ADHD Overwhelm 😩 How to get out of freeze mode and into action

if like me you tend to suffer from overwhelm and then you completely fight flight or freeze then first of all you are not alone but second of all if that is the case for you then today's video might just help you get past your overwhelm so you can get on with whatever it is you're dealing with and live your best damn ADHD life and on that note my name is Karen McGill I'm an ADHD coach and I help busy ambitious brains get nizzle done especially when they're feeling overwhelmed today's video is centered around an email

I received from somebody who's on my email list and by the way if you're not on my email list you need to get on there now because you have the opportunity to ask me anything that's on your mind when you get your introductory email from me and then every Sunday thereafter you will get a short quick handy email from me addressing an ADHD issue that will help you in your life so today's topic is coming from a woman who I will call Emily and she writes my biggest struggle at the moment is work for the

last few months I've been barely keeping my head above water unable to keep up with all of my tasks I'm starting to feel my job security slip through my fingers when I get overwhelmed I freeze and I have been frozen a lot since fall thank you Emily I don't know about you but I can feel the overwhelm in her message and I know exactly what she's going through so Emily if you are listening to this please know that I have been where you are and probably the majority of the people watching this video right now

have also shared The Angst that you're going through right now and I hope that today's video will somehow ease your struggle even if just a little bit so here's the thing about overwhelm it can be centered around a morning with the kids when they just will not settle down and you feel completely overwhelmed with all of their energy or it can be a frustrating afternoon at work when you feel like you just have too many things coming at you and you don't even know where to start on the other hand overwhelm can be very long

drawn and protracted which is the case here with Emily who says that she's been feeling this way okay Sid's last fall and when this happens over a long period of time it's kind of like driving a car with the emergency brake on or driving a car that hasn't had an oil change in like 10 years eventually that engine is going to seize up and your engine is going to burn out and that's the same with us humans when we are constantly in a state of overwhelm and we can't figure out how to break the cycle

we eventually end up in Burnout and that is never a good thing so in today's video I want to give you a framework for thinking about overwhelm because I find that when we can get very clear on what is causing the overwhelm it makes it a lot easier to focus on Solutions rather than dwelling on that sense of overwhelm which only then perpetuates it even further so to kick this off let's start off with a clear definition of what overwhelm actually means according to the dictionary overwhelm can feel like drowning beneath a mask but the

outcome of overwhelm especially for us ADHD years is a feeling of shutting down it's when our nervous system goes into fight flight or freeze and we lose access to our prefrontal cortex and why is our prefrontal cortex and executive function so important especially when we're overwhelmed because that's where we access all of the important skills that help us get out of overwhelm like prioritization and organization and thinking about situations objectively so that you can come up with a realistic solution so naturally when our nervous system is dysregulated that area of the brain shuts down or

just completely goes out for a boozy lunge and we're left in a feeling of emotional response which is the fight flight or freeze and obviously Emily is self-aware enough to know that her nervous system response is freeze meaning that she just can't do anything in those moments of complete overwhelm so what can Emily do to get her out of that freeze response so that she can then tap into her executive function and come up with solutions to get herself back on track well here's the thing and if Emily was in front of me and I

was coaching her I would first want to understand what the source of the overwhelm is because it can be a situation where the demands of her job are just unrealistic and there's just no physical way where she can actually complete the tasks that are being expected of her so in that situation it doesn't matter if you're emotionally regulated or dysregulated if the issue is that she just physically can't do all the things she's expected to do in her job then I would coach Emily on working with her employer to manage expectations but if I go

back to her note she says her biggest struggle in the moment is work and for the last few months she's barely been able to keep her head above water unable to keep up with all of her tasks and she's starting to feel her job security slip through her fingers now in that case let's just make the assumption that Emily's overwhelm is coming from a place of emotional dysregulation because the way she's thinking about coping with the tasks at work is making her feel emotionally disregulated she says she's worried about her job secure security which of

course is going to put her into that freeze mode so when I'm working with a client who is emotionally dysregulated I like to use the framework of sticks in order to identify it exactly where that sense of overwhelm is coming from so that we can get to the source of the emotional dysregulation and problem solve from there that way we're actually taking the emotion out of the situation so that she can move forward and get back to the task at hand so let's break down the stakes acronym and I will show you how you can

