Part 1: Why Conversations Are Hard For ADHD Adults
Episode Summary:
Real-time conversations can be surprisingly hard for adults with ADHD, and it is easy to assume it means something about your intelligence or your character. Of course, that is not true.
Learn why conversations are such a demanding real-time task for your ADHD brain. You will hear how interest, distractions, rejection sensitivity, working memory limits, long-term memory retrieval, processing speed, emotional regulation, and impulsiveness can all interfere with staying with the conversation and saying what you mean.
I hope you’ll leave with a clearer understanding of why conversations can feel so challenging. Then, in the following episodes, I’ll share strategies to help you specifically in group conversations and one-on-one conversations.
What You’ll Learn About ADHD Adults and Conversations:
- Why real-time conversations can feel challenging and even exhausting for adults with ADHD.
- How interest and stimulation levels can affect your ability to stay in the conversation.
- Why distractions, internal and external, can derail you even when the topic matters.
- How working memory, long-term memory retrieval, and processing speed can make you lose your words in the moment.
- Why emotional dysregulation and impulsiveness can change how you show up.
Transcript
(00:05)
When conversations are challenging for adults with ADHD, it’s definitely not because of lack of intelligence. I hope you know that. Though I know it may feel like it sometimes, it’s more often because conversations demand that use so many executive functions in real time and under pressure.
You’ve tuned into Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, a podcast for ADHD adults like you who want to learn how to adopt the best strategies, tools, and skills to be able to get your essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired.
I’m Marla Cummins, an ADHD executive function and productivity coach. And I’m glad you decided to join me today on this journey toward finding your way to doing what matters most to you, without hopefully trying to do it like everyone else.
But before jumping into how your ADHD may make conversations challenging, I want to make sure that you understand that I’m talking about conversations in real time, whether in person, on the phone, or via video call.
(01:10) What is a conversation for ADHD adults?
I’m not referring to conversations that may take place via email, text, or over the course of time. It’s those times when you’re interacting with one or more people, and you can’t rewind and take back what you said.
So when you do speak, if it comes out not quite the way you want, there are strategies you can use in the moment to change that. But I’ll reserve sharing those with you until the second and third episodes.
And also for clarity’s sake, I want to make sure that it’s clear what I’m not going to cover.
I’m not going to cover conversations that are debates. Think of family members arguing over politics at Thanksgiving.
I’m also not going to cover instances where it’s more of a discourse, where one person is giving a lecture, and maybe you get to say your piece or maybe not.
And the third kind that I’m also not going to cover is a diatribe where somebody is venting.
(02:08) ADHD adult challenges with conversation are not related to intelligence.
That is definitely not a conversation. What I am going to cover are real-time conversations that are fairly cooperative and interactive for the most part.
Before I get to this, though, I want to point out again that when adults with ADHD have difficulties in conversations, it is sometimes mistaken for a lack of intelligence. You may even have thought to yourself, “I’m not sounding very smart right now.”
Of course, people differ in intelligence, but conversational ease, especially in real time, depends on many things that have nothing to do with how smart you are. And one of those things, again, are executive functions that you obviously might find challenging because of your ADHD.
So let’s get on with looking at how these challenges might be interfering with your ability to have the kind of conversations you want to have.
One of the first hurdles you may encounter is just not being interested in the content of the conversation.
(03:12)
And I know some of you may be thinking right now, it shouldn’t matter. If it’s important, I should be able to pay attention, whether that’s at work, at home, in social settings, or out in the community.
I know you might be thinking this because I’ve heard it from plenty of clients before. And if you’ve been listening to my podcast, you’ve heard me say this before, but I think it’s worth restating here.
ADHD is associated with differences in how the brain releases neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine, which play a significant role in attention, motivation, and activation.
When something isn’t intrinsically interesting, your brain may not release enough of these chemicals for your attention system to engage fully, even if the conversation is important.
But when something is interesting, novel, urgent, or emotionally meaningful, dopamine and norepinephrine are released, which helps your attention come online, so to speak, or get more precise, and makes it much easier to stay engaged.
