1. Overcommitting. This is the start of the cycle and it feels absolutely wonderful. The person feels excited about new projects, or has a brand new idea and starts imagining what could be. For example, starting a new hobby (soap making) and deciding to create a logo (soapy monkey), start a website (www.soapymonkey.com), find sponsors, change the world (buy one bar of soap, send one to a community that doesn’t have soap?), all the WHILE learning to make basic soap and feverishly buying supplies on Amazon at 11pm on a Friday night, while driving home from a concert. I just made the names up, so feel free to steal them. Everything feels fresh, full of new beginnings and flowing with creativity. I have noticed that people with ADHD can be very creative and a force to be reckoned with when working on something they believe in. They can also be very persuasive for a short time, while the creativity and novelty moves through them.
2. Increased Stress: As the project settles, reality hits and the person is now having to work with new demands (making soap), added on to the demands of daily life (job, family). The person with ADHD may start losing some of their momentum and question the sanity of their new project, especially after going to Whole Foods and noticing 500 brands of craft soap.
3. Pushing Through: Despite feeling overwhelmed, individuals might try to push through and continue working on all their commitments, hoping they can handle it all. There is also history there, as the cycle happened before but the person wants to prove once and for all that this is it, the dream project that was waiting to happen.
4. Decreased Energy and Motivation: Committing to a new (or several) projects, ideas and organizations takes emotional and physical energy that the person with ADHD may not be able to sustain. The rush of novelty is gone, creativity is replaced by daily grind.
5. Burnout: Eventually, the cumulative stress and exhaustion can lead to burnout. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion. The person may also feel like a failure, noticing how they can’t follow things through and succeed.
6. Rest and Recovery: After experiencing burnout, individuals may need to take a step back, rest, and engage in self-care activities to recover and replenish their energy and motivation.

Breaking the cycle involves recognizing the signs of over-commitment and taking steps to manage one’s workload, set realistic boundaries, and prioritize self-care. It’s crucial to find a balance between commitments and personal well-being to prevent burnout and maintain overall mental and physical health. For individuals with ADHD, time management strategies, seeking support from friends, family, or professionals, and practicing stress-reducing techniques can be helpful in managing the cycle of overcommitting and burnout.

The content of this blog is based on my personal and clinical experience. It is not a diagnostic tool. If you suspect you might have ADHD, please seek assessment by a qualified professional.

About the Author: Annabelle Denmark (she/they), MA, LPCC is a therapist based in Lakewood, CO, They specialize in individual therapy for adults with ADHD and/or trauma. You can find them at www.renegadecounseling.com

Anxiety and stress are the most common mental disorders.  The current state of the world is exacerbating people’s anxiety and depression. Ongoing stress increases the chances of anxiety becoming a disorder.  The two go hand in hand.  It has been reported that 1/3 of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety and depression as a result of the pandemic, political divisiveness, economic stress, fires, droughts, floods and other climate extremes, and losses of life, property and homes. Countries worldwide are experiencing similar upsurges of anxiety as instability increases.  

By definition, anxiety is marked by “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”  It seems each day brings an alarming crisis and mounting uncertainty.  It is no wonder that anxiety is rising.  

Recognizing Burnout

Anxiety can sneak up on you.  You may not realize that your fatigue and exhaustion are a result of burnout from mental distress.  Your sympathetic nervous system, which pushes adrenaline and cortisol, is working overtime without a break from the necessary calming balance of the parasympathetic system.  Burned-out in this case means that your nervous system is overloaded and just like a fuse burning out of an electrical circuit, it damages your neuronal circuits. 

