Julie Legg speaks with Caroline Beresford about the concept of ADHD paralysis, a state of mental “freeze” where decision-making and action become difficult or impossible. Caroline shares her personal journey with ADHD, her experiences as a parent of children with ADHD, and her insights as a certified ADHD coach.
Together they discuss the unique challenges of ADHD paralysis, its triggers, and strategies to overcome it. A common stigma associated with ADHD paralysis is the perception that it is laziness or a lack of willpower. People often misunderstand ADHD paralysis as “procrastination” or “not trying hard enough,” which leads to judgment from others and self-criticism from those with ADHD. Caroline emphasizes the importance of self-compassion and recognizing the role of executive function deficits in ADHD-related paralysis.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Caroline’s ADHD Journey: Her ADHD diagnosis journey was influenced by her experience as a parent navigating her child’s ADHD diagnosis and her decision to train as an ADHD coach.
- Understanding ADHD Paralysis: Overwhelm, perfectionism, fear of failure, and large, unstructured tasks often trigger paralysis. ADHD paralysis can affect everyday tasks, work, and relationships, as individuals struggle to take action despite having a clear intention to do so.
- Strategies to Overcome ADHD Paralysis: Include breaking tasks into smaller steps, external accountability, self-compassion, and time awareness tools.
- Common Stigma: ADHD paralysis is often misjudged as laziness or lack of effort, but it’s actually caused by executive dysfunction, making it difficult to start tasks despite wanting to, leading to shame, self-doubt, and misunderstandings from others.
- Coaching Role: Caroline helps ADHDers manage symptoms, reduce paralysis, and find personalized solutions.
LINKS
- Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024)
- ADHDifference – Instagram
- Caroline Beresford – The Addvocacy Project Website
- Caroline Beresford – LinkedIn
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52. Welcome to ADHDifference. In this episode we’ll be discussing ADHD paralysis with special guest Caroline Beresford, a Sydney based ADHD coach. She was diagnosed with ADHD in her 40s and has experience of parenting ADHD children. She has a wealth of knowledge and firsthand insights to share. Thank you very much Caroline for joining us today. We’re going to be talking about understanding ADHD paralysis but, first of all, I’ve got lots of questions about your personal ADHD journey. Welcome.
CAROLINE: Thank you so much Julie for having me today. I’m really happy to be here. So where do I start? Where would you like me to start?
JULIE: Well, I guess if we can start from the beginning with regards to what prompted you to seek an ADHD diagnosis.
CAROLINE: Okay so I have … I’m a mother of two beautiful teenage boys and my eldest boy had always, I wouldn’t say struggled, but he had found Primary School a little bit challenging in terms of friendships and being able to control his impulses pretty much all the way through Primary School. And it wasn’t until around the end of year five that we got a clear-cut diagnosis of ADHD for him. And after that we went into Covid of course and the lockdowns that came along with all of that. I was working as an interior designer focusing on retail and hospitality design at that time. And of course, I lost the majority of my projects so I had a lot of time up my sleeve. I had heard of this amazing coach training program, ADHD coach training program, called the ADD Coach Academy, which is an academy based over in New York. I had a friend that had started her coach training there and I thought what a great opportunity for me to throw myself into this space of neurodiversity because it was really important for me to understand how my son’s brain was working so I could support him and I had time on my hands. So, I enrolled in the initial module which was called Simply ADHD and that’s where I became incredibly passionate about understanding neurodiversity, in particular ADHD. And it was during that time that I learned about you know how genetic it is, how it’s five times more likely to be passed down through the mother’s side, all of the different subtypes. You know, I thought it was just you know quintessentially little boys bouncing off the walls because that’s what it was known as in my time. So the more I found out, the more I sort of started you know just mentally ticking off the boxes. So it then led me to think I’m really resonating with a lot of these symptoms. So I was lucky, I found an amazing psychiatrist and because it was lock-down he had opened up some new appointments on Telehealth which you know, they don’t, they didn’t do that often. So I was lucky. The diagnostic process for me was pretty simple and yeah, it was actually a really incredible experience for me.
JULIE: So Caroline, you were diagnosed with inattentive subtype of ADHD. Genetically it’s not always passed down the same. Often it can be one of the three types. What was it in your situation?
CAROLINE: In our situation it was exactly that Julie. It was, so me being the inattentive, I have one child diagnosed with the hyperactive-impulsive subtype, and then the other child was recently diagnosed with the combined subtype which is of course the combination of the hyperactive-impulsive and the inattentive.
