Are You Overwhelmed and Scattered? Determining Your ADHD Phase

And How to Do Something About It With Immediate Actions

Hi 👋 hey, how you doin’? Before proceeding, did you know the image above is not just an image? Click it, see what happens, I dare you. Or don’t, I’m not going to bother using reverse-psychology on you, it wouldn’t work anyway, you’re too smart for that nonsense. Moving on…

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor / licensed physician or anything qualified like that—just a dude on the Internet that has a lifetime of experience with this stuff—anything I say can and probably will be held against me at some time or another (hopefully not in a court of law).

Do you love being overwhelmed and have your brain totally scattered? Phew, yeah me neither, I thought I was the only one! Not really, that would be pretty bizarre, right?

How about walking from room-to-room and each time you reach the next room you’ve forgotten what you came in there for and the moment you step foot in that room you realise what you wanted from the previous room you were in, ad infinitum. For all that creativity and imaginative thinking we have, it sure does balance out in unexpected ways—we’re really just wired differently.

I guess I’m making this into a series, the Self-Assessment Series—where we dive into helping ourselves (me helping myself to help you so you can help…yourselves? don’t mind if I do—yoink). That doesn’t mean we should go it alone, certainly not, we should all aspire to get as much help as we need. No, this series is more about becoming self-aware, damn it, why didn’t I think of that title before? In this episodic article, we’ll be delving into recognising when we might be feeling overwhelmed and scattered, and what we can do about it! Because recognising is half the battle!

Intro-ducks-pun

If you have ADHD, I’ll be preaching to the choir with this introduction—so that’s exactly what I’m going to do, because repetition is sometimes a great way to learn and reinforce knowledge! ADHD is a neurological disorder / condition / affliction / Ben Affleck / Susan Sarandon / continuum of other nouns that don’t fully capture what ADHD is because you can’t truly truly understand it until you’ve lived or experienced it, and if you’re a neurotypical person that will likely never happen—that will sometimes cause your thoughts and attention to deviate from what they’re supposed to be focusing on, like this article!

ADHD lives on a spectrum, because psychologists feel the need to say everything is on a spectrum in order to avoid accountability when things go awry. But really, there is a lot of variance and different combinations of ADHD—it stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. When you pop down to your local pub doctor’s office and request to be diagnosed, they ship you off to a specialist and you’ll spend at least a couple of hours failing the many tests they present you. Failing these tests, unlike all those you failed during primary school and high school (and even university if you had the fortitude—or the masochistic tendencies to power through) will quite possibly be the single greatest moment of vindication of you’re your entire life—especially thinking back on all those, me fail English, that’s unpossible moments. Maybe I’m speaking from experience, maybe not—either way, I’m not telling, so there.

ADHD is split in two, just like your bum. As mentioned slightly earlier just above, the A in {AD} stands for Attention and the H in {HD} stands for Hyperactivity. I’m pretty sure you know what attention and hyperactivity mean, but I’m going to write it down for you anyway, because reinforcement and all that. When you get diagnosed, the spectrometer of your diagnosis can fall on one of three primary diagnoses. If you lean toward the Attention side (Inattentive type), the Hyperactive / Impulsive side (Hyperactive/Impulsive type) or Combined (a blend of both Inattentive and Hyperactive/Impulsive types). The diagnoses range from weak to strong for all three types. Beyond that there is still a lot of variance, depending on the person. Some people show overt signs (unable to sit still, looking all over the place and seemingly not paying attention), whereas others may not display outward traits. However you experience it, the struggle is real—along with the social stigma, which is like walking around all day holding a bowl of cereal your loving ADHD prepared for you in the morning that has urine instead of milk. Then on top of that, everyone you interact with during the day puts a lovely dollop of poop into your cereal until it’s overflowing. But it's not all bad, don't fret!

