Burnout: the ADHD ‘bonus’ that nobody’s talking about
On language, Labradoodles, and spending ADHD Awareness Month paralysed by ADHD burnout.
What is ADHD burnout?
ADHD is exhausting. It’s mentally, physically, and emotionally draining. It also breeds shame, which makes me overcompensate, overcommit, and hold myself to unrealistic standards. Soon enough, I’m doing far more than I can manage and still feeling shame about productivity (or lack thereof).
For me, ADHD burnout is a too loud, too bright, too annoying feeling. A woozy-headed, whooshy-eared, be-quiet-before-I-kill-you vibe that makes normal activities nearly impossible.
Burnout basics
This is not to say that every day with ADHD feels like this. It doesn’t.
But when I’m burnt out, I experience a lack of motivation, exhaustion, pain, irritability, negativity, and even more emotional dysregulation than usual. My children, my clients, and strangers in the street become my enemies. I struggle to find pleasure in things I normally enjoy. I withdraw and feel tempted to run away.
At time of writing, I’ve been in burnout for four weeks.
Burnout — but make it a word game
As a word nerd, I’ve become obsessed with naming this feeling. Overstimulated doesn’t work for me. Neither does hyper-aroused.
I brainstorm options but the association isn’t great. Take ‘unsteady’ for example. It’s hard not to feel judged by synonyms like makeshift, wonky, badly built, dithering, weak-minded, and unstable.
Even alliteration, which can sometimes take the edge off, is a Judgy Judy today. Neither shilly-shallying nor herky-jerky feel like positive traits.
For me, burnout is sensory
Every noise hurts. I’m uncomfortable in my body. Most of my clothes feel restrictive and I’m sapped of energy. Hyper-perceptive has the right bones, but I want something that’s pure root word.
I look up ‘sensitive’. Synonyms include weak, feeble, infirm. ‘Wimpy,’ the algorithm suggests to my horror. Brittle resonates. As do raw and sharp. But none of them is right because they are empty words. This feeling is full. I add overwhelmed, overloaded, and flooded to the list.
The bad
The trouble with ADHD is that when people demand that you explain it to them the discrete events don’t seem like a very big deal. Take yesterday for example. My son and I had plans to visit a friend. Thanks to time blindness, I don’t leave myself enough time to get ready. Struggling to sense the passage of time is one way that ADHD affects my executive functioning.
Already late as well as burnt out, I am ripe for an attack from the inner critic. ‘You’re going to be late for Kristen and she’s never late. She’s going to know you’re late because of ADHD. She’ll be annoyed with you and she won’t ask you to get together again’.
Must go faster
My head pulses and my ears feel full. Just before leaving the house, I go back in (for the fourth time) for something to eat. By the time I reach the kitchen, I’ve forgotten I’m hungry. The Doorway Effect, a known psychological event in which crossing a threshold causes memory lapses, is also common in ADHD.
I grab a snack.
The feeling is vaporous. Intangible. Like I’m underwater but in churning waves. My brain is full of wind and electricity and sparks and brightness. Ideas are fleeting and often lost.
I lose my train of thought in conversations. Second guess myself.
The good
But here’s the other thing about ADHD. There’s a pretty good chance that nobody notices. I’ve been masking for so long that I deliver flawless performance after flawless performance.
Months ago, in a similar state, I was so wrecked that I flooded my laundry room.
Somehow I am the Chairperson of my kids’ school board. We had a meeting and I had all the papers and a folder to put them in and EVERYTHING.
Before I left, I took my dog for a walk. Remy is a Labradoodle. Having just been groomed, he felt compelled to restore the bacterial homeostasis in his coat by rolling in…something dead.
It was all over his harness, so I popped it off and started filling a bucket of soapy water.
And that’s when it happened.
I just … left the house. The water was running full blast.
Signal interrupted
My psychiatrist later explained the concept of the signal and the noise. When stress levels increase in an ADHD brain, the noise gets louder. And when the noise gets louder, the signal is diminished. That day, the noise was so loud that I couldn’t hear the tap running.
But that night at the meeting? I killed it.
I was organised and funny and charming and impressive. I got stuff done and made the rest of the Board feel valued. After the meeting, one of the members asked me — how are you?
‘I’m wrecked,’ I replied. ‘Totally overstimulated, overwhelmed, and drowning.’
Confusion. ‘But you were amazing in the meeting!’
‘Yeah. I was pretending. Masking,’ I said.
She shook her head and replied ‘well, you’re really good at it’.
‘I think I’ve been doing it my whole life.’
Advantage or curse?
To have ADHD is to be a walking contradiction. According to Drs Ned Hallowell and John Ratey — psychiatrists and authors of ADHD 2.0:
ADHD is neither entirely a disorder nor entirely an asset. It is an array of traits specific to a unique kind of mind. It can become a distinct advantage or an abiding curse, depending on how it is managed.
That’s why I want to give my burnout a kind, considered name.
Smoldering is ‘the process of burning slowly with smoke but no flame’. Indeed, I often don’t realise I’m smouldering until weeks into it. Synonyms include simmer, churn, and fester.
But this time it’s the antonyms that catch my attention. The opposite of smoldering makes me remember the good in me as well as the struggles. The opposite of smoldering is what is so hard to remember when the smolder sets in.
Smolder (ant): clear, active, functioning, alive.
