ADHD Emotional Regulation

Learning what to do with your negative thoughts and feelings and treating your ADHD go hand in hand. I know you want to learn how to work with your ADHD so you can leverage your strengths and manage the ADHD symptoms that get in your way. And sometimes you need to exert control to do this. For example, you might try to temper your impulsiveness, avoid distractions, manage your stress, decrease your perfectionism, etc. It takes a lot of time and energy to do this, right? But are you wasting your time and energy trying to also exert control over your thoughts and feelings? You frequently have automatic thoughts in response to a trigger. And these elicit various emotions. Sometimes these are helpful. For example,…

  All ADHD adults need and deserve validation — a sense of being heard and seen. But you may feel shame when you don’t get as much as your non-ADHD peers. You may also feel shame because you’ve internalized the common wisdom that you shouldn’t need to look to others for validation. But you do, don’t you? According to the belief that you shouldn’t look outside yourself for validation, you will do damage to your sense of self-worth and self-efficacy if you rely on others for this. Conversely, relying only on self-validation will give you a better sense of self. This understanding of validation is just wrong! Sure, self-validation is important, but we also need validation from others. No doubt, it’s a balancing act —…

  Recently, a subscriber asked me about “managing emotional dysregulation in ADHD adults” in response to my query: “What is the topic about ADHD that most interest you right now? And, like many ADHD adults, this topic may be of great interest to you, too. As the inability to regulate emotions can have pernicious results in your life, for sure. But, if we were to probe deeper, your curiosity is likely about more than just regulating emotions. You are likely interested in figuring out how to address the challenges you have with using various executive functioning skills to reach your near-term and long-term goals. That is, you want to know: To better understand how to address these core ADHD challenges it is helpful to understand…

When I thought of writing this article I was surprised to discover I had not directly addressed this question before. After all, I thought, “I’ve been writing for a long time, and this is a core part of what I do. How is it possible I’ve not tackled this question head-on, yet?” Time to remedy this. Because I know this is something you think about all the time when you wonder: What all these questions have in common is a desire to figure out how to do what’s important to you — be productive. The strategy for doing that might surprise you, and, I’m guessing, is not what automatically comes to mind. What Does It Look Like When You Are Being Productive? If I were…

You won’t be surprised to hear that my clients will on occasion cancel at the last minute because something has come up — an emergency. Such is the life of an ADHD coach, you may say. True. But more often than not, while it may truly feel like a crisis, it’s not. And so these occasions become opportunities for us to delve into where else they are jettisoning their schedule because of a perceived crisis. Because I know, if it is showing up in coaching, it is likely showing up in other areas of their life. And probably getting in the way of following through and being intentional. If this sounds familiar, the first place to start is to understand your brain wiring. As an…

Do adults with ADHD need more self-confidence and self-esteem or self-compassion? In a previous post I claimed that ADHD adults need more self-compassion. I still stand by that. But having a good sense of self is also important to be able to feel good, as well as “do good.” And I know from the questions I receive, such as the ones below, you might be interested in strategies for improving your sense of self, too. How can I salvage self-esteem by leveraging personal strengths (both related and non-related to ADD)? What are methods of confidence boosting and self-image improvement? These are definitely important questions to answer. Because, as Dr. David Burns, author of Feeling Good, noted, “a poor self-image is the magnifying glass that can…