ADHD affects everyone in different ways—I consider myself to be very fortunate, don’t ask me why, let me keep the facade going—fake it ‘till you make type thing. Some of the stories I’ve read online and listened to over the years make me feel fortunate, anyway. Let’s just say that whatever you’re experiencing, know that it could probably be a lot worse. Some examples of how ADHD may affect people:

• Missing the death of a loved one

• Being late to or completely missing a friend’s funeral / wake

• Being late to or completely missing (or forgetting about) job interviews

• Sleeping in and, you guessed it, missing the first day of a new job

• Arriving to a friend’s wedding reception just as it’s wrapping up

• Missing out on parties (if that’s your thing)

• Missing countless buses, trains, or even a plane or two

• Forgetting about friends (hello out-of-sight—out-of-mind our arch-nemesis, one of)

• Forgetting friends’ birthdays

• Forgetting anniversaries

• Appointments

• Tests

• You

The worst part is that people don’t understand! They think you’re an arsehole. They think you’re inconsiderate. They think you have no empathy, when the opposite is true! We are super empathetic. It’s the worst because we end up punishing ourselves for all of our misgivings—and we’re punished by those who perceived our forgetfulness and [insert a plethora of ADHD traits] as malicious or deliberate.

Bottom line is that ADHD can have major impacts on our (and those close to us) daily lives. Let’s do something about it, together!

I can’t stress enough the importance of being able to conduct our own mental and physical self-assessments in order to reach a higher level of self-awareness so we can better manage and regulate our executive functional impairments, emotional regulation and give ourselves the clarity we deserve. This article shouldn’t be the only thing you use to work on yourself—check out this article about energy levels and make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss future articles in the ADHD Self-Assessment series. The best Too Long Didn’t Read—TLDR; I can give you if you want everything I know condensed to its itty bitty-ness, ensure all these are in-check:

• Sleep—maybe you’ve never had decent sleep but you’ll know it when you get it and you’ll forever want more

• Diet—eat good, healthy food (I will do a full, deep-dive article on this in the future, super important)

• Exercise—sweet, sweet exercise

• Limit caffeine (or preferably eliminate it entirely)

• Limit or better yet avoid alcohol and recreational drugs

• Reach out for help when you need it

• Talk to someone—ideally a professional, you know, one them psychologists

• Get diagnosed if you haven’t, and,

• Consider medication (though research shows therapy should be your primary treatment with medication secondary)

Okay, now onto the crux of the matter. The phase we’re covering in this article is determining when you’re feeling overwhelmed and/or scattered and what you can do about it and improve it in the future.

Set Phases to Overwhelm

It’s Just a Phase!

People with ADHD a variety of different ‘phases’, which we might recognise as symptoms or precursory symptoms of ADHD—or I like to think of them as indications we should act once we acknowledge their existence. These phases are essentially patterns of symptoms over time, and are influenced (made better or worse) by various things—these might be physical or mental.

Why We Should Pay Attention

Have you ever realised the more you do one task, the better you get at it? Sometimes we make a conscious decision to get better at something, other times it simply happens as a natural byproduct of repetition. The difference between these two methods of improvement are that one requires you to be conscious of what’s happening, the other doesn’t. This is why it’s important that we pay attention and become familiar with ourselves, so we can recognise these different phases so we can make the necessary adjustments. Also, don’t be fooled into thinking that just because we know about phases and symptoms and so on, it’ll all be a breeze. Far from it. Persistence and repetition is key if we want to make long term changes and improve ourselves. It’s not something we can do one time and then forget about it, though inevitably we will according the laws of executive functioning!

Don’t fret! We can do it together! The most important part is showing up. Be consistent, be persistent and trust that over time it will begin to get better. It’s a long game—I want to prepare you, there are no quick fixes here, I don’t have magic beans to sell you, but I have lived experience and the ability to write down and share with the rest of you what I’ve learned.

The main point is, ADHD comes with many challenges and recognising them is half the battle!

Explain Yourself and Give Me Examples!

Okay, so what specifically are you talking about Sir Ramblesby the Third?

