When ADHD and Trauma Intertwine (Part 6)

As I’ve been writing and thinking about my mother, one of the tensions I keep returning to is this, her limitations didn’t exist in isolation. They existed inside a home that, at times, didn’t feel safe.

My father’s drinking shaped the atmosphere in ways that were hard to name when I was young. Things could shift quickly. There was an unpredictability to it. Not always dramatic, not always visible from the outside, but enough that your body learned to stay alert.

In that kind of environment, children don’t just notice what happens. They notice who responds. Who steps in. Who steadies things. Who makes sense of what’s happening.

Who helps it feel containable again.

I think, without fully knowing it at the time, that’s what I was orienting toward with my mother. Not just her presence. Her response.

And when that response wasn’t consistent, it didn’t feel neutral. It felt like something important was missing. This is where things become more complex for me now.

Because when I look back with the language I have today, I don’t just see a parent who didn’t respond, I see the possibility of someone who may not have been able to respond in the way the situation required. Not consistently. Not in the moment. Not under pressure.

If ADHD was part of her experience, even unrecognised, it may have made certain things harder. Tracking everything happening in a volatile environment. Shifting attention quickly when something changed. Initiating action in moments of stress. Regulating emotion while responding to someone else’s. All of which are exactly the capacities that get called on in a home where things can escalate.

That doesn’t mean ADHD caused what happened. And it doesn’t mean it explains everything. But it may have shaped what was possible for her in those moments.

From the outside, what I experienced was:

• a lack of intervention

• a lack of protection

• a lack of someone fully holding the situation

From the inside, though I can’t know this, it may have felt like:

• being overwhelmed

• not knowing where to start

• freezing instead of acting

• falling behind what the moment required

Both things can be true. And sitting with both is not straightforward.

Because as a child, I didn’t experience overwhelm. I experienced absence. And absence, especially in moments where something doesn’t feel safe, carries its own weight. It changes how you orient yourself. You become more watchful. More independent. More attuned to shifts that aren’t being named. You learn to read the room. And, often, to manage yourself inside it. That learning doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from patterns.

I think this is one of the hardest parts to hold together now, that my mother may have been coping within her own limits in an environment that required more than she could consistently give. Not because she didn’t care, but because care and capacity are not always the same thing. That difference matters. But it doesn’t erase impact.

There were moments where something needed to happen, and it didn’t. Moments where a boundary needed to be set. Where protection needed to be clearer. Where someone needed to step forward. And my experience was that those moments passed without that happening.

Understanding possible reasons for that doesn’t take those moments away. They are still part of the story. They are still part of what shaped me.

What has changed is not what happened, but how many dimensions I can now see it in.

Before, the story was simpler:

• She didn’t act

• She didn’t step in

• She didn’t protect us in the way I needed.

Now, there is another layer alongside that:

• What made acting so difficult?

• What was happening internally that I couldn’t see?

• What happens when someone is already at capacity, and something more is required?

These questions don’t resolve anything neatly. If anything, they ask more of me.

They ask me to hold complexity instead of certainty.

Becoming a parent has made that even more apparent. Because I know what it feels like when something in the environment requires immediate response. To override your own state. To step in quickly. To regulate yourself and someone else at the same time. That’s not a neutral skill. It draws on attention, emotional regulation, and the ability to act under pressure. And those aren’t evenly distributed capacities.

There are moments, even in my own parenting, where I can feel how close I am to missing something. To being a fraction too slow. A little too overwhelmed. Not fully tracking what’s happening in real time. The difference is not that I never miss. It’s that I’ve had access to language, support, and awareness that help me recalibrate. Things she may not have had.

Still, knowing that doesn’t change what it felt like to be a child inside it. This is the line I keep coming back to: ADHD, if it was part of the picture, didn’t create the environment. But it may have shaped how that environment was managed, or not managed, in the moment. And that distinction matters. Because it allows me to see more without collapsing everything into one explanation. It lets me hold that harm can exist without clear intent, that limitation can coexist with care, that people can struggle in ways that affect others deeply.

And that understanding those struggles doesn’t mean stepping away from the impact they had. If anything, it brings a different kind of honesty to the story. One that doesn't simplify what happened, but doesn’t reduce it to a single cause either.

I’m still working out what to do with that. But for now, it feels enough to say

this wasn’t just about one thing. It was about how different forces. pressure, limitation, environment, met in the same space. And what it felt like to grow up inside that.

If you’re thinking about your own experiences, you might notice places where it’s tempting to simplify: to find one cause, one explanation, one story that makes it make sense. And you might gently ask: What else was present at the same time? And how did those things interact? You don’t have to resolve it. Just seeing more than one layer can be enough, for now.

Previous in series: The Ones We Didn’t See: Gender, Invisibility, and Missed ADHD (Part 5)

Next in series: Inheritance without blame (Part 7)

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