JULIE: And were there signs that you had ADHD earlier in life that you can now recognize in retrospect but didn’t at the time?
CAROLINE: Absolutely, yeah absolutely. I’ve thought about this a lot. I was … I had my diagnosis formalized for me, it was about four years ago now so I was 47 at the time, and I’ve had a lot of time to reflect. And often I’ll be driving in the car and a little memory will pop up and then I’ll think oh it just makes sense now. Little things like you know, I was very, very diligent at school. I didn’t, I never wanted to do the wrong thing. My parents might disagree with that but I worked hard even though I did quite, you know, quite often looking back now I’m aware that I did especially in the later years of my schooling, I would leave everything to the last minute. So it was always a scramble and you know, pulling the all-nighters. I do remember that. School report you know, I’ve gone back over those and it was always “She’s a charming girl, she’s polite, she’s hardworking, but she’s not meeting her full potential.” Yeah, so those little things but the funniest thing I do remember is I think I was about … I was in Year 4 so I would have been 10, nine or 10, and I remember mum bought me a pair of new shoes. And I was obsessed with these so obsessed with them that I would take them to school every day and sit them on my desk. And so of course the other kids would look at me and think “She’s like … what’s going on here? Is she showing off that she’s got these new shoes, or…?” And guess what the shoes looked like Julie? They were multicoloured striped with like little fine beautiful threads of gold sparkles through them. And they were like my thing that I would on my desk and they would just help me focus because they were sparkly and shiny and, yeah. So … [Wow, wow.] I still love shiny sparkly things.
JULIE: Don’t we all. Don’t we all. That’s wonderful. And how did it feel when you were first diagnosed that you know, a range of emotions what .. how was it for you?
CAROLINE: I think for me, I … my case is a bit of a unique one that I feel very blessed to have had actually. As I said before I was already immersed in my ADHD coach training through ADDCA and so I was surrounded by the most incredibly neuro affirming group of people from the United States, from the UK, from South America, from Canada. So there were people, there were probably about 30 people in my cohort that I trained with all the way through. And we were catching up that the training that we do through ADDCA for our training, coach training, is quite rigorous. That it’s three hours of virtual training in a group, twice a week. And then you have two hour’s worth of your mentor training and your like coaching buddies as well, like when where you do practice training and stuff. So I pretty much had constant contact with these incredible people that had I think probably 90% of them had all been diagnosed before they had started. So I was one of the scragglers that sort of got the diagnosis halfway through. So for me it was like oh gosh, okay. It just you know, if I can borrow your title of your book it was The Missing Piece for me. It was like, oh that makes sense. It just made sense. It was a relief and it gave me the space to actually sit back and start thinking about all of my flaws. Well, I don’t really call them flaws anymore. I just call them my quirks. But it … but having that diagnosis gave me the space and the insight to actually then just look at it in a different way with greater self-compassion and understanding.
JULIE: Absolutely. That’s the most amazing thing I think to come from a diagnosis, to begin that work. Before we start going into in depth about your ADHD coach training that you offer, I did want to ask you know, I think it’s quite remarkable that we all we make it through to adulthood undiagnosed and somehow, we pull together strategies to manage some of our traits. Did you have any strategies or did you bumble your way through undiagnosed? You know, these ADHD traits often trip us up left right and center. How did you manage? How did you manage yours?
CAROLINE: I was thinking about this the other day actually because it’s a really good question. Some someone asked me the same thing; I think it was one of my clients and I had to think for a little while. But when I reflected, I think I was really good at masking my ADHD which explains why the diagnosis didn’t come forth or come forward until I started digging myself. But I think I was able to mask it by just being super, super organized. And I remember when I did get my diagnosis a couple of my close friends who knew me really well said “You? ADHD? No!” Actually even my GP said “Are you? No. Are you sure? Does he, does … you know does this psychiatrist know you?” And I just said thank you guys, that’s all very you know complimentary but it … my organization came at a cost. My, especially I was, because I’ve always put my family first, and my boys, and being on top of everything for them, I think my work suffered a lot. So then of course you know, the ADHD tax of like having to stay up late because you’ve spent all day looking after kids stuff. So I guess you know, so having you just being really, really probably overly vigilant in terms of checking the family calendar all the time. That was probably one of the strategies that I developed.
