How to manage ADHD overwhelm

Do you get overwhelmed a lot? I do. Do you ever get Totally Overwhelmed? I do, but thankfully not as much as I used to, and I’m here to help you avoid total overwhelm too.

Fun fact: there IS such a word as ‘whelmed’. It’s old and out of use, and means to be covered, buried, or engulfed. So if you were a ship at sea, you’d be whelmed by the waves if they were hitting the bow and spraying up over the deck. If they tipped you right over so you’re totally covered by the water - that’s being overwhelmed. How apt.

Let’s say you’re making dinner, the kids are talking to you, and you’re also trying to get ready to go to your night class in 30 minutes. So you’ve got steps to follow, you’re hot from the stove, you’re trying to meet your own expectation of being a good parent, but your son is telling you about a dream he had, and someone else is singing, and you’re trying to keep focused on how to leave the house on time. 

Now your partner walks into the room and asks you if you want to go visit her parents for the weekend. Emotional processing! Logistics! Distraction! This simple-seeming situation is a recipe for overwhelm.

Getting overwhelmed is a common challenge for adults with ADHD. Getting totally overwhelmed can have high costs - for your nerves, your relationships, and your self-trust. If you go into total overwhelm, it’s hard to cool yourself down, or to control what you say or do. The point of this post is to give you tools so you can help yourself before you get to that point.

Important note: If your overwhelm leads to violent or destructive behaviour that risks hurting you or someone else, you probably need more targeted help than just reading this. Please see a therapist or other specialist! (You’re welcome to talk with me about it - I’m not a specialist in this stuff, but I’m practical and kind, and am happy to help you figure out a way forward.)

Total overwhelm

Being overwhelmed is uncomfortable, but isn’t always in itself a problem. The problems tend to come from when we get Totally Overwhelmed. So what do I mean by total overwhelm?

When you get to total overwhelm, your nervous system freaks out and goes into self-protective overdrive. The mode switches to full fight/flight/freeze/fawn (or any other f you wish to add in there). This is happening in our nervous systems, body, and right side of the brain, and the rational mind is not able to help.

When you go into total overwhelm, you often struggle to choose your actions and words - they ‘just happen’. Instead of nicely putting up with the pressures and inputs, some part of you does whatever it can to get rid of them. This looks different for different people - it could be a meltdown, it could mean shutting down, or it could look like you’re having a breakdown.

Let’s oversimplify for a moment, to give a sense of the kinds of things that might happen. Meltdowns take an external form: this can include lashing out, shouting, smashing things, or storming out. Breakdowns might involve running away, or a lot of tears and saying things you usually wouldn’t. Shutdowns happen more on the inside of a person. This can look like going very quiet, drinking or drug use, or impulsive quitting.

This range of responses is useful to know about, because some of them are hard to see or to identify. For example, sometimes I’ve been so overwhelmed I can’t talk, make decisions, or get my brain to do any thinking at all. When I was younger, I was anxious all the time anyway, and I didn’t link up being overwhelmed with these strange states I’d end up in. (This has been one of the biggest benefits of an ADHD diagnosis for me - it shines a light on my patterns, so I know how to help myself more accurately.)

After going into total overwhelm, it takes a while to recover. We may feel embarrassed or awkward. We may be tired, washed out, or wound up; maybe we feel lonely, angry or misunderstood. It can bring up stories, feelings and beliefs connected with past meltdowns, breakdowns or shutdowns. And this nervous system crisis may make your ADHD symptoms worse for a day or two afterwards.

‘Total overwhelm’ doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It follows on from ‘pretty overwhelmed’, and starts off as ‘a bit overwhelmed’. Once you’re totally overwhelmed, it’s hard to cool yourself down. But if you’re only a bit overwhelmed, you’re in a good spot to get off the overwhelm train, if you learn how to do it. And you can! (Most of the time, at least…which may still be a lot better than what you do at the moment, if you’re bothering to read this.)

Note: you may have your own terms for the stages of overwhelm, or you may want to create your own. This is great! Having the words to name these states is incredibly useful. It lets you point out to yourself what’s happening, and also helps you to tell other people, if you wish.

