Overcoming ADHD's Emotional Hurdles
Overcoming ADHD's Emotional Hurdles
Every person with ADHD that I’ve met has had problems with procrastination or ‘getting started’ with projects. Heck, a lot of undiagnosed people I’ve met have this problem.
Maybe you’re not procrastinating because you’re distracted, maybe you’re afraid of failure.
Maybe the extent of the “overwhelm” feeling is so bad that it has locked your brain, leaving you unable to process the next steps you need to take.
It’s possible you have some form of emotional dysregulation that locks your brain down when you are trying to finish a project.
ADHD has an emotional problem.
A common trait for folks with ADHD is emotional dysregulation. Sometimes this is a fear of being rejected by others, sometimes it’s unexpected outbursts of anger or sadness.
There is a part of the faulty working memory for people with ADHD that can lead to time blindness, or an inability to see things long term. These bits of ‘faulty wiring’ manifest in different ways, but how you process emotions is a big one.
While being in the middle of an emotional lock-down doesn’t have a lot of ‘quick fixes’, knowing they exist, what they are and where they’re going can often help shorten and soften their effects.
There are 3 factors that are essential to becoming an emotional master, or at least something greater than an emotional wreck.
How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
As is the case with so much of ADHD, learning about yourself is the answer. Mastery of ADHD means becoming a master of self-awareness. Your method may be different from mine, but we both have to address these three things.
Understand your emotions.— Recognize that we have some emotional wiring that needs special attention. Once you learn that sometimes your emotions will be stronger or weaker than other times. Today I’m a robot, tomorrow I’m a sobbing mess.
Learn your triggers.— Sometimes the simplest things can set us off, maybe it’s the sound of someone chewing, possibly it’s the sensation of satiny materials. It could just be hunger or tiredness. Keep a list of the things that irritate you or make you sad. Anything that evokes an emotion at some point, write it down.
Practice relief.— Putting on headphones to block out a sound. Going to a neutral place (the Goldilocks zone) to get away from sensory input that affects you. Eating a Snickers bar. Any of these could be simple quick fixes. The better you know your triggers, the better you can ‘treat’ them.
I like to journal, thought it’s mostly the act of writing things down that plants then in my mind. I write to understand. I think everyone should, but you’re you. If you need to record it into an audio format, then do that. The important is that you make a note and use it to learn.
Message Jody Gates
Emotions aren’t a problem, they’re part of living.
Last night I was on a drive with my daughter, she’s living some peak neurodivergence and as she started crying as I argued that “They/Them” has been in use much longer than the current pronoun reality, we realized something was going on.
After she tearfully confessed she just wanted a “My Bad, I’ll be better” from me, I realized it wasn’t the topic, it was the ADHD emotion game. Dr. Brown labeled it “flooding” because these emotions come in, all at once, and you just drown in it.
After we talked, after we each had some space to let our emotions normalize, everything was fine.
It was a great indicator of how emotions can feel completely random in an ADHD brain. She confessed she didn’t care that much about the topic and had no idea why she reacted the way she did.
We’re fine now. We were fine 10 minutes after the outburst. We both see it for what it was, a sometimes thing.
The Important Bit
Emotions are good, you need to feel them. You need to express them. You need to process them.
Repressing these emotions will hurt you. Feeling shame for them will break you.
Have your emotions, unapologetically.