use it to get to the root of your own sense of overwhelm and don't worry about taking notes or remembering anything there's a worksheet linked below that you can access and it will give you the definitions and also an area where you can brainstorm your own emotional responses to each area of this framework so let's start with the first s in the acronym sticks which stands for State this is your emotional and physical state very often our sense of overwhelm May either derive from or be exasperated by our physical or emotional state in the moment

for example if you're not sleeping well and you're tired it makes it really hard to stay emotionally regulated if you haven't eaten lately and you're hungry that can also drain your energy and lead to emotional dysregulation perhaps your medications may have worn off or you might be in a state of moodiness or emotional dysregulation due to hormones or something else that's going on in your environment so the very clear question here is how are you feeling in the moment and is there some immediate steps you can take to bring yourself into a better emotional state

food sleep fresh air connection with others and physical movement are your gateway to emotional regulation and bringing your attention back online so that you can attend to whatever you're dealing with in the moment the next letter in that acronym is T and that stands for what you're thinking so when you are feeling emotionally dysregulated especially at work it's really important that you examine your thoughts that might be driving or exasperating that feeling of overwhelm what are you thinking about these tasks at work that are making you so overwhelmed are you feeling like they're beyond your

scope or capabilities are you thinking you're not good enough are you mired in perfectionism or black and white thinking it has to be this way or the highway what are your thoughts that are pulling your attention away from the task at hand draining your energy and emotionally disregulating you to the point where you feel overwhelmed and what I would encourage you to do is get quiet for a second pause take a few deep breaths and just listen to the conversation in your head if you're putting too much pressure on yourself if you're being hard on

yourself if you're being perfectionistic about the way you're approaching your work it's really important to take the pressure off by either combating those limiting beliefs because I can tell you that's probably a story and a narrative that is based entirely on opinion and not reality and it's really important to work on neutralizing those thoughts is it absolutely true that you're not living out up to the expectations of your boss do you know that for a fact or are you making that assumption is it true that the project you're working on looks like a dumpster fire

or is that just your perception because your mired and perfectionistic thinking sometimes getting the perspective of somebody you trust can be really helpful for taking you out of those thought Spirals and putting you back into a mode of paying attention to the task at hand the next letter in the acronym is I which stands for interest now if you have ADHD you know you have an interest driven brain so something is super boring it is going to be hard for you to create the chemical cocktail you need in your mind to execute now that doesn't

mean it's impossible it just means it's going to be a challenge you need to understand that your brain is wired for interest so how can you make the task more interesting is there a way to re-sparkleize it we know that when things get boring and mundane we want to drop them and move on so you need to figure out a way to reconnect yourself self to the task at hand either by understanding the meaning behind it the value or benefit you're going to get from being finished with it or finding some other way to make

the process more interesting like getting a body double or having somebody walk through it with you brainstorming it on a whiteboard something that will help you kick your brain into gear get the dopamine moving into your prefrontal cortex and moving you forward now that brings me to the next letter in our acronym which is C and that stands for clarity let me tell you something ambiguity is an ADHD there's Kryptonite when we don't know what the next step is it can make it very hard to get started on something that's when our tasks start to

build up which can lead to overwhelm or overwhelm could just be that thought of I don't know what to do next and I'm frozen so Emily I would encourage you to really think about this so if Clarity is something that's holding you back what questions do you have that would help you move past ambiguity do you need to ask somebody what does done look like what is an example of something that's been done in the past that you can use as inspiration or a template or a direction to move towards I will tell you that

in my own professional career this is something that really hung me up because when I didn't know what done looked like or had a clear idea of what my boss's expectation on a task was I would Spin and I would make things way more difficult than I needed them to be if they asked me for three slides I would spend two days crafting three slides that were way overly complex and unnecessary and if I had just asked specifically what is it that we're working to solve here who is the audience what do they need to

know specifically what does done look like what does success look like whatever those questions are that will inspire whoever is asking you to do the thing to be more clear is going to make you look like a champ because they're going to go that's that's a great question I hadn't really thought about what I wanted it to look like then they're going to tell you and it's going to make everything a lot easier so ask yourself if you need Clarity to move forward and if that's the case how can you get it and that actually

