What Is The ADHD Burnout Cycle? 6 Different Stages

Are you stuck in the ADHD burnout cycle? Many of us with ADHD often feel lit up by new ideas, love embracing fresh challenges, and want to prove wrong anyone who says, “you can’t do it.”

I’ll be honest, this rush of excitement can feel great in the moment…

But we often forget to check our capacity before diving in head first, and we end up overcommitting to too many things. 

While we do our best to stay afloat, the mounting pressure creeps in, our energy depletes, and we find ourselves completely burnt out. Like a phone with a dead battery, we can’t do anything until we’ve recharged.

I’m guessing you’ve navigated this cycle before.

I certainly have…many times.

While it’s a tough cycle in which to get caught, the good news is that we don’t have to stay here.

In fact, with the proper supports, we can learn how to: 

• Recognize where we are in this burnout cycle
• Figure out what to do to get us out
• Learn how to prevent burnout in the future

In episode 219 and 220 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast, we’re talking about just that. 

Episode #219: 6 Stages of the ADHD Burnout Cycle, you’ll Discover:

• What the ADHD burnout cycle is 
• The six different stages of the cycle
• How to recognize whether you’re in burnout and what to do about it

You can listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app here.   

Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for the entire podcast transcript. 

Episode #219: What Is The ADHD Burnout Cycle: 6 Stages (Transcript) 

Over the next two weeks, we are talking about a topic that is very near and dear to me, and I have a feeling will resonate with many of you as well. And this is the ADHD burnout cycle, and more specifically, burnout prevention.

Now this is a very common theme that I address quite often when I’m working with newer clients. And again, I’m guessing most of you listening to this episode will be able to relate to what I’m about to describe as well. This is because I think many of us with ADHD and ADHD tendencies have – at some point in our lives – found ourselves going through the ADHD burnout cycle.

Many of us in the I’m Busy Being Awesome community tend to find ourselves always going for the next goal, the next objective, and the next challenge. We’re driven by new ideas and new possibilities. And when someone tells us we can’t do it, we want to do it that much more!

Here’s the deal: I love all of that for us.

What I don’t love, is that many of us do this without proper support in place that allows us to manage our capacity and check in with how we’re feeling, so we end up overcommitting and burning ourselves out.

Where Does ADHD Burnout Come From?

I find that many of us ADHD brains find ourselves driven by a combination of different components, a few of which can be useful, many of which are not super useful.

When combined together, they almost always result in some form of burnout.

These components include:

• The excitement and drive that accompany new ideas
• People pleasing – a struggle to say no
• Overloading and over-committing ourselves to too many things (whether new ideas or requests from others)
• Feeling driven by the pressure of encroaching deadlines
• Constantly moving set of standards as seem to move the bar of expectation higher and higher on ourselves.

When we put all of these different components together, we quickly find ourselves within one of the stages of burnout.

It’s often here that we either realize… It’s time to finally step back and take a break, or we are forced to take a break because we’ve made ourselves sick and simply can’t keep going.

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you may be navigating a handful of these categories right now. If so, this episode was created specifically for you. For those of you who may not be navigating them right now, but nevertheless know these patterns from past experiences, this episode is for you, too.

If you have no idea what it’s like to be driven by lots of ideas or to overcommit yourself or to feel pressure from encroaching deadlines or people pleasing… first of all, what’s that like?!

But honestly, keep listening anyway, as this will provide you with incredibly beneficial preventative awareness, which may help you avoid these situations in the future.

6 Stages of The ADHD Burnout Cycle

Before we dive into the specifics of how to navigate and support ourselves through burnout (which we’ll be covering on next week’s episode), at first want to look at this idea of the ADHD burnout cycle.

As I mentioned, this is a very common sequence that is easy to slip into, and it’s especially easy to slip into when we don’t have awareness of what that cycle looks like or the tools we need to help stop the cycle and step out of it.