Chronic stress is draining.  It causes wear and tear on the body and the damage to the brain’s circuitry causes changes in the brain’s anatomy.  Symptoms of constant anxiety, panic attacks, restlessness, insomnia, heart palpitations, inability to relax, high blood pressure, breathing problems and poor digestion as well as other impacts to the body can result.  Research by William James Fellow Bruce McEwen on the neuroendocrinology of stress hormones found that chronic stress impacts specific areas of the brain, which can lead to changes in mood, learning, and memory.  Burnout can result in a loss of motivation, emotional depletion, memory impairment, cynicism, rumination on negativity, and detachment.  Your brain is worn out and needs a rest.

Approaching Threat

How do you manage the bombardment of so many external factors that you have no control over?  Your body’s defenses and your sympathetic nervous system will ignite whenever your survival is threatened.  This may occur when your values or way of life are threatened, or when you are isolated and alone, unaccepted or unloved.  

Detachment is the natural outcome when you are mentally and emotionally exhausted and drained.  You want to “chill-out” or numb out with mindless distractions.  Mild distractions can be beneficial in the short term.  However, when anxiety escalates you may dissociate, or turn to drugs or food to soothe yourself.  Sitting in front of the television or your computer for long hours, erratically keeping busy or working until you drop are danger signs.  These habits of retreating may become addictions that harm you, deplete your energy and don’t actually stop the anxiety.  The underlying threat response is still activated and only temporarily submerged.  Regular exercise, being creative, walking in nature, meditating, dancing, playing music that you love, laughing, playing and reducing time spent listening to media are all healthy ways to discharge and de-stress.  These are great coping skills and when you understand why these work, you will be able to initiate a higher and more productive level of consciousness. 

Connection Creates Security

In the moments you are doing the latter activities like exercising, playing and laughing, you are not separate from yourself.  You are fully present and connected.  It is all about connection.  You are either connecting with life or disconnecting from it.  Threat brings out the defenses of separation that purposefully disconnect you.  It is easy to see that dissociating and inhibiting your emotions disconnect you from a vital part of yourself…you no longer feel alive or an integral part of life.  When you are in that level of consciousness you have a tendency to fall back into controlling life creating even more separation.    

A healthy body is always checking for harmony, balance, and a return to homeostasis.  You go in and out of balance with continual adjustments taking place. Physical connectivity between the physiological elements and processes of your body is required to achieve relatively stable equilibrium but so is emotional and mental connection to others.  When you know that you belong and are supported it gives you a sense of safety and freedom, which not only relaxes your defenses but also reminds you that you are interconnected with life.  So…connecting with people that support and love you will ease much of your stress.  Having deep meaningful connection with others when you are isolated or the world is contained is not so easy.   

Control Creates Insecurity

Relying on or seeking stability in the world or even in relationships can be a never-ending quest.  Life and the world are in constant flux.  The very best relationships have times of discord.  Your body has a marvelously intricate system to maintain equilibrium; yet, it cannot control all of life and external events.  Most happenings in life are absolutely not in your control.  Ay, there’s the rub.  The ego’s threat detection program focuses on attempting to control what it cannot.  “If I can fix what is wrong out there or with this person, then I will be secure, I will be safe.”  “If I can control external events everything will be fine.”  Control is a defensive losing strategy because it disconnects you not only from others but also from security itself.  It sets you up to see the world as separate.   

As Alan Watts reveals, “There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness, which makes me feel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fortify the “I,” but it is just the feeling of being an isolated “I” which makes me feel lonely and afraid. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want.”  Without that sense of security, I am engulfed in anxiety and stress. 

The Way to Everlasting Security is Interior Connection to Presence

If you can’t find safety in the external world, where can you find a safe haven?  What is security?  Change is scary because it reflects the impermanence of life.  What is truly needed is an internal sense of permanence.  

Ultimately, rising up from the debilitating carrion of stress and anxiety is metaphorically like the rise of the Phoenix from the fire and ashes.  It is an undertaking and journey of the soul.  It is a catalyst for tremendous growth.  It requires you to remain present with your experience rather than standing apart from it.  There is a place within you that is eternally present that is outside of the noise of turmoil.  Presence is the light of consciousness at one with all of life.  Consciousness has never been separate.  It is permanent, secure and stable.

