For people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), even regular days or basic tasks can feel like a constant battle within our brains to balance ourselves, to function, and to remain regulated. With a tremendous loss such as the death of a parent, your grief as a neurodivergent person with an ADHD brain can evoke significant challenges that most neurotypical people may not experience.

You might not necessarily get the care and support you deserve if your ADHD brain makes it so you can’t articulate your needs or emotions. At times your life may be such a swirl and a flurry that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where or how you need help, let alone ask for it!

You might dismiss or downplay your own grief, falling back on your role as parent or boss or employee to shield yourself from what you’re feeling or to keep others from seeing just how mixed up and chaotic everything feels for you right now.

People in your life might be the ones dismissing or not recognizing your grief or the pain you’re enduring. Quite often our ADHD brains are difficult for others to live or work with, and our loved ones can feel like they are walking on eggshells around us. They might not know what to do to help with our grief, if we let them see it at all.

What is ADHD?

ADHD is a potentially lifelong neurological disorder. Adults with ADHD can have trouble paying attention or getting started. They can be impulsive and struggle to regulate emotions. ADHD brains might procrastinate or never finish the multiple projects they’ve started. They can be forgetful or focus intently on one thing to the detriment of all else. They can be extremely intelligent or struggle immensely with information and learning. There are many symptoms and ways ADHD presents in people, so please talk with your doctor or other provider if you think you might have ADHD. This guide to symptoms, signs, and treatments for ADHD by ADDitude Magazine is a great resource and starting point.

Grief and Your ADHD Brain

Dear friend, I understand what it’s like. I’m “neuro spicy”, too–diagnosed with ADHD late in life (in my early 40s). All my life I was the kid who devoured books, always wanting to stay inside the fairy tale and never go home. In a similar way I wanted to stay inside my grief back in 2018 when my mother died. It was a new and different world, one in which I felt compelled to live, because it was impossible to return to the way things were.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass are my favorite stories. Wonderland is supposed to be the nonsensical land, but the real world up here on Earth is the topsy-turvy place to my neurodivergent brain. In Wonderland, silliness was accepted. Difference and quirk were common. Here in the real world, I often feel like I’m living on the other side of the looking glass, struggling to navigate a challenging “normal” world that often doesn’t make sense. If I had fallen down the rabbit hole instead of Alice, I would have wanted to stay in Wonderland forever.

Similarly, I read L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series as a young child and never understood why Dorothy didn’t leap at the chance to live in the Emerald City. Why did she go back to Kansas, where life was hard? She said “there’s no place like home.” Really, Dorothy?! (Is this line actually in the book or just the movie?)

Home isn’t a house, Dorothy. Home doesn’t have to be the dry, black and white life in Kansas. Your home can be where you feel loved and accepted. Your safe place. My home was my mother, and when she died I lost everything.

After her death my ADHD brain hyperfocused on grief. It was all I felt. No hunger. No thirst. Not tired. Just deep, raw grief. I couldn’t see the purpose in anything else around me, except for basic care for my children, which kept me upright and somewhat functioning. Otherwise I stared off into space. Thinking. Existing on a plane slightly out of time with the rest of the world, listening to grief rumble through my heart all day like an east coast thunderstorm.

Grief is going to be different for you. Your brain has nontraditional wiring. ADHD brains are known for hyperfocusing and intensely feeling emotions. Your brain might want you to immerse yourself wholly into the grief experience, or you might hyperfocus on something totally unrelated to escape the feelings or forget the pain.

You might suddenly need to start a vegetable garden, rearrange the furniture, purge your wardrobe, or begin a new hobby. Sometimes as soon as you water the new garden, you’ll immediately lose interest, revert to shutdown mode, or discover something else that catches your attention.

The important thing to remember is that none of this is wrong. Living, working, and existing around neurotypical people can already make ADHD brains feel like outsiders, and this feeling of being an “other” only intensifies when you consider the surges of grief the ADHD brain will produce.

Generally girls and women tend to hide their ADHD symptoms and are often diagnosed late, but ADHD brains all along the gender spectrum often use stress and anxiety to pressure themselves into attempting to appear “normal”.

We will do almost anything to mask our ADHD symptoms and appear functional. After our parent dies this can include masking our grief, hiding it, and not reaching out for help. You might not want to tell people just how much you’re hurting because you don’t want to seem weak or like you don’t have it all together.

Find Your People.

Dear friend, you are not alone, even when everything feels horrible and chaotic. If you have ADHD and your parent just died, it’s important that you don’t turn inward and isolate yourself because of how intense everything feels. Adults with ADHD can be easily overwhelmed by external stimuli and emotionally or physically shut down in response.

This is when it can help to have trusted people in your life. Ideally you might have a neurotypical adult who can keep track of things like making sure you’re eating enough, drinking water, and getting sunlight. Sometimes a simple text conversation is all you need to feel better and more connected.

My kids knew I was sad when their Grammy died. They wanted to help. I asked them if they would occasionally check my water bottle, and if it was empty to fill it and set it near me. I managed to mindlessly sip water, but didn’t have the bandwidth to remember to refill the bottle a few times per day.

I relied on a small handful of trusted people, mostly through texting and social media, because after my mom’s funeral it took a long time before I felt up to talking on the phone or seeing humans in person. If you feel alone, please reach out–to family, friends, online groups, a therapist, your doctor, or anyone you trust. Don’t stay alone.

What About Late or Latent Grief?

ADHD brains excel at cataloging and keeping obscure, random, or minute details in our memory banks. I may forget to buy milk at the store and walk out with three bags of other items (when milk was the ONE thing I needed), but I can certainly remember the day my kindergarten teacher wore candy cane earrings. Or the exact color and texture of my childhood bedroom carpet.

Some memories are stored intact and can come back to us with the same force and intensity we felt on the day the memory occurred and was saved. It can be the same with a parent’s death. This is why almost five years after my mom died I can still see and feel details of those early grief days and suddenly break down and cry as if it just happened.

Do neurotypical people experience this, or is it a function of neurodiverse brains? I think ADHD brains certainly feel this involuntary memory recall or memory spike more intensely. It can be a good thing (possibly?), like when a memory from eight years ago pops up on my phone with the sweetest photo of my little boy. I’m hit with a wave of positive feelings crashing over me, as if his peach fuzz head is still nuzzled against my cheek and his tiny fingers are latched onto mine. Looking at that picture is like drinking from a fire hose of joy.

And yet also because I have ADHD, I process those good feelings out in a nanosecond, swiftly continuing on to the comedown–wistfulness, longing, sadness, and ache for times gone by, because I’ll never hold that baby again.

When your grief pops up later, months or years after your mom or dad died, these latent memories can be just as tangible and palpable as the day they first happened. Even if your mom or dad died a decade ago, your ADHD brain can easily ignite a memory flash and bring all the feelings back. It can hit like falling down that first big hill on a roller coaster—your stomach drops when the packaged memory of your lost loved one opens and dumps a hefty load of fully intact feelings in your lap.

Your spicy brain is amazing in its capacity and ability to retain. That memory package opens and the experience is just as it was the day it happened. Pain can be remarkably shelf stable and stay fresh a long time, just waiting to poke your heart again with a sharpened stick.

So be kind to yourself today, dear friend. And hey, if you have ADHD and read this far into the post…thank you! You are amazing, and I appreciate that you stuck around with me this long. I know it’s not always easy.

Leave me a comment, spicy brains! I’d love to hear how you’re doing.