E50 - Justice Sensitivity

Julie and Jel Legg explore the deep emotional responses people with ADHD often have to perceived injustices. They delve into the concept of ***justice sensitivity*, describing how this sensitivity can manifest in different areas of life—particularly through heightened emotional responses and a strong sense of moral fairness.**

They introduce the four key domains of justice: Distributive (fairness in outcomes), Procedural (fairness in processes), Interpersonal (fairness in treatment), Informational (fairness in communication). The conversation highlights how ADHD traits such as emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and intensity of feelings contribute to a heightened sensitivity to unfairness. The duo reflect on both childhood and adult experiences—ranging from emotional triggers to social scenarios like queue-jumping—that evoke strong reactions due to this innate sense of right and wrong.

Rather than merely complaining, they aim to unpack why ADHDers react so strongly to injustice, with a focus on understanding and self-compassion.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Justice sensitivity is often intensified in ADHD due to traits like emotional dysregulation and impulsivity.
ADHDers may struggle more with perceived injustices, reacting with an emotional depth that neurotypicals might not relate to or understand. Perception matters—what feels unjust to one person may not even register to another, leading to feelings of isolation or invalidation.
The emotional reaction can feel childlike or disproportionate, which adds a layer of internal conflict or shame.
ADHD brains often seek fairness and may instinctively advocate for the underdog or fight against perceived wrongs, even in seemingly minor instances.
Acknowledging this sensitivity can be empowering, helping individuals better navigate emotional responses and interpersonal dynamics.

LINKS

TRANSCRIPT

JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.

JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.

JULIE: Welcome to ADHDifference. In today’s episode we’re going to be talking about justice sensitivity. And for those of us with ADHD that sense of fairness is very strong, that strong moral compass or supporting the underdog. And we’re more attuned to noticing these things and then wanting to do right by the injustness that we see around us. So it kind of falls in to four areas I guess. One is distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. So we’re going to be talking about how they impact us and how it makes us feel.

JEL: There’s quite a lot of types of justice there. We’ll try to give some examples from each. We may miss a couple, I don’t know. But my first thoughts on this are I feel almost sometimes like my inner child is triggered in an unjust situation. That whole sense of “It’s not fair mum. It’s not fair dad.” I don’t pretend for a moment that’s very grown up but as a grown-up of course one develops the skills to cope with these things and deal with them. But the emotional trigger that happens inside always for me still feels quite childlike. It’s very easy when thinking and talking about this subject who for me, as a man of my age, to come across as a sort of miserable old man who complained at the whole world. I seriously avoid doing that. That’s not how I wake up each morning and set my store out for the day. And hopefully some of the examples that we come across will relate to you guys in your 20ies because your sensitivity and your awareness of the injustice of that may not be so well tempered and attuned as ours simply because we’ve experienced it more times throughout life and can spot it further off before it’s come at us. So how about you starting Julie with an example.

JULIE: I think before the examples maybe why, why are we so sensitive as ADHDer? And it comes up with this intensity of emotions that we experience which is one of our ADHD traits, and also how it can be dysregulated as well. So these swings, these… the movement of emotions and thoughts, and not necessarily be able to control them, and also that impulsivity as well. I was thinking of dysregulation of emotions.

JEL: Yeah, you’re right. Because we may say to someone, a contemporary, “Blah blah blah that’s really unfair.” The answer could often be “Whatever. It’s no big deal. Get over it. Move on or get over yourself.” But with us there’s an emotional response, that dysregulation which will make that… I won’t say a mountain out of a molehill but it will really firmly framework that injustice and fight to say “Can’t you see that’s an injustice? And if it’s an injustice for me it must be for you too.” But often for people without ADHD they seem to be able to ride through those situations.

JULIE: Yeah. And also too it’s a perception as well. It’s… we perceive things whether it’s unjust or not, it’s how we perceive it so we can own those feelings. But yeah, not everyone around us will feel the same way. An example for me… really simple things, and I think it comes under this interpersonal kind of justice, but it’s rudeness. Whether it’s queue jumping without a very good reason. I mean I’m more than happy to let someone in the queue that I think could do with getting to the front quicker than me but if someone just leapt in, I find that rude and that would irk me a lot. And I probably would want to say something and then ruminate as to should I? Am I being too impulsive you know? Should I just back off and not cause, not cause a stir? But yeah, queue jumping that annoys me. And letting in cars in traffic you know you slow down you go “Yeah I’m being good here. I’m being a great driver.” Just a little wave as a thank you would be fabulous. But it just doesn’t seem just when they just zoom on off and as if they had every right and yeah, they’re doing us a favour.

