ADHD & Emotional Wellness - Lifestyle Changes For Emotional Dysregulation & Rejection Sensitivity
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “self-regulation”?
Most people associate it with discipline, willpower, and self-control. All are connected to your ability to avoid procrastination, overcome paralysis, complete your goals, and stay productive.
However, impaired self-regulation in people with ADHD has an emotional aspect as well.
This ADHD symptom is called emotional dysregulation, meaning your ability to control your emotions can be significantly impaired. Burnout, sensory overload, feeling overwhelmed, and out of control are very often the norm, instead of the exception for people with ADHD.
The experience of living with ADHD creates additional obstacles whenever you try to manage your emotions. It is exhausting to mask and self-regulate, always overwork yourself to compensate for not feeling enough, and be a people-pleaser because you want to be accepted.
This article will dive into a holistic set of strategies you can use to avoid burnout, cope with strong emotions, and handle specific emotional dysregulation issues, like rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RDA).
Take Breaks, Seriously
This is the most obvious, but most of us are still not taking enough breaks.
We all know that breaks are healthy and necessary. They are a way to rewind, detach from everyday challenges and stressors, do something enjoyable, and snap out of our workaholic trance. You could probably come up with a dozen more benefits. Yet, if I ask you how much you rest, you will likely answer, "not enough".
I’m not making this observation to blame you. Don't feel ashamed for not resting enough.
After all, I am not much different. I tend to overwork myself because I often feel as though I am not doing enough and being enough. So, grinding my brain and body to mush is a necessary compensation. You also likely have perfectly legitimate reasons not to take enough breaks.
It feels frightening to take 4 hours off on a workday or an entire day off during the weekend, even if it is how you can be more productive long-term.
It's all very ironic and silly. We put resting as a non-priority because it would trade off with time when we could work. However, it's precisely this time when we are resting that allows us to work more and prevents illness, burnout, and other mental health issues, which are all negative events that stop us from working optimally for days and even weeks.
More importantly, you deserve to rest. There isn't anything fundamentally flawed and broken within you, so there is no need to grind yourself to dust to compensate. You are okay. In the same way, you wouldn’t put it as a condition for your friends to be over-achieving workaholics to stay in your social circle, you can be okay with yourself even if you aren’t always perfect.
So, maybe you are convinced to give rest a shot, even if reluctantly. How do you go about it?
Ideally, breaks should happen in some shape and form every single day. If feasible, most days should have a working and resting section that are clearly separated, and you may even want to take some days off entirely, like once a week. Of course, this doesn’t work for everyone since there are days when you can’t afford to sit down and months where you need to work to survive, but it’s still a worthwhile goal to aim towards.
Resting is good for you, but that doesn’t mean you desire to rest. After all, it is very likely that your ADHD brain is used to constantly being on the go, multitasking, and working in some shape and form. So, trying to rest will feel uncomfortable and challenging in the beginning.
If your brain leans toward being a workaholic, you will need reminders that it is time to rest, so prepare alarms in advance. A very simple alarm system can be a mandatory break in the middle of your workday and another one at the end of your workday, where you promise yourself to stop working after it rings off.
If you are very serious about taking self-care and rest, you can even ask friends to check up on you and make arrangements to be more social, so you will either be kept accountable or have no opportunity to work even if you have the urge.
Breaking Your Day Into Working Half And Resting Half
One of the most effective strategies for resting enough is also the hardest to pull off.
It requires you to strictly separate your day into a work period and a rest period. Once an alarm goes off, you immediately stop working. It doesn't matter if you need 30 more minutes to finish something. This sharp separation creates a clear association with rest after the alarm goes off. This alone can help to reduce productivity-fueled guilt and shame over not doing enough for the day.
If you feel uncomfortable and dissatisfied with the work you did today, that's okay. Channel this pain into motivation for tomorrow. This system doesn't require you to kill your drive for career improvement and personal growth. It only changes the direction of your energy. This way, you can work more intensely in the shorter period of time you are given each day.
Contrary to what you'd expect, the less time you have, the more likely your work quality is going to increase. If a break is a mandatory and non-negotiable part of your life, then this creates a sense of time scarcity and urgency to finish your work in the limited time span. Even if you work fewer hours in total, a clear deadline can increase the total output and quality of your work.
The Different Types of Breaks
Rest is different for everyone.
Taking a break is much more complex than just going on a vacation or spending a day in nature. Resting is about finding a balance for yourself, and what you need in a given moment can be very different from what someone else needs.
