Trust Your Feelings Without Letting Them Guide Your Behavior

Episode Summary: Feelings & ADHD

Why can frustration escalate so quickly when you have ADHD, and why can it be so difficult to respond the way you want? In this episode of Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, ADHD and Executive Function Coach Marla Cummins explores how ADHD can affect emotional regulation, why feelings and interpretations can influence your behavior, and how you can learn to respond to frustration without letting it dictate what you do.

You’ll learn how to recognize the physical signs of frustration, understand the difference between your feelings, your interpretation of a situation, and your behavior, and create space to choose how you respond.

You’ll also explore why your feelings deserve attention rather than dismissal, how understanding what’s underneath an emotional reaction can help you respond differently, and how you can develop emotional regulation skills over time.

What You’ll Learn About ADHD & Emotional Regulation

• How ADHD can affect emotional regulation: Understand why frustration may escalate quickly, why emotions can feel more intense or last longer, and how ADHD-related differences in regulation can make it harder to manage your response.
• How feelings, interpretations, and behavior are connected: Learn how your emotional reaction, the meaning you assign to an experience, and the behavior that follows can influence one another, and why they are not the same thing.
• How to recognize frustration before you react: Explore how physical signs of frustration can help you recognize when you’re becoming emotionally activated and create an opportunity to pause before responding.
• How to respond to frustration without acting on your immediate interpretation: Learn why your feelings are real, but your interpretation of a situation may not tell the whole story, and how you can acknowledge your emotions without automatically accepting your assumptions or acting on an impulse.
• How to use your feelings to understand what you need: Understand why frustration may point to something beyond the immediate situation, how taking time to explore what’s underneath an emotional reaction can help you respond more effectively, and why you don’t need to dismiss or minimize your feelings.
• How to develop emotional regulation skills over time: Explore how approaches such as ADHD medication, mindfulness, CBT, ACT, DBT, and coaching may support emotional regulation, and why learning to respond differently involves developing skills rather than relying on willpower alone.

Transcript: Regulating Emotions and ADHD

(00:03):
Do your emotions, especially frustration, ramp up faster and last longer than maybe you’d like them to? That’s a common challenge for adults with ADHD.
The question is: how can you manage those moments so you can then decide what to do next in a way that aligns with how you want to respond?

You’ve tuned into Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, a podcast for ADHD adults like you, who want to learn the best strategies, tools, and skills to get your essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired.

I’m Marla Cummins, an ADHD and executive function coach. And I’m glad you’re joining me today on this journey toward doing what matters most to you without trying to do it like everyone else. Let’s start by defining what we’re talking about.
You’ll sometimes see emotions and feelings defined as two different things, depending on the framework you’re using.

(01:07):
But for this episode, I won’t split hairs; I’m just going to use the terms interchangeably. Emotions are responses to what’s happening around us, what we’re thinking about and what we’re experiencing internally.

They can affect our bodies, thoughts, attention, and urges to act.
For example, you might feel frustrated when something gets in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish, or angry when you believe you’ve been treated unfairly, maybe anxious when you’re uncertain about what’s going to happen next, or disappointed when something doesn’t turn out the way you hoped.

Emotions, as you know, are a normal part of being human. They can tell us something about how we’re experiencing a situation, what matters to us, and what might need our attention. Emotions can also motivate us to act.
When you’re angry, you might want to confront someone. When you’re anxious, you might want to avoid something.

What Are Feelings and Emotions?

(02:15):
And when you’re frustrated, you might wanna push harder, give up, or tell someone exactly what you’re thinking. But having an emotion and acting on the impulse that comes with it, as you know, are two different things.

And that distinction matters most when your emotions are intense and you feel a strong urge to respond immediately. So let’s focus on frustration, which is definitely one of the most common emotions adults with ADHD struggle with.

Maybe, like many adults with ADHD, you may also get frustrated, as I said earlier, more easily than you’d like and react in ways you wish you didn’t, or maybe you shut down when you’re frustrated.

