Dr. William (Bill) Dodson

And even when you explain it, they don't listen.

They compare it to their own experience and it doesn't match.

They discard it.

ADHD is always there, unabated.

And so people do everything they can to avoid the occasion of either disapproval or, this is where the last feature comes in, your own perception that you've failed or fallen short.

Because ADHD sets you up to do that pretty much all the time.

So the pattern that I've seen is it has a profound effect upon the development of personality.

Personality is that set of problem-solving abilities that a person has that when they're presented with stress or a task in life, it's what do they have to do to continue with that solving, mastering, et cetera.

And everybody has a different set, and that's how we know who they are.

If somebody who's mild-mannered and very thoughtful has an externalization of RSD and a range of the person or situation that wounded them so severely, people will say, oh, Fred, it wasn't you.

I didn't recognize you.

So personality is who we are.

In technical terms and literature, it's the mark of the man or the mark of the woman, mark of the child, whatever.

And so people deal with it in three ways.

Some people just decide to quit.

They're not going to start anything new, anything challenging, unless they're absolutely assured up front of quick, easy, complete success.

If they don't have that, they don't start.

And so I have dozens and dozens of people that I've worked with who have never asked somebody on a date, never applied for a job,

They're grossly underemployed.

And it's because just the imagination of asking somebody and being rejected, being turned down, just the thought of it is so devastating.