2024 has been full of stressful moments. Between work, school, juggling household responsibilities, and then throwing an extremely pivotal election in, I have been simmering for months and on the verge of reaching my boiling point. Last week, it finally exploded, and I just so happened to be reading the perfect book for that moment: Self-Care for People with ADHD by Sasha Hamdani. Had it not been for Dr. Hamdani’s book, I likely would have suffered an even more intense burnout with a longer and more painful meltdown.

Sooo, what happened??

Great question! I’m glad you asked.

All last week, I felt it building up – the stress, the frustration, the constant sensory overload, the inability to focus on anything, the complete lack of interest in anything that I actually needed to do, the inability to handle household chores, sleeping in incredibly late and barely being able to get out of bed, the struggle to force myself to shower. I knew the bubble was about to burst, and with Christmas coming up, I was really hoping it would happen before so that I could be in recovery mode during Christmas and not ruin the holiday for anyone that had the displeasure of being around me (i.e., my fiance’s family).

Friday morning, nothing was going my way. I was prepping spreadsheets for work, and one that was semi-urgent somehow got messed up and the amounts were no longer lining up with the correct names, and no matter how many times I tried to Ctrl+Z my way out of the issue, I couldn’t fix it. An hour of work down the drain. I had to scrap it, pull the reports again, and go back through the whole process while frustrated and trying not to f*ck it up again. (ugh!!) Thankfully, I finished it on time, sent it off, and went on about my morning. Then I got an email about another mistake – a bill was overlooked and now it was late. Cue the long string of profanity while I got up and left my desk to go breathe and try not to lose my shit. All week, it seemed like I was making nothing but mistakes, and I couldn’t figure out what the f*ck the issue was.

I went downstairs and before I could even finish the sentence “I feel like I’m about to have a meltdown, but I don’t have time for it right now,” it happened. *Cue waterworks* Thankfully, my fiance is amazing; he completely understands and handles these things beautifully. I have no idea how he does it. He was able to talk me through the fact that I’ve been overworked for months, I’ve been pushing myself to reach impossible goals, trying to juggle work, school, home, medical things, etc. while not dropping a single ball. He finally got me talked down through the hardest part and convinced me that I need to take time off from EVERYTHING as soon as I possibly can. Time off is something that I just…don’t do. I have my weekends like everyone else, but outside of that, I don’t really take time for myself to just be. I’ll take a day off here and there, but those are always days that are for something. A day or more that’s just for me? Unheard of. Later, I thought back to the book that I had been reading the last few days and realized that it was exactly what I should be doing right now – self-care for my ADHD brain.

Here are a few of the self-care tips in Self-Care for People with ADHD that really resonated with me while fighting this burnout:

Allow Yourself to De-Mask

Like most women with any sort of neurospicy brain, I am a master masker, and I have such a hard time when trying to unmask. I’ve been masking my symptoms for so many years that I have no idea who I even am without the mask. Dr. Hamdani mentions that “masking can lead to negative impacts like a delay in diagnosis, or people not validating your experience when you tell them you are struggling.” She’s totally right! This has been one of the biggest struggles in trying to get a formal diagnosis. Practicing this unmasking (or de-masking) on a regular basis at home would likely help me get more comfortable with doing it in a therapy setting so that they can get a real view of my symptoms.

Reflect on Positive Qualities and Strengths

A large cause for this most recent burnout & meltdown was feeling like I was constantly f*cking everything up, especially with work. Of course, this kicked off a series of thoughts about being fired. What this tip reminded me is that while I may have made a few mistakes, I have quite a few positive qualities. I am super creative when it comes to problem-solving. I work really well under stress and deadlines (unless I’m about to burnout). I can get more done in an one hour than some people can in four hours. When my hyperfocus kicks in (on the correct thing), I’m an absolute BEAST.

I also had to remind myself here that I don’t see most of the mistakes that other people make, but I always see my own. So of course, I would think that I’m making more mistakes than others. But in reality, I’m probably not and my brain just needs to stfu.

Manage Sensory Overload

This is something that I’ve been focusing on long before I read this book, but it’s highly worth pointing out here. Sound is my kryptonite. When someone plays metal music, I want to rip my ears off. It’s something about the way those sounds perform together that I just cannot handle. Background music on most video games? Absolutely not. Turn it off/down. Someone who speaks with a loud voice? I’ll avoid them at all cost. Even if someone just has an unpleasant voice, it makes my skin crawl. I realized a few years ago that headphones with really good noise-canceling ability are worth investing in. Now, instead of suffering through terrible sensory overload, I will put my headphones on and block everything out. Sometimes I’m playing music or a podcast, but many times I have nothing at all playing – just silence.