As I’m sure you already know, your ADHD is almost certainly contributing to this. And here’s how that happens. First, a stimulus hits. Someone interrupts you while you’re deep in a project.
You get a text from your partner saying she’ll be an hour late for dinner.

Where Do Emotions Come From?

(03:19):
A friend glances at their phone while you’re in the middle of telling a story, or the air conditioner starts making that clicking sound that no one else seems to notice.

When something like this happens, your brain reacts quickly without conscious interpretation. In a fraction of a second, your brain is asking basic questions, “Did something change? Is this important? Does this require my attention?
Is there an emergency?” The stimulus automatically activates your brain’s arousal systems. Your body begins to mobilize.

This may make you more alert, maybe increase your heart rate, maybe tense your muscles, but you may not yet be consciously aware of an emotional reaction.
As you know, your brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex, plays an important role in regulating the intensity of our emotional responses.

Its job essentially is to signal this is or isn’t a big deal. I do or don’t need to react strongly.

(04:36):
This is or is not a three-alarm fire. And it’s not something people do intentionally, rather it’s an automatic response. In the ADHD brain, however, research suggests that the brain networks involved in emotional regulation may function differently.

That is differences in the dopamine- and norepinephrine-based brain systems in particular may contribute to less consistent regulation, making it harder to manage the intensity and duration of our emotional responses, especially when you’re stressed, tired, or just really overloaded.

So heightened frustration appears because arousal escapes containment. Your brain’s regulatory systems just aren’t dampening that activation as effectively, so the emotional response becomes more intense and lasts longer.

Then once that physiological state is already active, your thinking brain, so to speak, steps in and tries to make sense of it. Thoughts start to appear like, “She stopped listening. That was rude.

This always happens.” These thoughts don’t necessarily cause the frustration, but rather they’re explanations your brain generates after the fact to account for the existing bodily state.

(06:14):
That’s why frustration often feels instantaneous and personal. The body was activated first, the meaning came later.

(06:25):
To make matters worse, the same regulatory systems that don’t do such a good job suppressing arousal, or containing it rather, in the first place for an adult with ADHD, also don’t do a great job helping the nervous system return to baseline.

So again, the emotions can spike higher and last longer. ADHD-related differences in emotional regulation, attention, and impulse control can make it harder to pause, shift perspective, and then choose a response.

So even when you understand intellectually what happened, even when maybe you know it wasn’t intentional or think it might not be, even when you’re telling yourself it shouldn’t be a big deal, your body may still feel activated.

It’s just a slower physiological downregulation. The thoughts that show up tend to match the state rather than create.

Emotional Responses Can Be A Habit

(07:37):
At the same time, while your nervous system’s initial arousal is automatic, your response to it may be habitual.

That is, over time, certain cues paired with certain reactions become well-worn patterns, not necessarily because you chose them deliberately, but because repetition reinforced them.

The physiological reaction itself is unconscious, so you can’t eliminate that directly, but you can work on the behavioral response that follows the automatic arousal. I’ll say more about this in a bit.

Understanding the Difference Between Feelings, Interpretations, and Behavior

But before I talk about managing emotions and deciding what to do next, I wanna distinguish between three things, what you feel, how you interpret what’s happening, and how you behave.

These three things are certainly connected and they influence one another, but they’re not the same. A feeling, as you know, is the emotional experience you have, as I noted before, and it might be anger, frustration, hurt, anxiety, or disappointment.

(08:57):
An interpretation is what you think a situation means. It’s the conclusion you draw about what’s happening, why it’s happening, or maybe what someone else’s behavior says about you.

And behavior, which is really what I wanna hone in on today, is what you actually do in response. You might speak up, snap at someone, withdraw, ask a question, or decide not to respond at all.Let me give you an example from something that happened to me recently. I was in a parking lot with my new puppy.

A gentleman stopped me because he was curious about the puppy and he was a dog walker and had some questions. We were standing in a parking lot, maybe where we shouldn’t have been when a woman came along in her car and decided she wanted that spot.

So she started backing into it while we were standing there. We noticed what she was doing, and so the gentleman left and he told me to be careful.

