When Fairness Feels Like a Threat: Justice Sensitivity and the ADHD Nervous System

When Fairness Feels Like a Threat: Justice Sensitivity and the ADHD Nervous System

For many ADHDers, life is not only shaped by challenges with attention, working memory, or impulsivity, but by a deep and often overwhelming sensitivity to perceived injustice. Moments that others might dismiss as “annoying,” “unfair but minor,” or “not personal” can register in the ADHD nervous system as emotionally charged, morally urgent, and identity-threatening. These reactions are not arbitrary. They reflect a pattern known as justice sensitivity (JS), a heightened emotional and physiological response to situations perceived as unfair, inequitable, exploitative, or morally wrong.

Justice sensitivity is often misunderstood as overreactivity, rigidity, or being “too intense.” In reality, it represents a complex neurobiological and psychological pattern that intersects directly with ADHD’s core features: emotional hyper-reactivity, executive functioning challenges, heightened threat detection, and difficulties with regulatory recovery. For ADHDers, fairness is not an abstract concept. It is experienced viscerally, through the body, the nervous system, and the social brain.

Justice Sensitivity Is Not a Personality Quirk

Justice sensitivity refers to the tendency to perceive and respond strongly to injustice, whether directed toward oneself, others, or broader systems. Researchers typically describe several subtypes, including:

·       Victim sensitivity: distress when one feels personally treated unfairly

·       Observer sensitivity: distress when witnessing others being treated unjustly

·       Perpetrator sensitivity: distress over having benefited unfairly

·       Profiteer sensitivity: distress when others gain unfair advantage

While justice sensitivity exists across the general population, research consistently shows that individuals with ADHD score significantly higher across multiple JS dimensions. In a pilot study examining adults with ADHD, Schäfer and Kraneburg (2015) found elevated observer- and profiteer-sensitivity compared to neurotypical controls, with particularly high scores among individuals with the inattentive subtype. These findings challenge the stereotype of ADHD as self-focused or morally inattentive; instead, they suggest a nervous system deeply attuned to fairness, ethics, and relational balance.

A larger adolescent study (N = 1,235) further demonstrated that ADHD symptoms were associated with increased victim sensitivity, heightened perceptions of injustice, and elevated rejection sensitivity. Importantly, both justice sensitivity and rejection sensitivity partially mediated the relationship between ADHD symptoms and emotional distress (Bondü & Esser, 2015). In other words, fairness and belonging are not peripheral concerns in ADHD; they are central organizing themes in the emotional landscape.

Where Justice Sensitivity and Rejection Sensitivity Meet

Justice sensitivity in ADHD often overlaps with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), though the two are not identical. RSD is primarily triggered by perceived personal rejection, criticism, or disapproval. Justice sensitivity, by contrast, is activated when the nervous system detects violations of fairness, reciprocity, ethics, or relational agreements. Yet in the ADHD brain, these distinctions frequently blur.

Because ADHD is associated with rapid threat detection and heightened emotional salience, fairness violations are often experienced as relational threats, even when they are not explicitly personal. The nervous system does not neatly categorize events into “this is about me” versus “this is about principle/situation.” Instead, injustice itself can destabilize the sense of safety, predictability, and trust in the social environment.

The body responds as if something essential has been breached.

As a result, injustice (whether subtle or overt) can feel identity-threatening rather than situational. A broken promise, a coworker receiving unearned recognition, inconsistent rules, or witnessing someone being mistreated can evoke the same visceral responses as direct rejection. The social brain registers: Something is wrong. Something is unsafe. Something is unfair—and therefore dangerous.

Why Small Injustices Can Feel So Big

This is why events that appear minor to others can ignite disproportionate emotional intensity for ADHDers. Someone cuts in line. A partner forgets an agreement. A supervisor overlooks one’s contribution. A rule is applied inconsistently. To the ADHD nervous system, these moments do not arrive as isolated data points. They arrive layered with history.