JULIE: I guess with that too Caroline, I think that’s a prime example about how others see us. Their observation may be the extreme opposite of what’s going on inside our brains. Whether it’s you know, appear to be very attentive and onto it, or never arrives late you know, always prompt on time and highly organized. That’s what they see with a huge amount of effort from us. But, when we retreat into our own space and our safe space, we don’t and we don’t need to mask. It’s quite easy really to see those traits shining through so [absolutely] I completely understand and get that. I was going to now ask you actually about your ADHD coach training because that is what you do. And I’m just wondering, what does the ADHD coach training curriculum usually cover? So when you’re going through your own training, I know it’ll be very wide, but what do you cover?
CAROLINE: So I can probably make it easy for everyone listening, and for you Julie to sort of process this I guess. So there was, there were three components. As I said earlier in our chat I initially just signed up for the Simply ADHD, the module one, because I had no plans in changing my career at that point. I thought that yep, everything will be sweet. I had a really small but successful interior design business that I’d had running for 10 years actually, and I thought once you know, once everything opens up again I’ll go straight back into design and I’ll pick up where we left off. But that didn’t happen. I did go back to design and the … I guess the market had really changed there and I think the decision to move across into coaching was purely driven by my need to actually use my lived experience and my knowledge to actually make a big, you know, make a change make a difference, make some impact for people that might be finding living with ADHD challenging as well. So sorry, a little bit of a tangent there but back to the framework of my training. So we started out with the module one which is Simply ADHD and that covers … It’s really an introduction into what is ADHD you know, the term’s thrown around a lot. What is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. You know, what is it by definition. The training that I chose to do is very evidence-based so they looked at all of the studies and the evidence, the clinical trials that have been done in terms of genetics. We looked at you know, treatment types. We looked at you know, even the three subtypes you know, not many people know that there are three different subtypes of ADHD. So it was a real basics of ADHD. We looked at you know, what is executive function because that’s a key to understanding you know where our ADHD symptoms come from. So we learned about this, the 12 main executive skills and how, you know, they then manifest into the symptoms depending on what executive skills are impacted by our own personal ADHD experience. The … oh and of course, before I move on to module two, they were very big on reframing. Reframing in a sense of you’re not broken, you know this whole idea of it’s an illness, and they were reframing it into, and I love this, they talk about it not being a deficit of attention. It’s more of a redirection of interest, if that makes sense. [Yes, yes.] And that really resonated with me. So it was all about learning how to use the right language. So in terms of rather than saying “Oh you have a you know, oh ADHD it’s a mental disorder,” or it’s a you know. It’s like we have different brain wiring or unique brain wiring. So it’s that I think part of my mission through coming out of ADDCA is to really work on advocating that you know, it is purely our brains work differently. We process information differently, to continue to do the work on lifting the stigma around ADHD. Wonderful. So module two was, it was personal development. So it was learning about all of the different traits, like the different models that I now use in my coach training. So it was learning about the strengths model, and boundary setting, those sorts of things. And then the third module was our basic training and so that was, a lot of that was you know how to actually set up a coaching practice. The bulk of that module was purely like practical work. Practice. Practice. Practice. And we needed to do 100 hours of practical work before we could then graduate from that training program. Yeah.
JULIE: That’s full on but gosh, now having ADHD yourself you’re bringing something magical to the coach training party so to speak. And how has having ADHD yourself influenced your coaching approach?
CAROLINE: My coach approach is very much based on exploring our unique selves. Because through … like knowledge is power and you know, the more we can understand how our brains work, and how our brains and our bodies are connected, only then can we learn to have self-compassion and understanding. So I often you know, when I’m working with my clients you know, I find myself really putting myself in their shoes and relating back to I so get where you are right now. I’ve been there. I see you. I hear you. Because most of the time you know, people just want to be heard and understood. So I come very much from a self-compassion, self-awareness and knowledge perspective.
JULIE: I was going to ask too with all of your clients coming through, what are the most common challenges that they have and need help from you with?
CAROLINE: Yep. So, when I’m working with my clients I, because the symptoms are actually all stemming from which particular executive skills are being impacted by the imbalance of our neurotransmitters, sorry if that’s a little bit jargony, we need one of your warnings Julie! So I always link it back to okay, what are you experiencing? So it could be procrastination and so I think okay, let’s link that back to which executive skill is being, is in play here. And so procrastination is linked to task initiation, so a big one for most of my clients regardless of whether they’re a student or an executive, everyone seems to struggle with task initiation and getting things started. They get stuck, or we get stuck, yeah. Prioritizing. So prioritization and planning which is another defined executive skill and that’s I guess finding it challenging to you know, overwhelming. You know, we’ve got all of these things to do and sort of deep down we do know that we should do X but we choose to do Y because it’s not as threatening. And so I see procrastination very much tied to that as well.
