD.
I hope your doctor appointment gets you on a path to some relief.
ADHD is a complex set of disorders but generally it’s a disorder of executive function – the part of your brain that ‘holds stuff back’. Your brain wants to seek out stimulus and feel things, and executive function keeps it under control doing a task for longer or ramping down on a big feeling. That is a partial and incomplete answer but hopefully it hleps
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