The Silent weight: When your ADHD mind has more than it can possibly hold

I wake up already exhausted. Not that fatigue which sleep remedies, but that weary fatigue of mind which is never actually sleep.
Have you ever thought you were being drowned in the open? Brother, like everybody you know, has a friend who is “doing fine, and you are inside, only holding your head up just above the water? This is a sensation that is not unknown to you should you have ADHD. It is the secret emotional suffering of millions of us having to drag thirty pounds of not existing in a world our brains are not made to live in every day.

The Exhaustion Nobody Sees
The first thought that the people have in mind when the word ADHD is mentioned is the hyperactive child who never sits still or the daydreamer who is gazing through the classroom window. However, what of the adult ADHD mental exhaustion that is as though a marathon with a backpack of rocks? But what of the emotional repression that occurs when we are always hiding our plight in order to seem normal?

Being tired does not constitute mental fatigue in ADHD. It is that smacking down sensation in your head when it is like your brain is moving through molasses, when even basic chores are impossible. It is waking up and having eight hours of sleep and you are already exhausted to get through the day. It is the physical feel of having your mind dragging you.

“The words fail to be adequately represented by any other person than Sarah, a 34-year-old marketing professional, who states that it is like her brain is always in overdrive, yet she seems to be going nowhere. I will sit at my desk, watching emails that are supposed to be responded to within five minutes, and it almost seems like I have a lot of statues in my head. At 2 PM, I am completely exhausted, yet there is still half a day of work.”

That is the truth of ADHD vs anxiety, where the latter will give you a racing heart of worsted thinking about certain things, ADHD mental exhaustion will be more like having a PC with numerous programs running simultaneously. Sooner or later, all slows down, collapses or ceases to react at all.

When Burnout is your New Normal
The burnout of ADHD is not similar to burnout in the workplace. It is the result of having an overworked brain trying to be neurotypical just to get by in the world. It is the product of decades of trying to make yourself something you are not, to struggle against your DNA makeup.

The study indicates that adults suffering ADHD are more fatigued as compared to their counterparts. Not only physical fatigue, though, it is emotional, psychological and spiritual burnout all in one crushing package.

“Marcus, a 28-year-old teacher who was diagnosed a year ago, says that he had all his struggles with ADHD under wraps that long that he had forgotten that he had struggles. My brain ran wild at bedtime, I figured that all people were exhausted by the most basic obligation, that all people were unable to recall anything that happened to them an hour prior. At the time when I realized it was ADHD, I lamented all the years that I had spent believing that I was simply broken.”

The Secret of Emotional Suppression
This is what they do not tell you about the ADHD: we learn to be masters of emotion suppression. Since we grow up, we are taught to conceal our difficulties, our differences, to act as though being able to keep up with life is not an uphill battle on a daily basis.

Effects of emotional suppression in ADHD are devastating. By repeatedly repressing your frustration, inadequacy, and anything excessive, you do not get rid of it, but instead, it ferments. They become feeling of shame, depression, anxiety and that feeling of being fundamentally faulty.

The psychological impact of guilt is very inhumane in ADHD. We are ashamed that we forget significant dates, we are always late even though we do our best to be on time, we live in disorganized houses, and we do not complete our works. We bear the responsibility of our emotional eruptions, of our defensiveness to criticism, of our need to have more support than other people appear to have.

“I have spent my whole childhood being told that I was either too much or too little, says Jessica who is a 42 year old mother of two. I had assimilated all the corrections, every look of disappointment, each sigh whenever I had to re-learn something. When I grew up I was able to hear this voice in my head, telling me I was not becoming human.”

The Invisible Weight of Un-diagnosed Emotions
ADHD involves the existence of undiagnosed emotions that bring about a special suffering. When you do not know why you are so deeply hurt, why it hurts you more than it hurts other people, why criticism hurts you more than it others, you begin to think that there is something essentially wrong with your make up.

Here lies concealed emotional agony–in the interval between what we perceive actually and what other people perceive. We smile saying that we are fine, but in-side we are bearing the burden of:

– All those duties that seem like impossibilities to initiate.
– All the relationships that are made complex by our symptoms.
– Each of the objectives was lost due to lack of focus.
– We spend every night, night after night, unable to quite our frenzied minds.
– Each one of the mornings begins with the fatigue of living in a world that is not made of us.

The Mental Pressure Crushing Reality
Mental pressure in ADHD is not mere stress, but it is the cumulative stress of swimming upstream all the time. It is the strain of being in a position to know that you can but not always to be able to tap into that ability. It is the stress of seeing others easily do things that depletes all your energies.

This strain generates what scholars refer to as a silent load, which is the emotional price of looking functional when one is experiencing difficulties with the most fundamental tasks in their lives. It is the weight to justify the reason why you can be hyperfocused to make an elaborate presentation in three days but forget to pay your bills. It is the responsibility of being not understood by people who love you and cannot imagine your everyday life.

When the Mask Finally Slips
It is a point to which most of us arrive when the emotional repression is too much to bear. When we have spent years of shoving down our struggles, our sensitivity, our all-consuming feelings eventually reach us. This is usually when the symptoms of adult ADHD cannot be ignored anymore, when our coping strategies fail, when the burnout is so severe that it can no longer be covered.

“It happened when David, a 35 year engineer, broke down in the office of his therapist. I had known at least half a lifetime holding it together by sheer brute strength, and I could no longer do so. I cried just thinking of all the years I had spent believing I was a lazy person, all the relationships I had ruined because I was unable to control my feelings, all the dreams I had to give up because I believed I was a mere weakling.”

This is the point of pain, but it is usually the step towards the help, to morbidity and awareness that our miseries are not moral flaws but neurological variations, which need kindness and proper attention.

The Way to Heal: Living your Neurodivergent heart.
The healing process of ADHD related emotional trauma is not a matter of healing oneself, but rather just knowing oneself. It is about knowing that you have a different brain, not a bad one. It is about finding self-pity towards the criticized child, which was too much, and the adult who has these wounds.
Recovery involves:

Embracing your truth: Get rid of the down-playing of your hardships. If it’s hard for you, it’s hard. Full stop.
Re-linking with community: Find peer support. Forums and ADHD awareness communities that offer mental health support can offer you the validation you have been seeking.

Getting to know your brain: Learning how ADHD could influence your emotional regulation, executive function, and everyday life can allow you to build a more effective strategy and self-empathy.
Learning emotional acceptance: You should be able to practice sitting with unpleasant emotions and learn to understand them and react to them gently.

You Are Not Broken
And, in case you happen to be reading this and thinking that you see yourself reflected in these words, I will tell you something: you are not broken. Your plights are true, your sufferings valid, and your affections count. The world might not know your ADHD brain but it does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong about you.
It is not the weakness of your sensitivity, but the depth thereof. Your intensity of feeling is no drama, but passion. It is not your Ministry of need, but human.

You should be treated with sympathy, empathy, and care. You have every right to live in the world and not keep on apologizing to the world on how your brain functions. What you need is to recover the years of blame and neglect, the misunderstanding.
Above all, you should learn that you are not alone. This is our hidden burden that we are carrying, and we can all be trained to lay it aside, to breath more freely, to live more truly.

Other people might not have the same experience of ADHD, but it is yours and it is valid. And you–as you are–are sufficient.