The Interior Connection to Presence Fosters Interconnection with

 the Unity of Life

It is the interior connection to presence that fosters interconnection with the oneness and unity of all of life and relaxes you into the deepest state of security.  You are no longer in the illusion that you are separate because you know that you are integrally connected and one with life and consciousness itself.  

Embracing Anxiety into Freedom

The sky turns dark and a huge plume of orange and purple smoke billows overhead.  A fire has flared up on the mountains above.  I am aware of a flood of distressing thoughts.  Instead of being engulfed by them, I see them as a warning to be aware.  There is a perpetual movement of these thought forms.  Instead of grabbing onto them, I am in relationship to the present moment and to what is happening around me.  Is there something to be done or not?  I experience a burst of sensations and waves of emotions rushing through me.  A feeling of fear erupts in my stomach and gets caught in my throat.  Can I allow and accept this experience without controlling it?  It is almost unbearably uncomfortable.  At first I want to control it and push it away.  I remember to be aware and accept the anxiousness and fear that is present without needing to be separate from it.  As I experience being fully present in the now, my perception expands and I feel the energy of being alive a part of life simultaneously with the sensation of the emotions arising in my body.      

Miraculously, more presence in the moment creates an alchemical transmutation within and a higher intensity of awareness.  I am more enlivened and conscious.  This higher state of connectivity calms me.  I can assess my situation and know that I am safe. 

Presence is Fuel for Consciousness

Eckhart Tolle describes presence as the fuel for consciousness and higher intelligence.  Be gentle with yourself.  Your ego defenses are instinctual and strong.  Embracing and befriending fear and anxiety is a practice.  Each time you accept these raw energies, you will find that it gets easier to be present.  Your integrity and interconnectedness are restored.  It is because of this total acceptance of all parts of yourself that you no longer feel separate.  You are an integral part of life and fully engaged.  Your freedom is worth it. 

Dorothy Wallis is a former intern at People House in private practice with an M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy.  She is a Psychotherapist, Certified Relational Life Therapist, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, and an International Spiritual Teacher at the forefront of the consciousness movement for over thirty years grounded in practices of meditation, family systems, relationships, and emotional growth.  Her work reflects efficacious modalities of alternative approaches to healing for individuals and couples based upon the latest research in science, human energy fields, psychology, and spirituality. 

As a leader in the field of emotional consciousness and the connection to mind, body and spirit, her compassionate approach safely teaches you how to connect to your body, intuition and knowing to clear emotional wounds and trauma at the core.  The powerful Heartfulness protocol empowers your ability to join with your body’s innate capacity to heal through holistic Somatic, Sensory and Emotional awareness. 

www.TheDorWay.com and www.Heartfulnesspath.com  

People refuse to wear masks, thus endangering the lives of our more vulnerable from Covid. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos added $13 billion to his net worth in a single day, while his company paid just a little over 1% in taxes in 2019, despite the United States 21% federal tax rate on corporations (1). An estimated 19 to 23 million individuals are at high risk of being evicted from their homes by the end of September, hitting Black and Latinx rents the hardest (2). We have a corporatized healthcare system unable and ill-equipped to provide basic healthcare and fostering increasing inequities (3). And we have a policing system rife with systemic and structural racism.

In spite of all the anger and yes—hate—we can train in compassion. We train in order to RELEARN to relate to ourselves, others, and the world around us from a place of understanding and compassion rather than from excessive judgment. Full disclosure: I can more easily extend compassion and well-being toward the sheep. It’s the leaders who perpetuate social and ecological injustices for greed, selfishness, and political gain who I have trouble with. 

SEE BEHIND: THE INTENTION TO BE OPEN TO THE FIELD OF LOVE

For this I turn to the teachings of Andrew Dreitcer, Associate Professor of Spirituality, Director of Spiritual Formation, and Co-Director of the Center for Engaged Compassion. I attended his workshop at the 2016 International Symposium for Contemplative Studies, hosted by the Mind & Life Institute (4 and 5). 

