"I sometimes overthink things...”
This is so typical of ADD adults that it’s a cliché. We are the world’s leading over-thinkers.
It takes only a moment of contemplation to see why this is so. When faced with a situation that requires us to act, deciding how to act is a much bigger deal for us than most people, for two reasons: 1) we’ve blown it so often in the past by being impulsive that we don’t fully trust ourselves, and 2) getting it right is so important, because we want to preserve the goodwill of anyone else involved, that there’s some anxiety clouding our vision.
There’s another factor, too, I think: when we’re not acting impulsively, our novelty circuits are kicking in, and we get a little subconsciously creative: we are able to conceptualize a wide range of possible actions or responses – some of them useful, some of them extreme, some of them silly. And it takes a while to sort through them.
We have conversations with ourselves, as most people do, but ours go on endlessly. Again, no surprise there.
Here’s where we might be jumping the tracks: most people think their thoughts and feel their feelings. But we’re wired differently; we sometimes think our feelings.
We feel something, and it isn’t fun.
We immediately jump to some explanation for the feeling, something we can bounce on and address, so that the feeling will go away.
We start running open-throttle, evaluating competing explanations.
We get lost.
We don’t just do this when addressing a people problem. Any task or event in our lives has the potential to generate an uncomfortable feeling, so we overthink a wide range of things that may not require even a little bit of thought (and this never even occurs to us!).
We ADD adults, after a lifetime of anxiety and depression, is averse to simply feeling our feelings. It’s horrifically uncomfortable, because we feel our emotions more strongly than most other people do.
The important thing here is to communicate this reality to your partner or friend, but there are a couple of things we can do about it that bear mention.
First, we can put our toe in the water and begin separating thoughts and feelings. This is very difficult, because of our racing minds, but it has to begin sometime. We need to give ourselves permission to feel, and to prepare ourselves for the cacophony that will surely nip at us when we make the attempt. It’s best done in a tranquil place and moment, free of distraction, where comforts (anything from chocolate to a glass of wine) are close at hand. Quiet might be good.
Set a period of time for the exercise. Ten minutes, twenty, forty-five, whatever seems right. Set an alarm to bring back.
Then, just let yourself be sad. Or angry. Or whatever.
When narratives and explanations intrude, file them away for later reference. Just feel.
The second thing we can do is find someone to whom we can just speak the feelings. It need not the partner or friend we’re trying to connect with – it can be an older friend or a family member or someone else we know who has ADD.
Let that person know ahead of time that you need to let some feelings out, but make clear that the point of the exercise is to avoid getting into thoughts about the feelings. They will keep you centered on your emotions and clear of explanations and narratives.
As for sharing this aspect of yourself,
“Do you ever overthink things? I guess we all do, sometimes. Me more than most. You’ll notice this about me, if you haven’t already. I have a tendency to overanalyze what people say, and overplan my responses. Part of this is insecurity that my ADD brings out. And part of it is that my thoughts and emotions kind of blend together sometimes, like food on my dinner plate! If you see this overthinking happening, there’s a simple response that will really help: just smile at me, and squeeze my hand.”
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