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ADHD adults make mistakes just like everyone else. You will do something whether it is “an action, decision, or judgment that produces an unwanted or unintentional result.” And you may wonder on occasion, “How can I stop screwing up?!” Well, of course, it’s impossible to avoid making mistakes. You know this. Yet, you may beat yourself up whenever you make one. Maybe even going into a shame spiral. And, when you’re feeling like this, the last thing you want to hear is how your mistakes will help you grow stronger! So, I’m not going to tell you this. You’re welcome. ? However, the way you think and feel after making a mistake may lead you to behave ways you later regret. So that your response…

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…