For the sake of simplicity, breaks can be broken down into physical, mental, emotional, sensory, and social rest. Depending on your needs, there can be even more specific categories of rest.
If you are in a highly stressful corporate job, you will likely need mental and social rest - you've dealt with all kinds of people the whole day, so you need some time alone, and after having to process so much information during the day, you need to wind down and do nothing. For people whose everyday activities involve manual labor, which is physically taxing, not moving or getting a massage will likely be the most needed type of rest.
Paradoxically, sometimes, action can serve as a form of break. Going for a walk can feel very relaxing if you've been sitting all day at a desk or home office job. Similarly, getting lost in creative projects may be the necessary break you need if you spend most of your day working in a dreadful and boring job.
Action as a form of a break is especially important for neurodivergent people.
Neurotypical conceptions of rest usually involve watching TV, reading, or doing nothing for a while. However, the ADHD brain is at a dopamine deficit, making it more restless and demanding of stimulation. Having an intense workout, going on a massive cleaning spree, and losing yourself in a hobby can all feel very relaxing because you get to immerse yourself without the need to mask and self-regulate.
I've offered general guidelines, but you need to do some self-exploration on your own. Do your current breaks make you feel good? If not, try something different repeatedly until you find a formula that works.
How you take a break doesn't matter as long as you feel calmer and more refreshed afterward. It is all about finding a balance; what you specifically need will depend on you. One excellent way to see if you’ve found balance is if you feel your ADHD symptoms becoming less intense. For example, going for a walk after an 8-hour shift at a desk will make you less agitated and restless.
Addressing The Root Cause of Burnout
Rest is essential, but sometimes it is not enough to fix burnout.
What do you do when you return from the holidays or a vacation but feel the familiar resistance to work creeping in? Unfortunately, just stopping work for a bit is not enough to fix burnout in many cases.
Let's begin by defining burnout and its three key characteristics:
Exhaustion, which can be both physical and mental
Cynicism, which makes you more aggravated, spiteful, and less kind and empathetic to others
Low self-efficacy, where you feel like you are dragging yourself through the motions and keeping up the same work output, takes more energy than before
Christina Maslach is the leading expert on burnout who has studied the phenomenon extensively (1).
According to Dr. Maslach, there are six root causes of burnout:
Lack of control - If you feel forced and coerced to do what you are doing and barely have control and autonomy over the work process and the final product of your effort, then you are more likely to experience burnout.
Insufficient reward - Motivation to keep going requires a balance between the effort you put in and the reward you get. Lack of appreciation, respect, validation, and other forms of reward can all increase the chance of burnout.
Value conflict - You are more likely to burn out if the company or organization's values are not aligned with your moral, cultural, religious, political, and other beliefs and principles.
Unfairness - Being treated without respect, appreciation, and compensation for your effort and sacrifices can also lead to burnout. For instance, nepotism and decisions made based on corporate politics without reward for hard work would be unfair no matter what you believe in.
Work overload - An overwhelming amount of work sustained over a few weeks is one of the most common burnout cases because it pushes you over the limits and doesn't give you time for rest and recovery.
Toxic social environment - An environment of toxic competition, bickering, and gossip behind your back erodes the sense of community people need to endure stressful and exhausting work days.
To answer the question from earlier, going on a vacation is not enough to take care of burnout because you are only addressing one of the six root causes - excessive workload. When you return, you will still be met with a company that doesn't reward your hard work, favors others over you due to nepotism, doesn't do anything to create a sense of community, and micromanages your every move to a suffocating degree.
Your changes will depend entirely on your environment and the severity of your burnout. For example, if you feel micro-managed by one manager, you could ask to work under the wing of another or change departments. However, if this is not an option and you strongly dislike the company culture and practices, you may be better off changing jobs.
While so far we have talked about burnout in the context of the typical 9 to 5 workspace, you can also experience it from volunteering, group activities with family and friends, and even from your hobbies. Even if the context for burnout is different, the solution will still involve changing the environment to avoid any triggers.
For example, if you are doing volunteer work at an NGO for public speaking, you could feel burnout creeping in because the direction of resources doesn’t align with your vision (value conflict), and you don’t get any gratitude and respect for the effort you are putting in your work (insufficient reward).
So, you can put forward a candidacy for a senior position to get more control over the NGO’s direction or try private alternatives for the same niche because you will at least be compensated financially for your effort.
Try Minimalism - The Connection Between Your Emotional State & Your Environment
You become more stressed if there are more unnecessary items, objects, and equipment around you, making your home feel and look disorganized, messy, and chaotic.