How would you feel if you just finished work, came home and had a kitchen full of dirty dishes, you have 10 hungry kids going mental wanting food now, three months of bills suddenly appear right in front of your face, you can see dirt piling up all around your home before your very eyes, you have no money in your bank account, you have to make doctor’s appointments for you and all your ten kids, the light in the bathroom needs fixing, there’s no hot water, three kids just had accidents, one kid just threw up and all the other kids are writing all over the walls with permanent markers, and on top of that you only got three hours sleep last night. Oh and you have five minutes to have dinner ready. This may just give you the feeling of overwhelm. Yours will of course look different, depending on what stage of life you’re at. It may be school that’s overwhelming, work, relationships, but no matter what stage you’re in, the overwhelm will basically be everything coming together in your brain as a jumble of tasks and not knowing where to begin. Have a look at the ultimate ‘mental resources vs. demands’ graph that illustrates how it works:

Where your ‘mental resources’ is the ability for your brain to handle, juggle all your tasks, responsibilities, and challenges, it’s the energy level you have that fuels decision-making, problem-solving, task management and so on in your day-to-day life. The ‘demands’ are all the things that sap your mental resources, use up the energy you have in reserve. Unfortunately for us, our demands don’t come neatly packaged at regular times, they instead come from seemingly random times and places if we’re not on-top of things.

So then what’s happening when we’re in a state of ‘overwhelm’? Reaching the ‘overwhelm’ state is the feeling we get when all the demands of our lives, all the things we think require our attention suddenly appear in our consciousness. Why now? Why does this feeling seem to come out of nowhere? After all, the demands likely didn’t just all pop up at the exact same time and have been there all along. Let’s metaphorically dig out some psychology textbooks to help us out. Before we do that, it might be an idea for us to visualise what’s happening:

Each thought, idea, task, demand, “to do” list item, all of it takes some of our mental resources—but what happens when our mental resources become exhausted?

Cognitive Load Theory

John Sweller is a pretty swell guy…yeah I’m sure he’s never heard that one before. He got a PhD before it was cool. He knows a thing or two about Psychology. Above all, he’s an Aussie, so that makes him pretty alright in my books. Speaking of books, Señor Sweller wrote a pretty groundbreaking paper on the topic of cognitive load, titled, ‘Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning’¹. Sweller suggested that we have a limited capacity in our working memory (where information is stored temporarily, we make decisions with, etc.), meaning that our ability to hold and process information has its limits. If we go over this limit, (for example, we have a bunch of tasks or an assortment of complex information occupying our lil noggin) we get into a state of cognitive overload. This is when we start feeling overwhelmed, whereby too many demands are all fighting for the limited cognitive resources our brain has to offer. Have you ever had 100 tabs open in Chrome—I use Chrome as an example because it’s basically the browser equivalent of an ADHD brain, it doesn’t manage memory very well. What am I asking for? Of course you’ve had at least 100 tabs open—well if you’ve ever opened enough tabs for your computer to slow down or god forbid lock up, that’s a great example of your computer having “cognitive” overload.

Attentional Resources

Everyone wants attention in one way or another. That boy who liked you kicked you up the bum because he wanted your attention and didn’t know how to express it well (or didn’t understand what they were feeling). Maybe you exaggerated your clumsiness to get a guy you like’s attention, to spark his chivalrous side—and depending on his age this could have gone one of a number of different ways. If you’re a guy, you might have tried to impress a girl by showing how fast and athletic you are, only to start farting halfway down the 100m track, and we all know once that snowball starts rolling there’s no stopping it.

As with our cognitive resources, we have limited ‘attentional resources’ as well. When we have a bunch of different demands all competing for our attention at the same time we can feel overwhelmed. Multitasking is a myth and the people who think they’re great a multitasking are unfortunately lying to you and themselves. We’re only human, we can focus on one thing effectively at a time—man or woman. “Multitaskers” are simply switching from one task to another at a rapid pace, doing each more inefficiently than if they were to focus on one, finish it and move on to the next. Don’t get me wrong, oftentimes it’s necessary to do “multiple things at once”—put laundry on, then start on dinner, tidy the loungeroom, look at your kids’ lovely pictures briefly, stir whatever your making for dinner, et cetera, et cetera. That’s out of necessity, however, if you want to do deeper work as effectively as possible it’s best to put aside time where you can focus on that single task. The inefficiencies of supposed multitasking are very much highlighted with ADHD brains because we get a lot more disconnected each time we have to switch from one task to another and it tends to take us longer to regain focus. Task switching many times over long periods, and arguably more so over short periods strain our attentional resources. The more we do this, the less efficient we become at each of the tasks, the more stress accumulates and the greater our attentional resources are drained, leading to—you guessed it, overwhelm. Daniel Kahneman wrote about this all the way back in 1973—providing us with the foundational understanding of the concept of attentional resources through his book, ‘Attention and effort’².