Using a thousand-year-old Christian early morning practice, he led us in a process of INTENTION to be open;  i.e., when we are not capable of compassion, but we truly desire to be available to the presence of love, for ourselves and others. 

First centering ourselves, he asked us to seek within us one word that could focus us on the intention to be open. 

That word—our mantra—was then the focus of our meditation for the next 20 minutes, the idea being that throughout the day when anger or fury arose and compassion for our fellow human beings was nowhere to be found, we could return to this word with the intent to extend compassion. 

I find this process very hopeful—and helpful. Instead of throwing myself on the rocks for my lack of compassion, I can at least stay in this space of intent, knowing it is an ancient monastic tradition where it just might lead me into a “connection with an eternal, loving presence,” as Andrew called it.  

SEE BEHIND: COMPASSION VS. EMPATHY

At that same conference, Geshe Thupten JInpa of McGill University spoke on “Understanding the Psychology Behind Compassion Meditation.”

Compassion is a natural sense of concern that arises within us when confronted with another’s suffering and then feel motivated to see that suffering relieved. 

It’s comprised of three parts: first there’s the understanding that someone IS suffering; second, we feel an emotional connection; and third, we are motivated to see the suffering relieved. And this third piece of “doing” includes the prayerful act of practicing lovingkindness toward another, of wishing the other well by connecting spiritually to our common humanity.

A significant difference between empathy and compassion is that third step:  empathy takes us to the place where we enter emotionally into someone else’s suffering; we focus on the problem and the experience of it. If we stay in this emotional swirl, we can easily shift into “empathy burnout”. 

We manifest compassion, however, when motivated to relieve that suffering; it takes on an ethical quality—a way of being. 

A solution to the personal distress of empathy burnout is to shift empathy to compassion. Empathy can take a form of “feeling for” vs. the “feeling with” of compassion.  

SEE BEHIND

On the word lovingkindness, meditation author and teacher Sharon Salzberg says that while the word includes “a deep acknowledgement of connection [with someone], it doesn’t mean you like them or approve of them; it doesn’t demand action; it doesn’t mean being sweet, with only a sugary ‘yes’” to that which contradicts who we are.

“Compassion,” she continued, “rests on the shared understanding that we are all quite vulnerable. In life there is nothing we can hold on to” as permanent, all is always changing. 

Whatever your experience is, sit mindfully with it experience nonjudgmentally, asking your higher self what you can do to mitigate the suffering around us. You may just sit there and breathe, expressing goodwill toward that person. You may find yourself walking away. You may find yourself at a demonstration, facing exposure to teargas. 

I encourage you to see behind: to see behind someone else’s comments and actions—and your own. Train in shifting that energy within you from excessive judgment to compassion and lovingkindness.

Notes & Sources: 

1. https://www.fastcompany.com/90536152/calculate-how-many-seconds-it-takes-jeff-bezos-to-earn-your-annual-salary; https://www.salon.com/2020/07/24/as-laid-off-workers-face-a-financial-cliff-amazons-jeff-bezos-grows-13-billion-richer-in-one-day_partner/
2. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200730.190964/full/
3. https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/health_inequities/en/#:~:text=Health%20inequities%20are%20differences%20in,right%20mix%20of%20government%20policies.
4. ISCS “brings together scientists, scholars, artists and contemplatives to explore distinct though overlapping fields of research and scholarship, using a multidisciplinary, integrative approach to advance our understanding of the human mind.” This blog includes thoughts from a previous blog I wrote in 2017.
5. The mission of the Mind & Life Institute is to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing by integrating science with contemplative practice and wisdom traditions. https://www.mindandlife.org/mission 

About the Author: Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister. A life-long student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, focusing on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels, in addition to working in refugee repatriation.