Ten years ago, when Donald Trump descended the golden escalator, even before there was any real momentum behind the idea that he had any chance of being elected to anything, my heart sank to my feet. My reasoning had little to do with his political leanings or his callous rhetoric about women, though those things have become more important.
Before that, however, I turned to my family and said, “No one should ever empower an unmedicated, older white man with ADHD to the most powerful role in the world.” No one in my family was surprised by my statement.
As a female with ADHD, I recognize many of the traits of this neurodivergent disorder in myself. Still, my experience of how adult males interact with the world is very different from that of most adult females. That is especially true for those who lived before the window of time in school when troublesome boys were being identified and medicated.
Women with unidentified ADHD often believed their failure to meet everyone’s expectations was their fault. We carried that cauldron of self-doubt everywhere we went.
We apologized and accepted responsibility, knowing we did not do it intentionally. We wished we could do it differently, but knew we probably would not be able to do anything differently in the future, no matter how much we wished.
The irony was that many of us were dyed-in-the-wool people-pleasers, and nothing would make us happier than pleasing the people we respected. (We were pretty horrible at caring about pleasing people we did not respect.)
Different for Boys
Those underlying truths about wanting to please may have held true for boys and men, but many certainly expressed their neurodivergence differently. That seemed particularly true as they got older: The less control they had over their successes, the more they saw their failures or shortcomings as anyone’s fault but their own. They projected, blamed, and recreated scenarios to support their self-aggrandizement.
I don’t think they set out to be selfish or liars. I think our culture and families, in particular, did not equip them to accept their foibles.
Still, that makes it no less frustrating to try to have a successful conversation or make plans with someone with this worldview. (I have long believed that many of the people who elected him and unwaveringly stand by him are mothers and sisters who protected and made excuses for their sons and brothers.)
Signs
There are two traits that people find particularly frustrating about Donald Trump. One is hyper-focus.
When something captures the attention of an undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD person, they can think of nothing else. It is the opposite of the popular “This is the most important thing. Oh, there goes a squirrel” version of ADHD—for example, “Golden Ballroom!”
Neither war, near-death experiences, nor chaos all around you can shake the brain from its fixation. In reality, all of those things are filtered through the obsession (i.e., golden ballroom), giving the obsessed more reasons why their fixation is so important.
I have been fixated on the idea of a collapsible porta-potty for twenty-five years. On some level, I understand his brain.
Another very common thing among unmedicated adults with ADHD is their inability to keep a story straight because their minds are pinging all over the place.
People have it wrong. Donald Trump is not lying.
He believes everything he says at that moment. It’s just that his brain will turn over and see another shiny object in his chaotic mind, and he will go into another equally momentary, reasonable response to a situation.
It was this phenomenon that led me to go to the doctor for testing. People kept calling me out on contradictions in what I said, things I did not remember.
I had always considered myself impeccably honest. Why was this happening?
It turns out this is part of how my brain works. Too many thoughts, too few templates, and too much external processing.
Which leads to a final observation. As an extrovert, Donald Trump must process everything out loud. If he were an introvert, we would still have the same issues; we just would not have to listen to them.
He uses Post-it notes as his processing style. If you don’t like that idea, he has a million more just waiting to be t-shirt cannoned into the world.
Understanding
As I told my husband years ago, when I saw George W. Bush stare off into the far future, and when they whispered in his ear that the Twin Towers had been attacked, “Oh my goodness, W has ADHD. I saw it in his eyes just then.” It was absolutely the least important thing that happened that day, but it helped me understand him going forward.
The big difference between George W. Bush and Donald Trump is that Barbara Bush clearly parented her son very differently from Trump’s mother. Over the years, I have told my Republican husband, “I like W. I would love to have dinner with him. I would call him a friend. I get him. I just know that, unlike him, I should never run for president, and neither should either of them.”
It fascinates me that Republicans, historically a party of accountants and lawyers, have allowed their party to be represented by people they would never do business with. It also confuses me that they have been cowed by a mean man with a neurodivergent mind.
I thought they were smarter, savvier and braver than that. What is their rationale for this chaos?
Oh, yeah, money. Now that makes sense.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Retired campus minister, campus ministry coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, and Collegiate Specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.