brings me to the next letter in our acronym which is K and that stands for knowledge so let's say it's very clear what the expectations are but you're not sure you had the skills follow through with the request now that is something that is completely understandable first of all it's important to remember we don't come out of the womb knowing all the things about all the things so the fact that you may not know how to do something is not an opportunity for shame it's an opportunity for curiosity and to ask questions so leaning back

on the Curiosity piece what is it that you need to execute and do you have the right skills if you don't think you have the right skills the right answer to ask yourself is if I attempt to do this what is the risk that I might do it wrong and am I going to break something for example you may not want to do brain surgery on somebody if you've never tried that before however if what you're trying to do is something in your business like setting up an email funnel or fixing some text on your

website if you try to do it and you don't do it correctly first of all can you ask somebody for help and second of all if you don't have somebody who can help you if you do it is the mistake reversible and in most cases perhaps outside of brain surgery any mistake you make can be reversed it might cost a little bit of money so you want to try to get help first but if you can't get help don't let that be the barrier to you being an overwhelm open up YouTube there's a tutorial for

everything under the sun there and the University of Google probably has somebody waiting to help you with your question now this brings me to the last letter in our acronym and that is s and that stands for structure very often overwhelm can come from a place of lack of structure when we don't have structure all hell can break loose let me break this down for you structure looks like like having a to-do list having a calendar knowing exactly how much time you have to complete each task when you had that structure of knowing on Monday

I need to do this on Tuesday I need to do this and I know that I have the time to do it that takes the pressure off and you can just show up and do the work but when you don't have structure meaning there's a lot of ambiguity or you don't know if you have enough time to complete all the tasks this is what can bring you into dysregulation because your thoughts start to spin around I can't I can't I can't so that might mean actually working on your boundaries at work having a conversation with

your boss to really get clear on expectations so that you know and your boss knows exactly how much time it's going to take you to do something thoroughly this is where you've got to advocate for yourself and really ask for what you need but you're also being invited to a bunch of meetings then it's time to start asking the question to the powers that be what would you prefer that I put my attention on do you want me to complete this task or do you want me to attend this meeting what is your priority in

this moment if you can't prioritize put the onus back on them and it will make them think no I really need to go to this meeting or no I really want you to focus on this thing now if you're a knowledge worker or you're in management the onus is on you to prioritize and that can be very difficult when you don't have access to your prefrontal cortex because your executive function is out for a boozy lunch so in that case structure might look like having a trusted colleague that you can talk through things with or

an executive coach or an ADHD coach who understands the way your mind thinks and can help you think out loud because it's not that you can't think about these things it's that you can't hold it in your mind and think about it in your head you need to get it out there and externalize your thinking and one less point about structure and structure doesn't have to mean your work environment or your boss or what you're thinking it can also just be your environment in general if you are in an area that's cluttered or noisy or

distracted that can also lead to a lot of overwhelm because that is a huge barrier to attention so with all of that said within that framework I would encourage you to think about what is the root and source of your overwhelm it might be and probably is more than one thing but by taking a moment to pause and look through that list which again I will link below take some time to read through it and see what comes up for you you may be aware of what's causing your overwhelm but you may not have thought

about it holistically or you may not know what's causing your overwhelm you may be feeling I'm so stressed out and I don't even know why so I find this framework really helpful for externalizing those feelings and really getting to the root of it so you can start to take action on it bring your attention back online and move past the emotion of overwhelm into confidence Clarity and forward movement so I hope that was helpful for you Emily once again I know how difficult overwhelm can be and as a fellow ADHD or I know how it

can completely derail you but I am confident if you can get to the root of what is causing that overwhelm then you can start to take action to move past it and that sense of momentum is really going to help you move forward and if at the end of the day the true issue is that the expectations that are being put upon you are not realistic then it's time to start advocating for yourself in a different way and you can still use those tools to give yourself the confidence to actually speak up and advocate for

yourself so I hope that was helpful for you Emily and for everybody watching if you have any questions please drop them below let me know how you deal with overwhelm and if you're interested in working with me one-on-one as your ADHD coach you can find more information on that below and until I see you next week bye for now