The external world reflects your internal world, so you need to keep it tidy and under control, which is most easily achieved if you have fewer items to deal with. The less you deal with at home, the more clarity you have because of the fewer decisions and choices you have to make.
How you approach minimalism depends on you.
The most common minimalism techniques include:
Honestly assessing the value of your belongings
Selling, donating, or throwing out anything you don't essentially need
Having a three-month waiting period before making a purchase that would cost a lot
Implementing a "one in and one out" policy where new items have to trade off with something old
Investing in shelves, cabinets, and storage bins so most surfaces remain free to reduce visual clutter.
Minimalism doesn't end up in the physical realm. Since you are likely to spend a few hours a day on your phone (everyone does, so don't feel called out), digital minimalism is also important. The rule of thumb is - remove or restrain anything that stresses you out, distracts you unnecessarily, and doesn't have a clear use or purpose.
This can include removing apps you no longer use, de-cluttering your email from spam and irrelevant promotions, muting all non-essential notification sources, unsubscribing and unfollowing anyone on social media who's not aligned with your goals and values, and creating a personal system to store all your notes instead of having them scattered all over. Anything that creates a feeling of being overwhelmed or triggers stress belongs in the trash bin.
You should pay specific attention to digital triggers, like doom-scrolling, political content that feeds on anger and hatred, mobile games you can spend hours on, etc. By removing them altogether, or at least making it harder to easily click on them, you make it more likely to avoid the impulse altogether, or at least give yourself more time to think about it.
Find Yourself a Cheerleader
Not literally.
A cheerleader simply means having someone who deeply cares about you, who will treat you with compassion, and who offers positive affirmation when you are struggling and validation when you are doing well.
We all know having people who support you is good and necessary. Negative self-talk is very common if you have ADHD, so you need to balance it out by having a person or a whole group or community that reminds you how you are likable, good, capable, enough, and that you can always be better and improve, no matter how stuck you feel in the moment.
This is essential because people with ADHD struggle more than neurotypical people to cope with failure, self-doubt, and feelings of guilt and shame. Time blindness, feelings of inadequacy, and perfectionism can all make you ignore and diminish the value of your achievements.
The quickest way to get social support is by going to therapy, getting coaching from a qualified professional, and any other form of paid service where you connect well with the person. How likely it is to find a match and afford it in the long term will depend on your insurance, monthly budget, preference for in-person or online meetings, and the options in your area.
The second best option is to put in more time, effort, and commitment to maintaining and finding friendships. I know this is easier said than done. Not everyone has a best friend or friends with whom they feel comfortable confining about their current challenges, problems, and insecurities.
Even if you are currently alone, there are many online communities, forums, and servers where you can talk with others, get advice and validation for your issues, and form friendships. Some of the most popular ones are r/ADHD, r/ADHDwomen, and any of the popular Discord communities you can find by typing "Discord servers for ADHD" in Google.
If you don't have at least three very close friends, your quest to get close to people is not over yet. I know you are not completely in control of how many good friends you have. Sometimes, you give everything in a relationship, but they don't reciprocate. You are always the one who reaches out, but they never reach back, or they don't ever seem to have you as a priority
It's hard, especially the older you get, as people settle down with children or remain in already established friend circles. But it is not impossible. After all, you are not alone in this struggle. This is why many people call our times the "loneliness epidemic," especially after the Covid pandemic.
Many people feel like involuntary hermits nowadays. Still, you retain some power to shape your social life and find friends.
If you feel isolated, other people do as well, which means other people are also looking for connections. I know you have excuses - work keeps you too busy, you are focused on personal growth, the older you get, the more introverted you become, and others. Still, life is about balance and moderation.
You are not expected to be hyper-social, but it's essential to have close people around you and work on building connections with others. You can try many ways - play video games and look for buddies to play together with, volunteer in local initiatives, pick up a new hobby, meet people in training classes, etc. I’m not saying the success rate is very high, but it’s higher than not trying at all, and if you give it your best, you will make friends eventually.
Journalling - Making Sense of Thoughts And Emotions Through Introspection
Low self-worth, perfectionism, and internal hyperactivity can create a category-four hurricane in your brain. For many people with ADHD, the default way of being involves chronic overthinking, constant rumination, and an overwhelming amount of spinning worries, concerns, and strong emotions.
The cheerleader we just discussed can be very helpful because you can vent out your concerns and get some support, sympathy, and solutions. Still, being socially isolated is not something you can instantly fix.
In the meantime, you can try a simple journalling exercise I call “brain dumping” that you can easily do anywhere. It's more introvert-friendly, and you won't have to worry about people's reactions.
