Why Do I Get Frustrated So Easily? ADHD Meltdowns & Mood Swings in Adults: Top 3 Episodes Encore #269

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Do you ever feel like an emotional sponge, absorbing the feelings of others around you?

Especially when you’re with someone you care about?

Especially when you’re in certain parts of your cycle?

Extra especially when they are agitated, frustrated, angry, or anxious?

In this episode, we dive deep into understanding emotional regulation, stress management, and the unique challenges faced by moms with ADHD. From absorbing everyone else's emotions to navigating the stress ladder, we'll explore the struggles and I’ll offer practical strategies for finding balance and grace in the midst of the storm. 

You CAN learn to hear your own signals and trust them, as well as build your stress tolerance to help you regulate during the day, in spite of the rest of your and your family’s stressors!

And once you know how, you can teach your kids how to increase their stress tolerance, too.

***Note: This episode originally aired in April of 2024. As I write my book on Motherhood in ADHD while my boys are at home all summer (send prayers and patience), I'm sharing past episodes that topped the charts last year. I know these episodes will support you with some integral skills for ADHD and lots of virtual hugs.

You’re not alone.

“This is a chance to invest in yourself and build a community that will empower your future. Worth it!” –ADHD Mama D.B.

Our annual all-inclusive ADHD Moms Weekend Retreat is coming up October 10-12, 2025 just outside of Houston, Texas! And we hope you’re coming, too! 

I’ll take care of all the details - you simply show up and enjoy.

Put it on your calendar now. There are just a few tickets left, so get yours now.

Having a circle of moms who support you and believe in you matters. Register for your all-inclusive ticket here: https://www.patriciasung.com/retreat

Patricia Sung [00:00:00]:

Hey there, successful mama. It's your friend, Patricia Sung. Today, you're listening to one of the top three episodes from 2024. So let's dive in. Oh, but before we do, reminder that the tickets for the ADHD mom retreat are on sale right now, and we only have a few spots left. So go get your ticket now at patriciasung.com/retreat.

Patricia Sung [00:00:22]:

Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy? You can't figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get you, mama. Parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life, creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well. At the end of the day, we just wanna be good moms. But, spoiler alert, you are already a great mom.

Patricia Sung [00:01:13]:

ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess, mama. You can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story, and I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to Motherhood in ADHD.

Patricia Sung [00:01:28]:

Hey there, successful mama. It's your friend, Patricia Sung. So today in Lighthouse, we were talking about keeping other people's emotions out and being able to, like, uphold your boundaries and, like, the whole concept of, like, boundaries are for you to keep you safe, not to keep other people out, but it's really to protect you. Because when we have ADHD, we tend to be, like, very stereotypical here. We tend to be pretty perceptive towards other people's emotions, and we tend to suck them up. This isn't true of everybody, and I I really wish this wasn't one of my things because this has been, like, a struggle for me since I was a little kid. But quite a few of us have this tendency to absorb other people's emotions. Like, we just notice that something's amiss.

Patricia Sung [00:02:11]:

We notice when people are having a bad day. The problem is when we are soaking up everybody else's emotions, it then affects our emotions, and then we get more frustrated. We get more overwhelmed. We have a, like, grown up temper tantrum. It has been a horrible day, and I'm mad at everybody. Maybe you're yelling at everybody. Maybe you are curled up in a ball on the couch on your phone. Like, I'm not talking to anybody.

Patricia Sung [00:02:35]:

Just gonna be over here by myself. Don't talk to me. Like, when we get in this place where we're like, okay. I was fine a couple seconds ago, and now I'm a mess. Like, what happened? It can be really frustrating. We can start to beat ourselves up thinking there's something wrong with us. Like, I was fine in a minute ago. Why am I yelling at everybody now? Like, we can take on a lot of guilt and shame in the way that we treat others because we don't have control of our emotions.

Patricia Sung [00:02:58]:

So when we're talking about emotional regulation, there's a lot that goes into it. There are a lot of things that cause us stress throughout the day. It could be, like, a lot of people with ADHD have sleep issues. Maybe you got a baby. You didn't sleep well last night. A lot of us have issues with rejection sensitivity dysphoria where we take everyone's comments and feel personally attacked. Like, the criticism just hurts more. It physically hurts to hear somebody say mean things about you.

