Understanding the comorbidity of ADHD Adult ADHD, learning disabilities, dyslexia adults and anxiety disorder, its detection and intervention can have significant results in easing symptoms and improving one’s quality of life.
What is an Anxiety Disorder?
Everyone experiences occasional stress, but people suffering from socialization skills anxiety disorder face such extreme levels that it interferes with their daily lives and activities.
Some adults with generalized anxiety
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) may suffer from panic attacks or develop a more extreme social anxiety disorder. They experience irrational worry about everyday life events such as work, money, family, and health if their life is consumed by constant worry.
Comorbidity Statistics
Approximately 30 to 53 percent of adults with ADHD suffer from an anxiety disorder. Furthermore, many adults with a learning disability and dyslexia have a high probability of an anxiety learning disorder.
Related: ADHD and Coexisting Disorders – PDF – Chadd.org
Anxiety is often undiagnosed as a secondary disability to ADHD and learning disability. Only 20% of adults with comorbidity are diagnosed and treated for anxiety. Mental health professionals rarely recognize the symptoms of an anxiety disorder while dealing with the primary condition. Sometimes, physical symptoms can be difficult to tell apart from one another as they share similar characteristics. Connection between ADHD and Anxiety
What Causes Anxiety?
Anxiety can be caused by genetics, brain chemistry, a sleep disorder, life or family experiences, worry over job performance, finances and a myriad of other circumstances.
Roots In Childhood
For many people with ADHD and LD anxiety begins in childhood. Children who struggle in class often develop anxiety and exhibit avoidance behavior rather than admitting they have LD, people with dyslexia and can’t read well.
These individuals avoid social and emotional stress. They recall unpleasant childhood memories from school when their classmates mocked them for poor reading skills or low grades or they suffered the shame of being corrected by a teacher in front of the whole class.
Living with Anxiety and the Constant Fear of Failure
Daily life for adults is a series of choices and involves a certain degree of risk-taking. Individuals with anxiety disorder fear of making a bad decision, because of the possibility that things won’t go as expected and will lead to failure. Memories of past failures weigh heavily in their decisions to take risks and influence how they function every day.
Stressful situations — such as fear or anxiety and worry of failure or not meeting expectations before undertaking a task or, the anxiety experienced while performing a task “can trigger a cascade of stress hormones that produce well-orchestrated physiological changes.
A stressful incident can make the heart pound and breathing quicken. Muscles tense and beads of sweat appear. This combination of reactions to this stress is also known as the “fight-or-flight” response because it evolved as a survival mechanism, enabling people and other mammals to react quickly to a life-threatening situation” Harvard Medical Review Understanding the Response to Stress.
Related: What happens in the brain when we feel fear? – Smithsonian Magazine
Anxiety Induced Sleep Disorder
Many people with an anxiety disorder and diagnosed with ADHD often suffer from a sleep disorder. Periodically, we all experience a sleepless night in anticipation of some life events, good or bad. However, sleep deprivation can be detrimental to one’s health. Sleep is especially important for individuals with ADHD.
Common Treatments for Anxiety
The first step to the treatment of anxiety is to observe your daily levels of stress and struggles. Once you observe, feel anxious and recognize the symptoms of GAD, it’s important to seek the help of a mental health professional and get diagnosed.
Cognitive-behavioral Therapy
The inactivation of the amygdala can be one of the effective treatments for anxiety.
Further Reading: What is cognitive-behavioral therapy?
Exposure Therapy
This therapy allows you to face your fear without being harmed, allowing you to confront your fears and anxieties in a safe, controlled environment.
Additional Resources: What is exposure therapy?
Relaxation Techniques
Yoga and meditation- Mindfulness – Tai Chi are all relaxation techniques to reduce stress and will help improve your sleep.
Biofeedback Therapy
This is also a safe and effective approach that can help you gain control of your body’s responses to stress, anxiety and help balance your emotional wellbeing.
Medications
Medications could be tricky. If you are taking medications for ADHD the treatment may include the use of a stimulant that can cause anxiety as a side-effect. There are also ADHD Medications for Adults that are not stimulants.
Taking Charge of Your Lifestyle
Engage in activities that you may enjoy and make you feel good about yourself. Experience physical activities such as long walks or choose other relaxation techniques.
Avoid excessive use of alcohol and drugs. Limit your alcohol and coffee intake as often they exacerbate the symptoms of anxiety.
Keep a healthy diet and stay away from food that you are sensitive to.
Further Reading: Harvard University’s Nutritional Strategies to Ease Anxiety
Did you know by improving your sleep will help to manage your anxiety? An improvement in sleep will improve your well being.
Encourage yourself to try to learn new ways of self-expression. Art is often therapeutic and helps people feel calm and gain self-awareness.
Keep in mind that getting a thorough evaluation by a mental health professional is key to your success in developing an effective treatment plan that reduces stress and anxiety and enables you to live life to the fullest.
References:
The Dyslexia-Stress-Anxiety Connection.
Jerome J. Schultz, Ph.D., for his assistance in the preparation of this fact sheet. Dr. Schultz is a clinical neuropsychologist and lecturer on psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
https://dyslexiaida.org/the-dyslexia-stress-anxiety-connection/
NOWHERE TO HIDE: Why Kids with ADHD and LD Hate School and What We Can Do About It
Dr. Schultz examines how stress, brought on by ADHD and LD, negatively impacts learning and behavior.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470902981,descCd-buy.html
Zahavit Paz is a co-founder of LD Resources Foundation. She’s a graduate of CUNY Graduate disabilities study program. She is often a presenter on Assistive Technology at professional conferences in schools and colleges and has written extensively on her personal struggle with Dyslexia and ADHD. She is an advocate for individuals with LD and provides resources and information through the LDRFA website. More info about Zahavit Paz.
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