Julie Legg and Jel Legg discuss ADHD and overwhelm – that sense of frustration when we can get upset and shut down emotionally and mentally, in various situations.
They chat about overwhelming occurrences relating to boredom, deadlines, stress, busy environments, learning or reading under pressure, and tips and tricks to deal with overwhelming emotions.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Overwhelm in the workplace.
- Pressure we place on ourselves and by others.
- Hypersensitivity to noise, crowds, and unexpected situations beyond our control.
- Celebrating mini-milestones and ‘fader-down’ strategies.
- Overwhelm at home, following verbal instructions, losing things, and interruptions when hyperfocusing.
Key takeaways:
- ADHD brains can get overwhelmed in a variety of ways and can be often viewed as irrational, or ‘over the smallest thing’ by neurotypicals. This however is not the case for ADHD brains. Something that may appear to be minor may just be ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.
- When overwhelmed, it can be difficult for ADHDers to articulate how they are feeling as they may shutdown both emotionally and mentally.
Links:
- Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024)
Transcript:
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.
JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.
JULIE: Welcome to ADHDifference. In today’s episode we’ll be talking about overwhelm, overwhelm and ADHD. Really overwhelm is that sense of frustration when we can get upset, we shut down emotionally and mentally in various situations. And they can be grand situations and quite sort of small moments can trigger that overwhelm.
JEL: Yes, we never really know when it’s coming. And it probably surprises people around us all the time. It can appear in situations that seem quite innocuous and minor. And conversely, we can be under a lot of stress, sorry, and function extremely well in high-stress environments and people wonder why we don’t burn out. We do eventually. But overwhelm, yeah, it’s definitely a big part of ADHD and it’s a one big for me. I think it every situation I can think of it’s always got something to do with not getting a dopamine hit. And dopamine hits can come from hundreds of different directions, you know. It’s not just about a happy thing. It’s a sense of achievement, getting something done, you know. It, anything that blocks that or gets in the way, or is just too much, can lead to this sense of overwhelm.
JULIE: Yes, so when we are flooded by this excessive emotion – it can be emotion, it can be information, and it can be stimulation around us. It can be noise. It can be crowds. So, let’s talk about some situations where overwhelm may well occur, or give examples of where it’s happened to us.
JEL: Well, we always touch on other subjects – we’ve discussed one of the ones that I think always triggers me is actually boredom, or being stuck in a situation where I can’t do anything about it. So, I’m waiting and an appointment’s gone over, or a bus or plane is late, I get overwhelmed with the inability to do something about the situation, to progress forward. So, it is that kind of vacuum of nothing happening that can get quite overwhelming sometimes. Yeah. I can be quite chilled about it I’ve got a good book to read. I can find something else to get a hit from but if I’m really stuck in a No Man’s Land, a complete dead space, I can get really overwhelmed by that. There’s one example, so but that’s not your typical example. You wouldn’t necessarily think of that as overwhelming but it is quite a big one for an ADHD brain, like it is for me.
JULIE: Interesting too. For me in situations like a work environment, I’m … I have always been known to be really productive in some of the contracting roles that I’ve done over the years. And a lot of the time it’s it wasn’t good time management necessarily but it was running on adrenaline and so I’d hit every deadline, and I’d work through my lunch, or I wouldn’t go out to social drinks. I’d be getting there wanting to get the work done for my own dopamine hit, but also that you know that sense of achievement after all. But when I had a big list of things to do and someone gave me just one little thing to do on top of that, I would find that very overwhelming because there was just no time to do it, and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It was a random thing presented to me and I would get overwhelmed by that. And again, it’s just a simple task to do. “If you could do this before you go and leave the office today.” So, it seems really simple for me. It was really huge and it was quite patronizing when, let’s say a manager would say “Gosh, would you like me to help prioritize your work?” Well, yes, that would have been helpful but it, for me, it just took away … I’m a very capable person and I guess they didn’t appreciate that this was the … there’s a term for it. [It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.] That is, that’s exactly it. Yeah, so I find that very, very frustrating.