Patricia Sung [00:03:26]:

Or you see that sideways glance and you're like, they're mad at me. They're mad at me. I know they're mad at me. Or the text, can we talk later? Hate that text. No. We can't talk later. Get someone's going on. Non panicking.

Patricia Sung [00:03:35]:

What's wrong? A lot of us have intrusive or ruminating thoughts. Like, our brains are just, like, spinning around on the gerbil wheel. That horrible thing you said when you were 13 or that ridiculous you know, when your words just tumble out and you're like, I did not mean to say that anyway at all. Like, that did not come out right. Like, where we can just toss that around in our brains over and over again, or we have the intrusive thoughts that come up where we are worried about terrible things happening, or what if we did something terrible, and our brain just, like, runs amok and gets hyper focused on terrible things in our brain. And then we think there's something wrong with us because, obviously, neuro people don't think like this. Or you really are, like, having a rough day, and you're running behind because you are time blind, or you got into some kind of hyperfocus. You were supposed to be somewhere else.

Patricia Sung [00:04:18]:

You need to get something done. You didn't get done because you're over here on this really cool Google rabbit hole. Or maybe you're having a stressful day from relationship issues because whenever we have ADHD, it affects everything, including our relationships. All of these pieces come into how we're feeling that day and are parts of our emotional regulation, which is why emotional regulation is such a huge part of when we have ADHD or just like being a human in general. Like, being a human's hard. It's hard. So being able to account for all of these stresses that are coming in, especially the pieces of ADHD that affect our emotions more, When we don't understand how our emotional regulation works, that's when we start beating ourselves up for not being kind or not being patient. Another place that this comes into play is that a lot of us with ADHD, a lot of us have been taught that we are too sensitive.

Patricia Sung [00:05:08]:

Oh, you shouldn't get your feelings hurt by that. You're being too sensitive. You're being too dramatic. And as you train yourself to ignore all those red flags that pop up for you when you're like, no, I I don't that does not make me comfortable. I don't like that. When other people are telling you you're being too much about it, you start to tamping down those red flags and you learn to ignore them. And then it makes it harder to know when you're not in a good place because you have learned to ignore your own signals. We, by, like, protecting ourselves, have built this lack of self trust because other people told us that we were not reading the situation correctly.

Patricia Sung [00:05:44]:

As kids, we try to make sense of all that, and we blame ourselves, and we learn to ignore all those cues that are letting us us know. And it makes it really hard to then regulate because we are not aware of what's going on in our own bodies. So I feel like it's this, like, double edged sword of when you have ADHD, you tend to be less aware of a lot of things, then you've also learned to ignore the signals that you do have, and here you are in this place of, like, really imbalanced regulation. Because we are able to deal with all these stresses when we're at our best. When we're well rested, we feel good, I'm feeling patient. I ate lunch. I drank my water. You know, nothing stressful has happened today.

Patricia Sung [00:06:25]:

We have a lot of capacity for stress when there's not other stress there, if that makes sense. It's like the less stress you have, the more capacity you have to deal with stress. It's kinda like, you know, you have, like, a bucket's worth of stress capacity. And, like, you think about a poor toddler, like, they don't have a whole lot of responsibilities. So, like, they're trying to be on how to be a human. They're like, I can't get these blocks to stack. I don't know how to use a fork. I don't know how to tie my shoes.

Patricia Sung [00:06:47]:

I really wanna play this game. Then my mom said I had to do this instead. Like, toddlers have a lot of stress because they're learning how to do so many things. So that way when you tell them, hey, bud. It's time to come in from the park. We gotta go home. They, like, totally lose their ish because they're like, I I have used up all my capacity for stress today. Well, as grown ups, that's true for us too.

Patricia Sung [00:07:07]:

And as moms, we're dealing with a lot of stress. Like, all those, like, basic necessities are probably not getting taken care of. You probably didn't sleep that well. You may not have eaten a good lunch. Maybe you just had some handful of, like, Ritz crackers that were left over from lunch, scoop them in some peanut butter and keep on trucking. Probably didn't drink your water. Maybe you're dealing with chronic illness or you're trying to help your elderly parents do stuff. Maybe you're at a rough point in your cycle.

Patricia Sung [00:07:31]:

Maybe you got a lot of trauma in your background. All of these things play into how much capacity we have for stress. And then having ADHD is stressful. It's stressful having a million thoughts run around your brain all the time. It's stressful when you forgot to bring birthday cupcakes for your kid's birthday this year at school. So we have all this other stress going on. Mom life is stressful. ADHD life is stressful.