(10:02):
I was then trying to get my puppy into the car, which as you might imagine, can be a little unpredictable. I opened the front door quickly to put something in there, then opened the back door to get her into her crate. And the woman kept backing up instead of waiting a moment for me to finish.

I got really angry and frustrated. That was my feeling. But I also interpreted what was happening. I decided she was entitled. I thought there were plenty of other spots, so why did she need that one, especially when she could see I was trying to get a puppy into a car.

Then she just simply told me that we were in her way, and that made me even angrier. From my perspective, I was trying to get my puppy safely into the car and she could have waited a moment.

Instead, she acted like we were the problem, or at least that was my interpretation of this whole thing.

(10:59):
And then there was my behavior. I snapped at her and told her she could go look for another spot. Now, I’m telling you the story because it’s not that I think I shouldn’t have felt angry or frustrated.

I was certainly dealing with a situation that felt unnecessarily difficult and I had a strong emotional reaction to it. But notice how quickly these things came together.

Something happened, I felt angry, I interpreted her behavior as entitled, and I reacted by snapping at her. Not once, but honestly, again, as I pulled out. My interpretation fueled my anger and my anger and frustration shaped how I behaved.

Then her comment intensified my anger and reinforced my interpretation. It’s also worth recognizing that I knew what the woman was doing, but I didn’t really necessarily know why. I judged her intentions or character based on what I was observing.

That doesn’t mean my interpretation was necessarily wrong or right.

(12:17):
It means there was a distinction between what I observed and what I concluded. And here’s why I think this distinction matters. You can and should acknowledge your feelings without automatically accepting your interpretation as fact.

You can experience a strong emotion without acting on the impulse that comes with it, and I’ll get to that in a bit. So in this instance, I could have felt just as angry and chosen to respond differently.

I could have just asked her to wait a moment, finished getting my puppy into the car, or decided that engaging with her just wasn’t worth my time. The feeling itself didn’t dictate what I chose to do.

And honestly, I wish I hadn’t rolled down my window to say just one more thing.
And that’s what I want to explore in this episode, how to recognize and accept what you’re feeling, especially when emotions ramp up quickly and then create enough space to decide how you wanna respond.

How To Address The Frustration Habit

(13:30):
Earlier, I said the physiological reaction itself is unconscious, so you can’t eliminate it directly, but you can work on the behavioral response that follows the automatic arousal.

Let’s get into that piece, because when you start responding differently, even slightly, you interrupt the reinforcement cycle. Over time, that can reduce how often escalation happens and how intense it becomes.

Remember again, feelings are real experiences, but they aren’t necessarily objective reflections of the situation. The same event can evoke different feelings in different people.

For example, in my case, I was talking to the gentleman, he just simply walked away, didn’t say anything. Well, he didn’t have the puppy, but neither here nor there.

Anyway, our history, expectations, current stress and other factors can shape how we react. And the more we react in a certain way, the more we will react in a certain way.

Between Stimulus and Response, There Is A Space.

(14:50):
So the goal is never to minimize or get rid of your feelings, but rather to respond to them the way you want. Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Victor Frankl said that between stimulus and response, there is a space.

And he went on to say, “In that space is our power to choose our response.” Now, I don’t wanna minimize the challenge this presents for ADHD adults. It’s a tall order, but I think you can do it.

The first step is to notice how you feel, your feelings in your body somatically. Is it tension in your head or in your stomach? Is it a flushed face or something else?
Because I think for most people, before you know what’s happening, you can feel it in your body, and that is the space that you wanna take advantage of.

That is once you feel it in your body, that’s your cue to pull back or stop whenever possible and give yourself as much time as you need to choose how you wanna respond.

(16:07):
Well, I didn’t do that in the parking lot. I recently practiced this when talking to my daughter. She said something that upset me and she asked me if I was mad and I just said I was having feelings and needed some time to sort them out.

And I took the space I needed and figured out what was so upsetting, and we talked about it four days later. It turns out my original interpretation that sort of triggered the upset was miles away from where I eventually landed.