JULIE: Today we’re going to actually be talking about ADHD paralysis and I think this is all part of it. Would you be able to … we might as well leap straight in there, can you define what the term ADHD paralysis is?
CAROLINE: Of course. So ADHD paralysis it … I like to talk it, talk about it in the sense of ADHDers are, most of us are, great in a crisis. So under pressure and if it’s not a decision involving us, we are pretty much you know, we can make it a split second decision under pressure if it needs to be done urgently, and if there’s not too much information involved. What happens when there is a lot of complex information to sift through and work through, and when we need to be able to sift through that information to be able to make an informed decision or choice, that’s when the paralysis that freezing can set in because it’s too overwhelming for the ADHD brain to be able to, I guess methodically work through all of that information. So our brain freezes.
JULIE: That’s interesting too isn’t it, because when you think about it’s not just procrastination, which outsiders could even say “Oh you’re being lazy. You don’t want to do that role.” There’s a whole bunch of ADHD traits coming together as you know, the fight flight or freeze you know. That freezing, not knowing what to do and the overwhelm, as well as self-doubt and there’s a whole bunch of other things all thrown in. So very interesting and I can understand that would be a common one. It is. And why do professional women often find ADHD paralysis particularly challenging?
CAROLINE: In my experience talking to, like with my own lived experience and also working with so many women, that most of my clients have been late diagnosed actually because we were the generation that you know, there wasn’t you know as much evidence as there is now. We’re lucky to be living when you know in this day and age now. I think it’s particularly challenging for women diagnosed with ADHD because we have busy brains anyway. I mean I don’t need, I don’t mean to be gender sort of biased here or anything like that, but at the end of the day a lot of the thinking around keeping you know, family calendars and all of that sort of stuff, appointments, medical appointments, that still seems to be falling back on the mother. In my case I actually like to do that myself anyway because I, that’s me feeling like I’m in control of everything. You know, I’ve got everything sorted. So I think that with that mental load that’s already that we’re carrying around for our families if we then throw in you know, a whole wad of information based on like making a single decision on something, that just often is just it’s just too much for the ADHDer. For the ADHDer to be able to work through and if we can circle back to what you were talking about before Julie, about all of the … so many of these ADHD traits all working in together at you know at any one time. This is a great example of where this happens because you know you’ve got … so the you know, you’ve got the woman that is, has got all of the balls in the air with you know, being a mum, keeping the house running, keeping her job going you know, exceeding in her career. And then something you know, a big you know, important decision is thrown into the mix. That can just be enough to really make that woman feel quite overwhelmed and scared and threatened away. You know the decisions, even though to the outsider it might seem like a really simple decision to make, in that moment to her it can feel really scary and it can be perceived as a threat. And so what happens when we feel like we’re in a threatening situation our frontal cortex where all of our executive functioning happens, that switches off and our amygdala, our monkey brain where our fight or flight or freeze happens, that switches on. And so procrastination is essentially a fight or flight response. One more symptom that’s actually happening with all of this is that inner critic and the self-doubt and the second guessing. Yeah. You know, how many times have you actually made a decision and then gone to bed that night and not slept because you’re worrying about the decision that you’ve made. I know I’ve done that hundreds of times.
JULIE: Yeah and add to that, perfectionism and people pleasing and you know, we’re trying to be Wonder Woman where actually that’s unrealistic, you know. We’re human. We can only take so much on board. Probably juggling, I love that analogy of juggling. Put so many balls in the air at any one time, one extra ball and the whole thing’s going to fall. So I think we’re very aware that things could come tumbling down quickly if we’re not, if we’re not careful. But are you able to share some success stories of some clients who’ve really taken on a new look or transformed their relationship with task initiation?
