In defense of grief (especially when you have ADHD)

Quick look:

• Often, people with ADHD experience emotions, including grief at a much deeper level.

• In defense of grief, let’s acknowledge that there is grief with any loss, no matter how small – not just when big life events happen, like a death.

• There are ways to work through grief, better.

• YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

I only learned a few years ago that I had ADHD. The grief I felt was multifaceted – there were so many hard experiences that could have been prevented, understood or even celebrated if I had known. I also experienced grief about the guilt my parents felt not knowing or having me diagnosed, and for missed opportunities in my life or what could have been. Now, in a transition phase of my career, and in this political environment, I again am confronted with grief.

Grief can feel overwhelming in the smallest of instances of loss. With ADHD, grief can feel devastating.

It left me questioning, when do we allow ourselves to experience grief? Grief is something that most people attribute to losing a person or pet through death. I have learned, and consistently find it reiterated, that grief occurs with any loss. To relegate grief to a single experience in life does a disservice, literally, to how we exist and thrive. Negative emotions occur during so many of our life events, our experiences. To only acknowledge them as grief when someone dies results in discounting an emotion that needs to be acknowledged and worked through.

Take for instance, losing a job. Was there severance? Yes. Will I miss the toxic parts? Absolutely not. Will I miss the people, and even some of the work? Absolutely. Grief is about loss. This can be loss of an opportunity, loss of a relationship, loss of a job, loss of a routine, loss of a feeling of security…. any loss. Sometimes, even positive change can mean giving something up… you see my point.

With smaller losses (or really anything other than death), we are often told to “get over it”, or that “it is what it is” and to “move on”. ADHD’ers already have a complex relationship with emotions1,3,4. For me, it often feels like I either experience nothing at all - flatline emotional state – or BIG emotions. So, when we feel grief, it’s amplified by the fact that we have ADHD. Even smaller experiences register as big.

Because of our amplified emotions, experiences of grief are just that much harder2. Grief can feel overwhelming in the smallest of instances of loss. With ADHD, grief can feel devastating. It can feel paralyzing. We feel small losses more acutely, and big losses fundamentally. People with ADHD also engage more frequently in higher risk behaviours like drug use, gambling, impulsive spending, etc. to make ourselves feel better4. For these reasons, we need to learn how to work through our big, negative emotions better.

Let’s acknowledge grief as what it is and give ourselves permission to take the space to work through our big emotions.

I propose that we acknowledge that any loss, for any reason, can result in grief. If we can accurately identify our losses and our resulting emotions, we can regulate our emotions more constructively, instead of incorrectly labelling them, suppressing them or disregarding them. It gives us the permission seek what we actually need to function, instead of believing we should just “get over it” or “move on”. And let’s be honest. Some days, even functioning is hard.

Humans, at our base nature, have a strong aversion to loss5. It is, however, inevitable. With change comes loss. With loss comes grief, no matter how big or small. The point of this blog is if you have ADHD, and you ever feel crippled by any loss or grief, no matter the reason, you’re not alone. Let’s acknowledge grief for what it is and give ourselves permission to take the space to work through our big emotions. Maybe by doing that, we can be more resilient, fear loss less, and thrive more consistently.

Do your emotions seem bigger than people who don't have ADHD?

• Yes, definitely
• No, I haven't noticed a difference

Resources:

Here are some blogs I found that helped me learn ways to acknowledge grief, and start to work through it better. I hope they help you a little too.

Medium Article - Grief: The depths of loss with ADHD and ways to cope

Handling Grief and Loss When You Have ADHD

Healthy Ways to Process Grief and Move Forward

Overcoming Grief Starts with 3 Steps

How to Recover From a Friendship Breakup

References

1. Beheshti, A., Chavanon, ML. & Christiansen, H. Emotion dysregulation in adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry 20, 120 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-2442-7

2. Childress, A.C., Sallee, F.R. Emotional Lability in Patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Impact of Pharmacotherapy. CNS Drugs 29, 683–693 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40263-015-0264-9

3. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23224-executive-dysfunction

4. Shoham R, Sonuga-Barke EJ, Aloni H, Yaniv I, Pollak Y. ADHD-associated risk taking is linked to exaggerated views of the benefits of positive outcomes. Sci Rep. 2016 Oct 11;6:34833. doi: 10.1038/srep34833.

5. Brown, Alexander L., Taisuke Imai, Ferdinand M. Vieider, and Colin F. Camerer. 2024. "Meta-analysis of Empirical Estimates of Loss Aversion." Journal of Economic Literature, 62 (2): 485–516. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20221698