The beauty of brain dumping is that there isn't a structure, rules, or restrictions. You just need to pick an outlet and let your thoughts flow out of your mind. You don't even have to read or hear it afterward. If it's a digital document, you can erase it. If it's a journal page, you can turn it into a paper plane and fly it to the trash. If you make a voice recording, you can delete it afterward.
The exercise allows you to express all your thoughts and feelings instead of holding them in your mind. It no longer gradually wears you down or accumulates until it explodes somewhere or on someone else. Expressing your concerns, insecurities, and frustrations does not resolve or fix the underlying issue. Still, it can help you articulate more clearly what you are feeling, and getting it out of your mind can be calming.
Expressing what's going on internally creates a healthy distance between you and your thoughts and emotions. It allows you to see them more objectively. They are merely figments of your mind; it's up to you whether you choose to entertain them and let them define you.
Over time, you can see some patterns, make more sense of your feelings, and develop solutions.
For example, the more you explore the reason why you are a perfectionist, the more likely you are to see a connection between trying to be perfect and over-compensation due to some feeling of inadequacy. By seeing perfectionism as more than just a belief designed to make you more productive for the sake of working harder, you can find better ways to manage it.
Even if you don’t do a deep dive on a single issue, the very action of writing down your thoughts is useful. Otherwise, thoughts remain unaddressed, and they continue to aimlessly spin in your mind. This is especially problematic for people with ADHD because ignoring racing thoughts is a common challenge.
The more thoughts you have lingering in your mind, the worse the storm inside your head becomes. When it becomes too much, you naturally find other ways to cope with the internal noise. Scrolling on your phone, relying on YouTube videos and podcasts to be background noise all day, and playing video games are some of the most common ways we desperately try to drown out the radio in our minds instead of addressing the chatter.
Journaling is especially helpful in making sense of your emotions.
Many people with ADHD mention having symptoms of alexithymia, which is a reduced awareness of how you are feeling. The emotions are still there, but they are much harder to identify. Journaling can help you with that because you are dedicating your entire attention to exploring your inner world and making sense of the ambiguous and confusing feelings you have.
This is important because awareness of your thoughts is the pre-condition to better regulate how you are feeling. If you can name it, you can tame it. To control your emotions, you must first know what you are feeling.
If you can’t name the exact emotion, you can start by exploring its characteristics. The easiest one is the movement associated with what you feel. If your feet begin tapping and you start biting your nails, you may be feeling anxious and stressed. If you want to smash something or lash out at someone, it may be anger and aggravation. If you want to identify an emotion, ask yourself where you feel it in the body.
Similarly, you can try to define the intensity of the emotions from 1 to 10. Measuring the intensity of your emotions is not an exact science, but even a rough estimate can be immensely helpful. The higher a particular feeling is on the scale, the higher the need for you to pay close attention to what you are going through because it is likely to be more disturbing and overwhelming.
Finally, how often should you journal? Do you have to make it into a habit? What do you do to reap maximum benefits?
Don’t overthink it, and follow your gut. The lame answer is that it entirely depends on you.
Some people enjoy consistency and crave the order and structure provided by journaling every single day.
So, they have a specific time when they start writing based on convenience, or they just write haphazardly throughout the day when they have nothing pressing to do. When writing every day, there is no pressure to do multiple pages every single day, so you can only write a few sentences or even a few words when you are not feeling it.
To not run out of questions, you can always look at available templates online or in digital books. There is a whole market for journaling questionnaires around popular therapy modalities, like CBT and DBT, and other specific techniques, like shadow work (exploring subconscious needs, desires, and attitudes). Such guided journaling can give you a clear direction and goal in case you feel uncomfortable with the ambiguity of word dumping.
I can’t do habits like journaling two days in a row, and I suspect there are many people in a similar situation. My mind craves variety far too much to allow it. I also don’t like to write about random thoughts I had or how my day went since it feels boring and repetitive.
When I journal, I write about new experiences I’ve had, like traveling abroad or about a particular issue that has been bothering me for a while. I prefer to write every so often, but go very deep on the topic and look for patterns and connections to other parts of myself. I find it easier to start if I write for 2-3 hours every two weeks versus forcing myself to spend 5 minutes every day, which may have to do with my need to fully immerse myself in an activity for an extended time.
If any of that resonates with you, you don’t have to force yourself to journal daily. Sure, there are some cases where you can journal and feel better, but you won’t because you haven’t done this recently or forgot it’s an option since it’s not a habit. However, in most cases, you will naturally think about and desire to pour your thoughts on paper if the problem is big enough or you have a lot of experiences to make sense of.