JEL: So of course, when we’re talking about these injustices and you use the word, I think you use the word moral. For a start we don’t all share the same morals. Morals are relative. There are certain things in society which we all pretty much should agree on, very base fundamental things. But certain levels of morality is, that’s not what this conversation can really be going into because we each carry our own relationship with morality. Injustice is not quite the same as morality, and justice is stuff that really can be measured by first of all the law, which we have in a democracy we agree on, that’s something which you know we do shape the law as people. Morality can vary much more. So there is kind of this grey area between the two. You’ve got the law of justice and then you’ve got the justice of morality, which is almost what you’re talking about. Here’s one. I will open a door and hold the door open for someone. Now straight away some of you might think “Oh that’s just misogynist. That’s a male thing,” and then blah blah blah. No. I hold the door open for men twice my size. Big, burly, hairy men and I’ll hold the door open for anyone. It’s just an act of… it’s a teamwork thing. It’s just a sensible thing to do. You wouldn’t let the door just slam in someone’s face would you? I mean why would you do that? And in doing that, if they then just bowl through the door and don’t even make eye contact with me, a smile or a wee thank you, it’s like “What am I? A doorman?” Yeah. So but I can’t not do it because if I don’t do it think, the one time I don’t do it, thinking “Ha. I’ve had enough of this,” it’ll whack back in some nana’s face and I’ll feel so bad for so long.

JULIE: And that’s the guilt and shame that you get from creating an injustice yourself. So there’s everyday little things of course. There are… there’s the bigger view as well. There’s rules. You know, whether it’s the council rules or at times police rules that you may or may not disagree with. We have a strong sense of, in our own moral code, what we think is right and wrong and it can raise the old blood pressure. We can be frustrated. It can get us angry. We can get fixated and quite yeah, quite enraged by some things. Look what’s happening around us in our community or what’s happening on the other side of the world, we just seem to be able to hone in and pick up on these on these things quite readily, don’t we?

JEL: Indeed. Right, I mean we have our set of morals that we have as individuals and works within our relationship, but none of those challenge laws. None of them break the laws. None of them. And so there really is that difference and we actually could be law abiding on in every regard. I can’t think of a single law we wilfully break. Laws and rules. Rules is a subset of law. Law are the big rules that have big punishments. Then you’ve got the rules of society that sit underneath. I think they’re perhaps sitting more towards morals. But we follow all of what we think are the reasonable rules of our society which again is a cultural thing. So you talk about queuing. Fine in our culture, which derives from the English culture, British culture. Not so fine if you perhaps derive from a Japanese or an Italian culture where queuing on the continent is not such a big thing. You dive for the bus or the train when it arrives you know. So we have to be aware that anything we talk about is from our cultural background. Talking of cultures here’s an example of something. I don’t know which one this would fall under. Procedural perhaps or informational injustice. I grew up in England until my adult, early adult life. I’ve worked a number of years at England as an adult. When you see a job advertised, they nearly always, always put a salary there or an hourly rate. So before you make any effort to apply for that job you know what you’re going to get paid. If it’s not enough, don’t bother applying. If it’s a good salary then really sharpen up your knowledge and you put your best clothes on and go along. New Zealand is shocking. I still, after over 20 years living here, can’t understand why so many jobs don’t get advertised with salaries. In fact, only recently I read there’s a movement that’s pushing quite strongly to try to force employers to give some indication of salary before you take a half a day off, go you know halfway across the city, sit, have the interview, go through the whole process, get to the end and then find they’re offering 30% less than you can live on. So that’s an informational injustice. And talking of money, the other one that drives me potty, I’ve been a web developer for a long time now, and again with my British clients generally would have prices on websites. In e-commerce in Britain and America, in large markets, if you don’t put a price on the website, you’re not probably going to sell anything. And there’s a bit of an adage you know, if you go and buy a suit in Savile Row, which I imagine and I don’t know, it’s probably going to cost you $20,000, I don’t know. “If sir has to ask, sir can’t afford it.” So there is that snobbery association with not having prices. In New Zealand we have countless businesses that advertise products that I may be interested in but they don’t give you the prices. You have to inquire. So there’s an injustice, an informational justice there because if I phone up and say “I’m interested in product A B and C,” I don’t know if I’m getting a fair price. I don’t know if based on me being an individual I’m going to pay more than if I represent a company likely to want a thousand of these items. So I just don’t engage with those businesses because there is always a sense of injustice. Go back to the salaries. If you’re young and you’re looking for a flat, or to share in a flat, how many times have you found an advert that doesn’t tell you how much it costs a week to live there? Never pretty much. You know it’s going to be $300 or $400 a week. “Thank you very much. Nice flat. Nice bunch of people. Can I take it?” Yep yours. But you wouldn’t engage with a flat if you didn’t know what it’s going to cost yet you’re expected to go and get a job that may not pay enough money to cover that flat. So this isn’t just an old man having a moan here. This does apply to young people too I think. [Yes.] And I think they get ripped off in certain situations.

