Why We Feel So Much — and Ways to Overcome It
Research shows that people with ADHD have out-sized challenges with frustration, impatience, anger, and excitability. Here are four strategies to regulate our excessive emotional responses to frustrations and setbacks, so we can stay on course and move forward in our lives.
6 Comments: Why We Feel So Much — and Ways to Overcome It
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The negative nag thing makes no sense to me. I would say 90 percent of my anger results from frustration at not having the means to move forward. If there was something, anything, I could do to change my situation, I wouldn’t get angry in the first place. My only recourse is to let it go.
I didn’t even finish the article yet but had to comment on how life-giving it is to read this. I feel seen, AND I feel hope that there are ways to learn to react/respond differently.
From someone who so often feels alone and sort of broken compared to “normal” people, like I can’t meet the societal or even practical expectations put on me, this makes me exhale in the relief of knowing I’m not the only one who struggles the way I do. But the best part of this article is that it doesn’t just commiserate the shared struggle, it offers practical but compassion-filled ways to start re-learning healthy responses. How encouraging to know I CAN change!!
Does anyone get complete brain blowout (feels like 1000 people screaming in my face at full volume in front of strobe lights) response when they feel they have let someone down – like missing your daughters dance recital Cause you got the day wrong, or forgetting to book the party room for you son birthday, saying a mean thing to your partner that you didn’t mean (even though you’ve done everything else)… stupid stuff only people with ADHD understand)? I really struggle with having a debilitating hysterical response that I can’t do anything but cry and scream and shake, when I do something that will let down my kids or partner – I just dive from 1 to 1000 into self loathing and disgust and just can’t handle the intense regret. It is totally unnecessary and over the top but it’s like I’m not in my own body when it happens And nothing i can rationalise matters – the flooding makes me useless to sense. I usually have one of these massive meltdowns every 6mths and I hate it. I’m 41 and have basically an hysterical toddler meltdown but I have no control when it happens and it comes on so hard and fast (within a minute sometimes) … my partner can’t handle them and I’m so embarrassed about what my kids have to see when it happens… any help. The only thing that can bring me down seems to be a cold shower and crying hysterically till I literally exhaust myself to sleep.
This is a great article for me. I have been struggling with ADHD for years, this has been a fantastic help for me to look at the way I am behaving as well as reminding me of the need to keep a good ‘emotional home’. I definitely will be sharing with my 2 children who have ADHD, but also the other members of my family to help them further understand my & others behaviour.
This certainly came along at the right time. I’m having a bad day. I’ve been doing pretty good for almost a week now, but I didn’t sleep well last night and even though I don’t feel all that deprived, I can tell that I’m moving slower and having trouble staying on track. Plus, I’m frustrated.
I have a lot on my plate, all things I care a lot about, but I don’t seem to be able to balance them. Summer has been hot and humid, so I haven’t enjoyed being outside. I haven’t been able to ride my horse the way I normally do AND I managed to give myself tendonitis in my wrist from trying to do chin ups!!! So now I’m doing PT three times a week, and worrying about losing what I gained from strength training.
I’m trying to learn to be a better photographer because I want to create my own reference photos for my artwork. Along with that, I’m trying to learn how to paint with pastels, and it’s a lot harder than I realized.
I groom my own dog, and he’s getting close to needing it again. I don’t mind doing it, and in some ways, I actually enjoy it, but it seems like I just did it! The pasture needs mowing, the lawn needs mowing, and I can’t begin to keep up with the weeds! All I see is things I’m not getting done.
And then I do the same things over and over again, it seems. Yesterday I left the hose running for hours before remembering it. This afternoon I decided to take some photos and discovered that once again I forgot to turn my camera off from the last time I used it, a couple of days ago!! Fortunately, there was still half a battery charge left.
Oh, and yesterday I responded to a post on Facebook and felt like several people jumped down my throat. Normally I’m very careful about expressing an opinion, but I did, and then I was upset by some of the responses. Things ended up on a good note, but WHY do I do that? (It’s a history group, and everyone’s an expert!) Normally I stick with my wonderful ADHD group and an art group where everyone is nice and supportive.
When I feel this way everything bothers me.
OMG, SAME!!!!!! Seriously, y’all just cannot even KNOW (well, actually, I suppose you actually, DEFINITELY DO know!!) just how INCREDIBLY helpful, uplifting, and encouraging and JUST AMAZING it is, to hear one of these stories, and to think, that was my day, or that is MY life exactly, or whatever the case may be!!!! And to KNOW, FINALLY, without a doubt, with written proof, that you are NOT ALONE IN THIS STRUGGLE!!! Just finding out that I had adhd in tbr first place was such an ENORMOUS lightening of that godawful weight on my shoulders. Y’all know the one, the one we ALL HAVE, to varying degrees, that weighs us down, tells us we can’t, tells us not to even bother trying, we’ll only fail, we always do. Tells us we’re weird, we’re different. Tells us that “normal” people don’t do things like that, or struggle with simple little nothing tasks like this, or that they are better, smarter, more adult and mature, less lazy and can accomplish more than we can. But, when my weight is whispering, in its sinister, bog me down, bum me out and unmotivate and discourage me, I can come here, and I can read the stories and experiences of the MANY PEOPLE EXACTLY LIKE ME, and the encouragement, advice and helpful strategies of the expert voices here, and all of a sudden, even that whisper, it becomes nothing but the wind, or a creaky floorboard, and I feel ever so much lighter, less weighed down, less weird, less wrong, less alone, and I just feel, mostly, NORMAL.