JEL: And we can do that to ourselves. I can find myself in a situation where I give myself a fixed period amount of time before a deadline. Actually, it happened today. I had 30 minutes before lunch and agreed a time for lunch, and I know Jules was heating up some soup and it’d be so rude of me if I don’t wander in, well come in exactly on time. That’s just such a rude thing to do. So, I had 30 minutes to finish a garden task, precisely. I knew I could do it and the hit was going to be “I finished this task,” and it was a whole morning’s task actually, and so I could put my tools down, have lunch, and then the afternoon was mine. So big stakes at play here. And I needed the hose pipe, pulled the hose pipe out, and the end just fell off it. And I thought “Okay, that’s not the biggest deal in the world. I’ve got to put it back on.” But it was … it would have taken a minute or two, and it was the straw. It was the straw. And so, I was really frustrated now. Now I ended up being a couple of minutes late. So, the entire task I set out, which took about four hours to do, the dopamine hit wasn’t there because I failed to finish it at a pre-imposed time. I was 5 minutes late. I know that that sounds silly. That’s ridiculous. It’s unreasonable. It’s irrational. But I just don’t feel like I’ve got the dopamine hit from achieving that. I don’t look back at that job now, when I look out the window, it was cutting the lawns, and think “Yeah, did that, wonderful, awesome.” That’s just crazy but this is how our brains can work sometimes.
JULIE: I agree and this overwhelm, there’s a lot of ADHD traits that add to it, into the mix, and so for example another that can come from overwhelm is big emotions. It, for observers, it could be seen to be very irrational big emotion over the fact that you’re given one more task, or that your deadline you know, things weren’t quite working out for you. And also shutting down is a big one too and at times struggling to articulate how you’re feeling. Literally everything goes out the window, so you either rant and rave and boil over, or go so internally, you know, quiet that you can’t even put the words together to try and explain how you’re feeling. So that in itself is difficult for people to understand, or ourselves if we’re undiagnosed with ADHD. And so, if you can relate to those moments and you’re undiagnosed, well maybe one day after diagnosis you might be able to find some answers there. But, you know, it is a very frustrating time when you … ahhh, it’s just it’s too much to handle, really. Too much to handle.
JEL: So, I’ve got to throw in the opposite side now. Us folks with ADHD are known to be quite good at dealing with crisis, or under pressure in an emergency. So, this sounds like, from examples Julie and I have given, that would be … you wouldn’t ask us to be any good in an emergency. We’d just would be overwhelmed from square one and pretty hopeless really, but that’s not necessarily the case. We’ve got to remember all the time it’s about these, the dopamine hit. And we can … it’s not one singular dopamine hit and “There we go. I’m fine for the rest of the day.” Sometimes it’s just a whole series of them. It’s running, and running, running, into a situation. So, in an emergency we can actually respond really well and we can respond very focused and very efficiently for a very long period of time yeah. Yeah, we’ll collapse at the end but then, to be fair, everyone will. You know, everything we’re describing today non-ADHD people have, it’s just that we just seem to do all of it in more of an extreme, I think. [Hey it’s ADHD in a nutshell!] Another example is complex tasks. We’ve spoken before about complex tasks, motivation and so on, but it is important to break complex tasks down into simple parts. If you’re overwhelmed at the idea that your house is a complete mess and you need to tidy it up. Every room is in a mess. Then don’t try set the challenge of “I’ve got to do the whole house and it’s going to take me two days.” Just focus on one room at a time and look for the hit of tidying one room. You know, and as you walk away you look back, or as you go to bed you look in the sneak in the room and go “Yeah now that room,” because you know, all the great journeys start with one step. We’re good at these great thingies, whatever you call them here, but it really does work. And it may be weeks before you get on to the next room but that’s fine. That works too. [So that’s taking the win, isn’t it?] Taking the win. That’s the expression. We use this expression around here in our relationship all the time. Take the win, which means like you know, you’re on the pokies … we we’re not gamblers, but if you’re on the pokies, well that’s a bad example. Let’s forget that as an example but you know, taking the win is knowing when to say “Yeah, I did good.” It’s not all about the jackpots. It’s not all about the final score.
JULIE: Yes, it’s celebrating each mini milestone before you get to the end goal because things could deviate and change. Other times of overwhelm – it can be noise, unexpected noise or large crowds and that kind of triggers this hypersensitivity, which we’ve discussed in another episode.
