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Attachment Styles Viewed Through Biological Drivers of Sensory Overload and Anxiety

3/31/2022

Attachment Styles are often viewed through the lens of some kind of childhood trauma.

I'm not saying that is invalid --- BUT I am saying I think the challenges of various NEURO-DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS do make relationships hard for NEURO-DIVERSE people --- who tend to be people with a lot of SENSORY OVERLOAD and ANXIETY.

Conclusion: Difficulty in emotion regulation and insecure-avoidant attachment styles were more common in untreated adolescents with ADHD.

The study findings support the view that ADHD is a heterogeneous condition and that insecure attachment style and emotional regulation should be considered in the assessment and treatment of ADHD

Emotional regulation and attachment style in previously untreated adolescents with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder

In Pop Psychology, "ATTACHED" to this "IDEA" of "ATTACHMENT STYLES" is this notion that "Oh, you're just overlooking and rejecting perfectly 'WARM' partners and everything would be 'GREAT' if you could just 'LOOSEN UP' and 'RELAX.' "

When we talk about COMPATIBILITY --- we're often talking about some kind of SHARED INTEREST.

Two of the things that Youtuber Paul points out on his channel Asperger's from the Inside:

You tend NOT to have the same interests as other people, and
There is a lot of "INVISIBLE STRUGGLE" ---- Paul likens it to a DUCK PADDLING UNDER WATER --- you can't see it --- BUT there is A LOT going on UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE.

I think one of the reasons NEURO-DIVERSE people don't have the same interests is because at least some of them have been seeking out a lot of KNOWLEDGE and DISCIPLINES such as MUSIC, SCIENCE, HISTORY, ART, etc.

--- to CALM some pretty CONSTANT ANXIETY ---that may be the result of some pretty CONSTANT SENSORY OVERLOAD.

So if you do manage to find your "INTELLECTUAL MATCH" ------ you've often also met your MATCH in SENSORY OVERLOAD and ANXIETY.

There's a reason why Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah is so popular and unfortunately where a lot of NEURO-DIVERSE people find themselves in relationships.

In one of the videos I posted on DYSLEXIA and ADHD --- the psychologist makes the CRUCIAL POINT that AWARNESS is KEY --- AWARENESS makes things "BETTER ALREADY."

With regard to AWARENESS --- Neuro-Diverse people are at significantly increased risk of PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS.

I think if Mental Health Professionals are MORE AWARE that some to many of their clients are:

NEURO-DIVERSE,
They are pretty close to their LIMITS ALL THE TIME --- because their brains are so HYPER-CONNECTED
This is being CONTINUALLY FUELED by SENSORY PROCESSING challenges that are also fueling a lot of ANXIETY
This is impacting every area of their lives --- certainly WORK and LOVE.

That's going to lead to greater AWARENESS in their patients --- it's not going to be perfect BUT it could be "BETTER ALREADY."

Steph Anya, LMFT explains "Attachment Styles"

Leonard Cohen --- Hallelujah

Understood: Thriving with Learning Differences

AWARENESS IS KEY.

Asperger's from the Inside
High Functioning Autism --- It's NOT what you think

Lex Morningstar
What Happened to the Lost Generation of Women with Undiagnosed ADHD?

I can tell you from my perspective --- IT WASN'T GOOD.

A lot of people --- certainly older people who may have done well in school --- did NOT get that diagnosis of a DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER because organizational issues, etc. were fairly well MASKED.

Further, they may very well have married someone in a similar situation.

When it comes to Neuro-Diversity --- If all you know is the GOOD STUFF --- YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH.

If all you know is the BAD STUFF --- YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH.

AWARENESS IS KEY --- and it MIGHT improve those ATTACHMENT STYLES.

When are we going to make the reforms necessary due to an invalid dsm 5?

3/29/2022

We're now about 9 years out from when Science 2.0 website announced that Dr. Thomas Insel then Director of NIMH gave the DSM 5 a "KILL SHOT" -----

It may be slow acting --- BUT it is slowly making its way through the System(s).

When you have SYSTEMS that are SO DEPENDENT on a particular WAY OF THINKING and that WAY OF THINKING is GREATLY CALLED INTO QUESTION---

Understanding there is a problem is just the FIRST STEP.

I think the problems associated with the DSM will ultimately be recognized right up there with the Copernican Revolution and Darwinian Evolution.

BUT both the Copernican Revolution and Darwinian Evolution went to RELIGION --- the PROBLEMS with the DSM are going to EMPIRICAL SCIENCE and its LIMITS---- especially if DIVORCED from:

REASON, and
HIGHER ORDER MORAL and ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

----Once you get RDOC (the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria Program)--- figured out --- we will start MODIFYING --- is not only NOT GOOD ENOUGH --- it's RIDICULOUS when it is not HORRIFIC.

May 3, 2013

By Hank Campbell

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is distancing itself from the the American Psychiatric Association and its upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

While they acknowledge that the goal of DSM "is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology" they are no longer convinced that approach has value if we are going to solve 21st century cognitive science problems.

It is, paraphrasing the statement of Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, more of a dictionary than a manual. He uses the term "Bible" instead of 'manual' but I would have used 'glossary' rather than 'dictionary'.

Insel pulls no punches in his statement on why they are not going to fund things based on DSM criteria any more.

"The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure."

