The ADHD Stuck Cycle: What Keeps You Looping and What Actually Shifts It

You know that moment when you walk into a room and your whole body reacts before your brain even has time to make sense of it? That’s what today’s episode is really about, how clutter hits the nervous system first, and how that shapes everything from motivation to avoidance to why that one corner has been haunting you for months.

In this episode, I’m sharing the real, lived experience behind regulation, what it is, why it matters, and how it changes the way ADHD women interact with their homes. We walk through each protection pattern (fight, flight, freeze, appease) in a way that helps you see yourself with clarity instead of shame.

You’ll hear more about my own journey with understanding regulation, the resources that shifted everything for me, and why this work matters so much if you’ve spent years thinking, “Why can’t I just do this?”
 My mission: to help you rebuild self-trust, one tiny regulated moment at a time.

If this episode resonates, I’d love to hear where clutter shows up in your nervous system. Your stories help other women feel less alone.

 01:17 — Personal Updates and Reflections
 02:47 — Understanding Regulation and ADHD
 05:15 — Personal Journey into Regulation
 10:31 — Reactions to Clutter: Fight Mode
 15:11 — Reactions to Clutter: Flight Mode
 17:42 — Reactions to Clutter: Freeze Mode
 20:18 — Reactions to Clutter: Appease Mode
 23:08 — Final Thoughts and Community Updates

Check out Jenna Free: https://www.adhdwithjennafree.com/

Check out Mindful as a Mother: https://mindfulasamotherco.com/ 

^Go join their community! Megs is in it too!

Check out Laura Hope: https://www.hopeandhealingcoach.com/

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Learn more about the Community HERE> OrganizinganADHDBrain.com