JEL: And just on that one, because I know we tend to move on quickly, that doesn’t mean all of us folks with ADHD can’t handle a big crowd. Whether it’s a football match, or a concert, or a party. It’s our relationship to it. So, if we’re not invested in that crowd, if we’re not part of it, it can be overwhelming. If we are invested in it and part of it, so let’s say it’s a party and we know a few people there, and we’re in a good mood, we’ll be making the noise. [Yes.] You know, so we can be just as functioning just as well in that environment but it depends on our investment in that environment.
JULIE: With the hypersensitivity, thinking of you Jel, with smell of petrol or oil. [Car fumes.] Car fumes, there you go.
JEL: Or sirens, you know. Yeah, or a loud motorbike suddenly revving when you’re sat a cafe somewhere. Complex tasks. I wanted to just touch on something there. A little thing that might help with how you approach life with really complex tasks. When you’re doing something, you just can’t seem to nail, that can be very overwhelming, and you’re not quite sure why something’s not working. And it could be your life. It could be how you’ve got your whole life balanced or it could be just a complex task in front of you. Anyway, let me give you an example there. So, I’m a music producer, so I mix a lot of music and some music I mix is extremely complex. It can have 50 channels of input, each one can have hundreds of variations of what’s going on inside and so on. In the world of mixing, when we get to a point where mix isn’t working and the song’s not balanced, and we just can’t nail it. We think we’ve done everything right. It’s just not working. We have this technique called a fader-down mix. So, what it means is … you’ve seen those mixing desks with lots of faders on them, and you take them all down to zero and you start again. So, it’s back to basics, back to first principles. So, you bring up the bass drum, then you bring up the snare and you balance the drums, and you introduce the bass and you keep adding things until something’s not quite right. It’s called a fader-down mix. Now, I use this as an analogy for anything I’m doing. It could be your life, “Hey I like my job. My job’s great. I enjoy my job, great boss, great workmates. I don’t mind the commute to work, it’s not too stressy.” And you start adding things into the mix. “Child care, that’s proving a bit challenging. It’s too far away.” That’s until you find the thing that’s not right because if you don’t do that, and you look at the whole of your ADHD life, you get overwhelmed and you just hit a brick wall. You sit there and you do nothing and you I don’t know how to fix this. “I don’t know where to start because it’s all noise. Is it my job? Is it the child care arrangements? Is it my relationship? Is it the house I live in?” Yeah, so hopefully that kind of gives you a kind of tool idea of it’s a fader-down remix. Write it down. Sit there in in peace and quiet and write down a list of all the key things in your life and try to isolate which one is causing the overwhelm.
JULIE: Yeah absolutely. Yeah, and to just take note of it when it happens and the odds are you probably will know. You’ll see a pattern over past you know, over the history of when you’re likely to get overwhelmed and I guess anticipating those moments is really helpful. Another example of overwhelm can be actually in a lecture theater, or for those really trying to educate themselves on a particular subject. And I know, I’ve done a couple of papers over the years, and I find the lecture theater actually very noisy. There are people tapping away at their laptop, or writing notes, or talking. I’m really trying to focus. I find that environment quite tricky and so this year I’m trying remote learning, which I’m finding is really interesting. At my own time I can replay the lecture on Zoom, fast forward and go back again and repeat. So I, that’s kind of alleviated some of the noise or over-stimulation factors around the lecture. Also it can be overwhelming taking on board instructions. Little things like “Right, you want to go to the doctors. Well, you go about 5km down, turn left, and in the V go to the right, and then hook around and you’ll see this red barn, and then go beyond that and at the second gate, right again, and then behind …”. You know, it’s just like argghhh. After the … what was the very first instruction? I find taking on board instructions overwhelming too, so writing them down for me helps so I can refer back and not have to rely on my memory for complex things like that.
