Ever feel completely drained but still wired inside? Struggle to follow through on tasks no matter how much you try to “just rest”? ADHD burnout isn’t the same as neurotypical burnout, and traditional advice often makes it worse.

ADHD burnout is more than just exhaustion—it’s a nervous system issue, often caused by overcommitment, perfectionism, masking, and executive dysfunction. If you’ve ever felt trapped in cycles of hyperfocus followed by extreme crashes, this episode is for you. Learn why “just resting” doesn’t work and how somatic tools can be the game-changer for your motivation, energy, and focus.

Today we cover:

- Understand why ADHD burnout happens and how it differs from typical burnout.

- Learn how somatic healing techniques help regulate your energy, motivation, and focus.

- Discover practical strategies to break free from the boom-and-bust cycle of productivity.  

Next episode:

193: Think Strategy Creates Success? Try These 3 Somatic Tools for Embodied Safety Instead

Further reading:

https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score 

Book - Somatic Intelligence for Success

Nervous system alignment to prevent burnout and leave an impact.

Purchase here.

Regulation Cheat Sheet PDF

Learn to regulate with practices you'll actually use. No need for more time, space or privacy. Download here.

Group & 1:1 support

Join The Academy where visionary leaders build their businesses and bank accounts without sacrificing well-being.

Through nervous system regulation tools, body-based trauma therapy, and practical business tips, you learn how to create a business that leaves a positive, lasting impact on the world.

Click here.

This podcast explores the intersection of sales, money, and business success, offering entrepreneurial insights on overcoming the inner critic, burnout, and the unique challenges of ADHD and autoimmune conditions, while integrating polyvagal theory, Ayurveda, coaching, resilience, regulation, and trauma healing to support holistic growth and thriving in both life and business.

  📍 Are you tired, but also feel really activated inside? Do you struggle to follow through on things? 📍 Neurotypical burnout is different. And here's how to recover from it. In today's episode, we are going to break down why traditional advice, like just rest more, doesn't work, how ADHD burnout is different from.

A neurotypical burnout and why somatic tools using body based intelligence, uh, the game changer for managing your energy, your motivation, and your focus. We have a lot to cover. I'm going to try and go pretty quick. You will find studies linked in the show notes. ADHD burnout refers to a state of profound mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion that is experienced by people who have attention deficit hyperactive disorder, or ADD or ADHD.

This arises from the chronic stress that is associated with managing ADHD symptoms, whether that be really clear, such as you're struggling to, I don't know, manage going to the grocery store and also make sure that you are on time for your appointment at 6 p. m. Or the underlying stress of masking or the trauma that is associated when growing up with ADHD.

Um, it often leads to feelings of overwhelm and decreased motivation. I've linked a study there from Healthline. Some of the causes that the, that. burnout are number one. So some of the causes that I've seen in myself when I was experiencing ADHD burnout, I didn't realize that was happening at the time and that I see in my clients are number one, overcommitment.

Sometimes I don't know if you've ever felt this, but it like feels like you struggle to know how much capacity you actually have or you can get really excited about something and be a little bit impulsive, or maybe you have a little bit of a people pleaser inside of you. And so you take on all of these tasks because maybe you, maybe you generally think you can, but you can't, or maybe it's, it's something else.

But. Then you get really overwhelmed. Number two is perfectionism. Hands up if you experience high levels of perfectionism. Um, there's probably not a single person that I've ever worked with that doesn't have this. And it's actually pretty big for me, especially lately. Desire to strive for this unattainable standard, and that striving means that your cortisol, uh, and your norepinephrine levels increase, so your body is more likely to go into a stress state.

Especially when you do not meet your own standards, which happens almost all of the time because your standards are really freaking high and almost impossible to meet. Number three would be masking, so that just means suppressing your behaviors. So that you can fit into societal norms and it requires a lot of energy and that makes you feel really tired and you get burnt out.

I was speaking with a friend at a picnic this weekend and I was feeling a little bit burnt out from a lot of social things, but it wasn't like I was tired or anything. It was just that I was so friggin tired of this small talk and her and I bonded really quickly once over having ADHD and We both kind of connected really quickly and immediately went into this really deep talk.

And I felt all of my energy increasing. Then later on we were doing an activity together. She was focusing on something and when somebody else tried to interrupt her and she was like, I just can't. And it was like, it was really replenishing to know that we both understood that you just can't not focus when you're focusing.

And I felt That, that presence of like, Oh, I don't actually need to mask. And that gave me a lot of energy. Whereas before, when I was masking, you know, and it just happens sometimes, I guess, when I was masking, it felt like I was just like, Oh, this is like another social event that I have to go to. And like, Oh, it's like, Oh, that's not true.

