Many people with ADD are easily overwhelmed which leads to things like anxiety, freezing (unable to function), and procrastination. These are all things I deal with.

This feeling of being overwhelmed comes from juggling too much information all at once. It’s hard for me to focus on the task at hand because for one, I’m easily distracted, and two, there are a lot of tasks I need to remember to do and all of them are vying for my attention all at once.

For me, the resulting anxiety feels like having to write a 100 page paper. I obviously can’t write the whole 100 pages all at once, but my brain is thinking about all of those pages and I start to worry that I can’t get it done. And every moment I am obsessively thinking about all of those pages. I go to bed thinking about them, I dream about them, and I wake up thinking about them. My breathing quickens and my chest gets tight.

Then the anxiety leads to procrastination. The whole project is too big and overwhelming so it’s easier to find something else more enjoyable to focus on, like scrolling through social media. Every time I think about what I need to do, I start to feel anxious. Feeling anxious doesn’t feel good, so I do something that doesn’t make me feel anxious.

Recently, I was trying to plan a vacation itinerary for my husband and myself. We had the flights and the hotel, but all the details had to be worked out. Were we going to park at the airport or take the shuttle? How were we going to get from the airport to our hotel when we land? What sights did we want to see when we got there? I was definitely having anxiety trying to answer all of those questions and I procrastinated dealing with it.

If I have too much going on I freeze. It’s like I can’t function. There’s too much chaos in my space. For me this happens when I travel from one place to another. When I get to the new location it takes me a few days to settle back into a routine and get a handle on everything I need to do. In the meantime, nothing really gets done. I just can’t deal with any of it.

How I handle being easily overwhelmed. I keep my life very ordered and compartmentalized. Every day of the week has its specific tasks assigned to it. On Monday and Friday mornings I set aside time to do job #1, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I set aside time to do job #2. I will write on Wednesdays and Sundays and work on marketing and my website on Saturdays. 

This uber organization of my schedule extends to which days I do the laundry, which days I plan to shower on, what time of day am I going to switch tasks, so that I remember to do something important, like cook a meal. My bank account is like the old envelope system on steroids. Every amount is budgeted and I get a daily update on the account we use most often.

Organizing things is calming to me. If I am anxious about anything I will find an organizing task and work on that. Completing the organization gives me such a sense of satisfaction it eases the anxiety I was feeling, even if the anxiety was completely unrelated to what I was organizing.

If a new task comes along, I assign it to a day and time when I will deal with it. I am giving my brain permission to not think about everything all at once and getting overwhelmed, because everything has its own time slot in my agenda. What day is it? Ok, I’m working on x today. I can think about y this afternoon or tomorrow. That way I can push thoughts aside or create a note to think about it at the scheduled time. However, not being able to work on something on the day or at the time I assigned it to, throws me off and can cause anxiety.

Anxiety. The way I dealt with our vacation itinerary was to push aside the anxiety it was causing me and sitting down with my husband to write down every detail that we already knew – flights, hotel check-in and out. Then I started filling in the details we didn’t know. 

When would we need to arrive at the airport? When would we need to leave the house? Does the shuttle run at that time? What was the difference in cost between parking our car in long-term parking and taking the shuttle? What shuttle service would take us to and from our hotel? What were our options for activities once we got there?

I have amazingly detailed notes about our planned vacation. But it was the only way I could finally deal with it and make sure we got where we needed to go in a timely manner and had plans for when we got there. Once we did that I felt so much better and actually started to get excited for our vacation.

The funny thing is, that my husband actually didn’t do much except sit with me and listen to me as I worked it all out. Of course, he had some opinions about what activities we ultimately decided on, but he didn’t know how to find what our choices were. Having him sit there was just calming for me as I worked through it and talked it out.

Procrastination. When it comes to writing academic papers (I have written plenty) the key for me is getting it started. Write an intro, create an outline, or just brainstorm my thoughts. Once I’ve done that, I  can set it aside and come back to it later and pick up where I left off. The thoughts I already have written down will prompt new thoughts and I keep going until I at least have a draft of a paper that can be edited, put together and polished to be handed in. 

Another way to tackle this is to list the steps needed to complete the project and then assign a deadline to each step. That way I don’t need to think about the whole thing and can focus on the step I’m on. This method also helps me get things done on time.

I can apply these two methods to the other parts of my life that cause me anxiety. Get it started or list the steps needed to complete it and assign each of them a timeline.

Freeze. I noticed the freeze response the last time I came back from visiting my sister. I had been there for a month and a half and I had my routine worked out. Every day had its assigned agenda. Of course, I wasn’t working on my agenda on the days I was traveling so after arriving home, my schedule was very off and I was in a different space.

Where I work on my daily agenda is also part of how I keep things compartmentalized. If the space I’m working in changes, it can disrupt my ability to get things accomplished.

I had to organize my space and begin to reorganize my daily agenda to get things back on track. And the initial anxiety/freeze state kept me from being able to wrap my head around it for a few days.

If I am overwhelmed, anxious, procrastinating or frozen, I have to find a way to organize myself, my tasks, my space in order to be able to function again.