How to regulate your emotions with ADHD
The step-by-step guide to regulating your emotions when you have ADHD.
When you have ADHD, emotional overwhelm might feel like a part of daily life. One minute you're fine, the next you're flooded with emotions – anger, anxiety, hurt or shame. It can feel like your emotions hijack your body before you even know what’s happening.
Emotional regulation is difficult with ADHD, but it is something you can learn. Regulation doesn’t mean always being calm, it means knowing how to come back to center when emotions feel big – and that’s what you’ll learn here.
In this article, we’ll explore simple, ADHD-friendly ways to regulate your emotions – through movement, safe expression, and much more, that actually works with how your brain is wired.
Before you go any further…
When you have ADHD, emotional regulation is really, really difficult. You have a sensitive nervous system that’s easily triggered compared to neurotypical people who have more flexible and resilient nervous systems.
That means you can’t jump straight into practicing emotional regulation, before you’ve laid the groundwork – or there’s a high likelihood that you’ll get overwhelmed by your emotions, when you try the things I’m describing in this article.
So if you’re new here, I recommend you head on back to my first article and read the articles in a chronological order. I’ve written them specifically in that order, so that you can follow the steps and widen your window of tolerance before you get started on emotional regulation.
Here’s how you regulate your emotions
If you’ve never learned to regulate your emotions, it might seem kind of woo-woo at first. You’ve probably heard someone say “you just have to sit with your emotions,” without really understanding what they meant.
What that means is not that you have to sit down, close your eyes and just feel. I mean, you can do that, but it’s often not the most effective thing you can do to process your emotions.
What it really means, is that you have to be present with your emotions. That means you take time out of your day to actively stay present in your body to feel what’s going on in your body, naming what you’re feeling, and then acting to regulate the emotion.
Let’s do it step-by-step:
Step one: Feeling the emotion
Before you can regulate anything, you have to notice it’s even there. Emotions live in the body, not the mind – so to feel the emotions, you have to actively check in with your body throughout the day.
Emotions are energy in motions, so the way you’ll be feeling these emotions are through vague bodily sensations.
Start by tuning into your physical sensations:
Is anywhere in my body feeling tight?
What temperatures am I experiencing in different places in my body?
Do I feel a rushing, throbbing or tingling sensation anywhere in my body?
What are my facial muscles doing? Am I frowning or am I smiling?
Do I have some sort of urge to act? And what does this urge want me to do?
These are all emotional signals.
I recommend, you spend 60 to 90 seconds doing this a couple of times per day.
Ideally, do this check-in when something has happened, that might stir up an emotion.
Maybe you’ve just received a compliment – try to check in with yourself to notice where in your body you feel that compliment land. You might notice yourself smiling, or feel an upwards, buoyant sort of energy in your chest and shoulders.
Maybe you’ve just stubbed your toe for the third time this morning – try to notice what sort of sensations that incites in your body (other than the hurt toe). You might feel the urge to punch or throw something, or you might want to scream.
If you struggle with this, you can also schedule the check-ins for when you have a break, or pair the body check-in with something you’re already doing, like brushing your teeth in the morning, or getting on your commute for work.
You don’t have to do anything yet, just try to notice what’s going on.
Step two: Naming the emotion
A lot of people find it easier to regulate the emotion, when you know which emotion it is. Emotions are complex, and you might not entirely know which emotion you’re feeling.
That’s okay. This is not a test, and there’s no wrong answer, because this is just you practicing awareness of what's going on in your body.
Start simple:
“I feel angry”
“I feel sad”
“I feel overwhelmed”
If you struggle with identifying emotions, check out my article ‘How to recognize emotions in your body when you have ADHD’ – it contains 15 common emotions and the emotional signals of those emotions.
If you need a bit of more cognitive input, you can also try to observe your thoughts and the situation going on around the emotions:
Which sort of situation did I just experience? And is there any emotion that would be logical for me to be having right now?
Are my thoughts circling around anything specific?
If naming is hard, try using a feelings wheel like https://feelingswheel.app to see if any of those emotions resonate with you.
Remember: It’s okay to feel more than one thing at once. ADHD brains often process things in layers – naming even one part can help take the intensity down a notch.