JEL: That is such a good example. I’m just giggling to myself inside. My entire life when I … and bearing in mind I’m in my late 50s, so we didn’t have sat-nav and mobile phones when we were young, so we had to have a map. And we’d usually forget to put the map in the car, so you stop and ask a local “How do I get to blah blah?” I don’t know why I bother because after the second instruction, maximum third junction turn right, it’s I’m just phasing out. Smiling and thinking “Cool, awesome” and we get to the 10th instruction “Make sure you don’t turn left there.” Ahhh, and then you just to drive off and “He’s gone the wrong way.” And it’s been all of our lives we’ve done that. And it’s you know, and now I look back and laugh because I didn’t realize I had ADHD back in those days. [Yes.] But it’s no different now. There are sometimes when you realize, or you’re diagnosed ADHD, it doesn’t fix things. There’s no fix for that that I’m aware of, apart from writing it down, making a note, or recording it. “Do you mind if I record you?” [Well, you could yeah yeah.] Or, just don’t stop and ask anyone directions now because it’s a complete waste of their time.
JULIE: And other little things like losing your keys can be quite overwhelming because with ADHD it doesn’t just happen once, does it? We know that it doesn’t. It happens all the time. And after the fifth time, or the fifth time this week and you still can’t find them, that can get overwhelming just such a simple thing as finding the keys. And you’ve got ideas for losing …
JEL: Well first of all so you don’t lose your keys is, you know, you have to play to your own strengths. Your hyperfocus which a lot of us with ADHD can switch on and off every now and then, so hyperfocus on as soon as I walk through the door, I hang my keys up there, or I put them there and get obsessed with it. Because it will pay dividends. In my case my keys never leave my right front pocket ever, and so I’ve never locked, well generally don’t lock myself out, because the only way I can go out without my keys is not to have my trousers on, I’d kind of notice that. But it … when keys are lost, I’m going to go back to the fader-down example, reset back to basics. Forget all the “Oh it must be in the drawer.” I’ve looked in the drawer five times. It’s all the places it should be, it’s not. Back to basics. The most simple thing – you arrived home in the car, yeah we must have had the keys. Did you lock the car? Yes. Sure, right. And, where did you then walk? What did you do? And so, there’s no point looking at the other end of the house. You’ve got to strip it down. If you do that try to make it, try to make it fun, and try to think you’re sort of …. [Sherlock?] Sherlock! See, I had a complete mind blank there my mind went somewhere else. You’re trying to avoid this overwhelm, no matter how much stress you’re under and you’ve got to find those keys. You’ve got to go out in five minutes. You’ve just got to find that way of stripping it back to basics and usually that will give you the result.
JULIE: Which brings us through to time management because we know, I know, when you have to be at a certain place at a certain time. [Nightmare.] Absolute nightmare, and/or running errands. Getting across … you know, especially to a deadline, getting across town, doing this, doing that. It can get quite stressful. And throw in heavy traffic on the motorway … you can get quite overwhelmed when plans don’t quite go to plan. That can be very frustrating. The other thing too is being overwhelmed with things like exercise routines, or some self-care work, or losing weight for example. It can seem quite overwhelming. Such a huge task. Where do you start? Again …
JEL: Start the beginning. Take each day as it comes and if you … going through that process at the moment, if you fail on a day, or a week’s not what you want, a new week starts. Yeah. Set yourself reasonable expectations. Don’t … our ADHD brains want instant results and they want, you know, we don’t have the patience to wait but you do have to find a way of saying well … Stack the odds on your favour. If it’s going to take six months find a way to accept it to achieve something.
JULIE: In the book I talk about ‘chunk it’, you know, put things into chunks and so rather than look at the big picture which just seems so overwhelming and unobtainable, week by week. You know, you can you can look a week ahead and sometimes it’s a day-by-day, depending on what you’re setting out to achieve.
JEL: That reminds me, one other type of overwhelm is being interrupted. So, we hyperfocus a lot. So we might be hyperfocused on a useful task, a work task, or playing a game, or reading something. What overwhelms me if I’m hyperfocused on something, and it has to be done, or I really want to do it, or I’m really interested, an interruption, a silly Interruption you know “Oh someone’s phoned for you,” it’s like overwhelm. And that’s silly because in itself it’s like quite innocuous, it doesn’t matter, but it takes away from that hyperfocus. [Yeah, so it maybe, maybe it’s breaking that concentration just, I don’t know.] It’s the emotional response. We spoke earlier, you mentioned about emotional irregularity from being overwhelmed. It is irrational but there’s an emotional investment in what I’m doing, or I’m getting my dopamine from what I’m doing. I’m at this crucial point where it’s a great chapter I’m reading, so I’ve seen in the game where I’m going to win this, and then you get interrupted. So, it’s as if someone says “I’m just popping in and turning off the tap that supplies your dopamine,” and you know, halfway through or just before you’re expecting to get it, that is overwhelming. That’s a kind of overwhelm. Overwhelm can have … it can manifest in all sorts of different ways. We’ve just got to learn what the triggers are and how we get it.