Stress Response

Feeling overwhelmed can be stressful. When it comes to overwhelm, it’s not just a one-way street—the feeling of overwhelm can lead to other issues, like stress for instance. Chronically feeling overwhelmed and being in a state of stress over long periods can lead to negative effects on our health and well-being. Stress involves physiological changes (commonly known as ‘fight or flight’) that prepare our bodies to deal with a perceived threat. Bruce McEwen discusses this in more detail in, ‘Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain.’³

Emotional Regulation

During a bout of feeling overwhelmed, it might become difficult to manage emotional reactions, potentially leading to ‘snapping’ (being short and abrupt, not going into a post office and, you know)—this also feeds into the overall cycle of feeling overwhelmed through increased stress and anxiety, and increases the feeling of being overwhelmed. According to James Gross, emotion is regulated at five different points within the overall “emotion generative process”⁴. These are:

1. selection of the situation,

2. modification of the situation,

3. deployment of attention,

4. change in cognitions,

5. modulation of responses.

Let’s go through each point briefly in plain English to understand them better.

‘Selection of the situation’ is when you decide to do something or not based on how you think it will affect you. For example, if loud noises and large crowds give you anxiety, you could choose not to attend concerts—this is your selection of the situation.

‘Modification of the situation’ is how you can change the situation you’re already in to make it more manageable. Say you’re already at the aforementioned concert, it’s loud, there’s tonnes of people. You could choose to go to an area that’s less crowded and quieter, or perhaps it’s possible to buy earplugs at the venue or somebody might have a spare pair—it never hurts to ask!

‘Deployment of attention’ is choosing where to put your attention. For example, say you’re stuck in a loop of thinking about someone or something that’s making you feel sad, you can give your attention to something else more positive—just remember the goal isn’t to feel overly happy all the time, that’s not possible.

‘Change in cognitions’ is how you can change the way you think about something, adjusting your mindset—this one can be easier said than done. Say you are super nervous about giving a presentation, instead of thinking of it as a test you can potentially fail, think of it as an opportunity to share your knowledge on that subject, and if it’s something you’re passionate about even better!

‘Modulation of responses’ are about managing emotions that may have sway started. If you’re feeling angry, for example, you can take some deep breaths (square breathing, etc.) to help calm yourself and not let the anger get the best of you.

Selective Attention and Filtering

Our brains are supposed to be able to filter out some stuff and allow others. That bird you’re hearing outside while you’re reading this? You shouldn’t be noticing that as much as you are. How annoying is that dripping tap? The smoke alarm telling you to change its battery? Even worse. When we’re overwhelmed this filtering ability is compromised and the effects and distractions from all the sounds and internal distractions are much more noticeable and become hard, if not near impossible to ignore. When this happens we end up with a heightened awareness of everything—whether it’s the demands that are clamouring for our attention, all our responsibilities that are suddenly front and centre in our brain or the many and pronounced stimuli we are for whatever reason now acutely aware of—all of it is supposed to be getting filtered and it’s not. In his book, ‘Perception and communication’,⁵ Donald Broadbent introduces the idea of selective attention and how our sensory systems process information. He was the one who laid the groundwork for understanding how we filter information.

Executive Functioning

This is the stuff that helps us plan, organise and execute on tasks. If we are in a state of overwhelm, our executive functioning won’t work as well as it should. When our executive functioning is impaired, it makes it a lot more challenging to prioritise our tasks, make decisions and maintain control over our emotions and even actions. For a deeper dive on this, check out, ‘Executive functions’,⁶ a paper by Adele Diamond, her research has contributed greatly to ADHD.

Overwhelm Is Not Stress Or Anxiety

Overwhelm is the specific sensation when there’s too many things going on at one time, like trying to juggle 20 balls up in the air at once. It’s the feeling of your brain, emotions being at their limit. Stress on the other hand is the feeling of pressure, but in a more broad sense—stress is more broad. You might have stress about a test or a presentation but it won’t give you the feeling that you’re drowning in tasks or information. Anxiety is different again, and is a sense of worry or fear about something bad happening—you may feel anxious about flying for example, speaking in public, even if you’re not overwhelmed with tasks, responsibilities or information. Overwhelm is the feeling that you’re “swamped”, drowning in tasks or responsibilities, and so on.

