Have you ever been working on a task and become overwhelmed with all the details?
Do you go into a freeze response and become paralyzed by the thought of what has to get done? You may recognize that you need to get this task done, but you can’t do so for some reason.
Tasks continue to pile up for you one by one as you become distracted by less important areas of your life, such as social media.
You eventually recognize that you have so much and so little that you have completed. Even the thought of this starts the cycle again.
If you are shaking your head yes to this and you are an ADHDer, you may be dealing with ADHD paralysis.
If you are dealing with ADHD paralysis, you can see a mental health counsellor or ADHD coach.
Use this blog as a guide for what ADHD paralysis is, the causes and signs, and some strategies to support you with initiating, engaging in, and completing tasks.
What Is ADHD?
ADHD, as known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is a neurodevelopmental and neurodivergent condition.
It impacts the brain and causes individuals with ADHD to interact with the world differently.
These key brain differences are in areas that control impulsivity, hyperactivity, and attention.
Due to this, ADHDers may experience increased anxiety about waiting, difficulty with rejection, disorganization, and trouble planning, among other traits.
What Is ADHD Paralysis?
ADHD paralysis, also known as analysis paralysis or ADHD shutdown, is not a medical diagnosis. It’s a symptom of ADHD.
This occurs when an individual with ADHD becomes physically, emotionally, or mentally overwhelmed with tasks and information within their environment.
Some people may even describe this as a freeze response.
You may become so overwhelmed by the mere thought of starting a task that you freeze and are unable to initiate, engage with, or complete a task.
If you experience this, you may find it difficult to keep up with your everyday responsibilities as a result.
School, work, friendships, and other responsibilities may fall to the wayside in favor of less overwhelming tasks.
As a result of ADHD paralysis, you may be unable to prioritize and manage tasks, lack focus, and have a difficult time making decisions.
This can be further compounded by living in a world that is not built for neurodivergence.
ADHDers may be called lazy or disruptive instead of their traits being recognized and accommodated. As a result, many ADHDers may struggle with repeat cycles of ADHD paralysis when trying to keep up with neuronormativity views on productivity.
Thankfully, an ADHD coach could support you in recognizing your strengths and developing strategies to cope with these challenges.
Taking the first step in seeking ADHD therapy or coaching can be challenging, but your coach should be well trained to support you.
What are the Symptoms of ADHD Paralysis?
Individuals with ADHD have a difficult time deciding what to do and how to take action when dealing with ADHD paralysis.
Here are some common symptoms that may occur for those dealing with ADHD paralysis:
Time agnosia, or being unaware of how much time has passed by on a task
Overanalyzing a situation or difficulty making a decision
Difficulty initiating a task
Trouble focusing on a task to completion
Difficulty managing your time
Inability to prioritize tasks
Anxiety and irritability as a result of ADHD paralysis
Avoiding a task that requires sustained focus
Trouble listening to instructions
Lack of information processing or brain fog
Emotional disturbance
Becoming easily distracted
These symptoms of ADHD paralysis will manifest differently depending on the person. The symptoms, much like ADHD, exist on a spectrum.
Some individuals will only experience a mild disruption in their daily lives, while others will become completely incapacitated by ADHD paralysis.
What Causes ADHD Paralysis?
The causes of ADHD paralysis consist of a mix of factors.
All humans have a natural mechanism or biological response when confronted with an uncomfortable situation. This is known as the flight, fight, freeze, or fawn response.
For those with ADHD, you have a natural biological response that is more inclined to the freezing or shutting down when faced with decisions.
In addition, you may have lower levels of dopamine in the brain, causing executive dysfunction, which results in experiencing frequent inattention or having a difficult time planning and organizing things.
Dopamine imbalances can also cause a lack of motivation, which would explain why making a decision is more difficult.
Lastly, two other factors that could cause ADHD paralysis include overstimulation and emotional dysregulation.
Individuals with ADHD may have a difficult time regulating their emotions and the information within their environment, which could make initiating, engaging in, and completing tasks challenging.
Types of ADHD Paralysis
Three main types of ADHD paralysis exist. These consist of task paralysis, choice paralysis, and mental paralysis.
Understanding what type of ADHD paralysis you may be dealing with may help you discover what solution may be best for getting you unstuck.
