Why Do I Get Frustrated So Easily? ADHD Meltdowns & Mood Swings in Adults #221

 
 

Do you ever feel like an emotional sponge, absorbing the feelings of others around you?

Especially when you’re with someone you care about?

Especially when you’re in certain parts of your cycle?

Extra especially when they are agitated, frustrated, angry, or anxious?

 In this episode, we dive deep into understanding emotional regulation, stress management, and the unique challenges faced by moms with ADHD. From absorbing everyone else's emotions to navigating the stress ladder, we'll explore the struggles and I’ll offer practical strategies for finding balance and grace in the midst of the storm. 

You CAN learn to hear your own signals and trust them, as well as build your stress tolerance to help you regulate during the day, in spite of the rest of your and your family’s stressors!

And once you know how, you can teach your kids how to increase their stress tolerance, too.

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It’s time to take care of you, mama: A whole weekend for you to relax and get away from all your weighty responsibilities, to understand your ADHD mind in community with moms who get it. Drop your name on the waitlist for the 3rd annual ADHD Moms Weekend Retreat in October 2024, and I’ll take care of everything once you arrive!

Patricia Sung  00:00

Are you an emotional sponge that picks up everybody else's junk? Their grumpiness, their frustration their bad day? And you just soak it up with them? Let's discuss. Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family, I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest or the visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might.

 Patricia Sung  00:44

When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families. Well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD. Hey there successful mama. It's your friend Patricia Sung.

 Patricia Sung  01:21

So today in our house, we were talking about keeping other people's emotions out and being able to like uphold your boundaries. And like the whole concept of like boundaries are for you to keep you safe not to keep other people out. But it's really to protect you. Because when we have ADHD, we tend to be like very stereotypical here, we tend to be pretty perceptive towards other people's emotions, and we tend to suck them up. And this isn't true of everybody. And I really wish this wasn't one of the things because this has been like a struggle for me since I was a little kid. But quite a few of us have this tendency to absorb other people's emotions. Like we just noticed that something's amiss.

 Patricia Sung  02:01

We noticed when people are having a bad day, the problem is when we are soaking up everybody else's emotions that then affects our emotions. And then we get more frustrated, we get more overwhelmed. We have a like grown up temper tantrum, it has been a horrible day and I'm mad at everybody. Maybe you're yelling at everybody. Maybe you are curled up in a ball on the couch on your phone. Like I'm not talking anybody just gonna be over here by myself. Don't talk to me. Like when we get in this place where we're like, okay, I was fine a couple seconds ago. And now I'm a mess. Like what happened? It can be really frustrating.

 Patricia Sung  02:36

We can start to beat ourselves up thinking there's something wrong with us like I was fine. And I'm gonna go Why am I yelling at everybody now, like, we can take on a lot of guilt and shame in the way that we treat others because we don't have control of our emotions. So when we're talking about emotional regulation, there's a lot that goes into it. There are a lot of things that cause us stress throughout the day. It could be like a lot of people with ADHD have sleep issues. Maybe you got a baby in sleep well last night, a lot of us have issues with rejection sensitivity, dysphoria, where we take everyone's comments and feel personally attacked. Like the criticism just hurts more. It physically hurts to hear somebody say mean things about you, or you see that sideways glance and you're like, they're mad at me. They're my enemy. I know that Mary or the text.

 Patricia Sung  03:21

Can we talk later? Hey, that text? No, we can't talk later get to what's going on. Now I'm panicking. What's wrong? A lot of us have intrusive or ruminating thoughts. Like our brains are just like spinning around on the gerbil wheel. That horrible thing you said when you were 13? Or that? Ridiculous? You know, when your words just tumble out in your like, I did not mean to say that anywhere at all, like that did not come out, right? Like where we can just toss that around in our brains over and over again. Or we have the intrusive thoughts that come up where we are worried about terrible things happening? Or what if we did something terrible. And our brain just like runs amok and gets hyper focused on terrible things in our brain.

 Patricia Sung  03:57

And then we finish on the run with us because obviously, normal people don't think like this. Or you really are like having a rough day and you're running behind because you are a timeline or you got into some kind of hyper focus, you're supposed to be somewhere else, you need to get something done, you didn't get done, because you're over here on this really cool google rabbit hole. Or maybe you're having a stressful day from relationship issues. Because whenever we have ADHD, it affects everything, including our relationships. All of these pieces come into how we're feeling that day and our parts of our emotional regulation, which is why emotional regulation is such a huge part of when we have ADHD or just like being a human in general, like being a human is hard. It's hard.