Managing Emotions in Your Social Life
Emotional dysregulation can often cause your emotions to suddenly magnify, overwhelm your judgment and rationality, and spiral out of control. It also overlaps or causes rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD), which leads to an anxious expectation that someone is upset, disappointed, mad, or done with you when you are having a conversation (2)
Since you are sensitive to rejection, you start to interpret neutral or positive situations as negative.
This stems from the belief that there is something wrong with you. Thus, ambiguous situations that could be interpreted negatively will always be perceived as negative. For example, your partner not responding to your messages likely means they are busy, but you could start thinking they are mad at you or don't care about you anymore.
In many cases, the worst kinds of emotional outbursts and mood swings are a result of being out of balance and neglecting self-care. If you have a healthy work-rest balance, meditate, sleep enough, have a healthy diet, journal regularly, and have a strong support network, control over your emotions should be much easier.
I know what you are thinking. A person who does all of that is as rare as a unicorn, but that shouldn't discourage you from trying to care for yourself as much as possible.
Unfortunately, real life is not perfect. No matter what you do, inevitably, there will be moments where you feel on the verge of a breakdown, can't contain an angry outburst, or feel painfully rejected, betrayed, misunderstood, and neglected to the point where you wish to explode on someone else.
What do you do then?
You can't control the emotions that arise because it has already happened, but you have some control over your reaction. If you can't stop the emotions, the second best move is to create distance between you and the person you are talking with. Emotions are like waves. They come and go, which is why you can ask to be excused and disengage from the situation for as long as you need.
Usually, 15 to 30 minutes is enough for the emotions to cool off. Your body can’t sustain intense emotions for very long because they are very demanding and exhausting. Once some time passes, you may even realize that your emotional reaction may not be needed since you misunderstood the person's actual message and intentions.
This is not a perfect solution, but there isn't anything better you can do if facing a crisis at the moment.
You can't rely on your mind to regulate your feelings because it is currently overwhelmed with emotions. This is why you turn to your body, get your legs moving, and create distance. When you ground yourself, increase the physical distance, and calm your breathing, you change the course of your emotions, nudging them to pass instead of magnifying them further.
It’s much better to be in the middle of an argument and curtly ask them for some space before you awkwardly disappear for 15 minutes than to stay there, get even more heated up, and eventually say something you’d deeply regret afterward.
Using Controlled Exposure To Treat Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
One specific exercise you can try to improve your emotional resilience and reduce sensitivity to rejection is to create your own exposure therapy experiment (3)
You can set a goal for yourself to get a hundred small rejections. Ask X amount of potential prospects on a date, pitch articles to major news outlets, and apply for Y role in a company where you don't feel qualified. Once, and if, the rejection comes, take ten deep breaths (double inhale and very slow exhale), say out loud how this isn't the end of the world, and try to get distracted for a bit.
The discomfort you will experience sucks, but it will gradually get better. It may also improve your ability to cope with anything you perceive as a rejection down the line. Over time, you will grow more capable of handling your emotions and not catastrophizing even if you anticipate and end up getting rejected.
The benefit of this type of exercise is that you do it in a controlled environment. You are the driver behind the wheel, so you can choose when to start and when to stop. You also control the intensity, which allows you to avoid situations that are too stressful.
The point is to slightly push your limits without going overboard. To simplify, if your current maximum is an emotionally heavy situation rated 4 out of 10, then you should strive towards a 5 out of 10, not an 8 out of 10. So, apply for jobs you don’t care much about, but don’t go out confessing your feelings to your crush if you think it’d destroy you if the answer is no.
The exposure should have some effect on you, but it shouldn't be excessive and overwhelming. The point is to slowly become more resilient, not to risk breaking down entirely.
Emotional resilience is built by selectively exposing yourself to slightly challenging situations and overcoming adversity. Not when you go out of your field completely and traumatize yourself.
If you are not sure whether you can draw the line, refrain from doing this exercise or do it with the assistance of a therapist and qualified mental health professional.
Key Takeaways
Practice a skill ten thousand times, and it will feel like second nature. Automatically respond to a situation in the same way ten thousand times, and it will feel like the only reaction you could ever give.
When your emotions have felt out of control for so long, it can seem impossible to change the default setting into something different. Changing how you respond and manage emotions is an uphill battle. One that you can not easily win.
However, just because it's hard doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, especially if your sense of self, mental health, and happiness are on the line.