Symptoms of Being Overwhelmed

There are various symptoms that can be associated with being overwhelmed, enough that it’s worth going through them in different sections.

Cognitive Symptoms

• Difficulty focusing

• Forgetfulness

• Indecisiveness

Emotional Symptoms

• Feelings of inadequacy

• Heightened irritability

• Mood swings

Physical Symptoms

• Fatigue

• Tension headaches

• Changes in appetite

Behavioural Symptoms

• Procrastination

• Neglecting responsibilities

• Erratic task switching

Keep in mind that these symptoms can of course be associated with other things, just because you have one of these symptoms doesn’t mean you are overwhelmed. Remember to take a more holistic approach and take into account the context of these symptoms.

In order to get a better idea, let’s more onto how you can further recognise whether you’re feeling overwhelmed by digging into some self-reflection questions.

Self-Reflection Questions

Here I’ll give you some prompting questions to help get your brain into gear and thinking about different aspects to help evaluate your current state. Ask these to yourself—and be honest, otherwise what’s the point? Write stuff down as well! Keep a daily journal and put aside time daily (ideally) to reflect on how you felt throughout the day, tracking different aspects of overwhelm.

Evaluating Task Overload

• Do I consistently feel like I’m behind on my tasks?

Emotional Assessment

• Do I frequently feel anxious or upset about my workload or abilities?

Impact on Functioning

• Is my sense of being overwhelmed affecting my work quality or personal life?

Seeking Patterns

• Can I pinpoint specific situations or tasks that consistently lead to feeling overwhelmed?

Source Please

You know sometimes our brains can be less than friendly to us—or so it seems. At times we may feel a certain way and have no idea why. This is because we may try and lie to ourselves, our bodies know we’re lying and will still give us the symptoms of what we’re feeling whether we like it or not. The worst part is that our brains won’t always be courteous enough to tell us why exactly we’re feeling a certain way. We have to figure it out all on our own. All the things, tasks, to-do lists, responsibilities we accumulate and ignore all still take up space and resources in our brain, they just get pushed further back—so we still feel the strain of these stressors yet we may still forget about them. There have been times I’ve felt so overwhelmed and I legitimately didn’t know why. It can take a lot of digging to figure these things out, depending on how far you’ve repressed them and pushed them out of your conscious. What I can tell you though is it is well worth going through the process of discovery and improvement, especially if you’ve been feeling super stressed, overwhelmed and you are unsure why (on the surface). Let’s help each other figure out some sources of our overwhelm.

Identifying the Sources of Overwhelm (and Doing Something About It!)

Task-Related Overwhelm

Extensive To-Do Lists

Do you have many to-do lists? Are these to-do lists long and unwieldy? I remember going through the ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology, or at least trying to. The problem is, it’s not exactly tailored for people with ADHD. If a task takes less than two minutes to do, do it now! Great, I have at least 3 million things around the home that I could theoretically do in under two minutes. Let’s get ‘er done!

Me implementing the ‘2-minute’ rule from Getting Things Done

Then,

How easy 2-minutes turns into 2-hours

Remember that if you have a neurotypical friend that swears by something, take it with a grain of salt and realise that not everything is ADHD-friendly.

Another piece of advice from Getting Things Done is to capture everything (read: write down) everything that has your attention. This one for me was a little more successful than the two minute advice. To make the most of this capturing everything approach, I suggest using it alongside the Eisenhower Matrix. If you don’t know what the Eisenhower Matrix is, it’s this:

The Eisenhower Matrix boiiii

Everyone makes it seem so easy to use but it can be challenging, especially if you’re the type of person who want to do everything all the time without help. It may take some practice, though the more you use it, like anything, you will get the hang of it and it will get easier. The general rules of thumb are:

• If it has a deadline it can probably be considered urgent (unless the deadline is 5 years in the future, for example)

  • Think utility bills, rent, assignments, appointments, etc.

