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.
Shanlivvy 