Counselling for adults with ADHD

ADHD is broader than you might think

Not so long ago, ADHD was only associated with school-aged boys who could not sit still in class and charged around playgrounds. Research has moved on, and ADHD is now understood to be much broader and more complex than this.

More women are being diagnosed now. Women tend to mask or over-compensate for their difficulties more than men, which makes their needs harder to detect, but which, if left unmanaged, can eventually lead to exhaustion and burnout.

ADHD is really a disorder of regulation: a struggle to find balance in many different aspects of life. These will be different for each person, but may include difficulties with:

Emotional regulation:

You may get angry, upset, overwhelmed or over-excited more easily than others, or be more sensitive to criticism or rejection.

Time management:

You may underestimate how long a task or journey will take.

Attention regulation:

You may find it hard to engage with a task, get easily distracted, or become hyper-focused and lose track of time.

Executive functioning:

Planning, thinking ahead, remembering and problem-solving might all take more effort for you than for most people.

An overly busy body or mind:

You may feel a need to move around regularly, or have a mind that is always busy, making it hard to sleep or switch off.

Impulsivity:

You may find it hard to delay gratification or to think before you act. This can lead to overeating, spending too much, taking up new activities and then dropping them, or careless behaviour such as parking somewhere you shouldn’t.

Energy:

You may find your energy hard to regulate, getting a whole list of tasks done one day and then procrastinating and struggling to motivate yourself the next, in a boom-and-bust cycle.

Sensory processing:

You may be hypersensitive to sound, light, or certain textures of clothes or food, or hyposensitive to other sensations such as pain.

Managing these difficulties can be draining, and life can feel chaotic. It can lead to embarrassment or even shame when you get feedback from others, or from yourself, that you are always late, forget things, act impulsively and then regret it, and can’t understand why you can be so productive one day and so distracted the next.

How counselling can help

Therapy can help you explore these difficult feelings and find balance in your life. It may lead you to look back at your earlier life and realise why you struggled at school or university, or why you are struggling now as an adult. Perhaps you have been desperately over-compensating for these difficulties and are exhausted as a result.

You may feel grateful to finally have an explanation for your needs, and at the same time frustrated or resentful that they were not noticed earlier by those around you, before the negative messages and poor self-image set in. Counselling gives you room to feel both.