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:39

Hi, happy December, and I'm so excited to be coming to you with this episode today. Today, I have immense gratitude for all of you all tuning in. Thank you so much for listening week after week, and if you're new here, thanks so much for listening to this episode. So I just logged in to see my Spotify wrapped for the year, and there were so many comments I had no idea that people had left. Thank you. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing the podcast. That's how this podcast gets shared. and thank you. Even more so for reaching out and telling me how this podcast influences you. This week we are continuing through the messy middle, and my husband is on his third week of work. He just got paid for the first time. We have benefits again. This is insane. It feels like we are rebuilding a foundation that we had left in Colorado and it feels really good. I don't think I realized how much it had taken a toll on my nervous system. It was as if we were in survival mode for a really long time. when you send me comments and things that resonate with you in the podcast, it means so much to me. I'm so incredibly grateful because when there are hard days, I read those comments, they keep me going, and they really helped me continue to come with more content. This is constant. This is what I study. This is literally I am learning something new and creating new. Understanding of what's happening in our A DHD brains every single day. And as you've noticed, this podcast is so much more than just organizing because our lives mirrors what's happening in our brain. So if it's happening on the outside with our physical stuff, it's typically happening on the inside too, with our to-do lists with our. With our email with, oh my gosh, our, everything. Everything. So as I'm talking today, I'm gonna be talking to you about clutter, but this stuff is every experience we have in the world. This. This will show up in everything that you do when it comes to A DHD. It's fascinating. So today we're gonna talk about what regulation is and how you react to your clutter. People have been throwing around the word regulation a lot. Even I have been throwing around this word, and sometimes it's like, okay, but what do we do to get regulated? What does that look like? What does that feel like? What's the hack? Right? But this is the type of thing that is a life long journey. Okay? So hear me out. Being regulated the way that I have interpreted it through studying, through reading, through taking classes is when you are regulated, you are operating from your prefrontal cortex. It is your front brain. It is the brain that is responsible for logical thought decision making and organizing. And when you are dysregulated, you are operating from the back of your brain, from the amygdala, from your emotional response center. Now the amygdala is classically responsible for keeping you safe, and it keeps you safe by helping you understand when you are in danger, and then you react accordingly. And those responses are fight, flight, freeze, or appease. You say Fawn too, but I like the word appease, so we're gonna use that. So we react to our environment by scanning it for threats. And when we see a threat, we are going into fight mode. We go into freeze mode, we go into flight mode, or we go into appease mode. As we go into this, I want you to remember that none of the way that you react to things is wrong. You've been practicing this your whole life because your body and your brain are trying to keep you safe. It's designed that way because we used to live we're wild animals where all the time, and we needed to learn how to keep ourselves safe and to understand that our brain was gonna do anything in its power to do that. But our threats now show up in the form of. Comments online from people sending texts that may have a wrong tone to them. It shows up in the form of dishes that may not have been done the night before. It shows up in a doom pile in the corner. All of these threats are now not a saber tooth tiger, but they are things that make us react in a certain way. And because we're in this go, go, go mindset all the time, it's hard to pause and to really see how this is affecting us. Just real quick about my journey into the regulation and understanding it is I interviewed Jenna free last year on the podcast, and I remember her talking about regulation. I had seen a couple of her videos. I was like, come on. I already know all of this, but come on the podcast and let's talk about it. Okay. It turns out I knew nothing, but I was like, yeah, I do yoga. Of course I'm regulated. That was my understanding of it in the moment. But then she started saying things like, it's not about going to yoga. It's not about being regulated in these environments where you're supposed to be regulated. It's like calming and quiet. It's about learning how to regulate in the day to day, in the crap, in the shitty situations that you are in on a regular basis. So I continued to learn. I continued to start to observe my own environments. Of course, listen to podcasts, I'm reading, and I came across Mindful as a mother. Now they are Paige and Lindsay. They're a therapist team and they Help parents understand how to parent their neurodivergent children. Of course I have an A DHD or and an autistic child at home. So I am dying to learn how I can become a parent that is not only non-reactive because I grew up with an angry mom. And so as I continue to learn in my own journey, I realized that as much as I wanted to be different than her. As my kids reacted to things, I immediately had reactions to things too. And so there was a lot more that I had to learn. So I realized pretty quickly that I needed to start to dive in to more than just trying to stop it, trying to say, oh my gosh, how do I force myself into not being angry? How do I force myself into being a better mom and stop shaming myself over, yelling. And one of my mottos, one of the things I say to myself on a regular basis is I'm going to do my very best until I know better. And when I know better, I'm going to do better. And it is my goal to be a lifelong learner, and I'm gonna constantly learn and then of course, keep you all up to date with what I'm learning and observing and how I'm working with clients and how it's showing up in our A DHD. Fascinating stuff. So I signed up for this course through Mindful as a Mother, where they talk about parenting your neurodivergent children from a space where you learn how to regulate yourself first. For example, when you are in a situation and they're reacting, right, they're in meltdown mode, and then you're trying to help, but you're yelling at them and you're just trying to tell them to stop, that's not gonna work. What you have to do is actually calm yourself first. I highly