  • If you decide something is not urgent, that doesn’t mean you should ignore it—try and schedule time each week / month to deal with important tasks that aren’t time-sensitive, so they don’t end up becoming urgent later on

  • Be cautious about putting too many items in the urgent basket, as this is great way to lead to overwhelm

  • Is your focus on urgent tasks distracting you from your long-term goals? Take time to step back and check on your progression—if your urgent tasks are constantly taking priority over your important tasks you may need to consider re-evaluating things

• If it will have some negative affect on your life if it’s not done then it’s likely important

  • Not paying your rent could see you homeless

  • When deciding on the importance of something make sure you put some thought into the consequences of not doing the thing (short as well as long-term)—if your life will ultimately be the same if you don’t do this thing, is it really that important?

• Urgent vs. Important—this is an important distinction, the main difference is that something urgent needs to be done in the short-term, whereas something important is still important but it is more focused on long-term goals and values

• Something may feel urgent but that doesn’t mean that it is—you should evaluate for yourself whether the urgency is real or perceived, whether through anxiety, pressure from others, or a habit of last-minute work

  • Example, sales people are notorious for creating a sense of urgency in order to get you to make hasty decisions—when we make hasty decisions we are less likely to think things through thoroughly and are therefore not as likely to think about if we need the thing or the consequences of spending the money—I have a habit of not allowing others to set the urgency of my actions, make sure you give yourself time to think about things when the pressure’s on

• Delegate tasks that don’t need to be done by you—we don’t have to do everything by ourselves, and when you delegate tasks to others it gives you space to breath as well as easing the burdens and are less likely to become overwhelmed

• Small, specific tasks are always favourable to large ambiguous tasks

  • If tasks aren’t clear, make them clear—break large tasks down into smaller ones and ensure before starting a task that it’s clear, if it’s not clear don’t be afraid to ask questions and dig until it becomes clear

My number one piece of advice for ‘capturing everything’ is that we should recognise that not everything thought, idea, plan and so on is great, or even good. If you have a million ideas like me, make sure you write them down, but also make sure you revisit them and don’t immediately begin taking action on every random idea—let them fester for a bit and focus on a few high value tasks. Practice, practice, practice! I can’t stress that enough. Over time you will begin to have an instinct for the tasks that actually have value in your life and which don’t. If you’re the type of person who begins a thousand projects in the space of a week, stop! It’s fine to experiment with some things here and there, but recognise this can become detrimental in the long run. If you are truly passionate about something and it’s not just a fleeting lust, put your focus on that—have one project that you put your energy in. If you get bored with that project, think about how you might be able to make it more interesting. Avoid distractions.

Looming Deadlines

Looming deadlines can be a pain in the bum, especially if you haven’t been paying attention and seemingly 100 deadlines are all coming up at the same time. For me, weekly and monthly (and where possible, daily) check-ins become super important. At work we have a meeting every morning, and while at times it can seem tedious, I recognise the importance of having them for me, as it keeps things in focus and we discuss (and therefore keep in working memory) upcoming events and tasks we should be putting energy towards. These check-ins only really work if you put tasks and appointments and other things with dates into a calendar, otherwise it will be a case of ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’. I use Google Calendar for the most part. I use other tools (one primarily) but that will be another whole post on its own.

If someone tells you something and it has a date, write it down! Put it in your calendar, preferably with a reminder. For me, whenever I add something in my personal calendar, I make sure it has three reminders at least—one week before, one day before, and one other, usually 30 minutes before, depending on how far away it is, etc.

Multitasking Demands

As mentioned earlier, multitasking is a myth. You’re not going to change my mind on that. If it’s not necessary to juggle many tasks at one time, don’t do it. It’s not worth trying to impress someone, stoke your ego and wherever possible focus on one task at a time. Finish one task, move onto the next. This won’t always be possible but recognise when it is.

Emotional Overwhelm

External Pressures

People expect things from us. That’s normal. What’s not normal is when we end up prioritising others’ expectations about what we should do over what we want for ourselves. Don’t do that. I don’t mean tell everyone to f**k off, I simply mean creating boundaries for yourself and learning to say ‘no’ to people. Don’t worry it will rub people the wrong way, some will get annoyed with you, but that’s okay—that’s their emotional cross to bear.

