I get excited about ideas and possibilities a lot. Do you?
Sometimes it feels like I'm too excited though, too overflowing with ideas and things I want to explore: books to read, topics to write about, conversations I want to have. I don't know how to contain it. I find it hard to rest, I find it hard to sleep.
I have to summon all my willpower to do things that will quieten my mind because when I'm in this state of mind I don't want to quieten my mind. I want to go down these exciting rabbit holes and see what I can learn.
I've explored so much and formed narratives about my life story and my emotional responses with professionals over the years. However one thing that's still left relatively unexplored for me is this excitability. Is it hypomania? Would I meet the threshold for a diagnosis of bipolar type II. I don't know.
This week I read an interview with Anne-Laure Le Cunff by Gurjot Brar entitled 'The Hypercuriosity Theory of ADHD' which interested me a lot. The abstract of Le Cunff's paper 'Distractibility and impulsivity in ADHD as an evolutionary mismatch of high trait curiosity' states:
Recent research suggests that individuals with ADHD might exhibit higher levels of curiosity, which may be linked to their tendencies toward distractibility and impulsivity. This paper proposes an evolutionary mismatch hypothesis for high trait curiosity in ADHD, positing that ‘hypercuriosity’, which may have been adaptive in ancestral environments characterized by scarce resources and unpredictable risks, has become mismatched in industrialized societies where environments are more stable and information rich.
Le Cunff argues that 'individuals with ADHD will demonstrate heightened levels of novelty-seeking and exploratory behaviors, manifesting as symptoms labeled as distractibility and impulsivity in modern environments'. I find this fascinating for three reasons. Firstly, the valuable adaptive function of 'hypercuriosity'. Secondly, the idea that it's the environment providing a 'fit' or a 'mismatch' for this trait and thirdly the ramifications for thinking in this way on someone with ADHD's self-esteem.
Over the last year, I've become more and more fascinated by the neurodiversity paradigm and how this movement is shifting perspectives on different ways of seeing, and being, in the world. Whilst writing my second book I was undoubtedly, albeit unconsciously, influenced by the neurodiversity paradigm. I couldn't help but see my experiences of processing my emotions differently and my connections with others differently as somehow (even if tentatively) part of this conversation.
I'm very tired and need to go to bed, but before I go I want to ask a few tentative and half-formed questions. If ADHD is related to a 'hypercuriosity' trait and that trait has a use, what traits could I have as someone with a diagnosis of BPD?
And by the way, before anyone jumps on me, I want to make it very clear I'm not comparing ADHD and BPD. I know they are very different things with different etiologies, neurobiology, expressions and so on. I also know that the experiences which are labelled as BPD and the experiences known as ADHD can cause huge amounts of distress on individuals. Please give me the grace to explore thoughts and test out words here (which is what this blog has always been for me anyway) knowing that I have empathy for anyone who is in pain.
Could BPD be a hyperawareness of emotional connections?
Could it relate to a heightened need for emotional closeness or emotional containment?
Does it relate to a hyperawareness of others' communications and emotions?
Do the people who experience the world in this way bring an adaptive function to their social groups such as closeness or intimacy amongst certain people? Is there a social cohesiveness brought about by their need for emotional closeness?
I don't know, but this is something I know I want to think more about over the coming weeks and months. If you have any thoughts, I would love to hear them. For now though, I have to go and calm my busy mind, even though I want to stay here writing about this fascinating topic.
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