This is a huge problem in the field of psychotherapy. Unsurprisingly, people with every type of ADHD frequently end up in therapists’ offices. But even though it’s not that difficult to assess for ADHD, too many therapists never look for it. Worse yet, even when someone has already been diagnosed with ADHD, many if not most therapists do not treat it as a therapeutic issue.

Why does this happen? I believe it’s because of some very deeply held assumptions in the field of psychotherapy.

Most therapists are strongly rooted in the idea that their clients’ problems are caused by unprocessed thoughts, emotions and beliefs usually left over from childhood, and that listening, reflecting, relating, and working through these old unresolved painful emotions and erroneous beliefs will eventually lessen or eradicate them. Consequently, many therapists assume that if they treat their clients’ anxiety or depression or trauma history, their ADHD symptoms will no longer be a problem or even disappear.

This problem may actually be getting worse, not better. The cause, from what I’m seeing, is that many of the trendy somatic therapies, originally developed to treat trauma, are being taught online to neophyte therapists, who then get “certified” in the technique. The trainers then tell them that the technique will fix anything, including ADHD.

I actually had a trainer of one of these techniques, who had trained thousands of people, tell me that ADHD was caused by childhood trauma and her method could “cure” it.

It’s. Absolutely. Not. True. Countless real scientific studies have shown that ADHD is almost entirely hereditary with a small percentage of environmental causes. People with ADHD are more susceptible to being traumatized, and trauma, if they’ve suffered it, will exacerbate their ADHD. But trauma doesn’t cause it.

And there has not been a single well-designed scientific study to show that any of these new therapies, or any of the standard therapies like CBT, actually cures it.

Of course, it’s good to work through your emotional issues, and if you’ve had trauma it should be addressed. But by itself, doing so does not make ADHD symptoms go away.

That’s because ADHD is a processing problem. It affects how you experience and interact with the world every day of your life, and working through your traumas isn’t going to change that.

If you’ve been going to therapy for many months or years, and you feel as though you understand yourself a lot better but your biggest problems haven’t changed much if at all, consider that you may have Adult ADHD.