Our fourth and final week took a look at the strong link to emotional dysregulation associated with ADHD. Emotional regulation is significantly harder for people with ADHD because of a combination of structural brain differences and neurochemical imbalances. It is not a character flaw or a lack of willpower. It is a neurological reality where the brain’s emotional “alarm” is louder and its executive “brakes” are often delayed.
Emotional regulation is part of the executive functioning that we discussed last week. As we know executive functioning can be difficult for those with ADHD, we have to realize that difficulty includes our experience and response to emotions which means that ADHDers experience big emotions and a slow response time when they are trying to shift out of a given emotion. A trigger that our brain interprets as a threat or rejection activates the fight or flight response of the nervous system creating the sensation of strong emotion, but the executive functioning cannot keep up to manage to keep it under control. This cascade results in a strong emotional reaction that easily spills over into shutdown.
ADHDers experience a range of strong emotional experiences including heightening sensitivity to their environment, rejection sensitivity dysphoria, shame, masking, and sensory overload.
The heightened sensitivity is to people and things around them. Small changes in tone, facial expressions, noise, or environmental stimuli can feel bigger and more difficult to ignore. The ADHD brain has a harder time filtering irrelevant information and regulating emotional responses. Executive dysfunction can make it more difficult to pause, process, and shift attention, allowing emotions and sensory input to feel more overwhelming. The ADHDer can grow up believing they are “too much” or possibly withdrawing or masking from overstimulation.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is another emotional experience of the ADHD brain. It is an intense emotional and nervous system response to real or perceived rejection, criticism, exclusion, or disappointment. RSD can lead to people pleasing, over-apologizing, defensiveness, withdrawal, or perfectionism. It is an immediate and overwhelming response to the interpretation of a threat. The feelings are experienced as the reality of the moment in response to any real or even merely perceived rejection, criticism, or unexpected social cue.
Shame comes into the emotional experience when “I made a mistake” becomes “I am the mistake.” ADHD adults grew up hearing that they are too much, too loud, too lazy, too emotional, or too forgetful as a result of poor working memory – an executive dysfunction – that means more visible mistakes. These repeated messages about their behaviour get internalized as part of their identity and become shame-inducing. They have a pervasive sense of being fundamentally flawed. Years of correction have created a core belief that “Something is wrong with me” that is experienced as shame. But shame is as story, not an identity. Healing means challenging those beliefs and recognizing that ADHD explains many of one’s struggles but does not define your worth.
Masking is a protective strategy that develops in ADHDers when being authentic feels unsafe or when they feel judged or rejected. It is not being fake but an attempt to hide who they are and the challenges they have by performing neurotypical behaviour to avoid rejection. It can look like rehearsing conversations, perfectionism, suppressing stimming, hiding excitement, monitoring how you are perceived, overworking, and pretending to understand. It’s tied to the person’s conditional self-worth that thinks “I’m only lovable when I perform.” Masking comes at a cost. It can seem to protect our sense of belonging but actually disconnects us from ourselves… What can help masking is discovering safe relationships, gradually practicing unmasking, self-compassion, and identifying values.
Last, the ADHD brain can have difficulty filtering and prioritizing sensory information, meaning the nervous system may become overwhelmed by more input at once. Sounds, lights, textures, conversations, and emotions can become overwhelming. Patience decreases, reactions intensify, and recovery takes longer. This type of overstimulation is not overreacting. It is often a nervous system reaching its capacity.
So, what helps? Our presenter discussed ways to regulate your body, your mind, and your relationship with yourself in order to balance these emotional regulation challenges. Regulating your body can look like grounding exercises such as getting in touch with your senses or any type of meditation, movement for your body, breathwork, and reducing sensory overload. Regulating your mind can include the DBT techniques of STOP (stop, take space, observe, and proceed mindfully), check the facts, opposite action, and urge surfing. To regulate your relationship with yourself, you can practice self-compassion, self-validation, work on reducing masking, honor your nervous system, and reframe the sensitivity as a strength.
A key reframe for this work is that what often looks like being too emotional, too sensitive, or too much is frequently a nervous system doing its best to protect you. So instead of asking yourself, “Why am I so sensitive?” rather ask “What is my nervous system trying to protect me from?”