 Patricia Sung  04:33

So being able to account for all of these stresses that are coming in, especially the pieces of ADHD that affect our emotions more. When we don't understand how our emotional regulation works. That's when we start beating ourselves up for not being kind or not being patient. Another place that this comes into play is that a lot of us with ADHD, a lot of us have been taught that we are too sensitive. Oh, you shouldn't get your feelings hurt by that. If you're being too sensitive, you're being too dramatic. And as you train yourself to ignore all those red flags that pop up for you, when you're like, No, I, I don't, that does not make me comfortable. I don't like that when other people are telling you you're being too much about it, you start to tampin down those red flags, and you learn to ignore them.

 Patricia Sung  05:17

And then it makes it harder to know when you're not in a good place. Because you have learned to ignore your own signals we, by like protecting ourselves have built this lack of self trust, because other people told us that we were not reading the situation correctly. As kids, we try to make sense of all that. And we blame ourselves when we learn to ignore all those cues that are letting us know. And it makes it really hard to then regulate because we are not aware of what's going on in our own bodies. So I feel like it's this like double edged sword of when you have ADHD, you tend to be less aware of a lot of things, then you've also learned to ignore the signals that you do have. And here you are in this place of like really imbalanced regulation fees, we are able to deal with all these stresses, when we're at our best when we're well rested, we feel good. I'm feeling patient, I ate lunch, I drink my water.

 Patricia Sung  06:13

You know, nothing stressful has happened today. We have a lot of capacity for stress when there's not other stress there. If it makes sense. It's like, the less stress you have, the more capacity you have to deal with stress. It's kind of like you know, you have like a buckets worth of stress capacity. And like you think about a poor title or like they don't have a lot of responsibilities, but like they're trying to learn how to be human. They're like, I can't get these blocks to stack. I don't know how to use a fork. I don't know how to tie my shoes. I really want to play this game.

 Patricia Sung  06:38

And my mom's had to do this instead. Like toddlers have a lot of stress because they're learning how to do so many things. So that way when you tell them Heba, it's time to come in from the park, we got to go home, they like totally lose their ish because they're like, I've used up all my capacity for stress today. Well as grownups, that's true for us, too. And as moms, we're dealing with a lot of stress, like all those like basic necessities are probably not getting taken care of, you probably didn't sleep that well. You may not have eaten a good lunch, maybe you just had some handful of like Ritz crackers that were leftover from lunch, scoop them and some peanut butter and keep on truckin probably didn't drink your water, maybe you're dealing with chronic illness or you're trying to help your elderly parents do stuff. Maybe you're at a rough point in your cycle, Mineola, trauma, and your background. All of these things play into how much capacity we have for stress. And then having ADHD is stressful. It's stressful. Having a million thoughts run around your brain all the time. It's stressful when you forgot to bring birthday cupcakes for your kid's birthday this year at school.

 Patricia Sung  07:39

So we have all this other stress going on mom. Life is stressful, ADHD Life is stressful. And then, generally speaking, I think that when we have HD our capacities a little bit smaller, because we're dealing with all this other stuff, now we can learn how to increase that capacity, we can learn tools and skills to regulate that better. But when we are not aware that we even have ADHD, or that all this other stuff is going on, then we don't have as much capacity to deal with the stressful things. It's almost time mama.

 Patricia Sung  08:11

We are in the final stages of planning our fall, ADHD luxury moms retreat and getaway weekend. You deserve a weekend to step away, slow down, take care of yourself and also meet a bunch of other ADHD moms who get how you think if you want to be the first to know what's going on for next year's retreat, sign up for the waitlist now at Patricia sung.com forward slash retreat dash waitlist, put your name on the list. And well you know, as soon as the early bird tickets are ready, they know it's going to be very time especially since half the moms who came last year have already signed up for this year. So come join us spend the weekend building up your toolbox to take care of you in taking a deep breath to relax and enjoy the calm. Have a weekend away. Go to patriciasung.com/retreat-waitlist.

 Patricia Sung  09:07

So we go through all this to let you know like I want you to have grace for yourself and knowing that this is hard. Being a parent with ADHD is really hard. You're dealing with a lot of stuff. So we can have grace for ourselves for the situation that we're in. And then what can we learn to be able to grow that capacity. So when we're learning how to regulate better, are often refer to the stress ladder. So when I draw my stress ladder if you've been to any class that I've been taught the retreat in the community, like whenever I talk about the stress letter, I have this awesome drawing that Laura Madison made me I will link her episode in the show notes to when we're the top of the ladder. It's like when we are outside the sun is shining.

 Patricia Sung  09:50

The trees are blowing in the breeze. Everything is lovely. You don't have any stress. It's a great day. And as soon as we get stressed we go down the ladder like you imagine like a manhole cover and you go down the ladder into the sewer is that as soon as things start to get stressful, we started climbing down that ladder. And even if we're on the first rung and our feet are slightly below ground, yes, we're still seeing the sun shining, we can still feel the breeze blowing, but like our feet are no longer able to move around. Like we're stuck on this ladder, we can't just follow up in the lavender fields here, like some of our capacities already taken away by our feet being on the ladder. And as we get more stressed, we move farther down the ladder. And once we're at a five level stress, our feet are solidly below ground.

