How to Improve Emotional Awareness with ADHD

So you’ve heard about the impact of emotional dysregulation on adults with ADHD, and you want to increase your emotional awareness. You want to learn how to allow and process your feelings, but you also realize you have NO IDEA what that actually means. 

How do we do it?

Also, what’s the point? How does it even help?

If your busy ADHD brain is wondering similar questions, then you don’t want to miss episode 230 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast.

Tune in now and not only get those questions answered but also learn a powerful, supportive approach to feeling your feelings with much less resistance.

In Episode #230: How to Improve Emotional Awareness with ADHD, You Will Discover

• Why it’s important to increase your emotional awareness and feel your feelings
• What this process looks like
• A simple strategy that introduces you to feeling your emotions in a supportive (even enjoyable!) way.

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. 

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Episode #230: How to Improve Emotional Awareness with ADHD (Transcript) 

Catch the first part of this series if you haven’t listened yet: 10 Reasons for ADHD Emotional Disconnect

Today we’re exploring a powerful yet accessible way to start identifying the emotions we are experiencing, recognizing how they feel in our body, and how to allow them without so much resistance.

• What the heck does processing emotions mean?
• How on earth do we do it?
• Also, why does it even matter? Can’t we just keep pushing them away?

As you may remember from my botched poached eggs example last week, when we continually push away our emotions, they don’t actually go anywhere. They just sit in our bodies unprocessed, bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to explode in one way or another.

In fact, learning how to pause and sit with our feelings and allow them to process through our bodies either in the moment when we’re activated or later on once we can step away is a skill that I work on quite regularly with my clients.

Emotional regulation is a huge obstacle for many of us with ADHD and ADHD tendencies. It is something that can stop us from taking the action we want to take. They can prevent us from tackling that pile of laundry that we’ve been meaning to wash for days, to completing the materials for next week’s board meeting on time, to sticking with your personal goal of doing yoga four times a week.

If we don’t know how to allow and be with our emotions, all of the challenges and goals and projects on our list become so much more challenging.

Not only do we have to learn a new skill or do the hard thing, but we have to do it while also resisting the emotion. We’re making an extra hard.

However, when we can learn how to slow down and open up and process through the feeling first, we remove that initial barrier so that we can lean in and actually focus on taking the needed action or starting the project, or laying out the yoga mat, etc.

What if we feel a lot of resistance to simply slowing down and being with our feelings, what can we do?

How can we learn how to increase our capacity for this important skill?

That’s where today’s strategy comes in, which does a great job of helping you actually get to know how big emotions feel in your body without forcing you to be in super emotional situations.

Let me explain.

We Resist Uncomfortable Emotions

Most of us automatically resist or push away from uncomfortable emotions stemming from our personal lives. If we get into an argument, feel anxious about a job interview, get bad feedback from a client, or are in a chronically high-stress situation, we often want to push it away and not think about it. We just want to feel better. We don’t want to slow down and allow it.

However, I’ve also noticed that many of us are much more tolerant of experiencing those same emotions when they’re connected to an outside story or a narrative.

For example:

If you are reading a book, and there is a moment of sadness or grief that comes up in the plot line, I’m guessing you have a much easier time being with that feeling. You probably cry. You probably feel that heaviness or tightness in your chest. And you’re probably pretty comfortable with that.

You’re not thinking to yourself, “I can’t handle this. I shouldn’t feel this way. What’s wrong with me? I better do a little retail therapy to feel better.” No. You’re sad because it makes sense to feel sad. You’re sad because something sad happened in the book, and you want to be sad about it. That desire to escape is much less.

If you’re really lucky, it might be a book that taps into a huge range of emotions that allows you to experience this wealth of feeling as you move from one moment to the next.

When you can find a book that really wraps you up into the story and moves you in so many ways, it provides such an incredible opportunity to be with those emotions and allow them without resisting…because you WANT to feel them. You want to be moved. You want to have that experience. You’re able to shut off that part of your brain that’s worried about something going wrong or that you need to fix it immediately. Instead, you get to be with the experience.

Because it feels more natural to be with that experience since it’s not your current lived experience, you can start checking in with yourself.

You can ask yourself…

• What does this emotion I’m experiencing actually feel like?
• As I’m feeling this sadness or this loss, where do I notice that sensation in my body?
• Do I feel a sinking in my chest or heaviness in my shoulders?
• Does my throat feel tight, or am I crying?
• Does my stomach have a sensation of clenching or opening?
• What does it mean to physically feel sadness or grief?

Or, on the flip side…

• What does it feel like to experience humor, laughter, and joy?
• How do I experience that in my body? What are those sensations?

Getting to know these feelings, expands our capacity for them in our “real life,” which makes it that much easier for us to allow them when they arise in our own lives. And this is magic.