Know your overwhelm risks

Overwhelm often is the result of overstimulation from many sources, rather than just one. It’s too much for the brain to process the different types of stimulation all at once.

What are the inputs that combine to create overwhelm? It might be sensory, like noise, heat, or pain. It could be dealing with an ADHD-related state, like being really restless or horribly bored or tripped out. It could be that your whole day has been ‘bitsy’ - full of tiny chores that are tricky to do and unsatisfying.

There could be emotions that you’re trying to process. People might be talking while you’re trying to think. You could be negotiating a social situation. You may have forgotten your password again.

You might be feeling pressure from your own internal expectations, or have obligations to attend to. There could be external factors, like you’re driving, or your phone is ringing, or the onions are burning. Other things might be ramping up your nervous system, like a bad sleep or too much coffee or your meds wearing off.

All these inputs or sources of stimulation are asking for a piece of your peace of mind. I particularly think that we forget how much mental energy it takes to process things relating to other people, and that this increases if it’s happening in real time. (For example, you may get wound up by an email, but the same information delivered in a phone call may overwhelm you.)

Overwhelm can build up over a day. Trying to concentrate in a noisy place or a boring meeting in the morning can leave you on edge, making it more likely you’ll get overwhelmed in the afternoon. Overwhelm may also be confused with the challenges of emotional regulation with ADHD. Overwhelm may involve or create emotions, but it’s not in itself a feeling, at least in the way we tend to define them.

You know from experience the situations and inputs that increase your risk of getting overwhelmed. You could write these out and use that ADHD gift of analysis to name the three biggest culprits. This gives you the opportunity to plan for what you’ll do when you’re likely to be in a high-overwhelm-risk situation.

Made-up example: After monthly all-staff meetings, when we go to the kitchen to have morning tea, I get really overwhelmed when I’m trying to make my coffee. If someone who I find stressful asks me a tricky question, I answer in an angry voice, and last time I started crying afterwards and thought about quitting. This is a risk situation for total overwhelm. My plan is that as soon as the meeting ends, I’ll head straight out the door and go for a walk around the block.

You may say: it’s not normal to head out the door after the meeting. What will people think? This is one of the reasons we get to total overwhelm - we’ve told ourselves that we’re not allowed to do the things that lower our inputs. You could try to work out what’s behind all that for you, but the quicker way is to do the new behaviour, feel uncomfy for a bit, do it again, feel less uncomfy, and then get used to it. (Also: People probably prefer this to whatever you do when you do get totally overwhelmed.)

Know your signs of overwhelm

What are the signs that you’re getting overwhelmed? This is a very personal question, and the answer will be specific to you.

Here are some things that people may experience when they begin to get overwhelmed:

• Sensations: heat, ‘tripping out’, crawling skin, noises too loud, too bright, dizzy

• Thoughts: I can’t handle it, they’re laughing at me, why is everyone an idiot

• Words: voice rising, voice getting louder, voice going up and down more, snapping

• Breathing: fast, shallow, stopped

• Feelings: panic, dread, righteousness, rage, outrage, irritation, anxiety

• Actions: clumsiness, slamming doors, pacing, drinking alcohol faster than usual

Can you see how varied and individual this is? Luckily for you, you have a lot of first hand data to work from. Let’s squeeze past the elephant of shame and have a good look at what we’re dealing with. Once you know the key signs of increasing overwhelm, you have a good chance of catching yourself before you go into total overwhelm.

Let’s get curious! Be a detective on the trail of your own behaviour. It’s hard to stay in shame and denial when you have a burning question to investigate. You could ask safe close people what they observe about your behaviour when you START to get overwhelmed. (You may be surprised by what they know - and they may already have tricks they use to help you cool off when you begin to show these signs.)

To help you keep track of the signs of being overwhelmed, you could use your copious imagination to create a kind of overwhelm gauge in your mind. When you get into an overwhelm-risk situation or notice the first signs of being overwhelmed, bring up your overwhelm gauge. You could visualise it like a traffic light, or like the volume bar on an old-fashioned stereo.

Green means you’re handling the stimulus level okay. If you go from green into orange, it’s time to intervene and do what you can to bring down the input levels. If you flicker from orange into red, you need to take action, NOW. (If you get to solid red, you’re totally overwhelmed, and probably will forget all about the gauge, and this advice.)