 Patricia Sung  10:31

And this is when our head goes below ground too. And my therapist always says like, nothing good happens after a five. Anytime you are more stressed than less stressed, nothing good happens. This is when we can't have these conversations with me literally anybody, our partners, our kids like we're irritated, we're grumpy, because we've already got enough stress in our day that we're struggling. And when our head is below ground, and we can't see the sun, now we're not making good choices.

 Patricia Sung  10:56

And you can look up polyvagal theory and explains like all of the physical reactions that happen within our body, when we're, when we're stressed, like your body is preparing fight or flight, like your body has all of these physical changes it goes through to protect you, which is great, like thank you, buddy, thank you brain, I very much appreciate that you're taking care of me. But it means that like the systems that we need for like problem solving and logic, like those are not functioning because the resources have been diverted to keeping us alive. And when we are moving down lower on the ladder, it's like now our feet are dipping into water. And so once you're at a six, like your feet are wet, and you're moving slowly down the ladder, so that when you hit at 10, and you're at the bottom of the ladder, and your head is now below water, like this is the emergency situation where you are yelling at everybody or you are disengaged and not speaking to anyone when we're in that super stressed space. This is when the meltdown happens.

 Patricia Sung  11:51

This is when we have our grownup temper tantrum because we have exceeded capacity to hold that stress for that day. So when you look back at like a recent meltdown that you had, or a recent mood swing that you had, where were you at that point, like where would you put yourself on a stress level from zero frolicking in the field in the sunlight to 10. I'm underwater, and this is emergency mode. And thinking about like what led up to that what was making you feel stressed? What caused you to move from two to six to eight to 10? And then what helps you feel better? When you're feeling stressed? Minoo you're already like a four, what can you do to take care of yourself to move yourself back up the ladder so that you have more capacity to make it all the way through homework and bedtime in the witching hour and all the stuff that as mom's like we have to be on in the evenings, when we've already used up a lot of our capacity, quite honestly, what helps you feel better? And what can you do to move down that ladder? Slower? Can we slow down our reaction time so that when things come in, that instead of jumping from three to eight, maybe there's something we can do that that will be a little less stressful? Maybe we go from three to five, and then we have a chance to like oh, no, no, we're at five and make some changes, when you can look back objectively at what happened.

 Patricia Sung  13:06

And you can see where you were and what the red flags are along the way that lets you know that you're getting stressed and that something different needed to happen, you're able to start making changes so that you don't have to be in the place where you're reacting to your family like in a way that you don't want to. So what I would encourage you to do, along with the other things already said is to listen to those quiet voices, those little flies that let you know like you're getting stressed out, like you know your best, you know you best How can you strengthen that voice so that you know that you're getting frustrated or overwhelmed and need some space. Give yourself that grace in the current situation to recognize, oh, that there's a lot of stuff going on today, I'm probably going to need to build in some space today to decompress because this is a rough day.

 Patricia Sung  13:54

And how do you lessen your stress during the day so that you can have the capacity to get all the way to the end of the day without losing it. I've got a free video on my website of 10 ways to calm down when you're losing it. I call her Medusa mom when she comes out. That's when I start to get to like level 910 all the snakes are swirling and she's yelling at everybody. And nobody wants to look at her because they shall be frozen. Like, when you're in that place. What can you do to calm down? What can you do to ground yourself in and be like, whoo, I need to I need some space. That video has 10 different ways to calm down in the moment. And you can use them throughout the day so that you can constantly be pulling yourself up that ladder and being less stressed so that you have the capacity to move up and down throughout the day. Given that the stresses are gonna keep coming. We can't stop them. We can't control the traffic.

 Patricia Sung  14:44

We can't control that mean thing that that kid did to your kid. We can't control the fact that toddlers don't on a human. They're gonna get frustrated about a whole lot of stuff. But what we can do is control how we take care of ourselves. So I hope that this episode gives you a little insight into Why do you feel like you're super stressed? Why do you feel like you're frustrated so easily? Why are you having these meltdowns, or tantrums or anger explosions, and that having that awareness of what you need in order to show up the way that you want to show up, that you can learn the tools and the skills and the strategies to do that, and to show up the way that you want as a mom, and that you are worth spending that time and effort on yourself, because when you take care of you, everyone in the family reaps the benefit of having a mom who is calm and present and has it together most days. We don't have to be perfect, but we can show up in the way that we want to as moms and it is possible. I'll talk to you soon successful mama. For more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com.

Podcast EpisodePatricia SungADHD Adult, ADHD Symptoms, emotional regulation, Self care