JULIE: Another thing for me too is that I think it’s really unjust false advertising or misleading advertising. Anything, anything that pulls you into a store and they say it’s 40% off and you go in there and there’s two items that are 40% off and the rest is full price. And you know, I think that’s unjust particularly if you then have to argue at customer services. It’s yeah it’s just that sense of fairness. So really I guess what I think we are after is we like honesty, we like fairness, we like sincerity and we like the truth. And when it’s not, when it’s the opposite, that’s when I think our sense of fairness really… the hairs on the back of our neck stand up. It’s just arrgghh. No this isn’t right.

JEL: Because we’re going to fight for that. We don’t want to fight because we can’t always control ourselves in a conflict situation as well as we ought to. Because things, the dopamine… not it’s not the dopamine it’s the adrenaline. The adrenaline kicks in and so we don’t want to be in those situations. What you’re talking about there about deals I think there’s a sort of, that slightly can fall under distributive injustice. So you’re chatting to someone and they say “Ooh I’ve just bought the… and I bought this, and I did that,” and oh cool “Yeah it was only so and so. It cost me $300.” Are you joking? They saw you coming. That should have only been $100. So I can feel it for other people. I get very defensive when I hear of someone has been ripped off and I think that’s “They’ve really taken you for a ride.” And I’m doing everything I can. “You go back and you get your money back. You complain. You sort that out. That’s not right. That’s not fair.” So in fact I think to be honest most of the battles I fight when it comes to injustice are on behalf of other people more than myself, and particularly people who I think don’t have my life experience who got taken for a ride. That really irks me when they take advantage of people.

JULIE: And so it’s no surprise that ADHDers with this really strong sense of justice make really good advocates for social justice, for legal, legal justice. They really go in and they’re really hyperfocused and they do really well in those areas if it’s an area of interest to them. Also we don’t like to be discriminated against for any reason. And that sense of being victimized also doesn’t sit very well with us. And I guess if it happens often enough then you actually get a little bit… you feel like you’re a victim in life, and that’s not a good place to sit at all. So it’s just I don’t know. So it’s not just cheating at Monopoly when everyone knows the rules and you know, someone’s cheating. It’s the banker, isn’t it. Always the banker. There’s things that creep into our daily lives but there’s the bigger worldly view on what we think’s fair and not. And yeah we can… it’s tricky because do, at times, we will stand up and say exactly how we feel. And other times we maybe because we’re aware of our ADHD traits, maybe we don’t say it. And this is again the loop, the loop of overthinking. I should have said something at the time.

JEL: Yes, we’ve talked about that and then it can weigh on our minds for hours, days, even weeks and so long in the future we go “Oh do you remember? Oh, I wish. If I was there again now I’d say this.” Well no, we wouldn’t say that. There’s 101 things we’d say. We have to play it through in our mind. And we’ve spoken about this in another episode, how we do play things through in our mind. Even outside of the injustice thing, if someone criticizes us. I think it was amongst Criticism and how well we don’t necessarily reply straight away. We need time to process it and come up with a calm sensible answer. But injustice, it can just hit you left, right and centre from all over the place. Just going out for a shop. Just reading the newspaper. I tend not to read stories that focus on court cases, particularly if they’re quite unpleasant crimes and particularly when it gets to the bottom where they talk about sentencing. And I think “Is this just me?” And what I’m likely to do is skip that and go and see what the public thinks through public forums. And when you do brrrrrrr, 600 responses and 600 comments and boom boom boom boom every single one is “You’re joking,” and “The judge is having a laugh. It’s like ridiculous. That should have been three times as long.” I think there is injustice without looking at the details of the case. There’s this public talking about the big injustice of something and I think what ooh that’s a big one. I have to step away from that. Why are we still in a world where that… but of course, you put your rational head on, there are often reasons behind that situation you’re not a party to it. You weren’t in the court case. So there are things we can do with ADHD to avoid certain things. I’m not saying be ignorant to the world going on around you. I’m not saying bury your head in the sand. But some things can be quite super triggering on a large scale. Whether it’s that level of justice or sometimes international events that go against your beliefs or moral code. Just need sort of step back a bit sometimes.

JULIE: Yeah. Another one is people. People. People. People that don’t appear authentic or who aren’t acting authentically. You could say that they’re perhaps being a fake, or what’s coming out of their mouth is a whole bunch of lies. You know, I think the fairness, particularly if someone is up making up a story in their defence and you know darn well that that’s not the case, then the whole situation becomes really unjust because you know you’re not on an even playing field to chat openly about said action. Yeah. So I find that really frustrating as well.