So first, I’m going to share the different stages of the burnout cycle based on how I see it presented most often in myself and in my clients.

Now, you may hear people talk about the burnout cycle in different ways, and they may define the stages or the order a bit differently. Similarly, as I describe the process, you may notice it’s a little different for you, too.

Again, no problem at all; the important thing is having these different parts of the cycle on your radar to help you increase your general awareness so you can start noticing if and when you may have slipped into it more easily.

Stage 1: High Excitement & Overcommitment

So at the beginning, the ADHD burnout cycle tends to look like a lot of excitement. You may…

• Have a lot of new ideas,
• Feel incredibly eager to dive in, a
• Find yourself over-committing to things

Again, this might be because you are simply lit up by all of the new possibilities that are coming your way, or it might be because you have a harder time with saying no, and you’re getting a lot of requests from people and the people pleasing is coming out in full force.

Now, in this first stage, it’s easy to overlook.

As ADHD brains, we are often seeking dopamine. We are looking for a new challenge, the anticipation of doing something fun and exciting.

Many of us genuinely do want to help out when people ask us, and we’re driven by a deadline.

So, if you think about it, the first stage of burnout may be a slight bit of exhaustion or a slight dip in our executive functions, which we immediately tried to overcome with a boost in dopamine with a new project or a new challenge or something fresh and exciting.

For many of us, this phase can actually feel good if we don’t slow down to check in on how our body is actually feeling.

I think this can be a really powerful space to familiarize yourself with because if you can catch yourself here, and you have the tools you need to slow down, pause for a moment, and make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, you can pull yourself out without slipping lower into deeper burnout that may demand a much longer recovery time.

Stage 2: Mounting Pressure & Increased Stress

From that first part of the cycle, we move into the second stage, which tends to look like mounting pressure with increased stress.

In this phase of the burnout cycle, you may find that you are constantly juggling too many tasks.

Remember, in the first stage, we took on a whole bunch of different tasks, which means that in the second stage, we’ve been attempting to juggle them for a while, and we’ve drained our battery quite a bit.

The second stage of ADHD burnout can look like:

• Feeling a bit more tired.
• Things feel a little harder.
  • But at the same time, we still may be able to sleep okay – the stress hasn’t totally thrown off our sleep.
• We still have some pockets for downtime or connection with others.
• The mounting pressure and increased stress of the deadlines is still enough to keep pushing us along.

It’s kind of like when you light a match, you have that big burst of energy that pushes you, but then it extinguishes quite fast. That’s what the second stage of the burnout cycle looks like.

Example of Stage 2 ADHD Burnout

In fact, when I was navigating this stage relatively recently, I was reminded of an experience from when I was quite young that seemed to demonstrate what this stage of ADHD burnout looks like.

When I was little, my dad took my younger sister and I on a road trip. We were going from Minnesota to California, and one of the stops we were going to take was to see Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

I was probably 10 or 11 years old at this time, so the specifics are a little bit hazy for me…

But from what I remember, reaching Devil’s Tower was a bit off the beaten path. We had to get off the highway and drive for quite a ways. We made the drive, and we got to a great lookout point, and we even got some pictures with the tower in our background.

Then it was time to turn around and drive back to the main highway so we could continue on to California.

Now, my dad had planned to fill up at the gas station that was marked on both the atlas and the road signs on our drive out. (This was well before Google Maps, so we were still using an old-school atlas).

Unfortunately, because the monument was in the middle of nowhere, the gas station had actually closed. And we essentially were out of gas in the middle of nowhere.

In fact, I can remember my dad having to restart the car several times to try and suck up the gas fumes that were left in the tank to get us moving a little bit further.

With each start, the car was able to get a little bit more fuel to go just a bit further. (As I reflect back on this now, I can’t even imagine how my dad must have been feeling. I would have been so stressed out.) But we did eventually make it back to a gas station and everything was fine.

With all that said, I think this is a great depiction of what this second stage of burnout can look like.