Manage Imposter Syndrome

“You may have worked hard to cloak symptoms and keep parts of yourself hidden, which makes you afraid of people discovering the “real you.” You may push yourself to and past your limits to put on the perfect persona to make up for your perceived shortcomings and to reconcile the feeling that you are “tricking” people.” Oof. Way to call me out there, Doc. I have an insane level of imposter syndrome that has me constantly worried that people are sooo close to figuring me out –

However, my fiance knows what kind of work that I do, and he’s like “yeaaaahhh…I have no idea how you do all of that, I could never.” But like…I don’t know, bro, I just work here. I’ve helped others make sense of their taxes and personal finances, and it seems like it’s nothing. I have to remind myself every time that if it was nothing and as easy as it seems to me, they probably wouldn’t have asked for my help.

Learn to Say No

This is one of the hardest things for me to do, alongside prioritizing myself. I suck at making and sticking to boundaries, so I’m constantly taking on far more than I have the capacity to handle. Then, when I can’t handle it all, I start beating myself up about why I’m dropping the ball. It’s a vicious cycle. For 2025, I’ve decided that I desperately want to say “no” to more things. Not “I’ll think about it” or “I’ll try.” but firm, solid, absolute “no” to the things that I don’t want to do, can’t do, or don’t have the capacity for. Hear that, 2025 me?! We’re saying NO and we’re prioritizing us over other people.

Use Your PTO

Here’s another thing that I’m terrible at – it’s December, and I have two weeks of PTO available. Of those two weeks, I’m only taking Dec. 23-24 off work (Dec. 25 is already a paid holiday off). The only reason that I’m taking those days off is because my fiance is taking those days because he has to use them before the end of the year. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have taken any time off during the week of Christmas because practically everyone else will be off that week. To me, that means two things – I can get work done uninterrupted during that time and I can be around if anything urgent needs to be handled. But since we’ll be out of town and spending that week with family, I opted to take the same days off as my fiance so we can do things together instead of me being stuck working while he does things alone. My need to fully and unnecessarily justify taking two days off during Christmas week is part of this problem. I feel like my time off has to be utilized to maximum potential and cannot be wasted on just enjoying myself, and it must always be at a time that is most convenient for anyone that may be affected. Of course, this means that I make it to the end of the year with too much available PTO and feeling burnt out because I didn’t take any for myself throughout the year.

This part of the book reminded me that utilizing my PTO is not 100% a burden on the company that I work for or my coworkers. Instead, it helps with improving my work performance and helps avoid the multiple mistakes being made while I’m suffering from burnout and building up to a meltdown. That extra PTO is definitely being used for a week off in January.

Manage Impulsivity

Like most people with suspected or diagnosed ADHD, I find it incredibly difficult to regulate my impulsivity. I couldn’t even tell you how often I do first, think later. This applies to spending, eating, working, everything. Impulsive decisions have landed me in some rather uncomfortable predicaments – like traveling across the country to meet some internet stranger on a hope and a dream that they aren’t a psychopath, or $15,000 of credit card debt (granted, $9k of that was surgery bills, so it’s more like $6k on impulsive spending). I’ve noticed recently that I apparently need one area of my life where I’m allowed to be impulsive, because as soon as I get one area under control, another area gets out of hand. Once my spending was under control, I started binge eating. I’m still looking for an area in my life where I can allow my impulsivity to thrive.

How the Book Helped in Burnout Recovery

For those who it may not be obvious to, this book definitely helped remind me to stop and breathe, that there are legitimate medical/scientific reasons for why I was feeling the way that I was, that I wasn’t as incapable of doing life as my brain was trying to portray in that moment, and that there are ways to cope with the symptoms of ADHD and lessen the frequency and intensity of future burnouts and meltdowns.

I’ll be honest, the book is short and sweet. It doesn’t dive deep into scientific research or thoroughly explain how to perform some of these self-care tips, but it is very easy to read when you’re on the verge of reaching your limit and everything else is simply too much. This is probably a book that I’ll keep on hand when I feel myself underwater and needing something easy to consume that will remind me to pace myself, remember that I’m not neurotypical and cannot hold myself to neurotypical standards, and to give myself the same level of grace that I manage to give other people.