Decoding Your Emotions: How to Identify Feelings with Adult-Diagnosed ADHD
Written by Abigail McMillen, LMFT
If you are one of the millions of adults living with late-diagnosed ADHD, you may have often felt stumped by the question “How are you feeling?”
More adults are being late- diagnosed with Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder than ever before. This can be due to a few common reasons:
The rise of mental health awareness and literacy has increased access to information for folks who may be able to recognize symptoms they’ve lived with for decades for the first time. The general assumption that it was a disorder that affects children exclusively has begun to be stripped away.
ADHD, especially inattentive type, has been historically underdiagnosed in women because it often presents “invisibly”, or with internal symptoms (ie brain fog, chronic overwhelm, disorganization, difficulties with concentration). The diagnostic criteria for ADHD was built around hyperactive young boys, and women become adept at masking difficulties to hide their struggles.
ADHD management depends on “life scaffolding” (like routines, schedules, and predictability) that the COVID 19 pandemic stripped away. More and more adults experienced the full force of difficulties with executive functioning and burnout for the first time.
What’s Going On Here?
If you happen to be one of these people, being asked a simple question about how your day is going can feel like an unsolvable riddle. Identifying and naming emotions can be more confusing and frustrating to folks with ADHD, due to a common brain- body that makes the feeling get lost in translation alexithymia. This is the experience of having a feeling equate to a physical sensation (like a racing heart or tight chest), but your brain is unable to recode that data into an emotion. ADHD affects your brain’s ability to read it’s own internal signals, no matter how many messages your body may send.
As a result, it might feel hard to accurately describe your emotions in the moment. If you find yourself replying with noncommittal or limited words when asked how you’re doing, this may apply to you (I’m fine, I’m ok, I fee weird, etc).
This can also cause confusion between your physical state and emotional state. Am I anxious or hungry? Am I sad or just tired? A person dealing with ADHD can have difficulty knowing the differences between bodily and emotional needs.
So, what do we do?
Notice the body first: Instead of asking abstractly "What am I feeling?", look for physical clues like tight shoulders, a knot in the stomach, or a flushed face.
Practice body scans: Spend a few minutes daily checking in with different parts of your body to notice tension or changes without judging them.
Link sensation to context: Ask what was happening right before your body reacted (e.g., a tight chest right before a meeting might point to anxiety or excitement)
Build emotional vocabulary using a feelings wheel: Visual tools like a feelings wheel help break down general sensations (like "unpleasant" or "tense") into specific words like overwhelmed, frustrated, disappointed, or anxious.
Write daily check-ins: Complete simple, structured statements or keep a short journal mapping out physical triggers and matching them to possible emotion labels.
Emotional identification is a muscle we can exercise, and by practicing and learning how to flex it, we can feel more understood within relationships, our thoughts, and our own bodies.
