How do I… know if I’m ADHD? I feel broken and different
Cope with ADHD?
You may have trouble starting, organising or finishing tasks, have racing thoughts, or be emotional impulsive. These can affect your relationships, work and your self-esteem – everything. None of this means that you are broken, lazy or bad, ADHD is a brain-based condition. A combination of support can benefit you, including therapy or medication (if this is right for you). This would include tools to help identifying, bearing and understanding any shame you are feeling, and understanding your unique processes.
Emotional regulation and rejection sensitivity
If you have ADHD you’ll often experience intense emotions, have issues with frustration tolerance, or rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD).
Therapy strategies
Emotion regulation tools, such as help with managing your distress. This may include tolerance techniques, including identifying primary and secondary emotions: ‘When I feel anxious, I withdraw or get angry’, and help with putting more thinking processes in place
Identifying emotional triggers and learning how to respond to them and give yourself time rather than reacting
Processing emotional responses to perceived criticism, failure, or abandonment
What therapy can do:
Reframing negatives like ‘I’m useless’ into ‘I can start this, even for five minutes’
Teach strategies for planning and organising tasks, such as breaking them down, a colour chart or schedule – and even a reward system
Identity, shame, and self-esteem
Many adults with ADHD feel shame
Therapy could include:
Rebuilding your sense of self to reflect your strengths and identifying where this ‘I’m not enough’ came from
Working with compassion through seeming past academic, social, or work failures
Learning to ask for your needs to be met or meeting them yourself rather than overcompensating or hiding them
Impulsivity
ADHD can involve acting without thinking or finding it hard to sit in uncertainty.
Therapy can help you:
Practice pause techniques, such as stopping and taking a breath, observing and then responding
Use mindfulness to build awareness of impulse patterns
Learn to slow down decisions and reactions through structured thought exercises
Motivation
Many people with ADHD feel paralysis, even with things they want to do.
Therapy could help you:
Understand the dopamine connection in ADHD (why uninteresting tasks can feel almost physically impossible)
Build a toolkit of low-resistance entries, like the ‘I’ll just open the document’ rule or do one thing a day towards my goal