Read on to discover more about these types of ADHD.
Task Paralysis
As the name would suggest, task paralysis is associated with the task at hand.
It involves an inability to begin or complete a task. This may be due to a variety of reasons.
For some, the anxiety of starting a task may make you unable to do so. For others, a lack of motivation may be the culprit.
Regardless of the reason, an individual with ADHD may avoid doing a task or delay their responsibilities and instead engage in other activities and zone out.
This may be especially true when the task is boring, repetitive, new, or involves multiple steps.
Those with task paralysis may have a list of work tasks that need to get done, but they instead may play on social media.
Choice Paralysis
Choice paralysis, also known as decision paralysis, involves difficulty with making a decision.
This is more likely to occur when a person has too many options to choose from.
Examples of choice paralysis include struggling to decide what to wear to work, what to buy for dinner, or what topic to write about for a research project.
Regardless of whether the decision is small or big, individuals with choice paralysis may experience extreme anxiety and hesitation when trying to make a decision that prevents them from making one.
Mental Paralysis
Mental paralysis is associated with overstimulation.
It occurs when a person is overwhelmed with too many emotions, thoughts, and pieces of information, making it difficult for them to engage in a basic task.
Individuals with ADHD may describe this as a brain crash.
During this episode, you may have an inability to form and organize thoughts, struggle to communicate with others, and feel like your mind is elsewhere.
All of this can make it nearly impossible to focus on and complete a task.
ADHD Paralysis Vs. Executive Dysfunction
Executive dysfunction involves disturbances in cognitive processes that make it difficult for you to organize thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
This can make regulating emotions, managing your time, making decisions, prioritizing tasks, and organizing tasks difficult.
ADHD paralysis shares similar symptoms to executive dysfunction, such as difficulty making decisions, prioritizing tasks, lack of focus, and emotional dysregulation.
But these two terms differ in one key aspect. This involves how they come about.
If you are experiencing ADHD paralysis, you struggle to initiate, engage with, and complete tasks due to cognitive overload.
You may feel overwhelmed by all the information in your environment to the point you cannot get a task done.
On the other hand, those experiencing executive dysfunction have a difficult time completing tasks because they lack the skills needed to do so.
ADHD Paralysis Vs. Procrastination
Every single one of you has likely engaged in procrastination at one point in your life or another.
Procrastination involves the intentional decision to prolong or avoid a task. This may be more common in those with ADHD, but it is not the same as ADHD paralysis.
ADHD paralysis is more of an unconscious experience that results from feeling so overwhelmed.
Your body goes into a freeze response and cannot initiate or complete a task. This is only experienced by those with ADHD, not everyone.
The Toll of the ADHD Paralysis
ADHDers can experience consequences of ADHD paralysis at work, school, home, or in their relationships with others.
ADHD paralysis impacts every ADHDer differently. Some people may experience a mild impact without facing much consequences in daily living.
For others, it may be causing a disruption to their career or school success or to the quality of their relationships with others.
Some common signs ADHD paralysis may be taking a toll on you include:
Lack of work productivity
Losing relationships
Lower school grades
Increased stress
Increased feelings of guilt and shame
And more
20 Ways to Cope With ADHD Paralysis
It’s unlikely that you will be able to predict every situation in which ADHD paralysis will arise for you.
But understanding this concept is a great first step to working to manage the symptoms that come about as a result of it.
Here are some tips put together by neurodivergent individuals and created for neurodivergent folks.
These tips include:
Take things one step at a time; if you are feeling overwhelmed, you may not know where to start. You can break down a larger task into smaller steps. Each step becomes easier to manage and less overwhelming. The chances of completing the task are higher as a result. You can reward yourself for every small win to give you the dopamine boost you may be needing to continue.
Practice a daily brain dump: as an ADHDer, you may have a million thoughts running through your mind on a daily basis. This can make staying focused on a task difficult. Instead of keeping this information circulating in your mind throughout the day, do a daily brain dump. This involves writing down all the thoughts you are thinking and everything you are feeling as a result. You will keep the important information and eliminate the thoughts that aren’t needed. If there are due dates, use this time to place them into a calendar so you have a concrete way of remembering. You can also use this time to prioritize all tasks on your to-do lists.