It didn't feel that bad. I love my friends, but I was tired. Number four, challenges with executive functions. So that's just kind of what I mentioned before, difficulties in organizing your time and management of your things and where are your belongings and prioritization. It's just so much mental energy that we have to put into what for other brains can come really quite easily that it takes, it takes more energy.

So we are more prone to burnout recognizing these faxes is really important part of actually implementing strategies to manage your ADHD burnout, but it's not about just fixing and band aiding these, these things. We can't do it on a superficial level. It has to happen on a really bone deep somatic level.

Let's start with rest. Here's the thing. Burnout is not about being tired. It's not because you've done too much. It is a nervous system dysfunction. Orientation. So that means that your body gets kind of stuck in hyperactivation. It feels like it has to be on. It feels like it's really difficult to stop, or it's shut down.

It feels like it has to save energy. You feel really tired. You don't really want to do anything. It's hard to get motivated. Everything is overwhelming. And this is because your nervous system on some level is experiencing some type of danger. It might just be your own. Expectations that might be really dangerous.

It might be, um, disappointing yourself or somebody else or fear that you're not going to get something done and then you're going to have forgotten. And then that will be like the other last time that you forgot a lot of. ADHD people and entrepreneurs rest. We're good at resting, but don't feel replenished because your nervous system never actually reaches a deep state of relaxation and rest.

When we have more skill of somatic intelligence. So tuning into your body's signals and understanding what it needs to reach rest. And you've actually felt a deep sense of rest, which not. Most people have not. You're able to sustain and understand how your energy fluctuates, work with it, and spend less energy trying to fit in to something else.

So instead of forcing productivity, it's kind of like you feel this, like, you know that you're going to have a surge of energy. And you can channel it and you trust yourself to follow through on it. Instead of collapsing into avoiding for something you kind of like, it's like kind of like niggle into your body.

You're like, ah, this is what I need to motivate myself.

We achieve reaching that when we kind of clear up a lot of the pain or difficulties or fears or confusion that we've accumulated. We can just call this trauma or we can call it conditioning or we can call it unconscious beliefs. We can call it everything that isn't you functioning exactly the way that makes you feel alive and free and is supported in the world.

Somatic trauma healing is one of the most effective ways to break free from this little cycle and get back in contact with who you are and what you need in the world. This is because it accesses the body and the nervous system on a deeper level than some other things. So we're looking at how to release stored stress, which will improve your ability to regulate your attention, your motivation, your focus, your how much energy you want in your body at different times, and also increasing your capacity to feel safe in your body.

If I really ask you, do you know how to feel safe in your body? When was the last time you really felt it? I don't know. Would you be able to answer? We have a really beautiful podcast episode 193 called think strategy create success try these somatic tools for embodied safety instead that I recommend that you download Now and come back to later.

Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay here. Listen, don't get distracted. Hi Okay, I would recommend that you do that And here's okay. Here's how it works a little bit a little bit science volume Okay. Stored trauma. Say you've got like a lot of emotional exhaustion and it's not just because you've been doing a lot, but it's because you for many years have been trying to fit into a system that wasn't made for your specific brain, whether that be in personal or professional spaces.

So we have this stress and this pressure to fit in and that is stored in the body in the nervous system and you have to use energy to keep storing that all of the time. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, In the Body Keeps the, In the Body Keeps the Score, is a wonderful book. He explains how the traumatic experiences are stored in the body and how it affects both the mind and the physiology.

And then we have numerous studies in neuroscience that confirm how unresolved trauma can keep the nervous system in a constant state of hypervigilance, making this burnout. Cycles more severe when we can use somatic practices like somatics part therapy, which I teach in my book breath work Trauma involved movement even just mindfulness you help the body discharge stress in a way that talking about it Just doesn't number two business regulating the nervous system in business So many ADHD have this like massive Boom and crash cycle of productivity.

I've spoken about this so often on Instagram. You go all in when the motivation is there and then you crash in overwhelm and avoid it. I'm actually not totally sure how I skipped this one. I'm sure i've gone into it more maybe in some places, but I seem to have skipped this. And I think it's honestly because of my yoga therapy and somatic therapy and all of my training.

Uh, but the point is it makes it really difficult to feel consistent and you might even feel like you can't trust yourself to be consistent because you've done this before. When you use little things like a self hug or general rocking or you just get really good at grounding yourself and you take that into the transitions mindfully.

You can make sure that your system doesn't get too overstimulated before, so you don't crash. I mean, this is true for everybody along this direction of different neurotypes, but when you feel in your body, okay, now we're getting a little bit too excited, getting a little bit too focused, going a little bit too fast, and you reference whatever tool you're going to use, and we teach, I teach this inside of my programs, like, there are so many, you could use grounding, you could use an exhale.