recommend you checking them out. They have a podcast. They also have a community. I learn something new from them every time I hear them speak because they are constantly talking about how to do things a little bit differently. The different tools that are out there, constantly changing the tools.'cause sometimes the tool will work for a little bit and then you'll have to change it. But my regulation journey truly began with noticing how I reacted and what my triggers were with Mindful as a mother. And I can honestly tell you that as a mom now, I am a completely different human than what I was when I first started working with them, because I now recognize when I am getting overstimulated when I need to tap out. When I need to regulate or demonstrate and show my kids what I'm doing to calm myself and to also understand that it's actually not a bad thing to be angry. It's teaching us something that we need to understand about our life. It's giving us evidence into. Understanding our world, it's giving us data, and all of this is giving us so much data, and it's so good once you start to see it as data and not as something that you're like constantly judging yourself for, because literally none of us have ever gotten anywhere from shaming ourselves into doing something. There's not anyone out there that has written a self-help book on, oh, well, all I did was beat myself up for months and months, and then one day I finally did it. That's not the way that it works. But the truth is, is that we have a habit of beating ourselves up. Guess what? That's actually dysregulation. That's something that we do to keep ourselves comfortable, which is insane. So. Let's dive into how this shows up in our clutter and why we stay stuck in this cycle of dysregulation when it comes to life. Now, I highly recommend you going to check out Jenna Free, because she doesn't talk about the clutter piece of it. She talks about the life piece of it. As an A DHD, I also encourage you to go check out Mindful as a mother, and then Laura Hope, who I had on the podcast a couple weeks ago she is absolutely incredible and. She talks about, regulation when we are choosing to skin pick and hair pull and do all of these other things. And it's fascinating the work that she's doing too. She's also in my community and she's doing a really cool workshop this month. I'm so excited. So without further ado, let's talk about how we react to our clutter. I have mentioned this on the podcast multiple times, but angry cleaning. Well, guess what? This is it's fight mode and let's talk about how it shows up.'cause I know that this will resonate with some of you. So you're coming up for air after having a really long day and you're looking around your kitchen and all over the place is. Papers from the kids' school and there's a cereal box still out and open. The milk has actually been left out from this morning, and you're noticing all of these things that have not gotten put away There's dishes still in the sink from last night, and the dishwasher hasn't been run, and you get so angry it turns on and now. It's three hours later and you're scrubbing baseboards and you're like, how the hell did I get here? Now this shows up not because you're doing anything wrong, but because it is a symptom to a larger problem at hand. this precise thing happened to me about a year and a half ago now. and I'm like, why am I here? I was down on the floor scrubbing the baseboards. I've talked about this in a podcast before too, and I'm like, wow, what got me here? And I'm like, oh if I'm truly analyzing this. I don't have any systems. I kind of hate the word systems, so bear with me here, but I don't have a process for getting the dishes done every night. We just kind of hope for the best and I don't have a process for the kids' paperwork, right? We just hope for the best and one day we go through it and I don't ask for help. In fact, I actually push people away because. I'm afraid that they're gonna do it wrong. So I want the help desperately, and I need the help because I can't do this all on my own, but I'm so afraid that other people are going to do it wrong, that I would just rather do it myself. This is a control thing, huh? Oh, shit. That's a lot. But because I don't ask for help, because I don't have any systems in place, because I don't have a process for doing this, all of it comes up and I see this as a threat, and now I'm attacking the threat. I'm fighting. I'm not consciously going in and saying, I would like to attack all of my stuff right now and I'm gonna make it all clean. Now, is this productive? Yes. And am I judging you for telling you about this? No. I've done it myself, and sometimes I still catch myself going into this mode, but I'll get to that in a minute. This is nothing wrong. This is just something that we've trained ourselves to do. In fact, it's kind of funny in some households, we angry clean, right? Oh, mom's about to rage clean. And sometimes, you know, people join in, sometimes your family goes to hide. And sometimes this is the time where you start to tell yourself all of these stories about why you're angry and why it's everyone else's fault in your head, when truly there's something so much bigger happening. I was on Dana K White's podcast last year and I talk about dysregulation I was explaining that there was one day I was cleaning my garage and I was in full on fight mode and I remember I had been in the garage for hours and all of a sudden. I saw the stuff to wash my car. I was like, oh, I'm gonna wash the car right now. Something in the back of my head was like, you can't, you don't have the capacity to, your brain is so far gone. Why would you do that right now? That is maniacal. But I shoved that little voice back down. I was like, you shut up. Little voice. I washed the car and it took me about an hour and a half because not only did I wash the car, but like I got really down and dirty into it. Like I think my father-in-law had given us this shine polish and used some de scratchier stuff. That's probably the technical term for it, and I went haywire. I went to town and I got the car cleaned. Well, what was really happening in that moment? That my husband was actually away for the weekend and we're not used to that. This was a change. This was different. This was the unknown, and so I chose to fight my environment. That was what I could control in the moment. Instead of actually taking care of myself or making plans with the girls or making a memory of just us, I had to fight my stuff and that was something that I did to keep myself comfortable. It's fascinating. It's just fascinating. Okay. So that's not the only way that we respond to our clutter because there is also, and so many of you will relate to this. There is flight mode. You cute little birdies. You little buzzy bees. Here's the scenario. I'm gonna