(04:17) Distractions can make conversations hard for ADHD adults.
How about you? What kind of conversations do you struggle to stay engaged in because they’re just not interesting?
Also, remember, contrary to what many believe, it’s not that adults with ADHD can’t pay attention. It’s that we tend to pay attention to too much, both in our external environment and our internal world. Sometimes, at the expense, when it comes to conversations, too, staying engaged with them.
Of course, this can be amplified if you’re not interested in the content of the conversation from the start. But even if the conversation does interest you, it’s still easy to get distracted.
Sometimes it’s a thought that pops into your mind, which might be related to the conversation or totally unrelated. Yes, there goes the fly.
Other times, the distraction is external, such as someone tapping their pen, the room being too cold, side conversations nearby, or something else.
It’s important to remember that getting distracted or not feeling interested doesn’t mean the conversation isn’t important to you.
(05:28) ADHD adults may have a hard time with conversations because of rejection sensivity.
It just means that it’s harder for you to stay on track in real time.
Another challenge adults with ADHD can experience in conversations is, well, rejection sensitivity, which can, of course, add an element of distraction.
If this shows up for you, you may get caught up in your own thoughts, wondering if you’re off track, missing the point, or maybe that you just sound, well, ridiculous.
And when you’re spinning in these thoughts, you’re obviously less able to stay with the conversation. And if these thoughts and feelings get intense enough, you may end up just disengaging and even shutting down because you feel so far behind the eight ball and like you can’t catch up.
Of course, disengaging and shutting down can happen as a result of any of the other ADHD related conversation challenges, but it seems to show up more when rejection sensitivity is in the mix.
(06:24) Conversations can be challenging for ADHD adults because of limited working memory.
Another element that may introduce challenges for you in a conversation is limited working memory capacity because of your ADHD.
When it comes to conversations, working memory, as you know, is the brief storage, roughly 15 to 30 seconds, where you hold information long enough to determine what it means to you and then decide what you want to do with it.
Do you want to respond now, later, or not at all? And if you do respond, what do you want to say?
This can be hard not only because working memory capacity is limited, but also because working memory works best when you are focused on the conversation and not distracted by irrelevant information.
No doubt your ADHD related executive function challenges are definitely interrelated.
And because working memory is limited, you may lose pieces of the conversation before you’ve had a chance to do anything with them. Because if they get crowded out by other thoughts, it can seem like, well, water through a calendar.
(07:30)
And if it’s a conversation with a group of people, it may move on before you’ve had a chance to say your piece, leaving you feeling like you’re in the Indy 500 rather than a conversation.
And before you know it, the flag is down, and the conversation is over. I’ve never been to a car race, but I’ve watched enough TV.
Anyway, when it comes to memory, retrieving information from long-term memory also may be a challenge for you. And there are a few reasons related to ADHD that this may be happening.
One is that none of the information gets encoded because you’re not able again to focus and attend long enough to get the information filed into your long-term memory, perhaps again, because of distractions.
This may be related to your challenges with working memory, where you couldn’t hold the information long enough to, well, pass it along.
(08:28) ADHD adults have a hard time retrieving information from long-term memory in conversations.
Other times, fragments of information get stored in your long-term memory, but the other pieces that provide context, like why it mattered, what you thought about it at the time, and how it connected to other topics, may not make it into your long-term memory.
So later on, when your brain goes looking for that context, you can’t find it. In other words, the encoding was not totally absent, just incomplete.
So you may end up saying things like, “I just had it, but it’s gone. I’ll remember it later, or just give me a minute.”
But you just can’t pull it together fast enough to say something relatively cogent in real time conversation.
(09:15) Processing speed challenges can make conversations hard for ADHD adults.
And then there’s processing speed, which, as you probably know, refers both to the pace and accuracy at which you take in information.
Work with it, make sense of it, and then decide how or whether to respond.
Of course, in conversations, this has to happen again in real time, which is why it’s so tricky.
