What is ADHD shutdown?

Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.

adhdaware.org.uk - ADHD symptoms

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Inattention: Easily distracted, poor concentration skills, difficulty organising themselves

Impulsivity: Impatient, risk-taking, disproportionately emotional responses

Hyperactivity: Overly energetic, talkative, excessive fidgeting, difficulty staying on task

Everyone is different, so it isn’t uncommon for two people to experience ADHD in different ways. These behaviours often differ between the sexes, with males displaying high levels of obvious physical hyperactivity while often females may appear to be the opposite, quiet and inattentive due to mental hyperactivity resulting in excessive daydreaming. If you have this type of ADHD, you may experience more symptoms of inattention than those of impulsivity and hyperactivity. You may struggle with impulse control or hyperactivity at times but these aren’t the main characteristics of the inattentive type.

People who experience inattentive behaviour often:

Miss details and are distracted easily

Get bored quickly

Have trouble focusing on a single task

Have difficulty organising thoughts and learning new information

Lose pencils, papers, or other items needed to complete a task

Don’t seem to listen

Move slowly and appear as if they’re daydreaming

Process information slower and less accurately than others

Have trouble following directions

Type 2 – Hyperactive/Impulsive-type

This type of ADHD is characterised by symptoms of impulsivity and hyperactivity. People with this type can display signs of inattention, but it’s not as marked as the other symptoms.

People who are impulsive or hyperactive often:

Squirm, fidget, or feel restless

Have difficulty sitting still

Talk constantly

Touch and play with objects, even when inappropriate to the task at hand

Have trouble engaging in quiet activities

Are constantly “on the go”

Are impatient

Act out of turn and don’t think about consequences of actions

Blurt out answers and inappropriate comments

This is the most common type of ADHD. Combined-type ADHD means that your symptoms cover both inattention and hyperactive-impulsive behaviour. ADHD symptoms can change in severity, visibility and impact over a lifetime, meaning someone can move between combined-type ADHD, inattentive-type ADHD, hyperactive/impulsive-type ADHD and ‘sub-clinical’ ADHD (sub-clinical ADHD refers to someone who has too few medical symptoms to meet diagnostic criteria). Diagnosis of a sub-type of ADHD can be important for understanding but, equally, it may just reflect which traits of ADHD are easy to observe as having a negative impact. All types of ADHD share the same brain and nervous system changes in development, though no two brains are the same.

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Most people, with or without ADHD, experience some degree of inattentive or hyperactive/impulsive behaviour. These symptoms are far more severe in people with ADHD, with symptoms often interfering with the ability to function properly at home, school, work, and in social situations.

fast-building, high-intensity and short-lived emotions

difficulties recognising emotions in themselves and others

extremes of empathising completely with others or reacting without emotions to others

experiencing many more emotions simultaneously than a typical person might

Experiencing multiple contradictory emotions at the same time can be difficult for people with and without ADHD to understand. For example, it is not uncommon for someone with ADHD to say they feel excited, happy, frustrated and nervous all at once in a situation where someone neurotypical is likely to only be experiencing one or two emotions. Similarly, people with ADHD can also experience ‘meltdowns’ more commonly than others, which is where emotions build up so extremely that someone acts out, often crying, angering, laughing, yelling and moving all at once, driven by many different emotions at once – this essentially resembles a child tantrum and can continue throughout adulthood. Meltdowns can be an important way to self-regulate and can actually bring great lasting relief to adults afterwards. Differences in emotions as well as experiencing meltdowns and shutdowns are also common in autism.

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Promotion

These differences in emotions are often referred to as ’emotional dysregulation’. There is ongoing debate in the medical field as to the role of ADHD in symptoms of emotional dysregulation. Emotional dysregulation used to be considered a core part of ADHD and was always included in descriptions of ADHD. There have been many name changes to ADHD, with medical literature from the 19th and 20th century referring to ‘minimal brain dysfunction’, ‘defect in moral control’, ‘mental restlessness’, ‘hyperactive child syndrome’ and ‘hyperkinetic impulse disorder’ before the term ADHD became centralised. In all of these early conceptualisations, emotional dysregulation was considered a key part of ADHD and physicians sought to treat patients and mediate the impact emotional dysregulation had on someone’s life. In the 1970s, ADHD research became more formalised so that ADHD could be incorporated into the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistics Manual – the key psychiatry book). Emotional dysregulation was repeatedly observed during research, but researchers chose to focus on inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity since these traits were far more easy to measure and develop treatments for in a laboratory or clinical setting. Measuring emotional dysregulation was more challenging and, as such, it was phased out of medical descriptions of ADHD. Some people also believe that emotional dysregulation in ADHD is strictly due to other mental health conditions that can co-occur with ADHD. Whilst co-occuring conditions can create a research challenge and weaken data, this idea has been disproven. Alongside the core traits and emotional dysregulation, people with ADHD can also have other co-occuring neurodiverse conditions as well as mental health conditions.

adhdaware.org.uk - ADHD symptoms

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