At a Glance
ADHD emotional dysregulation can lead to extreme outbursts and difficulty tolerating frustration.
This can increase daily stress and interfere with interpersonal relationships.
Utilizing strategies like naming your emotions, journaling, exercising, and other coping mechanisms can be beneficial.
Verywell / Alison Czinkota
What Is Emotional Dysregulation?
Whats a more rational response to this situation?
Its even harder to move past it and convince my brain to focus on something else.
Psychologically, it can also lead to a lot of self-doubt and uncertainty surrounding your feelings.
Why Is Emotional Dysregulation So Common in ADHD?
If that cortex is underactive, its not inhibiting those emotional reactions as well as it could be.
Here are a few strategies it’s possible for you to try.
Write It Out
For me, it often feels like the only way out is through.
Then, once it feels less urgent, I can start thinking more clearly about an appropriate response.
If youreangry, youll regret the mean things you said to someone you love after you calm down.
Then, tear it up or throw it away afterward.
Sometimes, you could channel that urge to take action into harmless exercise.
You may struggle to intentionally change your mood on your own but music can help jumpstart the process.
Make a List of Your Coping Mechanisms
What works in one situation might not work for another.
Short-bouts of high-intensity exercise can be a great way to channel your emotions.
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(2010).Emotion regulation and psychopathology: A transdiagnostic approach to etiology and treatment.
Shaw P, Stringaris A, Nigg J, Leibenluft E.Emotion dysregulation in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.AJP.
In:Future Directions of Music Cognition.
The Ohio State University Libraries; 2021. doi:10.18061/FDMC.2021.0024