JULIE: So, we’ve talked about lots of different types of situations where we can find overwhelm, and my last example will be reading a book. Now, I’ve written a book and I’ve had to reread it many times for editing and proofreading, but I find reading a book, because I can get distracted and have to go back and reread some paragraphs, or at times forget where I’m up to and have to reread several pages to work out where I’m at, I can find that overwhelming. It’s because I’m hoping that my brain works like neurotypicals brains do, but it does not. So, being kinder to myself and going “You know what? It’s okay that is going to happen,” makes things easier. Reading in paragraphs rather than in chapters, rather than chapters. Breaking it down. Getting a highlighter pen out and highlighting things that were important, or making notes, whatever it may be, but just not … I do enjoy reading but sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming if it’s not quite ‘getting in and staying there’ so to speak.
JEL: And as we’re sort of heading towards the wrap-up, I think there’s a word that’s the most important word in the English language, it’s no. NO. If you can learn the art of saying “no”. Say it nicely, or you got to snap it out if you really need to. When someone says can you do this, this and this, and this and this, and this you go “No. Right, I can do this. I can do that. I will achieve this. I have no problem doing that, but that’s too much.” If you can learn to recognize where the overwhelm will kick in, the answer is no. And it really is one of the most important words because a lot of us are very good at saying “Yes. Yeah, I’ll be there at 6. Yeah, I’ll come over. Yeah, we’ll do this. Yeah, I’ll get that for you.” We want to please people. We want to be liked. We want to be loved and respected and valued, but if we keep saying yes all the time, we’re not doing ourselves any favours when we reach that overwhelm point. So politely learning a way to say no and saying “No. No, I recognize that would be too much but I can achieve all the other things, that’s the deal.” If that fails and I do this … no. If that fails … see I just said no … if that fails, walk away from the lot of it. Go for a walk or go for a run. Literally step away from it.
JULIE: Which was what I was going to talk about. More positive ways of addressing overwhelm rather than “nooooo.” Yes, give yourself some space. Do something that brings you joy even if it’s five minutes just to go and sit in your car and listen to your favorite song. Just give yourself some space. Allocate some time to re-energize, practice some mindfulness and just you know, trying to push out some of the noise. It’s also breathing, if you practice breath work. It’s also reframing those unhelpful thoughts that are coming into your mind. Just be at peace with them for a bit. Don’t feel that you need to have a knee-jerk reaction to them. If you need time to sort of mull things over, that also helps.
JEL: And if you’ve been overloaded with people for days telling you what you must do, and what they want you to do, and you’ve lost control of the ability to choose what to do your time, don’t beat yourself up if the answer to it is when you get that first couple of hours, or a day or whatever, to go and do nothing.
JULIE: Again, when we talk about giving yourself space, what you do in that space to recharge, the world’s your oyster. It could be something really productive.
JEL: Because the point of this space is you’re not being told what to do. Yes. That’s the point of the space. Whatever happens in that space is take the win that you’re not doing what you were told to do, or have to do, or required to do. You’re doing what the heck you want to do and if it’s nothing, that can be a very powerful thing.
JULIE: Before we sum all this up, overwhelm of course neurotypicals can experience overwhelm. ADHD brains are more likely to come across this more often and as I said earlier, it’s likely that you’ve got lots of examples yourself where you’ve been overwhelmed. Looking for those patterns and trying to predict when they may happen is always very helpful. We’ve given a few little tips but of course your ADHD coach or therapist will also help guide you, particularly if overwhelm is really impairing a part of your life in a major way. And we’re talking about work relationships, and friendships too. So, overwhelm it’s being frustrated and upset, it’s a flood of emotions, it is shutting down mentally and emotionally over what could be a huge life experience or just the simplest of things.
JEL: Hopefully in this chat we haven’t overwhelmed you.
JULIE: Thanks for listening.