Patricia Sung [00:07:55]:

And then generally speaking, I think that when we have ADHD, our capacity is a little bit smaller because we're dealing with all this other stuff. Now we can learn how to increase that capacity. We can learn tools and skills to regulate that better. But when we are not aware that we even have ADHD or that all this other stuff is going on, then we don't have as much capacity to deal with the stressful things. It's time to be who you are unapologetically. No more contorting or shrinking yourself to fit inside the box. Instead, you're gonna feel the freedom of just being yourself because you are more accepting of who you truly are. You're invited, mama, to this year's fourth annual successful as a mother weekend retreat.

Patricia Sung [00:08:39]:

It is time to relax, unwind, rest, and take care of a very important person in the family, which is you. This year's retreat is on October 2025, and you are invited. This is an all inclusive retreat. It covers your meals, your hotel, all of your activities. You literally only have to show up, and I will take it from there. We are staying at the peaceful Happy Goat Retreat just outside of Houston, Texas. I have rented the entire property, so we have it all to ourselves where we will enjoy nature and breathe deep in the fresh air and the calm of the lake and the sway of the trees. But this is not camping, this is glamping.

Patricia Sung [00:09:19]:

You will stay in your very own adorable modern tiny home with your own comfy queen-size bed, your own private bathroom, and living space that's just for you. Go check out the pictures I posted on my website because it is so cute. We will spend the weekend learning about our ADHD and tune into who you are and what you need so that you can trust your gut and love yourself a little bit more. All while eating delicious food you didn't cook, you didn't clean up, and hanging out with awesome other ADHD mamas who are just like you in this journey of understanding ADHD and also trying to do all the things, but not this weekend. This weekend, you are doing none of the things. You are relaxing. I will take care of everything and you get to focus on you. Head over to my website patriciasung.com/retreat and get your ticket.

Patricia Sung [00:10:08]:

This is a small group of 14 mamas, and we already have a bunch of mamas going, so I don't have a ton of spots left. This means do not wait. Do not procrastinate. When you hear this, this is your sign. Go sign up. Get your ticket, and by signing up now, you number one, have access to the shrinking payment plan before it's gone. There's no extra charges for that. And number two, you get to pick the type of tiny home that you want to stay in before they are all gone.

Patricia Sung [00:10:35]:

So go sign up. Get your ticket and take a weekend to relax and take care of yourself while I do all the work. Head over to patriciasung.com/retreat, and get your ticket for the fourth annual ADHD moms amazing getaway weekend and relax. Patriciasung.com/retreat. So I go through all this to let you know, like, I want you to have grace for yourself and knowing that this is hard. Being a parent with ADHD is really hard. You're dealing with a lot of stuff. So we can have grace for ourselves for the situation that we're in.

Patricia Sung [00:11:10]:

And then what can we learn to be able to grow that capacity? So when we're learning how to regulate better, I often refer to the stress ladder. So when I draw my stress ladder, if you've been to any class that I've been taught, the retreat in the community, like, whenever I talk about the stress ladder, I have this awesome drawing that Laura Madison made me. I will link her episode in the show notes too. When we're at the top of the ladder, it's like when we are outside, the sun is shining, the trees are blowing in the breeze, everything is lovely. You don't have any stress. It's a great day. And as soon as we get stressed, we go down the ladder. Like, you imagine like a manhole cover and you go down the ladder into the sewer.

Patricia Sung [00:11:51]:

Is that as soon as things start to get stressful, we start climbing down that ladder. And even if we're on the first rung and our feet are slightly below ground, yes, we're still seeing the sunshine. We can still feel the breeze blowing, but, like, our feet are no longer able to move around. Like, we're stuck on this ladder. We can't just frolic in the lavender fields here. Like, some of our capacity is already taken away by our feet being on the ladder. And as we get more stressed, we move farther down the ladder. And once we're at a five level stress, our feet are solidly below ground, and this is when our head goes below ground too.

Patricia Sung [00:12:21]:

And my therapist always says, like, nothing good happens after a five. Anytime you are more stressed than less stressed, nothing good happens. This is when we can't have these conversations with, I mean, literally anybody. Our partners, our kids, like, we're irritated. We're grumpy because we've already got enough stress in our day that we're struggling. And when our head is below ground and we can't see the sun, now we're not making good choices. And you can look up polyvagal theory and explains, like, all of the physical reactions that happen within our body when we're when we're stressed. Like, your body is preparing fight or flight.

