“Someone makes one offhand comment, and suddenly your whole day is ruined.”
If small things set off big emotional reactions, it doesn’t mean you’re too sensitive or bad at relationships. For people with ADHD, emotional dysregulation is a core part of the condition — not a character flaw. Dr. Mark Bertin explains what’s actually happening in the brain, and the four skills that make emotions easier to manage.
ADHD affects executive function — the brain’s self-management system. And because managing emotions runs through that same system, ADHD has a direct effect on how intensely emotions arrive and how hard they are to steer once they do.
Dr. Bertin also unpacks why the dopamine advice circulating on social media is misleading — or outright wrong — and why chasing quick hits of relief can keep people stuck in what’s sometimes called the happiness trap.
The four skills he walks through: building an emotional vocabulary, recognizing emotions in the body as they arise, noticing the stories we tell ourselves about our feelings, and practicing patience with emotions over time.
Mark Bertin, MD, is a doctor and ADHD specialist with over 20 years of experience working with adults and families. He is the author of several books on ADHD.
Timestamps: 0:00 Why small things trigger big reactions 0:39 Why ADHD makes emotions bigger 1:29 ADHD as the brain manager 3:01 Why dopamine hacks don’t work 3:39 Skill 1: Building an emotional vocabulary 4:20 Skill 2: Noticing emotions in your body 4:42 Skill 3: The stories we tell ourselves 5:04 Skill 4: Practicing patience 5:37 Treating ADHD as a whole 6:15 Change is always possible #ADHD#EmotionalDysregulation
Video Summary
AI Generated
Dr. Mark Burton explains that emotional dysregulation is a core component of ADHD, stemming from deficits in executive function rather than character flaws. He emphasizes that while ADHD affects how emotions are managed and experienced, individuals can improve their emotional well-being by building specific psychological skills and seeking professional support.
It can happen so fast.
Someone makes one offhand comment
or a coworker gives you one small piece of feedback
and suddenly your whole day is ruined.
You can feel yourself spiraling.
Your chest tightens, your stomach drops,
and your heart starts racing.
You may even be telling yourself, just let it go.
But your brain and body are already somewhere else.
It spills into a conversation with your partner.
It affects your work.
You send that rage text, or raise your voice,
or shut down completely, and later you think,
why did that get so big so fast?
This doesn't mean you're dramatic or too sensitive
or bad at relationships.
It may be part of how your brain is wired.
I'm Dr. Mark Burton.
I've spent over 20 years working with adults
and families navigating ADHD,
and I've written several books on the topic.
These types of challenges are often discussed
as part of emotional dysregulation,
and more and more we're understanding
that they are inherently part of ADHD.
That's because ADHD isn't really an attention disorder
or a hyperactivity disorder specifically.
It affects this much larger skillset
called executive function,
which is like our self-management skills.
What may be most important to realize
is this isn't a character flaw.
This isn't anyone's fault.
It's a really challenging part of living with ADHD,
but if we don't get ahead of emotional dysregulation,
it makes it all that much harder to do everything else
that might make living with ADHD easier.
So a good question to ask then is,
why does ADHD affect emotions in this way?
The first thing to understand when living with ADHD
is this idea of ADHD as the brain manager,
and one shorthand way to summarize that
is almost like anything you can put the word management to
in life depends on executive function.
So you have to manage attention.
You have to manage time.
You have to manage projects.
So ADHD has a direct effect on emotional self-regulation
because executive function is the skillset
or is one of the skillsets we use to manage emotion,
but it's actually a little more than that
because executive function is also the skillset
we use to manage everything in everyday life
from to-do list to time.
So day-to-day chores and keeping track of our household
or keeping track of our work become more stressful,
and that affects our emotional state.
ADHD can very much affect someone's mindset.
It can affect how they think about themselves
and their confidence,
and very much cause people to get down on themselves.
So when you combine all that,
ADHD has a very direct effect
on both emotional wellbeing
and emotional management skills moment to moment.
There's a famous Zen saying
that everyone is perfect exactly as they are
and has something to work on.
When it comes to ADHD,
you may think of yourself as someone
who just has a big temper
and never can do anything about it
or someone who's a lot emotionally
and people just need to accept that as it is.
In real life, all these things may be true.
We are who we are,
but there also are things we can work on and change.
And when it comes to ADHD,
emotions are part of life.
Emotions can be big,
but we definitely want to work on things
until instead of being managed by our emotions,
we're managing them.
There's this trend going on social media lately
that dopamine is the end-all be-all for happiness,
and it really fundamentally isn't true.
If you're always chasing that quick hit,
the relief has gone almost as soon as it starts.
That moment passes.
Then you need the next thing and the next thing.
That relates to an idea
sometimes called the happiness trap,
a cycle that develops where we're always chasing
that one next moment of happiness
and really doesn't relate to long-term contentment
and well-being at all.
So instead of trying to hack your way out of every feeling
or chase happiness,
the work is really about building emotional skills.
How then can we build the skills
that help us manage our emotions
before they're out of 10?
So there's four things I like to discuss.
The first is building an emotional vocabulary.
It's been shown that just being able
to nuance our experience of emotions
through our emotional vocabulary
changes our experience of them.
One survey years ago showed that many adults
without prompting divide all emotions
into happy, sad, or angry.
And whatever life experience it is,
they put it into one of those baskets
when there are actually dozens and dozens
of emotions in life.
And the more we're able to identify
those different emotions and label them
fundamentally changes our emotional experience.
A second part of developing that emotional awareness
is really beginning to recognize emotions
as they're changing and arising.
So that often can be referred to in a way as body awareness.
When we're able to notice how our body feels
around different emotions and recognize that early,
we can often begin to manage emotions again
before they take over, before they've won the day.
A third thing to look at are the stories
we're telling ourself around emotions.
Because one of the things that fixes emotions in place
is just our experience of them and the story we tell.
So a big emotion happens and then we start spinning
into this always happens to me,
or this is gonna never end, or I hate this.
And those stories that's been shown
prolong emotions in and of themselves.
And the fourth is developing the skill
of patience with emotions.
We can practice noticing emotions and pausing.
Noticing emotions and not falling into our ruts directly.
And that skill, which may seem impossible right now,
is something we can cultivate
just like going to the gym regularly.
So if we pull together those four things,
meaning labeling emotions, awareness of emotions
as they arise, breaking out of the stories
we tell ourselves about emotions,
and then just practicing patience,
that ability to manage emotions grows.
It's also important to note that these sorts of changes
aren't happening in isolation,
so that the more we work with managing ADHD as a whole
also improves emotional regulation.
So that might mean getting your medications right
or working with a therapist or working with a coach.
But certainly this big picture of ADHD
will change how you feel emotionally too.
It requires a lot of patience
and a lot of self-acceptance to work with this.
So if you're gonna begin to work with emotional regulation,
it's really important to give yourself the space to try,
to make mistakes, to work forward in steps,
because these are all really difficult changes to make
and it may take a while, but you can get there.
If emotional dysregulation has affected your relationships,
your work, or the way you see yourself,
the first thing to know is you're not broken.
This is a real part of ADHD for many people.
Naming it accurately can be a relief
because it means you can stop treating it
like a character flaw.
This doesn't mean everyone around you
just has to absorb the impact.
Full acceptance doesn't mean there's nothing to work on.
We can be accepted as we are
and still have skills we're building.
Change is always possible.
With awareness, support, and practice over time,
emotional regulation can get easier.
Not perfect, not overnight, but easier.
And that starts with understanding what's really going on.