Make a plan for when you notice the signs

Okay, so let’s imagine you’re now able to recognise the situations and the mix of inputs that tend to feed overwhelm for you, and to notice signs that you’re getting overwhelmed. But once we start to get overwhelmed, that makes it harder to think clearly - which means it’s harder to work out a way out of the overwhelm. This is why it helps to make a plan beforehand.

Not-at-all-made-up example: One time I got totally overwhelmed when a person I didn’t know well was talking to me. She went on and on without a break and I was standing in the hot sun wilting under her sustained eye contact feeling trapped and anxious and the music was too loud and I probably stopped breathing and eventually I fainted. Clunk!

Why did this happen? Firstly, because I had a story that my needs were not as important as the need to Be Polite. Secondly, it was because I didn’t know what to do or say to intervene in the situation.

Nowadays I’d notice the increasing overwhelm by the sensory data of my facial expression melting away into owl eyes. Then I’d raise my hand and say: I have to stop you there, I feel a bit funny. Then I’d take myself away into a quiet space till I felt better. And yes, it might be socially awkward, but nowhere near as awkward as it is to fall SPLAT on the floor, while someone talks about the colour scheme of their cupboards.

What kinds of things might go in your plan, to help bring down the overwhelm levels? Here are a few ideas…

Words:

• “I need some fresh air for a minute”

• “I’m going to the bathroom”

• “I’m going to go have some quiet time”

• “I’m sorry, I’d like to listen but there’s a lot going on, can you tell me later?”

• “My brain is full, so send me a text about it and I’ll deal with it soon”

Actions:

• Leave the room

• Make a cup of tea

• Go outside

• Breathe in and out

• Choose one thing to stop doing for now

If one of your risks is the demands you put on yourself, you could create a motto to tell yourself that helps you release the pressure you put on yourself. Here are some examples:

• “It actually doesn’t really matter”

• “I can handle this”

• “This moment will pass”

• “I’m safe here and now”

• “We’re all just monkeys spiralling through space so I can chill out now"

(I find that nothing pops my seriousness bubble like humour.)

Once you have your plan, you can go out into the field and live your life. Your mission: to keep an eye out for your overwhelm risks, and to notice when you’re getting overwhelmed. Ask your brain to let you know. Meditating, in whatever form you can do it, helps people to notice this sort of thing more easily. Keeping notes can help sharpen your attention. Be curious!

Then, once you do notice, you can Do Your Plan. If I sound a bit Famous Five about all this, it’s because I believe you can get genuinely excited about this process. Excitement is a strong positive emotion and is very motivating. You could make it your challenge to identify the risks, learn the signs, make a plan, notice and then do the plan, and then email me all about it! I’d love that.

If you want to help yourself to remember and take action in the moment, it can help to run your plan through in your mind a few times, and then daily for a couple of weeks. You make a mental movie that starts with you experiencing your risk situations or signs (including things that you think or feel in your body). Visualise the AHA moment: I notice that I’m starting to get overwhelmed!

Then, in your movie, imagine that you do or say what you’ve planned to do to help yourself. Finally, you can visualise feeling less overwhelmed. If you have this movie practiced in your mind, you’re more likely to act on it in real life.

Other people

Asking for help when you get overwhelmed seems like it would be a sensible idea. However, a lot of us don’t do this. We’ve learnt from experience that well-meaning people might take over, and do what they think is best, instead of helping us in the way we need (especially if we can’t find the words to explain what we need right then). This creates more emotions to process, and that only feeds into the overwhelm. Eep!

So, how do we get support? We ask for help LONG BEFORE we get overwhelmed, when the sea is calm. With people who are close to you, you may be able to set up agreed-on ways to communicate if you do start to get overwhelmed. Like: if I say I want space, I still love you but I’ll be able to be way nicer if you give me ten minutes alone. Or: if you notice me breathing in a shallow way with eyes as wide as an owl’s, please feel free to ask if I need some quiet time.

We may also want to talk through our overwhelm plan with those closest to us. This is an emotional risk, of course. Most of us haven’t ever seen anyone take responsibility for their behaviour in this way. Not everyone will be into it, but you may be surprised how open others are to it.