start by washing the dishes. But I see. There is a dish rag that needs to be washed. So you know what? I'm gonna start a load of laundry. I'll come back to the dishes, but I'm gonna start a load of laundry. So I'm gonna throw this downstairs, but let me actually go get the rest of the laundry and let me get a couple loads done. But I'm loading the laundry now and I see that there's. Stuff in the dryer that needs to be taken out and there's a load of wet laundry that needs to be moved over. Okay. Well, I'm gonna do all of this, but let me go ahead and put away the girls' clothes real quick because these are all dry. So I'm gonna walk into the girls' room and oh my gosh, there's stuff everywhere. I'm just gonna pick this up real quick because here's the thing, There's nothing wrong with this again, but it's more data and it keeps us stuck because what am I doing? I'm starting a bunch of things. And I'm not finishing a damn thing. I am just running around from place to place doing things because I'm noticing things, and part of me noticing and doing right away is I'm scared that I'm not going to remember to do it in the future. And I'm in motion mode now. I am an action mode and I'm taking advantage of it. Okay, I'm gonna do all of these things because if I sit down and I realize I'm exhausted, I'm not gonna get back up and finish any of these things. There's nothing wrong with this, but this is what keeps us stuck. Did you guys see that Instagram video where the woman leashes herself to the dishwasher? I think I had like 10 people send it to me, and I love that you sent it to me because this is so real. Oh my God. Why can't we just stay in one place and do something? Well, it's because naturally. We get excited about starting something, but finishing it, Ugh. It's awful. I've seen it in my clients, my, when we're having a decluttering session, it's like, I don't wanna do this anymore. Can we actually go over there now? And I'm like, no. Stay right here. You stay right here. You cutie pie. You are safe. You are safe. And we can make decisions on the rest of this stuff, but it's not exciting anymore. So we start to fly to all of these other places. Now at the end of the day, we're like, what did I even do? I've done so many things, but nothing's finished. That's part of the reason why I say when everything is important, nothing is important. That's because we're not getting anything done. But it is uncomfortable to finish a task because it's not as exciting anymore. and plus we feel like we're always in a rush and we don't have any time to get it done. More to that, but I wanna then move on to freeze mode. Because freeze mode is something that we experience a lot as well, and this is when Let's pretend you have a day off and you're like, I'm gonna get so much done today. There's so much I need to get done, and I can't wait to get it all done. So you're sitting on the couch, you're drinking coffee, and now you start to think about everything that needs to be done. Well, you see a doom box. In the corner and you're like, well, I'm not gonna do that, but I need to do that. But also I need to order food for the animals, and I have a to-do list that's about a mile long. And then you start to think about things that you're doing at work, but you're like, no, I can't think about work right now. I'm thinking about home. But then you need to sign up the kids for dance class. And then you also need to wash the dishes, but you don't wanna wash the dishes and you also don't wanna do the laundry. Actually, I'd much rather do a craft. And what if I just. Started to decorate for Christmas instead, but then because all of that is so overwhelming, everything needs to be done all at once. I saw another video the other day of this man trying to explain what A DHD was like, and it was like everything that I just said. But he started playing all of these to-dos. Over each other. So like it was just the voices. Loud, loud, loud, right? Like you're saying everything at the same time. And then I saw another video where this guy was writing all the to-dos down and he was just writing them on top of each other, right? So it was just like 10 to-dos, but they were all on the same line, written over each other. So nothing was clear. You didn't understand what to do because they were all in this. You were like, okay, I'm gonna do all of these things. Okay, let me sit down and scroll. Our brain wants to do everything all at once. And that's why so many people come to me and they're like, I don't know where to start. Yeah,'cause you've got like 30 things you're telling yourself you need to do all in this moment, that's a threat. Again, you're being threatened by all of these things that are staring at you, but instead of doing anything, we freeze.'cause we're like, where the hell do I go from here? I can't start decorating because the pets need food, but I can't order food for the pets because that doom pile over there needs to get done. And I have people coming over, But I can't order food for the pets because I need to budget, and I don't feel like budgeting right now. All of these things come up at once, so instead we do what makes us feel comfortable and let's scroll. Let's avoid this. No, no, no. I'm just going to sit here and I'm gonna make myself feel better because all of that shit is uncomfortable. And then guess what? We've had a day off. We haven't done anything, and we're like, what have we done with our lives? Okay. We keep ourselves stuck. And then the last way we react to our clutter is we appease. We do it for everyone else. I think what's really interesting about this one is this oftentimes comes up when we have people coming over. Well, there's people coming over now. Okay, well, I must, I must now give the illusion that we have everything together and that my life is not, in fact, chaotic and there's things everywhere. Not only all over my brain, but all over my home. I now must show people and make them feel comfortable in my own home, and so I'm going to. Organized, not for myself, but for them. What's interesting about this is that oftentimes we know people are coming over like way ahead of time and it's funny. It's like, oh, well now I have a deadline. I must clean now. Okay. But it is a threat because we don't actually want people to see the real us. And I thought about it earlier today. What a gift. If someone allows you into their home and they haven't cleaned up, they haven't tidied for you, what a gift that truly is. Because they trust you enough to see into their home to welcome you into this vulnerable space where they don't feel like they need to clean for you, Regardless, we appease and so we're trying to make things look better for everyone else. Now, this keeps us stuck because. Now we're doing things in haste. We have a deadline and we're not planning ahead for it. It's not like, oh, I