I’ve heard that for people to be teachable they have to feel safe. Feeling afraid makes your body enter a defensive stance and this includes not only resisting harm but also resisting knowledge transfer. I assume that’s why people who struggle with a subject at school sometimes have a difficult time catching up even when with tutoring.
It would then be similar to how you can’t convince a stranger who believes in wrong things - controversial topics cause stressful situations and when you’re seen as an enemy their brain goes into a defensive mode, distrusting you and not letting new information in. You first have to build up a certain level of trust and mutual understanding.
Maybe that’s nothing new. Either way, this picture reminded me of that.
Due to me having adhd and corresponding anxiety with a healthy mix of trauma I’m not sure I should speak on this. Sorta biased towards that fear response.
Anyway, almost universally, people with ADHD overreact initially to mistakes they make. This is for a number of reasons, including and not limited to, well…childhood trauma and an education system and culture that severely diminishes their accomplishments while setting inappropriate expectations. Because of all of this (and more besides) people like me feel an exhaustive level of fear when entering new social and professional situations.
The small, inescapable mistakes many people make are magnified in our own heads. So while we often learn quickly, if we’ve learned to cope, we don’t really understand until later. Because of this it can make us feel as if we are incompetent because we display a rapid understanding of complex information and yet have this incessant need to ask questions, even if we could figure out the answer with time and patience.
All because we fear we just don’t understand something in the way we know others expect us to.
Hey though! I’m speaking for a lot of people here. Anybody else with ADHD have a different experience?
This is definitely my experience, even as a fairly social ADHD haver. I think sometimes I come on too strong because I’m trying to figure out and meet people’s expectations, though I think I’m not great at evaluating what exactly those are and heavily overestimate a lot.
I think there’s more to it than that - sometimes when you get too comfortable you can likewise become resistant to teaching. Probably reality needs to find a balance between those concepts.
What does “too comfortable” mean in this context? To me it sounds like you’re bringing up the situation where students don’t care or find the subject boring and then do other things like staring at their phone, doodling, chatting, etc. Is that what you’re referring to?
I don’t think that situation has to do with comfort directly, if anything people feel uncomfortable because boredom is not comfortable. The cause for that boredom could be bad teaching/presentation, or maybe the taught information builds up on knowledge that the student doesn’t have cause they missed a class or didn’t understand the subject at hand or they simply just don’t care and find the topic uninteresting. The brain is good at conserving energy so when a situation seems unimportant it shuts off focus or shifts it to something else. That’s not always helpful.
I’ve heard that for people to be teachable they have to feel safe. Feeling afraid makes your body enter a defensive stance and this includes not only resisting harm but also resisting knowledge transfer. I assume that’s why people who struggle with a subject at school sometimes have a difficult time catching up even when with tutoring.
It would then be similar to how you can’t convince a stranger who believes in wrong things - controversial topics cause stressful situations and when you’re seen as an enemy their brain goes into a defensive mode, distrusting you and not letting new information in. You first have to build up a certain level of trust and mutual understanding.
Maybe that’s nothing new. Either way, this picture reminded me of that.
Due to me having adhd and corresponding anxiety with a healthy mix of trauma I’m not sure I should speak on this. Sorta biased towards that fear response.
Anyway, almost universally, people with ADHD overreact initially to mistakes they make. This is for a number of reasons, including and not limited to, well…childhood trauma and an education system and culture that severely diminishes their accomplishments while setting inappropriate expectations. Because of all of this (and more besides) people like me feel an exhaustive level of fear when entering new social and professional situations.
The small, inescapable mistakes many people make are magnified in our own heads. So while we often learn quickly, if we’ve learned to cope, we don’t really understand until later. Because of this it can make us feel as if we are incompetent because we display a rapid understanding of complex information and yet have this incessant need to ask questions, even if we could figure out the answer with time and patience.
All because we fear we just don’t understand something in the way we know others expect us to.
Hey though! I’m speaking for a lot of people here. Anybody else with ADHD have a different experience?
This is definitely my experience, even as a fairly social ADHD haver. I think sometimes I come on too strong because I’m trying to figure out and meet people’s expectations, though I think I’m not great at evaluating what exactly those are and heavily overestimate a lot.
I think there’s more to it than that - sometimes when you get too comfortable you can likewise become resistant to teaching. Probably reality needs to find a balance between those concepts.
What does “too comfortable” mean in this context? To me it sounds like you’re bringing up the situation where students don’t care or find the subject boring and then do other things like staring at their phone, doodling, chatting, etc. Is that what you’re referring to?
I don’t think that situation has to do with comfort directly, if anything people feel uncomfortable because boredom is not comfortable. The cause for that boredom could be bad teaching/presentation, or maybe the taught information builds up on knowledge that the student doesn’t have cause they missed a class or didn’t understand the subject at hand or they simply just don’t care and find the topic uninteresting. The brain is good at conserving energy so when a situation seems unimportant it shuts off focus or shifts it to something else. That’s not always helpful.