Now, this doesn’t have to be something you do strictly with books or audiobooks either. The same goes for movies, TV shows, and even music.

So, for example, I am a crier. If I’m happy, I cry; if I’m sad, I cry; if I’m angry, I cry; if I’m overwhelmed, I cry. My body cries when I feel big emotions. Not a problem. I just have emotion leak from my eyes.

This exercise has taught me to recognize the different nuanced sensations beyond tears.

Recognizing Different Emotions

For example, let’s talk about the movie Encanto, which had me crying throughout. It is such a brilliant movie, and I love it so much. But when the older sister was singing the song Pressure, and I cried, it was a very different emotional experience from the final scene, which I will not describe in detail for those of you who have not seen this movie yet.

Needless to say, I also cried, however these were very different tears streaming down my face.

In my body, the emotional response was very nuanced.

With the first, I could feel the Pressure she was singing about. I could experience the pressure in my chest, that tightness and the heaviness in my shoulders, and that weight pressing down.

This was very different than the love and the joy and the lightness and expansion that I experienced in my body while crying at the end.

Watching that movie and getting curious about the emotional experience allowed me to better understand what the nuance of emotions are for me in my body in addition to the standard tears since that’s apparently what I do with all my feelings.

One more quick example

while I am pretty comfortable overall with emotions and allowing my emotions because I’ve practiced it pretty intensely, two emotions that are still very challenging for me to sit with are embarrassment and humiliation – especially secondhand embarrassment.

When I’m feeling this, my entire body wants to completely shut down. I want to disappear and get away from the situation as quickly as possible. Needless to say, I am not so great at sitting in these emotions.

One of the best ways that I found early on to help me actually understand what these emotions feel like sensationally in my body and to expand my capacity to be with and allow the feelings of embarrassment or humiliation and second-hand embarrassment rather than automatically shoving them away was by watching episodes of The Office.

If you have not yet watched this show, definitely do. But also, do so knowing that it’s quite possibly one of the most uncomfortable shows to watch out there. Seriously. That show is so cringe-worthy that when I first started watching it, I would literally leave the room several times per episode because I could not handle how uncomfortable I was.

When I turned it into an experiment, however, I began getting curious about how my body felt physically. Thinking in terms of sensations, I’d check in with what was going on in my body when I felt that secondhand embarrassment watching Michael Scott do whatever the heck he decided to do in that episode.

I would notice my chest get tight, and my whole body would curve into itself. I noticed this churning in my stomach and an intense restlessness in my arms and legs, essentially telling me to run away from this uncomfortable situation.

However, because it wasn’t actually happening to me, I had enough separation from the experience to learn how to allow the emotions more easily. It’s like practicing the emotion with training wheels. Because the unfolding situation was not happening in my life, I could remind myself I was just experiencing the emotion while watching the show.

So it felt much less intimidating, but I also managed to expand my capacity to feel the emotion. I learned what it actually felt like in my body because I was able to pause a bit longer to check in.

Now despite giving you an example for both movie and TV, I generally love this practice the most when I’m using audiobooks.

I especially love audiobooks for feeling heavier emotions like sadness, grief, shame, loss, hurt, or anger, as well as really big positive emotions, like joy, love, excitement, and delight. Because many of us, tend to feel uncomfortable with big emotions on both sides of the spectrum.

Books have such a beautiful way of really drawing me in, captivating my imagination, and making me feel like I am part of the narrative, so I really experience the emotions in a big way, too.

When it comes to feelings like embarrassment, humiliation, anxiousness, and fear, I tend to do better with shorter TV shows or movies.

My mind loves to get sucked into a narrative, and I experience really big feelings when it’s a beautiful story or captivating characters or a moving, plot, etc. I also have a super active imagination, so books that tap into fear and anxiety for a long period of time are not great for my brain (thrillers or scary stories are not at the top of my must-read list).

But I wanted to give some examples of both long-form books/audiobooks as well as visual storytelling through TV and film since everyone will have different preferences.

Try The Exercise

Essentially, the practice is this.

Check In On Your Emotions

As you listen to your next audiobook or watch your next TV show or movie, challenge yourself to check in with the emotions you’re feeling throughout.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s quite easy to check out and essentially “leave your body” with these mediums. Again, many of us use TV, books, and movies as an escape.

Rather than escaping and disconnecting entirely, I invite you to try staying connected to your body and noticing how you feel.

If you don’t know the name of the emotion, it’s not a problem at all. First and foremost, focus on the sensations.

• Where do you feel it? Is it in your gut? Your shoulders? Your chest? Your throat? Your limbs?
• Is it heavy? Is it light?
• Does it seem to be opening or closing? Is it sharp? Dull?

There are no right or wrong answers. What’s more, everybody experiences these emotions differently. So this is really an opportunity for you to get to know your experience.