Make an action time and date. We all know about a to-do list, but what about an action time list? This involves writing down a time and a date to complete a task. This makes it more likely that you will get the task done because you are prioritizing this task at this time. You are eliminating all distractions and other tasks from this date and time. When we create specific time allowances for each task, we are less likely to be overwhelmed and more likely to complete them.
Pomodoro technique: Spending too much time on a task can increase your likelihood of becoming overwhelmed or unmotivated. The pomodoro technique helps to counteract this. It involves spending a specific amount of time on a task and then taking a break at certain time intervals. Most people will work for 30 minutes and then take a 5-minute break. These breaks can be used to reward yourself, eat, or do something else to boost your motivation using dopamine.
Make your work schedule simple. If you are trying to avoid becoming overwhelmed, one of the best things you can do is to keep things simple. Instead of planning all your work tasks for the day, plan out one task at a time.
Use tools to manage: Calendars, stop watches, and other tools can support you in remembering all the tasks on your to-do list. You can use multiple alarms to write down when something is due.
Add in novelty: staying on top of boring and repetitive tasks can be especially difficult for the ADHD brain. To support you in completing a task, try to keep things interesting. Decorate your office space with fidget toys, or work from a co-working space.
Do things that bring you pleasure. If you are constantly spending time on things that are mundane without doing anything for pleasure, you will end up with burnout. Consider adding pleasurable activities into your daily life, including during your breaks from work.
Ask for help: ask someone else if they could support you with providing motivation to complete a task. This is known as body doubling. You can also seek out a coach who can help with learning management strategies.
Do the task right away: complete a task now (if possible). This can help you reduce the risk of forgetting to do the task if you wait. The urge to put something off until later is minimized.
Cross things off the list: make a to-do list and cross things off your list when they are completed. Include making a to-do list into this list and any tasks that you complete that you didn’t plan to. The mere act of crossing things off your list could give you a motivation boost.
Support groups: support groups can help you to know you are not alone and provide a community of people that can help you learn strategies to cope.
Create an ADHD-friendly environment: make your environment into one that allows you to follow a routine and avoid distractions when you are working on a task. You can also make a bin for rewards so you can reward yourself when you are able to complete a task.
Self-compassion and self-affirmations: living in a world that is based around neuronormativity can be exhausting. For this reason, we can practice being compassionate and kind to ourselves when it takes longer to complete a task than the average person would take. One way to do this is through affirmations. We can let ourselves know, “I am enough, and I’ll always be enough. My worth is inherent. Task completion is better than perfection.”
Dopamine boosts: sometimes, you may lack the motivation to complete a task due to lower dopamine levels than average. If this is the case, consider adding some tasks that will boost your dopamine levels. This could include listening to music, eating your favorite food, going for a walk during your break, or getting up and moving.
Focus more on completing the task and less on perfection: you are human and not a robot. No one is going to get anything 100% perfect all the time. The sooner you are able to recognize this and give yourself grace for your mistakes, the easier ADHD paralysis will be to deal with. Instead of trying to be perfect, try to focus on getting a task done first. If you have time afterward, you can always go back and make it better. On the other hand, you can’t complete a project at all if you are too focused on it being perfect.
Seek accommodations: ADHD can be considered a disability. If you are dealing with the challenges of ADHD in school or at work and need support, consider asking for accommodations.
Use the STOP method: if you are feeling overwhelmed, STOP what you are doing, take a step back, observe and reflect on what is going on, then decide how you want to proceed with the task from a place of mindfulness.
Medications: if ADHD paralysis is impacting your day-to-day functioning, medications may be an option for you. You could speak to your doctor about whether a stimulant, non-stimulant, or another medication may work best for you.
Neurodiversity-affirming therapy: if you are in need of additional support to cope with ADHD, finding a therapist that affirms your identity and works with you to find ways to cope with your ADHD challenges may be of support.
Book a Free Consultation With Blue Sky Learning
Do you experience the emotional and financial consequences associated with ADHD tax?
Are you looking for ways to cope with ADHD tax?
Book a free 20-minute consultation with one of our expert ADHD coaches or therapists to come up with a personalized plan that suits your individual needs.
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