ADHD and Anxiety: ADHD Looks Like OCD

by Dr Charles Parker on May 31, 2009 · 6 comments

You can’t judge a book brain by it’s cover.

So much of our work with ADHD is based upon necessary, but limited pre-technology diagnosis. For years we had to rely on appearances, and didn’t have the means to measure function, much less see specific areas of the brain as they function. As a consequence of using only one set of glasses we still use phenomena as targets, and many critique valid, peer reviewed findings regarding hard brain evidence.

As you will see in this video, ‘anxiety‘ can take on many different faces – and cognitive anxiety, you heard it first here, is simply not in the books yet – strange, but true. If we don’t look for it, we just can’t see it – and so much of ADHD symptoms are associated with anxiety. I see so many who say they aren’t anxious, but suffer from complete mental shutdown from cognitive anxiety. You will get it with this video.

Sign up either on the blog here for email updates or over at my Channel on YouTube to keep up with the many planned ADHD and CorePsych videos. Might as well stay posted for these small, but useful tidbits from years of ongoing office work, – evolved from when we couldn’t see what we were shooting at.

And, of course, not all OCD is ADHD, but with a history and significant additional findings we will get the medications dead wrong if we miss ‘dopamine‘ and only make the ‘serotonin‘ diagnosis.

Drop me a comment to see what you think about these findings.

Company Claims EEG Scans Can Help Identify ADHD (science.slashdot.org)
Teaching Children about ADHD – A Book Review (adderworld.com)
The Addictive Potential of ADHD Stimultants According to JAMA (medicineandtechnology.com)

—>Tweet this post below! For ADHD Medications: Download complimentary white paper Precise Solutions now, – and get ready for the complete version of ‘The Patient’s Guide’ details to follow. Get Neurotransmitter Details Here

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Tagged as: ADD and ADHD, ADD/ADHD diagnosis and treatment, ADHD Medication, ADHD Stimulant Medications, affect, anxiety, Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Child and Adolescent, cognitive anxiety, Health, medication details, Mental health, obsessive compulsive disorder, Therapeutic Window, youtube

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Heather June 22, 2009 at 8:41 AM

Bingo! This describes my 23 year old daughter who just graduated from college and is having a failure to launch.
She was diagnosed with ADHD-Inattentive 6 months ago and has been tinkering around with stimulants and is currently
on 40 mg of Adderall XR. We’re seeing an increase in OCD tendencies……order, order, order…controlling her external
environment, everything in it’s place (this from a girl who lived the “messy purse syndrome” her whole life. She’s
lost a lot of weight and is exhibiting a lot of “control” in her eating habits (small plates, eating slowly with small controlled
bites (very concerned because my mother died at 41 from complications of anorexia) She is over analyzing what to do
next and will goes days without even leaving the house. Complicated, a lot of stuff going on here and it’s hard to
decipher what’s the “true need under the iceberg”. She is definitely “talk” resistant and just wants to work it out on her own. Any suggestions?

2 Dr Charles Parker June 22, 2009 at 9:25 AM: Heather-
Only a brief discussion here, but if she is treatment resistant she really should look at Neurotransmitter testing as outlined here

Sounds like she is simply on too much stim, use the DOE as outlined in many other posts [Search], and consider dropping the dose of Adderall to get it in the 8-10 hr DOE range. If she is still having probs would suggest your doc try Vyvanse – much less overstim – or switch to a methylphenidate product.

Please keep us posted!
cp

Reply

3 Betsy Davenport, PhD June 10, 2009 at 2:46 PM

Cognitive anxiety — this is exactly the right term for it! One of my favorite people in the world suffers from exactly that, and has been severely debilitated by it and misunderstood more times than I could ever count. And, given the cognitive problems, this person has been completely unable to describe, name or explain the stall-outs, the freezing, the avoiding-because-it-is-too-painful.

I look forward to reading a lot more about this. To get it into words, Dr. P., is a real gift to the world. Thank you.

Betsy

4 Dr Charles Parker June 14, 2009 at 8:00 PM: Thanks Betsy,
Appreciate your comments and hope that your friend does see the dopaminergic side of that one – so often many are lost on the serotonin side of things because we have only been thinking ‘affectively,’ not cognitively.
cp

Reply

5 John R. June 1, 2009 at 12:03 PM