JEL: On the interpersonal one, that reminds me. So again we’ve spoken about this before with energy levels engaging with people. So if we find ourselves in a social and we’re engaging with someone who doesn’t ask a single question of us, yet we ask them lots of questions, and we’re very engaging and you know we’re here having a social. Let’s make it fun for everyone. And it’s just a one-way flat conversation and there’s no energy and no interest but they want to keep talking to you. You know they’re not so bored they’re yawning and walking away. There’s a great social interpersonal injustice in there. And sometimes we’ve had to host people in a situation for some period of time. By the end of it we’re absolutely exhausted and had enough. And there’s a real sense of injustice there because we will say to each other “What did we learn about that person? Everything. What did they learn about us? Nothing. Did they ask about ABC? Nothing.” And they could leave our company and they’re “Wonderful. Wonderful. Lovely. Thank you. Lovely wonderful times.” For you maybe. So there’s a great injustice there and that’s something we have to avoid, really avoid.

JULIE: And I guess how do we you know, when we feel that our emotions are starting to brew and we really want to go and correct this injustice that we perceive that for our own moral code it’s irking us, how do we deal with it? Because it’s kind of like a it’s sometimes it’s an irrational thought and other times it’s extremely rational. You know we know exactly what we’re thinking and what do we do? Because we can’t just say “Oh it doesn’t really matter. Put things into perspective,” or you know, they’re very sensible things to say.

JEL: Generally, the only successful outcome is the very antithesis of what we want to do. It’s that patience and somehow switch your mind off and disconnect from the situation, and have patience for it to resolve itself. Two examples come to mind. Waiting in a doctor or dentist surgery for your 3:00 appointment and it’s now 3:30. Oh yes. I was like you know so I’m ready to walk out. You know, this is not the deal. And I appreciate being 5-10 minutes late. When we start getting into this space of course now, where’s that critical moment? Where I “Excuse me nurse, can I just check you have booked me in? I mean, I do have an appointment. Is it my fault?” Yeah, because you don’t want to make a scene. That drives me nuts. There is, there have been times in supermarkets when the queues are 6 deep, half the tills are closed, and I see members of staff, three or four of them… I’m sorry if you work in a supermarket. I’m sure you’re going to have a go at me for this. But you see people, some members of staff chatting away and I left a whole trolley full of stuff because I can see it’s going to take me too long to get out. That’s not the deal. That’s not kind of implied contractual relationship. If all the tills are open, everyone’s working hard, oh yeah, champions all of you. You see but I’m not managing that store and so I… that’s an injustice to me. It’s a procedural justice? It’s like we have an arrangement. You open the tills. You sell things. When the queues get too deep you manage them, move them along. I really appreciate that. But when it’s just being ignored. And I feel sorry for the staff that are working on the tills but someone somewhere did not expect it to be busy at 5:00 on a Friday. It’s never happened before. Really? And if there aren’t enough people working there then I’ve got a big problem with the company because they’re not paying enough to the people to work there. Increase their…. see there’s a distributive justice, screwing people down for the lowest salary per hour. Put it up. Give them more money. Make it a place to come and work at so that I don’t have to queue in the queues. You’re already putting the prices up. Anyway, that’s it’s a systemic thing, isn’t it. And so this is what I mean is with the systemic stuff, when you start thinking about something that affects you in a minute little way like that and then you start thinking about the bigger picture, you almost need to run home, shut the doors and windows, and hide under a blanket. It’s too much.

JULIE: That’s a drastic approach but you were kind of alluding to earlier and that’s mindfulness. Yes. And it’s just letting… we’ve talked about mindfulness before but it’s just letting thoughts flow through you without feeling that you have to solve everything and you have to address everything now. And just being aware of things other than your thoughts, you know the feeling of the wind, the breeze on your face, or the grass under your feet, which I often talk about. Just not to take on board absolutely everything because that really strong sense of fairness or justice sensitivity that we have as ADHDers, can really wind us up and exhaust us and take over. You know, that’s this fixation on a particular subject or situation can really run us ragged.

JEL: Because I think a good thing to remember is, whether we like it or not, the world is an unfair place. The world is probably more than 50% injustice. And back to how we started when you say to your mum when you’re 5 years old “It’s not fair mum,” well life’s not fair so get on with it. Ohhh. You get taught quite early on. I think I used to say “I don’t recall…” I used to say to the kids, it’s a bit mean, “I don’t recall it. Let me just check your birth certificate. No. It doesn’t say on here life’s fair.” Mean dad, mean parent. But that is life. It is the reality of it. It’s just us with ADHD are far more likely to be sensitive to it and aware of it. It’s the awareness I think you alluded to earlier. Perhaps we’ve just got justice antenna, looking for it all the time. I feel like that sometimes is I’m always looking for an injustice. It needs to be put right but you can’t, you know, you just can’t.

JULIE: But there you go. That’s injustice and ADHD, and sense of fairness, all wrapped up in a nice little episode. Thank you for listening.