If you can’t name an emotion yet, that’s okay. I don’t want you to overthink it. Some people have a tendency of intellectualizing their emotions – which means logically thinking the emotions through instead of actually feeling them, and that doesn’t actually regulate your emotions.
So if you’re stuck, just allow yourself to feel the sensations of the emotions instead of putting a label on it.
Step three: Regulating the emotion
Once the emotion is felt and named, it’s time to move it through your system. That means supporting your body and brain so the emotion can complete its cycle instead of staying stuck in your body.
Start by asking:
What is my body asking me to do right now?
Consider:
Do I need to move?
…To cry?
…To breathe?
…To have a talk with Susan in HR about someone’s inappropriate behavior?
…To stand on a cliff and scream into the void?
Regulation doesn’t always mean calming down. Sometimes, it means allowing safe expression of anger, happiness or sadness. The goal is to do what your emotions are asking you to do, instead of resisting or suppressing your instinct.
Below I’ll explain some ways you can move the emotions through your system.
Stand up for yourself
Often, feelings like anger, frustration, or anxiety show up when your boundaries are being crossed or your needs are being ignored.
When you speak up, set a boundary, or express a need, you're telling your nervous system that you’re safe. That sense of inner safety makes it easier to stay regulated because you're not suppressing how you feel or abandoning yourself to keep the peace.
Over time, this builds self-trust. Your body starts to believe that your feelings matter, and that you’ll take action when something’s wrong – and you’ll be more likely to have a smaller emotional reaction.
Validate the emotion
The essence of emotional regulation is learning how to stay with your emotions without getting overwhelmed. One of the things that can help you stay grounded in the emotion is validating what you’re feeling.
Validating your emotions is the practice of saying to yourself: It makes sense that I feel this way. You don’t have to like the emotion. You just acknowledge that it’s real, and that it matters. Instead of fighting your emotions or judging yourself for having them, you’re offering understanding and acceptance.
When you validate your emotions, you take away the shame and the pressure you might feel to make your emotions go away. This helps establish internal safety.
This is particularly useful when the emotion isn’t necessarily one that you can act on. Maybe you feel sad or ashamed. Just validating that it’s okay to feel that way can help your process the emotion.
Move with the emotions
Sometimes, emotions feel too big to process with words. When your body is flooded with emotions, moving your body can help release that built-up energy and bring you back into balance.
If you’re experiencing a big emotion, and your body is asking for movement, try to see if you can feel what your body feels like doing.
Movement doesn’t have to mean a full workout (though it can be). It can be as simple as stretching, shaking out your hands, going for a walk, or even pacing around the room.
Dance or intuitive movement – just moving in a dance-like fashion in whatever way your body wants – is one of the most powerful ways to shift difficult emotions, so even just dancing to a single song can help you come back to your baseline.
When you’re overwhelmed, anxious, or stuck in your head, any sort of gentle movement helps you reconnect with your body and discharge emotional tension. It gets you unstuck – physically and emotionally. The goal isn’t to distract yourself from how you feel, but to move through the emotion in a way that feels safe and grounding.
Getting out aggression
Anger is a natural part of the emotional spectrum, especially when you're feeling powerless, frustrated, or unheard. But many of us were taught to push it down or feel ashamed of it. But suppressing anger doesn’t make it go away. It builds up and often leaks out in ways that feel overwhelming or out of control.
That’s why finding safe, intentional ways to release anger and aggression is an important part of emotional regulation. It helps your nervous system discharge all that pent-up energy, so it doesn’t stay stuck inside you.
Some examples of safe release of anger include:
Hitting a pillow or punching a cushion
Screaming into a pillow or in the car
Stomping your feet or doing fast, powerful movements
Tearing paper or scribbling hard on a page
Doing intense physical activity like boxing, running, or shaking
Punching or kicking into the air
Pushing against a wall
The goal isn’t to stay angry, it’s to let the energy move through you instead of turning it inward. When you give yourself permission to feel and release anger and aggression in a safe way, it’ll be easier to let go of the emotion.
If an emotion sticks around, and one technique doesn’t work for you, consider trying a different technique. Not everything is going to work for everyone, so it’s all about figuring which types of regulation works best for you.