And obviously this wasn’t something urgent that we talked about it four days later, but it was important enough to talk about.

(16:53):
The other part of Viktor Frankl’s quote is, “In our responses lies our growth and freedom. And I feel this each time I take the space I need to respond the way I want.” How about you? Are you willing to give it a try?

Do Not Discount or Minimize Your Feelings

The key in all of this though is not to discount or minimize or feel shame about your feelings, because again, remember, sometimes they’re just automatic and they’re telling you something that may or may not be related to the incident.

And as you probably know, if you try to stuff your feelings and ignore them, they’ll come back at some point, just like a boomerang.

Use The Space To Figure Out What You Need

For example, without going into details, because well, you know, privacy and everything, I was upset about the incident that I shared with you, and it had nothing to do with the incident itself or with my daughter for that matter.

(17:56):
Go figure. But it took me a while. It took me space to unpack what was bothering me so much, and that was in fact useful information for me. In this case, having the information was good enough.

I didn’t need to do anything else. But when you discover what’s prompting your feelings, you may decide you need to talk with someone else to dig a little deeper, maybe your therapist.

If you’re frustrated with a colleague, you might have a really good reason or you might not. That’s for you to figure out in that space between, again, stimulus and response. And then you can figure out what you wanna do next.

Maybe you want to do something different or maybe you want to talk to your colleague. Recently, I was talking with a client who was frustrated with her staff.
When we unpacked the situation, it actually turned out she needed to put more effort into training because they just didn’t understand her expectations.

(19:00):
In another example, I was talking to a client who was frustrated with his kids for dawdling, been there, done that. And it turned out that she just didn’t give them enough time to get ready.

You may still feel angry or frustrated even after choosing what to do. The feeling doesn’t have to disappear for you to behave intentionally.

Building the Skills You Need To Better Regulate Your Emotions Over Time

(19:26):
And to help you meet these moments, you can do a number of things in advance.
One, of course, is to take medication to treat your ADHD, which may help with emotional regulation, as it may make it easier to pause before responding.

You could also learn therapeutic skills such as DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, which can help you tolerate stress, regulate your emotions, and manage interpersonal situations.

Another type of therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, can help you learn to make room for difficult feelings while choosing what to do based on your values rather than your immediate emotions.

And of course, there’s CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, which can help you think more clearly about the thoughts contributing to your tendency toward dysregulation if that happens to be true for you.

And more generally, you can learn mindfulness practices that help you notice your feelings and bodily reactions without reacting to them in the moment.

(20:37):
And of course, there’s coaching, which can help you look at recurring patterns, think about what triggers responses that you wanna change, and develop ways of responding the way you want. The point isn’t that every strategy works for everyone.

Emotional regulation can though be supported and developed over time, rather than relying on willpower in the moment.

(21:06):
That’s it for now. I’m really glad you joined me, and I hope what you’re taking away from this episode is that it’s important to pay attention to your feelings, but feeling angry doesn’t mean you need to confront someone immediately.

Feeling rejected doesn’t mean you need to withdraw from the relationship. Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you need to abandon the task. And feeling anxious doesn’t mean you should avoid the situation.

But you may need time to figure out what is triggering the feeling and what the next best step is. And there are strategies to help you do that.

And if you want to keep learning how to work with your ADHD, sign up for my biweekly newsletter. You’ll get time-tested, ADHD-friendly strategies and resources from me straight to your inbox.

You’ll also receive a complimentary guide I created entitled Six Common Planning Mistakes Adults with ADHD Make and How to Avoid Them.

(22:14):
You can find the link in the podcast description or you can go to MarlaCummins.com/planning to sign up and get the guide. 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.

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Resources To Help ADHD Adults Work With Their Emotions

• Learn how to plan better with my Free Guide: 6 Common Planning Mistakes Adults with ADHD Make.
• Join other adults with ADHD and Marla in this virtual live adult ADHD education and support group.
• Learn more about how to respond to life’s challenges and find meaning in your life by reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.