CAROLINE: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah definitely. I’m not working with her anymore, this particular lady, because my work is done. Great. We did some great things. My role is to actually do myself out of the job so unless they you know, want to go into like a mentorship type agreement, which happens sometimes. But I was working with this gorgeous woman. She was a professional in a leadership role and she would struggle with putting workshops together. And it wasn’t just the workshop content, she was fine with that. She could get up and present and run a workshop you know to hundreds of people and just speak off the cuff because she really knew her stuff. But where she was getting stuck was actually you know, she would have an assistant putting imagery for her slides together. But of course you know, the night before she would start looking through all the imagery and she would think no, that’s not, that image isn’t right for that. So she would then basically, I think she came to me ultimately because she had stayed up all night before a really important workshop and it really, that lack of sleep because you know a lack of sleep can really sort of ramp up our ADHD symptoms. She was very upset that she had sort of fallen into that trap of perfectionism. And the reason why she had left it right up to that last minute was because she knew that she would probably fall into that trap. So, you know so we did some work around you know, what is perfect anyway. We did some inner critic work but I think the strategy that she found most use useful was, I like to call it my Post-It note strategy. And that strategy is all about choosing a day and time, two weeks before the workshop is actually happening or whatever you’re preparing for. So in this case we set it for two weeks beforehand. She timed herself for 25 minutes using another time management technique that I use, and she got a pack of Post-It notes. And in that 25 minutes the task is that you just write down a single word or a phrase, everything that she had in her mind that she wanted, she … the most important things of her workshop that she wanted to talk to. And then she organized them into themes. And then she set out to review what her assistant had found and tweak the images that she wasn’t happy with. So it was … it’s all about planning, well in advance, and she gave herself a time limit. I’m only, you’re only going to get 25 minutes to brainstorm exactly what imaging you want in here. And then you know, with plenty of time to refine it. I like that too because if we don’t give ourselves deadlines, they go on and on don’t they. And we spend way, way too much time which sort of, yeah which is … has a ripple effect and then encroaches on other important aspects of our work or projects.
JULIE: So now I can see that working, very good. And it’s great that she doesn’t need to see you. You’ve done a very good job, very good job. Procrastination is often overwhelming and also you know, I can imagine ADHD paralysis is also often misunderstood by neurotypicals or those not really yeah … maybe overlooking some of the symptoms. What would you like people to understand about ADHD paralysis?
CAROLINE: I think the most important message for everyone to understand with regards to ADHD paralysis is it’s not laziness. It’s not …it’s not an avoidance tactic. So it’s not it … and a lot of the time with many of our ADHD symptoms that show up, ADHD paralysis, there’s a lot of shame around that. I can I hear that in you know, with the clients that I work with and I’ve been there as well myself. Now I understand what it is and what’s wrapped up in you know, this whole concept, I am kinder to myself and I’m more aware of it so it doesn’t actually … I don’t fall into that trap as much anymore. So I think it’s not yeah, take away the negative connotation and look at look at this with compassion and understanding because when we’ve got more understanding we’re actually opening ourselves up to finding the strategies that work. Because there’s lots of things that can be done if you know, if you find the right person to work with.
JULIE: Which is my next question to you. You know, what would you say to a professional who is struggling with ADHD paralysis who might be listening today? What’s the first step you think that they should take?
CAROLINE: The first step you should take to everyone listening if you are struggling with this particular challenge, is talk to someone. Find someone to talk to. Try and shift past the shame and reach out to someone. Hopefully you’ve got someone who you feel safe with and who you feel comfortable talking to. Either in the workplace or a family member, yeah just reach out and talk to someone. I think that would be my recommendation, rather than freezing and hiding just hoping that it will go away. Because the more that you stay in that space, the worse it will get.
JULIE: And talking to an ADHD coach like yourself is a way not just to express what you’re going through but to come up with some brilliant strategies that are actionable, and with your support too, guiding them through. [Yeah.] Absolutely. Now Caroline, all of your details are going to be in the copy notes of this podcast so anyone listening wanting to reach out to Caroline, we’ll have some details there for you. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you today however we were going to mention a little something that might be coming up in the near future. Would you like to chat about that?
CAROLINE: I would love to and I’m so excited about this Julie. I’m so excited. So Julie and I are going to be launching a very new little venture together. It’s our very first webinar. So Julie is going to be talking to all things ADHD from a New Zealand perspective and I will be speaking from an Australian perspective. And it is a webinar for late diagnosed ADHD adults based in either Australia or New Zealand. So you could be someone who has just received a late diagnosis and you’re navigating a path forward or you could be someone that’s you know, on the journey to finding your diagnosis. So please stay tuned. I think Julie is going to put our contact, you know platform details in the show-notes. Please follow us both and you will get updates through that.
JULIE: Absolutely and I’m very much looking forward to it as well from my work as an ADHD author and the experiences I’ve gathered with numerous women, and your expertise in the coaching field I think we’ll be able to answer a whole bunch of questions and maybe put a few stereotypical myths to bed. And raise some of the stigma around, ERASE some of the stigma around ADHD. So really looking forward to that. We will keep you posted if you stay in touch with us as Caroline said, and we’ll be chatting again soon. So thank you Caroline and we will talk to you shortly.
CAROLINE: Thanks Julie, bye bye.