Um, you could just like, I'm really enjoying the sauna at the moment. That's getting me really focused and making sure that I relax. That's mine at the moment. When you use that, especially in transitions in your day. So neurotypical neurodivergent people might struggle with transitions. I struggle transitioning from work to rest sometimes.

So I'm using the sauna at the moment to soften that. Um. It means that you're not going to have so much energy accumulated in your body because if you hold the energy in your body for too long without deep, deep rest, you will burn out. Your hyper focus will be there when you're ready to come back to it, I promise.

And we can work together to making, to making sure that you trust that it's okay to take a break. Number three, restoring body awareness and self trust. So because ADHD It means that sometimes we are taught or we learn to disconnect from our bodily cues. We have a focus on something so we don't eat, or we get breaks, or we override exhaustion because we're so into something and we're getting all that dopamine, um.

It feels like sometimes you won't notice that you're burnt out until you hit a wall. When you increase your capacity through somatic exercises to rebuild that connection, and it can start with some things as simple as going to the toilet as soon as you notice that you, that you need to. That is a, that is a somatic tool you can use to build trust in your body, build awareness.

This means that you have earlier intervention. You know when to pause, you know when to shift tasks, and you know when to rest before burnout takes hold. Okay. Now let's talk about the big one. Rejection sensitivity and imposter syndrome.

RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria, it feels like these tiny little minor setbacks create massive emotional waves in your body. And what I've learned, Oh my God, I had this so much. It just shaped my whole frigging life. I didn't even. Think about the things I could do. I, well, you know, you know, I wore a wig for a really long time and I actually thought my career had to be shaped around the fact that I wore a wig.

One time for a short period of time, I wanted to be like a pastry chef. I wanted to make cakes and I was offered a apprenticeship and I was like, no, no, I can't because. I can't wear a wig in the kitchen if I want to like be in hospitality. Isn't that insane? That was a rejection sensitivity dysphoria.

What will people think of me? And then the imposter syndrome, like, do not even get me started. I know that you experienced it as well. And it's like, the more successful you are, the bigger the imposter syndrome gets, right? Well, somatic trauma, healing, and there's a specific tool that I use called emotional alchemy.

It helps. You feel confident that you can have big emotions inside, so it makes emotions so much less big. You just sit with them, and you become emotionally so resilient. There's nothing in the world that you could be afraid of, because you know how to sit with fear. There's no pleasure too big. You can have literally everything you want, because you know how to feel pleasure, and nothing could say anything that you could possibly take personally, because you know how to feel those emotions in your body without feeling overwhelmed by them.

You can get feedback, you can fail, you can learn from it, and you don't have to worry about having so much self doubt because it just exists over there as like a small part of your experience. So, summary, regulate before you rest. Instead of just like transitioning into resting, create a sense of embodied safety in your body.

Go back to episode 193 to learn about embodied safety. That means that the rest that you're using is going to be more productive. Number two, dopamine. We want simulation, we want novelty, we want fun stuff. So don't Listen to all of the traditional relaxation things that are so friggin boring. Look for something that is calming and stimulating, like drawing.

I like watching cooking shows sometimes. I like going for a walk and having music. It's like you're looking for something that is relaxing. My sister with her children causes low sensory engagement. It could be knitting, something that is relaxing, but not activating. And somatic check ins, now this is a big one.

Throughout the day, take 30 seconds to scan your body. Ask, am I activated? Tense, jittery, restless. Am I shut down? Heavy, disconnected, foggy. Based on what you notice, adjust. There is a nervous system PDF that will help you learn to regulate. If you're overstimulated, you'll find it cause we call it the red or yellow zone.

You can go to your PDF and it will have exercises for you. If you're in that shutdown mode, um, this is the freeze mode. We're using polyvagal theory, by the way, guys, activate movement, cold water splashes, move your body, shake it up, like put on Taylor Swift and shake it out. So this is. These are practices and tools for you to practice sustainably.

You don't need to take massive breaks. You don't need to work harder. You don't even need to do less. You just need to align with what your body wants from the world. Find your most amazing gifts and go do them in the world. When your work aligns with your nervous systems, natural rhythms, everything flows.

So one last question before we go, where are you forcing things that don't work for your brain and what systems can you create that work with your energy instead of against it? That's what we do in the academy. We have this somatic approach to business and life and career, and it prioritizes what your body needs to feel good in the world, as well as sustainable success strategies.

That's why I call them because it sounds really cute. If you're ready to create a business model that supports your neurodivergent brain. Check out all of the different tiers of the Academy at www. sheridanruth. com forward slash Academy. And please, if this resonated with you share it with another entrepreneur who might, you know, might need it, might need some help, some support.

They might be neurodivergent. They may not be neurodivergent, like, subscribe all that jazz. And remember that your success was literally made through a blueprint in your body. All you got to do is follow it. See you next time.