How I Deal With Worry & Ruminating

Anxiety and rumination are common with ADHD. Why? And what can be done about it?

Simply put, people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have problems with controlling our focus. So when we’re enthused about something, thoughts ricochet here, there, and everywhere as we come up with wonderful possibilities. Each is better than the one before.

But a worrying thought can just as easily trigger terrible possibilities. Each worse than the one before.

My ability to turn a mild concern into a paralyzing panic was impressive. But now, knowing this escalation is the result of my ADHD allowed me to seek out and find strategies to interrupt the rising fear and nip it in the bud.

It starts with noticing the physical signs, the rising sense of mild terror and then simply taking a series of slow, deep breaths.

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Let’s Talk About Worry

Let’s talk about worry, everybody worries to some degree.

Some people have learned how to manage their worry, and I don’t know about you but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for those people, and that place is called petty jealousy with a dash of seething resentment.

That’s because I’ve always been a worrier, I wish I was more of a warrior but instead I’m a worrier, and not content with that I eventually upped my game to ruminating, stuck, going over and over the worst case scenario, trying to stop, but then it would come up again, ah yes the curse of the vivid imagination.

Now I’m not the only one who has had this problem in fact let’s look at the ancient Greeks who took their prayer beads the komboloi, com, some that’s probably not how they pronounced it, and they came up with worry beads called begleri, no relation to my friend big Larry.

So how do you break free? How do you break free from ruminating when you’re stuck in it? It’s actually simple, Don’t Worry Be Happy, why didn’t you think of that earlier because as I’ve noted in a number of videos it has to be actionable, being happy is the goal ,specifically breaking the cycle of worrying, interrupting repetitive anxiety inducing thoughts, that’s actually a goal as well, it’s how.

Well there’s a number of ways but here’s a simple three-step process that has worked for me.

Step 1 is the trickiest and I said these were simple, I didn’t say they were easy, riding a unicycle is simple, don’t fall off, keep the wheel underneath you by pedalling.

Having owned a couple of unicycles back when I could recover from hard falls I can tell you, I can testify I swear it’s not necessarily easy, it takes practice, apparently more practice than I was willing to put in, but I digress.

3 Tricks to Stop Worrying

Step 1 to stop worry & rumination is to actually notice that you’re ruminating, when your mind is full of worry going over something, you want to bring a little bit of your awareness to what’s going on, to what you’re doing at that moment, to step back just a little bit, part of you, mentally, and notice, okay I’m going in circles again, here we go this is the worrying.

You know what it’s like when you’re going on and on about something and you’re yaking away and then then you finally sense oh maybe people have tuned out like 10 minutes ago and so you quickly wrap it up, you know, yeah I don’t know that either I usually just keep going, but to notice that your mind is racing, replaying these imaginary disasters and worst case scenarios, unable to break free, distinguishing what’s happening, is a crapshoot when you have ADHD, because it’s difficult for everybody, it’s worse with ADHD.

For me the worst was something that happened to my kids or actually scratch that, is something that I was imagining might happen to my kids, when I would get trapped in the tornado of repetitive thinking, why haven’t they called, going around and around, the bus driver looked drunk, my mind was zooming a thousand miles an hour, oh God they could be lying in the ditch, and I had zero awareness of my breathing, heart rate, adrenaline, stomach.

That is actually your access to recognizing what’s happening, your physical sensations, your tight chest, your hard clenched teeth, flush face, hunch shoulders, shaky hands, pacing.

You’re locked up in here fixated on whether there’ll be a war, or did I leave the stove on, or was Marcy being sarcastic when she complimented my shoes.

Once you’ve noticed the physical signs and you’ve noticed that you’re ruminating, that you’re stuck in this repetitive thought pattern then comes…

Step Two – You Take 4 Deep Breaths

In through the nose, out through the mouth, and you want to do all four, right, all four.

It’s almost contagious, you’re doing it with me aren’t you, and a pause between breaths, and oh right 4, I know you’re tempted to do three sorry start again.

If you wear a device you’ll notice that your heart rate goes from 118 down to what it would normally be, or should be.

Now you have a chance to think clearly, and that’s…

Step 3 – actively coming up with a better scenario, or taking apart the scenario that has you stuck.

It’s a bit like cognitive behavioural therapy where you look at a belief you have, you know I shouldn’t have said that, now everyone hates me, I’m such an idiot, in cognitive, cogn, cogn, in CBT you look to see which cognitive distortions have led you astray, that’s what they’re called cognitive distortions, perfect.

As I say this is not easy to do but just noticing the physical sensations and then interrupting that with those deep breaths, and I said four you could do 10.

Anyway I hope that helps, give it a try next time you get stuck, if you are a person who gets stuck in worrying and catastrophizing, and do share your experiences what is it that has you locked into that state of constant oh my God oh my God oh my God, that you just can’t get out of, what was it for you?

And you can also like and share this video especially with somebody you know who does the same thing, and you could even become a patron and meet a really amazing community of people who do a lot of these things as well and and are dedicated to not doing them anymore.

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