If you want to explore this work further, join us in We’re Busy Being Awesome where we not only learn the tools, but we apply them to our lives and as we work with our brains. 👉 Head to imbusybeingawesome.com/group to learn more and sign up.

Audiobooks To Expand Your Emotions

Now, if you’re looking for some recommendations of great audiobooks to consider, I’m gonna share some of my favorites that I have listened to this past year. I tend to listen to a pretty wide range of genres, except the aforementioned thriller and scary stuff, so I have a feeling that at least one of the recommendations I make here will resonate with you.

You can either get them on Audible, or if you have the Libby or Hoopla apps and library card, many of these books are also available via your local library. You just sign up through the app, and you can download the audiobook for a couple of weeks for free while also supporting your local library, which is super awesome.

I’m not sure if Hoopla and Libby are available outside of the United States, so for those of you listening in other parts of the world, I definitely encourage you to check with your local library and see if they have any app that allows you to check out audiobooks or ebooks from them online. So with that said, let’s do a quick overview of books I highly recommend listening to.

Under The Whispering Door

The book I already mentioned is called Under the Whispering Door.

I’m recently obsessed with Klune’s writing. His books are magical, thoughtful, and touching, and he also manages to include dry, witty humor that has me literally laughing out loud throughout the books. I don’t know how he does it.

Under the Whispering Door tells the story of Wallace Price, a man who dies and is taken to a strange teahouse called Charon’s Crossing, where the dead go to decide whether to move on to the afterlife or remain in the teahouse as a ghost. And again, it’s this beautiful, heartwarming, and humorous story about love, loss, and finding a place to belong.

The House In The Cerulean Sea

The House in the Cerulean Sea is a whimsical and beautiful story about acceptance, found family, and the power of love. It’s the story of Linus Baker who is a rule-following, by-the-books caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He’s sent on a special assignment to a special orphanage, where six supposedly dangerous magical children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist.

Throughout the story, Linus has many powerful experiences that have him questioning his own beliefs, and at the heart of the story, it’s a message of love, acceptance, and finding your place in the world. It’s really beautiful.

The Reading List

Up next is The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, which is a book that follows an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb. Aleisha, who is an anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer and Mukesh, an older man who recently lost his wife. The two start meeting regularly at the library to discuss books they’re reading, and they form this beautiful friendship as they learn and grow together.

Lessons In Chemistry

The next book on my list is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This book follows the remarkable journey of Elizabeth Zott, who is a brilliant and unconventional chemist navigating the male-dominated world of science in 1960s California.

Toward the beginning of the book, she’s unfairly fired from her research position, and she finds herself unexpectedly thrust into the limelight as the host of a cooking show, “Supper at Six.” On the show, she manages to intertwine her knowledge and passion for science into creating amazing meals while inspiring women across the country to embrace their own intellectual potential.

This book is fantastic. It celebrates female empowerment, resilience, and the pursuit of dreams in the face of adversity.

Beach Read

Next up is a pretty light read that’s literally called Beach Read by Emily Henry. This novel revolves around two neighboring writers, a bestselling romance author, and a highly acclaimed literary novelist. It is very much a “beach read” love story, but it is so well written. It’s this tale of two writers who challenge each other’s perspectives, discover unexpected connections, and navigate the complexities of love. It’s a story about the power of stepping outside our comfort zones, embracing new experiences, and confronting our deepest fears.

And then of course, in true romance/beach read style, it has witty banter and heartwarming moments and all the things. So if you’re a lover of this type of book, I highly recommend Beach Read (and all of Emily Henry’s books, actually).

Remarkably Bright Creatures

The last one I’ll mention today is a book called Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. This book – perhaps like the others – is going to sound so weird on the surface because it follows Tova Sullivan, a widow who develops an unlikely friendship with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus at the local aquarium. I know, it sounds weird. But the story is so beautiful, and like the other books I’ve mentioned, the narrator is ON POINT.

The two can’t actually talk to one another, but as the reader, you get insight into what Marcellus is thinking. And as their friendship develops, Marcellus helps Tova confront her grief and uncover long-buried truths about her missing son while Tova helps Marcellus understand the world beyond the aquarium walls.

Essentially, Remarkably Bright Creatures is a story about the resilience of the human spirit and the power of unexpected connections.

From magical youth to relationships with Octopus to 1960s feminism and a good old-fashioned rom-com, this list has plenty to choose from. So if you’re looking for a book to move you and allow you to practice tapping into these bigger emotions as you expand your capacity to be with them, I highly recommend checking them out.

Also, I am desperately searching for new authors and series, so if you have a book that you read or listened to and you loved it or you can’t stop thinking about it, or it made you think, would you be a rockstar and send it my way? I would LOVE to hear about it. You can connect with me over on Instagram, I’m @imbusybeingawesome.