One factor that can interfere with processing speed is your level of stimulation. When you’re understimulated, you may start to tune out, and it can feel like your brain is slowing down, even when you’re trying to listen and stay engaged.
Another challenge is the ADHD tendency to take in, again, too much information at once.
In conversations, you have to filter out distractions, both internal and external, and keep the main thread of what’s being said front and center.
That filtering takes effort, and it can slow down how quickly you process what you’re hearing.
(10:16)
At the same time, remember your working memory, which again is compromised because of your ADHD, is further overloaded because of the stress of the conversation, so that processing can slow down or stall altogether.
Last, you know, inconsistency is one of the hallmarks of ADHD.
So sometimes your processing speed is lightning fast, maybe even outpacing the people you are talking with, and your thinking feels sharp and fluid. Other times, well, not so much.
(10:51) Emotional regulation is a challenge for ADHD adults in conversations.
And of course, there’s nothing that can derail a conversation faster than becoming dysregulated, which you may be prone to, like many other adults with ADHD. Even though at this point in your life, it may show up more internally than externally.
And when you become emotionally dysregulated, perhaps because again, of the stress of the conversation, you may have a hard time recovering enough to participate in the way you want.
Instead, you might get distracted by your own emotional reactions.
One of the reasons for this is that the prefrontal cortex in the ADHD brain just does not consistently have dopamine and norepinephrine available at the right levels and at the right time, so that it can help you regulate emotions by reducing the intensity of emotional signals, helping you to interpret what those emotions mean, and also helping you to control how you respond.
So even when you know intellectually thatyou’ree okay, your nervous system may be in red alert mode because of something going on in the conversation.
(12:08)
Part of the reason for this happening is when the prefrontal cortex isn’t operating in its optimal range, it’s less able to provide, again, consistent regulation.
That includes helping keep the amygdala threat signals in proportion.
The amygdala, which you know about, is designed for rapid threat detection and can pick up on cues in the conversations like uncertainty, tone, or perceived rejection, and then it sends an alert signal to the rest of the brain.
That can shift your nervous system into a heightened state of stress, even when you know intellectually again that you’re really okay, and then it’s see a later conversation.
(12:57) Why might ADHD adults impulsively interrupt in conversations?
As always, I’m sure there are other ADHD related reasons that conversations can feel challenging, but the last element I want to share with you is impulsiveness.
This is also in part a result of the prefrontal cortex being understrained in your ADHD brain, which can make it harder to regulate your behavior in the moment.
So even when you try not to, you may end up blurting out whatever comes to mind, whether it’s directly related to the conversation or a bit tangential.
You might interrupt because you’re afraid you’ll lose the thought, or simply because the thought pops into your head and you feel an urge to say it.
(13:41)
Anyway, what I hope you’re taking away from this episode is that conversation struggles for adults with ADHD are not, again, a signal that you’re not smart.
They’re often the result of all of these executive function challenges that I’ve talked about that have to happen in real time under pressure.
And understanding doesn’t solve everything, but it can change the story you’re telling yourself.
And in the next episode, we’ll talk about what can actually help you turn this around, specifically for group conversations and one-on-one conversations.
So that’s it for now.
If this resonated with you and you want to hear more strategies for working with your ADHD, please follow the podcast so you don’t miss future episodes and click like so other people who might benefit can find it more easily.
Until next time, this has been re-imagining productivity with ADHD.
I’m Marla Cummins, reminding you that ADHD doesn’t define you, but how you work with it can shape what’s possible.
ADHD Adults and Conversation Resources:
- Hear how you can start addressing your conversation challenges in Part 2: How ADHD Adults Can Have Better Group Conversations.
- Learn how to plan better with my Free Guide: 6 Common Planning Mistakes Adults with ADHD Make.
- Discover strategies to help you regulate your emotions better in this podcast, How ADHD Adults Manage Emotional Dysregulation.
- Learn more about ADHD and rejection sensitivity in this podcast, Can ADHD Adults Really Become Less Susceptible to Feeling Rejected?