• We’re tired
• we’re dragging a bit
• we’re essentially running on fumes.

But every night, we get a little bit of sleep, we manage to get ourselves moving with whatever energy we have left in the tank, and we take another day. There’s enough pressure from the deadline to fuel us just a little bit further.

Unfortunately, if we don’t have an actual respite. If we don’t have a gas station nearby to completely fill up our tank all the way – maybe even wash our windshield and get some snacks – we’re going to totally run out of fuel and lose our ability to keep going.

We won’t have any fuel left to start that engine again.

As we’ll talk about in just a moment, we find ourselves in the last stage, which is complete and total burnout.

Now, of course, I’m hoping that both today’s episode and next week’s episode can help prevent that from happening. But I wanted to share that analogy with any of you just in case it helps bring this second stage to life for you a bit more.

Stage 3: Gaining Awareness of Burnout

From there, we moved to the third stage, and I think about this stage as the struggle bus.

This is often wear my clients we’ll start gaining awareness and question whether they’ve taken on too much.

So again, the first two stages can often go unnoticed.

We’re pushing ourselves so hard, and we’re so driven that we don’t even slow down to notice.

This third stage is when we start to notice. We tend to see it reflected in our performance.

• We might notice ourselves dropping the ball more often.
• Sleep is probably impacted quite a bit.
• I also find that this is where our negative self-talk tends to come in even stronger, too.

The increased stress and pressure are no longer enough to keep us moving forward, yet we have commitments to uphold and deadlines to meet, so we turned to negative self-talk to get us into action.

This is when it feels decidedly not fun anymore.

Not only are we feeling the exhaustion, but we’re also starting to drop balls, and we’re beating ourselves up on top of all of it. We’re no longer driven by the excitement and the challenge, we’re instead driven by our inner critic.

Stage 4: Physical and Mental Exhaustion

That brings us to the next stage, which is often reflected in our physical and emotional exhaustion. We may experience:

• Being way more than just tired. Instead, it’s this bone-weary, chronic, physical and emotional exhaustion.
• A lack the energy to do the things that we once loved to do.
• Our emotions feeling even bigger – we may be even more sensitive.
• Stronger mood swings.

For myself, I feel more brittle or crispy. I can’t roll with the punches, I’m much less resilient and I don’t bounce back as easily.

It can look different for everybody, but by and large, this fourth stage is really defined by physical and mental exhaustion. You have nothing left in the tank.

Stage 5: Isolation from Others

Stage 5 of the ADHD burnout cycle is one that I tend to see overlapping with the previous stage. Or I might see it in reversed order for people as well.

This next stage is greater isolation from others. We tend to withdraw from the things that we really love.

We pull back or withdraw from:

• Things that help us recharge and that bring us joy
• Connection to others

Instead, we use everything that we have left to finish the obligations, commitments, and deadlines that we overcommitted to.

Because our executive functions are so incredibly drained, everything takes us so much longer to complete. We’re much less efficient. So we need longer to actually complete the work.

Meanwhile, we’re not doing the things that recharge us, so we’re working with less and less battery power – working with less and less fuel.

Stage 6: Complete Burnout

That finally brings us to complete burnout. This is when we literally have nothing left. We shut down and simply can’t do anymore.

We have nothing left to give. And it’s here that we are often forced to recharge because – again – we have absolutely nothing left in the tank.

So we take that time to recharge – sometimes willingly, sometimes not so willingly – and we recharge our batteries. We fill up the tank.

In a best-case scenario, we not only give ourselves time to fully recharge, but we also learn from the experience so that we don’t slip as far down that burnout cycle as we did the last time. We increase our awareness so that we have a better idea of how to navigate each stage a bit better next time.

Having this awareness is so important. In fact, I think it’s one of the most important components when it comes to burnout prevention.

Why? Because most of us tend to live in this burnout cycle on autopilot.

