Tag: anxiety

Emotional Dysregulation in ADHD

One of my intentions this year is to understand my ADHD more deeply, especially the parts of it that show up in my relationships. Not just the visible, functional stuff, but the emotional turbulence I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember.

Emotional dysregulation is something I’ve been learning to name. Simply put, it’s the difficulty regulating emotional responses. For me, it feels like emotions arriving quickly and with intensity, sometimes before I’ve had a chance to make sense of them. Feelings of sadness, frustration, defensiveness, and overwhelm. At times it can look like reacting too strongly or pulling away completely. Neither feels good afterward.

What I’ve come to understand is that this often happens with the people I feel safest with. In the outside world, I hold it together. I read the room, choose my words carefully, push feelings down, and keep moving. That kind of self-monitoring takes a lot of energy. When that energy runs out, usually at home or with someone I love, everything I’ve been containing finds its way out.

ADHD is often talked about as an attention issue, but beneath that is so much more, and what some call the ADHD iceberg. Attention, impulses, motivation, and emotions all live under the surface. The pause that helps someone to stop and think before responding is the same pause that softens emotional reactions. With ADHD, that pause can be hard to access, and emotions can take the lead before wisdom has time to arrive.

I’ve written about this before, but another layer of this is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. Small moments others might brush past can land deeply. Whether it’s a change in tone, a slower reply, or a gentle correction. People with ADHD are often highly intuitive, able to read emotions and energy in others in ways that many might miss. We can also be creative, energetic, vibrant, and deeply empathetic, but with that comes an intensity to ‘leak’ our emotions onto the people we feel safest with. In those moments, our nervous system is trying to keep us safe, even if the response doesn’t reflect what’s actually happening.

For anyone who has a loved one with ADHD, learning about how ADHD shows up for them can make a real difference. Even just trying to understand why someone reacts the way they do can reduce misunderstandings, deepen connection, and create space for patience on both sides.

Lately, I’ve been marinating in the words, Philippians 4:6 ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’ Instead of fighting my feelings or judging myself for having them, I’ve been trying to entrust God with what’s rising in me. And sometimes it’s simply about sitting in His presence which gives me peace in the midst of everything.

One practice I’m learning is something called Opposite Action. It’s a CBT tool, and it means doing the opposite of what an intense emotion is urging you to do when that emotion isn’t helping the situation. If the instinct is to shut down, Opposite Action might look like staying present. If the urge is to defend yourself or snap back, it might mean pausing and listening instead of absorbing. Depending on what works for you, some other good options could be taking a few deep breaths, holding your breath for 20 seconds, walking away from the situation until you’ve reached a calm state, or splashing your face with cold water. I’ve come to know that it’s not about dismissing or suppressing emotions but about creating that positive distraction that causes less harm to yourself or to others.

This is an ongoing process, but my hope is to both understand my own brain better and share a little awareness of how ADHD shows up, while learning strategies and tools to cope along the way.

To those with ADHD who’ve always felt too much

I didn’t get my ADHD diagnosis until adulthood. But I always knew, deep down, that my brain worked a little differently. Not wrong, just harder, louder, and more intensely.

I thought everyone found bright lights overwhelming, or background noise impossible to tune out. I thought everyone had to read the same paragraph five times and still forget what it said. I assumed that everyone overthought even the smallest comment or glance, and that everyone felt pain and anxiety when spoken to in a disrespectful manner.

It turns out that not everyone experiences the world so intensely. Not everyone constantly misplaces items or struggles to remember where they put them. Not everyone can feel unaffected by caffeine and can drink a cup of coffee, like it’s herbal tea, before bed. Not everyone zones out when people are talking to them, speaks over top of them, or forgets what was said the moment it was spoken. Not everyone rehearses conversations in advance because they fear saying the wrong thing and falling apart when they do.

That’s sensory overload. That’s Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD).

It’s more than just getting distracted or being too sensitive. It’s the relentless flood of information and emotion, with our nervous systems struggling to hold it all. A negative news article can ruin our whole morning. A throwaway comment can echo for days. Even joy and love can feel too big, too fast, and too much.

For years, I assumed it was a flaw in me; that I was too forgetful, too dramatic, and too prone to depression and anxiety; that I just needed to try harder, push through, and be better.

But the more I learn, the more I realise this is common, especially among women. The model of ADHD we grew up with was built for boys in classrooms, not for girls who struggle inwardly and hold it together until breaking point. As a result, we often go unnoticed, misdiagnosed, or made to feel like a burden. 

As Gabor Maté writes in Scattered Minds:

“The child’s brain and body are not defective. What is defective are the expectations of a society that believes the demands it places on young people are reasonable.”

I wasn’t broken. I was absorbing too much, too fast, with no name for it. So, if you’ve ever felt like the world was just too loud, or like your brain takes the long way round, or like you cry too easily and recover too slowly, I want you to know you’re not alone. You are not weak. You are not failing. You are fearfully and wonderfully made!