Internal Expectations

The same way others have expectations of us, we also have expectations of ourselves. There are times where these expectations are way too high. Maybe it’s from being told, oh you have so much potential and then not being able to live up to it. Whatever the reason, if we have too high expectations on ourselves, this will eventually lead to disappointment and feelings of inadequacy because of constantly feeling like a failure. This in-turn can further intensify the sense of being overwhelmed. Be real with yourself and recognise that mistakes happen, they’re part of learning and if you are constantly not meeting the goals you set then it might be time to re-evaluate your goals to be more realistic.

Emotional Responses to Stress

Recognise how your emotional reactions to seemingly stressful situations can amplify the perceptions of being overwhelmed. Remember to breathe. There will likely be times in your life where your emotions get the best of you. That doesn’t define you, those moments are reminders that we can improve ourselves. Constantly ask yourself questions, instead of making definitive statements about situations and what you think you observe. Question. Question other people instead of telling them they’re wrong. Why did you think this was the right decision? Don’t pretend you know everything about anything. In the grand scheme of things we know virtually nothing. The older you get the more you realise this.

Environmental Influence

Cluttered Workspaces

Our brains can feel like they are cluttered, scattered, all over the place. There are times where I’ve realised how much clutter there is around the home, I became conscious of how much space in my brain all this random stuff was taking up. It was occupying my thoughts without me fully realising at first. Over the last couple of years I’ve thrown out or given away a lot of stuff. I’ve been pretty ruthless at times. In the end it’s only stuff. It doesn’t actually mean anything other than the value that we give it—even though it costs money it’s not really worth anything other than perhaps the time that we worked to be able to afford it. If all our stuff magically disappeared tomorrow, we would still have our health, we would still have all the things that are important to us—family, and so on. Don’t let things take up real estate in your mind. If you don’t use it, throw it away, or give it away, or sell it (if it’s not too much hassle, otherwise it’ll just sit there and continue to be useless). For the rest, put them away, make the place tidy and organised. If you want help with how to do this let me know and I’ll write an article on it! Put it in the comments! Do it!

Noisy Environments

Noise can be a massive distraction. It can prevent us from being able to focus, and if you’re constantly being interrupted by noise you will soon become overwhelmed. If this is happening frequently you should address it as soon as possible—get noise-cancelling headphones, move to another room, find a quiet place somewhere. Whatever you need to do, do it for yourself—you don’t have to put up with the noise just because someone else feels they have the right.

Ergonomic Factors

Be comfortable! Do you sometimes realise that you’ve been sitting in an uncomfortable position, but at the same time you’re too “comfortable” to move—meaning you got yourself in one of those, I’m uncomfortable, but I feel like if I move I’ll disturb the universe ruts. Yeah we’ve all been there. It doesn’t have to be like that. Practice doing things for yourself instead of just for others. Oh you didn’t think I knew you did that, did you? Well I do, so cut it out.

Concludering

This article has turned out to be my longest yet, after the conclusion it’s likely to be to be over 6,000 words. As such I’m going to make the conclusion super brief. Just to prove how long this post is, check this out:

‘Post too long for email’ with a grey beard

See? Look! I got the above message so long ago, the damn thing grew a long grey beard.

• Recognise ADHD has different phases and symptoms

• Recognising our personal experiences with being overwhelmed or scattered is super important and being able to self-assess can lead us to better ways of managing

• The power of self-assessment in identifying ADHD symptoms and phases overall shouldn’t be understated

• Practice using the Eisenhower Matrix and use the techniques mentioned to employ cognitive reframing to better manage your daily challenges

• Realise that it’s important to be able to adapt strategies to suit the situations and they will naturally change and adapt as you become more familiar with your ADHD patterns

• Keep a journal to track overwhelm (and other stuff)

• Share your experiences in the comments! Know you’re not alone—and your experiences can help others as well!

If you haven’t done so yet, subscribe!

If you enjoy this content, fret not there will be more! This is part of my ADHD Self-Assessment series and I have a bunch more articles lined up.

Remember we have ADHD for life, it’s not going anywhere so it’s worth putting the time in to ease our symptoms and make our lives more enjoyable, how we want it to be. Keep it up!

ADHDers are resilient and persistent, always remember that!

That’s it for now, as always, good luck, stay safe and be well!

Braeden

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5. Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and communication. Pergamon Press. https://doi.org/10.1037/10037-000

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