know my friends are coming over Friday, so let me clean like a maniac on Monday and then Tuesday. No, we're gonna hope for the best again, and we're gonna either. Do it the night before because they're coming in the morning or we're gonna do it that morning'cause they're coming in the afternoon and we're not making any intentional decisions on our stuff. We're literally just putting things in places to make it look pretty. We're not concerned about functionality at all. In fact, we're not thinking about our future selves. We're literally just thinking about the person coming over what they're gonna think about us. And we are going to allow our future selves to suffer because it doesn't matter if we shove everything in this room and close the door, at least people won't truly see what it's like. And that's crazy because now future self is like, where the hell did I put that thing? What the hell did I do with that thing that I meant to do this with? But I remember it was here, but then I remember cleaning, but I actually, I wasn't here. I wasn't in my brain up here to know what I did with it. we do so many things on autopilot without fully thinking about it, because we are constantly reacting to our environment as a threat. Not as a purposeful, let's do this shit, let's get it done, type of thing. We are constantly in fight or flight mode, and it is fascinating. Over the summer, I decided to sign up for the regulation course offered through Jenna Free with ADHD. Love it was really, really eye-opening and incredible. I have been incorporating the knowledge and the practices into my coaching because I think that this is ultimately fundamental to us getting in front of understanding our brain so that we can not only unmask, but truly understand how to go about life. Not trying to fix our A DHD, but understand it in a way that we can advocate for ourselves and notice more and more to live the lives that we want. I wanna read to you my mission because I've worked really hard on this and my vision for the world, my mission, I help women with A DHD discover their strength, rebuild self-trust, and create lives that truly support who they are. Together we replace shame with understanding, shift limiting beliefs to new perspectives, and take small guided actions that build trust and momentum that lasts. And my vision. I want to live in a world where women with A DHD trust themselves fully and live in spaces that reflect that trust, calm, creative, and alive with possibility where regulation. Practice replaces shame and progress no matter how small is celebrated as proof of growth. I envision communities where women lead with self-awareness. Honor their capacity and model what it looks like to live gently, bravely, and on their own terms. You can see that on my website as well. I say that because when you are operating from a place or fight or flight, the first step here is to notice. Now I think that you can relate with a lot of the things I'm talking about today, but step one is really to notice what's happening here. And when you notice the, this gives you insight into starting to get curious about what's happening after this episode. The only thing I want you to do, you're not fixing anything, you're not doing anything but noticing and collecting data. You're collecting data on your habits, your patterns, and what you see now, you might start to see that on the Pandora's box has been opened and you're like, oh my God, I just wanna shove it back in there. But now you can't. You do your best until you know better, and now you know better and it's gonna be hard to not know better. But because you've unpacked Pandora's box when you're noticing, When you notice, you can pause. Inhale, exhale, relax your shoulders, and remind yourself that you are safe. I'm gonna put my hands across my shoulders here. You are actually safe. from the world, you are in a safe space. I just wanna say that if you have a bear in your house or like a saber tooth tiger, you're not safe. So you don't need to convince yourself you're safe if you're not actually safe. But if you are trying to run from your clutter or the stuff that is uncomfortable, you are safe. You are safe. And so many of the tools, out there are ways to remind you that you're safe. But now knowing this, it can actually help you more. So some of the regulation tools, aside from simply just relaxing your shoulders and reminding yourself you're safe in real time. like Dana Kay White's first rule. Where would I go to look for this if I were trying to find it? I talk about it all the time because you are literally supporting future you in trusting yourself. You're building that self-trust. But saying that out loud and actually asking yourself that question is a regulation tool to bring yourself into your logical brain to make a logical choice on where this thing is going to live because you know where you're gonna go to look for it. Fascinating body doubling. Body doubling is a conscious. Activator, right? Like you're in this room, you're telling people what you're doing, and now you might drift off and go off into like all of these distracted worlds that you live in, right? Squirrel. And because you're in a room of other people, you're like, oh yeah, I'm in this room. And you're like, what was I doing? Oh yeah, that was what I was doing. And the more you notice and the more you practice this, the more you can actually stay on task a little bit more. It's fascinating stuff. I cannot wait to tell you more and share more stories. I just love the fact that we're not alone in this. I see it show up in everybody's life. Even the people who have the organizing part of it down, there's another part of it that they're reacting from a place of fight or flight It's fascinating stuff. What I would love from you even more as you're listening to this episode, I don't even care if it's a year from now and you're listening to this episode, or if this was three years in the past. Send me an email mags at organizing an ADHD brain.com. Share with me something ridiculous that you have done in one of these modes. Fight, flight, freeze, or appease. I would love to hear some of the things you're now noticing because this is enlightened you in a way that helps you understand. Just knowing is the first step. Noticing is going to allow you to understand your habits and the things that you do, and then you get to remind yourself that you're safe. It's fricking cool. It really is, and you're not alone. On that note, I've decided to take the rest of December off The community opens again on January 1st. I'm so excited about that. I will be taking on two more clients in the month of January, so if you're interested, I encourage you to get into my schedule now so that you can decide if that's the right step for you or not, and I will see you in the new year. Have an incredible December.