Nobody wants you to have a tantrum or ‘go funny’. They literally don’t know what’s going on for you when this happens. They want you to do something different, so ask them to follow through and help you! If people know that it’s overwhelm and not you just suddenly being a jerk, they may be willing and able to help you get to a space where you can cool off and calm down.

If you do go into total overwhelm

I hope this framework will help you learn to manage ADHD overwhelm before it gets too big. There are bound to still be occasional times that you do go into total overwhelm. So what happens then?

Here are notes to help you through and out of total overwhelm. I’ve broken it into six phases, and then given them all a title that starts with the letter R. (I’d like to say that’s to help you remember, but honestly, it was mainly for my own amusement.)

Phase 1: Rrrrrrarrrrrgh!!! Total overwhelm, meltdown, shutdown, breakdown. Live through it. Your behaviour is targeted to removing the stressors in a blunt force manner, whether by changing them or by changing your experience. Try to keep safe and do the least damage possible. Good luck!

Phase 2: Refuge. Get yourself to a safe space where the inputs are much less. Tell yourself or have someone else tell you you’re safe from the stressors. Do whatever helps you wind down. Give yourself a big cuddle - I mean it, wrap your arms around yourself! Walking in nature is good, being alone can help. If necessary, go lock yourself in the toilet - people may ignore words, but people tend to respect toilet doors…

Phase 3: Rest and recover. Keep cooling off. Accept that you are probably going to be not much use for a bit, so you may as well let yourself collapse in a little puddle. Getting totally overwhelmed is intense! It takes a lot more time to recover from total overwhelm than it does to bounce back after getting just a bit overwhelmed.

Phase 4: Reality check. What the hell actually happened? Sorry to break this to you, but you’re likely to not remember things clearly or accurately. Talk it through with a safe person if you can. Little Bobby isn’t actually Satan’s spawn, it just felt that way on the motorway as he kicked the back of your seat, singing a song by the Wiggles while clutching your hair in his sticky fingers.

Phase 5: Repair. Do what you can to heal relationships where needed. Try to forgive yourself - writing or talking it out can help. You’re still a valid, loveable human doing their best, and you may wish to ask a safe person for reassurance of this.

Phase 6: Reflect. Learn for next time. What were the inputs? What were the signs? What would have helped you to notice? What could you have said or done once you’d noticed, to get you out of the overwhelm? What can you add to your plan? (Or was it just plain, unexpected, unavoidable bad luck? That does happen…)

Final thoughts

Speaking of repairing relationships, if you have done something that has hurt another person, this is a really simple way to apologise:

• I’m sorry I [whatever you said or did that was out of line with your values].

• That’s not okay and not how I want to treat you.

• Just so you know what happened, I got really overwhelmed. 

• Next time I’m going to take time out earlier to cool off.

• Again, I’m truly sorry.

Saying sorry has the added bonus of giving the other person a chance to tell you what they experienced. (If you apologise at the start of the conversation, they’ll probably be quicker to move from blaming you to telling you how they felt, which is a great relief.) It can be hard to hear, but it’s often even harder for them to do this, so please listen and learn.

Once you become interested in what overwhelm looks like in you, you are likely to start recognising the specific signs of overwhelm in those around you. This is pretty handy, because it gives you a chance to say: There’s a lot going on right now: is there anything you need? (Or: Can I take over frying those potatoes for a minute while you step outside, before you tell Uncle Frank exactly where he can stick his new fishing rod?)

There is a cultural context to all this, of course. I don’t know if this is a Kiwi thing, but if I have a meltdown where I show that I’m really angry or upset, afterwards people are very, very, very nice to me. They tiptoe around, exchanging meaningful glances with each other. On the other hand, if I express my needs clearly when I start to get overwhelmed, sometimes people seem surprised, even confronted. What are we up to?

Finally, if you want to make it less likely that you’ll get overwhelmed, take care of your baseline level of stress. If you’re constantly ‘whelmed’, like a ship in a storm, it’s much easier to get overwhelmed. Keeping down those stress levels is easier said than done, but it can be done, and is something I help people with in my ADHD coaching.

If you’d like to talk about how we can work together to help you, I invite you to book a free introductory chat with me.