Patricia Sung [00:12:55]:

Like, your body has all of these physical changes it goes through to protect you, which is great. Like, thank you, body. Thank you, brain. I very much appreciate that you're taking care of me. But it means that, like, the systems that we need for, like, problem solving and logic, like, those are not functioning because the resources have been diverted to keeping us alive. And when we are moving down lower on the ladder, it's like now our feet are dipping into water. And so once you're at a six, like your feet are wet and you're moving slowly down the ladder so that when you hit a 10 and you're at the bottom of the ladder and your head is now below water, like this is the emergency situation where you are yelling at everybody or you are disengaged and not speaking to anyone. When we're in that super stressed space, this is when the meltdown happens.

Patricia Sung [00:13:40]:

This is when we have our grown up temper tantrum because we have exceeded capacity to hold that stress for that day. So when you look back at, like, a recent meltdown that you had or a recent mood swing that you had, where were you at that point? Like, where would you put yourself on a stress level from zero frolicking in the field in the sunlight to 10, I'm underwater and this is emergency mode. And thinking about, like, what led up to that? What was making you feel stressed? What caused you to move from two to six to eight to 10? And then what helps you feel better? When you're feeling stressed, meaning you're already like a four, what can you do to take care of yourself, to move yourself back up the ladder so that you have more capacity to make it all the way through homework and bedtime and the witching hour and all the stuff that as moms, like, we have to be on in the evenings when we've already used up a lot of our capacity quite honestly. What helps you feel better? And what can you do to move down that ladder slower? Can we slow down our reaction time so that when things come in, that instead of jumping from three to eight, maybe there's something we can do that that would be a little less stressful. Maybe we go from three to five and then we have a chance to be like, oh, no. Uh-oh. Nope. We're at five.

Patricia Sung [00:14:51]:

Gotta make some changes. When you can look back objectively at what happened and you can see where you were and what the red flags are along the way that lets you know that you're getting stressed and then something different needed to happen, you're able to start making changes so that you don't have to be in the place where you're reacting to your family, like, in a way that you don't want to. So what I would encourage you to do, along with the other things I already said, is to listen to those quiet voices, those little flags that let you know, like, you're getting stressed out. Like, you know your best. You know you best. How can you strengthen that voice so that you know that you're getting frustrated or overwhelmed and need some space? Give yourself that grace in the current situation to recognize, oh, that there's a lot of stuff going on today. I'm probably gonna need to build in some space today to decompress because this this is a rough day. And how do you lessen your stress during the day so that you can have the capacity to get all the way to the end of the day without losing it? I've got a free video on my website of 10 ways to calm down when you're losing it.

Patricia Sung [00:15:55]:

I call her Medusa mom when she comes out. It's when I start to get to, like, level nine, ten. All the snakes are swirling, and she's yelling at everybody. And nobody wants to look at her because they shall be frozen. Like, when you're in that place, what can you do to calm down? What can you do to ground yourself in and be like, woo, I need this. I need some space. That video has 10 different ways to calm down in the moment, and you can use them throughout the day so that you can constantly be pulling yourself up that ladder and being less stressed so that you have the capacity to move up and down throughout the day. Given that the stresses are gonna keep coming.

Patricia Sung [00:16:30]:

We can't stop them. We can't control the cat traffic. We can't control that mean thing that that kid did to your kid. We can't control the fact that toddlers don't know the human. They're gonna get frustrated about a whole lot of stuff. But what we can do is control how we take care of ourselves. So I hope that this episode gives you a little insight into why you feel like you're super stressed. Why do you feel like you're frustrated so easily? Why are you having these meltdowns or tantrums or anger explosions? And that having that awareness of what you need in order to show up the way that you want to show up, that you can learn the tools and the skills and the strategies to do that, and to show up the way that you want as a mom, and that you are worth spending that time and that effort on yourself.

Patricia Sung [00:17:15]:

Because when you take care of you, everyone in the family reaps the benefit of having a mom who is calm and present and has it together most days. We don't have to be perfect, but we can show up in the way that we want to as moms, and it is possible. I'll talk to you soon, Successfully.

Patricia Sung [00:17:33]:

For more resources, classes, and community, head over to my website, motherhoodinADHD.com.

Podcast EpisodePatricia SungADHD adult, ADHD Symptoms, Emotional regulation, Self regulation