Meaning, it’s just the way we live our lives. We don’t even really think about it. However, if you reflect back on different busy seasons in your life, my guess is you can probably trace this cycle of peaks and valleys in your energy and your wellness overall.

It was certainly the case for me throughout grad school and life in academia overall. I was essentially always in one of these stages, with brief moments to recharge on the winter and summer breaks.

I think I’ve gotten significantly better at catching this tendency much earlier in the stages now. As I will talk about in next week’s episode, I caught myself at the edge of stage two recently, which inspired me to create a tool for burnout prevention, which I’m so excited to share with you next week.

ADHD Burnout: Next Steps

For this week, I encourage you to spend some time in curiosity.

Have you ever found yourself somewhere in this ADHD burnout cycle before?

• If so, what did it look like?
• Did you go through all of these stages?
• Did yours look a bit different?
• Were you able to pull yourself out before you hit empty?

ADHD Burnout Stages: Recap

• Stage 1: High excitement, overcommitment, and seeking dopamine. This is a stage that often feels good and is SO very easy to overlook.
• Stage 2: Mounting pressure and increased stress. You may notice that you’re running on fumes a bit, and it’s the pressure of deadlines that’s driving you rather than the excitement or the challenge of the new projects.
• Stage 3: This is often when people start noticing the effects of burnout. I think about it as the struggle bus phase because you can clearly notice its impact. Often your dips, you may notice your sleep is affected, and often the biggest giveaway – your negative self-talk intensifies, and it’s now become the main driver to getting things checked off the list.
• Stage 4: Complete physical and emotional exhaustion. You may notice you feel more fragile or brittle with decreased resilience and bigger mood swings.
• Stage 5: This may be swapped with the previous stage or kind of intermingle with the previous stage. But it can look like greater isolation and a withdrawal from activities and connections that once filled you up.
• Stage 6: Complete burnout, inability to continue, forced recharge.

If you’ve navigated this before – whether primarily in your home life, your work life, or both – what did these stages look like for you? Help your brain create this greater awareness so you can notice it if and when it shows up in the future.

Ask Yourself These Questions:

• Have I taken on more tasks or commitments than usual?
• Is my enthusiasm driving me to overextend myself?
• Do I feel mounting pressure and increased stress?
• Am I juggling multiple tasks and responsibilities?
• Is it getting harder to manage my workload?
• Am I noticing a drop in performance and increased negative self-talk?
• Do I find myself criticizing my own abilities, or has my self-talk become more negative?
• Is my exhaustion more than just feeling tired, and instead rather a deep, chronic fatigue?
• Do I notice heightened emotional sensitivity or mood swings?
• Do I find it harder to bounce back from challenges?
• Have I stopped engaging in activities that used to bring me joy because I don’t have the time or energy for them?
• Do I feel completely drained? Is my tank empty?

This week, I encourage you to give yourself the gift of this reflection.

Notice what the ADHD burnout cycle might look like for you.

Again, it’s very possible that it presents a bit differently for you, which is why it’s even more important to get curious about it. Help yourself increase your awareness so you can start catching it ahead of time.

Then next week, I’m going to share with you a powerful tool to help you identify what you need most to help you shift out of the burnout cycle into one of restored energy. So make sure you’ve hit the follow or subscribe button on your podcast player so you don’t miss it!

If you’re ready to take this work even further, my next small group coaching cohort of We’re Busy Being Awesome is enrolling soon, and the group begins the last week of October. So be sure to get your name on the waitlist through the link in the show notes. And if you’re looking for 1:1 support, you can find a link with information in the show notes as well.

Links From The Podcast

• Learn more about We’re Busy Being Awesome here
• Learn about 1:1 coaching here
• Take the Focus Training here
• Get the top 10 tips to work with your ADHD brain (free ebook!)
• Discover my favorite ADHD resources here
• Get the I’m Busy Being Awesome Planning System here
• Get the Podcast Roadmap here

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