This is a charge leveled at psychology as well, and the field in general, but psychiatry takes the biggest hits, because they are supposed to be the most evidence-based. Unlike psychology, psychiatrists have to be M.D.s first.

Writing in The New Yorker, Gary Greenberg tries to tackle why cognitive science hasn't kept pace with medicine, much less the physical and life and earth sciences, writing rather nicely that "it’s not entirely clear that psychiatrists want a solution to the problem."

Insel is more blunt. "DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever."

Basically, he says DSM is stuck in the past.

Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment.

Patients with mental disorders deserve better.

NIMH is leaving the past behind. In the past, Insel notes, they would reject a biomarker that did not match a DSM category. Now they instead want to collect how all data - genetic, imaging, physiologic and cognitive - cluster, and not just how symptoms do. They call it the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project.

"That is why NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.," he wrote, and that means funding applicants are going to have to adjust to the 21st century.

The APA may be outraged, and certainly some DSM-5 defenders, but I predict people in cognitive science who want to really do science and get NIMH funding are relieved that they are not going to have to cater to a document everyone seems to know was always flawed.

Read Insel's whole statement, Transforming Diagnosis, and have hope for the future.
Science 2.0

Hyper-Connected Brains --- What Does That Mean? And Why Can It Be Both A Blessing & A Curse?

3/24/2022

Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

"Hyper-connectivity and hyper-plasticity in the prefrontal cortex implies hyper-functionality of one of the highest order processing regions in the brain, and stands in contrast to the hypo-functionality that is normally proposed in this region to explain some of the autistic symptoms.

"We propose that a number of deficits in autism such as sociability, attention, multi-tasking and repetitive behaviours, should be re-interpreted in the light of a hyper-functional prefrontal cortex."

Hyper-connectivity and hyper-plasticity in the medial prefrontal cortex in the valproic acid animal model of autism (2008)

-------Frontiers in Neural Circuits

1 Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
2 Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Medical Daily:
Kids with Autism have Hyperconnected Brains (2013)

BUT HYPER-CONNECTIVITY IS NOT JUST ASSOCIATED with AUTISM

it is associated with Depression
it is associated with Schizophrenia
it is associated with ADHD
it is associated with Bipolar Disorder
it is associated with Dyslexia
Etc.

https://www.frontiersin.org › articles

by F Morken · 2014 · Cited by 23 — Overall, the dyslexia group showed cortical hyperactivation ... group differences in brain areas associated with language processing as well ..

University of Pavia, Italy

hyper-connectivity between caudate and salience regions in ADHD fMRI at rest
...https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › ...

by S Damiani · 2021 · Cited by 12 — Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) comprises disturbances in attention, emotional regulation, and reward-related processes.

Further, this HYPER-CONNECTIVITY appears to be related in some ways to EPIGENETICS and INCREASED HUMAN VULNERABILITY to NEURO-PSYCHIATRIC DISEASES.

Georgia Institute of Technology

"Therefore, recent epigenetic evolution of human cortex has shaped the cellular regulatory landscape and contributed to the increased vulnerability to neuropsychiatric diseases."

Evolution of DNA methylation in the human brain (2021)

Pitzer College

"Specifically, those with a high intellectual capacity (hyper brain) possess overexcitabilities in various domains that may predispose them to certain psychological disorders as well as physiological conditions involving elevated sensory, and altered immune and inflammatory responses (hyper body)."

High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and ...

Department of Psychology, Pitzer College, , Claremont, CA USA
Department of Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Seattle Pacific University, USA
Department of Research, Awesome Neuroscience, USA
Department of Psychology, Pitzer College, USA

Academic Medicine as the BRIDGE Between Research and the Clinician as well as the PUBLIC

3/17/2022

A lot of what we are about in the 21st Century is INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE.

The more the RESEARCHERS DISCOVER ---- the more that has to be INTEGRATED with EXISTING KNOWLEDGE.
Traditionally, this has been a BIG ROLE of HIGHER EDUCATION.

One of the reasons we now have this HUGE DISCONNECT between RESEARCHERS and Mental Health Clinicians is we have NOT appreciated the COMPLEXITY and DIFFICULTY of integrating new understandings that absolutely are going to:

the brain, BUT are also going to
the IMMUNE SYSTEM
the MICROBIOME
METABOLISM, and
the Endocrine System

Like a lot in LIFE --- there's NO MAGIC WAND --- there's a lot of HARD WORK.

Now once we get "it" FIGURED OUT --- it's easy --- "OF COURSE"
BUT prior to that "it" is NOT SO EASY and NOT SO OBVIOUS.

IT takes TIME, ENERGY and MONEY to INTEGRATE NEW UNDERSTANDINGS and we need MESSENGERS people will TRUST --- and UNIVERSITIES help to provide that.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) --- Scarecrow Gets A Brain

Based on the book by Frank Baum -- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and the subsequent series.

Psychiatry & the Criminal Justice System: Simplicity on the Near Side of Complexity

Translational Medicine Friday

Attachment Styles Viewed Through Biological Drivers of Sensory Overload and Anxiety

When are we going to make the reforms necessary due to an invalid dsm 5?

Hyper-Connected Brains --- What Does That Mean? And Why Can It Be Both A Blessing & A Curse?

Academic Medicine as the BRIDGE Between Research and the Clinician as well as the PUBLIC

Translational Medicine Friday

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