The ADHD brain combines several factors that amplify this response:

·       heightened emotional intensity

·       sensory sensitivity

·       rapid bottom-up threat activation

·       slower top-down regulatory rebound

·       and a nervous system shaped by years of disconnection and inconsistency

When fairness is violated, the system responds with urgency. Physiological arousal rises quickly. Moral rumination begins. Internal narratives form around worth, safety, and belonging. What others experience as “irritation” may feel, internally, like alarm. This is not a failure of logic or maturity. It reflects a nervous system that is exquisitely tuned to fairness and relational consistency but does not always have the regulatory bandwidth to sort signal from noise in real time.

A Clinical Example: How Justice Sensitivity Shows Up

“Maya”, a 32-year-old woman with ADHD, describes feeling “punched in the chest” when a colleague receives public credit for a project they completed together. Cognitively, she understands that her coworker may not have intended harm. But her body reacts immediately, as though a boundary has been violated.

Her chest tightens. Her face heats. Her thoughts accelerate:

“This is unfair. People always take advantage of me. I work twice as hard for half the recognition. Why does this always happen to me?”

Within minutes, the experience shifts from event to identity:

·       Event: The coworker received credit.

·       Emotion: Anger, hurt, agitation.

·       Identity conclusion: I’m invisible. I’m not respected. I don’t matter.

This rapid fusion between moral violation, emotional overwhelm, and self-worth is characteristic of ADHD-related justice sensitivity. The nervous system moves faster than reflective thought. Meaning is assigned before context can be fully assessed.

If left unaddressed, Maya may ruminate for days, withdraw from the coworker, or impulsively confront her supervisor. From the outside, the reaction might appear excessive. From the inside, it feels unavoidable.

Viewed through a neurobiological lens, however, Maya’s experience becomes coherent:

·       Her nervous system interpreted a fairness violation as a relational threat.

·       Emotional activation preceded cognitive appraisal.

·       Regulatory systems lagged behind physiological arousal.

·       Long-standing identity scripts filled in the gaps.

Justice sensitivity, in this context, is not about being “too sensitive.” It is about a system that learned (through repetition) that fairness is tied to safety, and that inconsistency often precedes loss.

Reframing Justice Sensitivity

Justice sensitivity in ADHD is not a defect of character or a moral rigidity problem. It reflects a nervous system shaped by emotional intensity, relational inconsistency, and a deep sensitivity to fairness and belonging. Many ADHDers have spent their lives navigating environments where rules were unclear, expectations shifted, and effort was not reliably matched by outcome. Over time, fairness becomes not just a value, but a stabilizing anchor.

When that anchor is disturbed, the system reacts.

Understanding justice sensitivity through this lens allows us to move away from shame-based narratives and toward regulation, agency, and repair. The work is not about becoming less sensitive to injustice, but about helping the nervous system feel safe enough to respond rather than react, to pause instead of brace, to contextualize instead of collapse into meaning.

Justice sensitivity, like rejection sensitivity, tells a story. And when we listen to that story with curiosity instead of judgment, it becomes a doorway, not to pathology, but to deeper self-understanding and nervous system healing.

References

Bondü, R., & Esser, G. (2015). Justice and rejection sensitivity in children and adolescents with ADHD symptoms. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 24(2), 185–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-014-0560-9

Schäfer, T., & Kraneburg, T. (2015). The Kind Nature Behind the Unsocial Semblance: ADHD and Justice Sensitivity-A Pilot Study. Journal of attention disorders, 19(8), 715–727. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054712466914

Cristina Louk, PhD. LMHC

About Dr. Cristina Louk Dr. Cristina Louk is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and founder of Peace Humanistic Therapy, PLLC in Woodinville, WA, where she provides trauma-informed psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and energy-based approaches for adults and teens. She specializes in ADHD, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, neurodivergence, and relational trauma, integrating humanistic and Buddhist principles to help clients regulate intense emotions, heal attachment wounds, and cultivate self-understanding. Dr. Louk’s work emphasizes the nervous system and embodied experiences, helping individuals reframe challenges as biologically meaningful signals rather than personal flaws. She is passionate about translating complex neurobiological and psychological concepts into practical insights for both clinicians and those seeking deeper self-awareness and healing.