ADHD Emotional Permanence: Why Out-of-Sight Is Out-of-Mind

✅ Today's Sunday • 📖 5 mins read

— By Dr. Sandip Roy.

Resilience researchers say we should embrace diverse experiences to learn how to cope better in difficult times. And coping gets easier when you have emotional permanence.

Emotional permanence is your ability to retain and recall how an emotion, positive or negative, feels even when you are not experiencing it at present.

However, people with ADHD have an altered relationship with emotional permanence.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neuroatypical disorder that plagues millions of people with impulsivity, hyperactivity, and difficulty concentrating.

ADHD And The Struggle With Emotional Permanence

People with ADHD often have issues with emotional permanence, also called a lack of object constancy. They struggle to keep people’s presence, love, or intentions in mind once they’re out of sight.

This is better explained by poor working memory (including impaired prospective memory), executive‑function deficits, and emotional dysregulation that make it hard to sustain awareness of people or feelings without external cues.

They may also struggle to fully retain or recall past emotions. ADHD-related working memory and emotional dysregulation can make it harder to hold onto positive feelings and easier to get stuck in negative ones.

Low emotional permanence can contribute to difficulty keeping jobs and trouble maintaining meaningful relationships in ADHDers, though severity varies, and other factors also play major roles.

How ADHD Affects Emotional Regulation

People with ADHD cannot easily stay focused on an emotion for long. They find it hard to stay engaged emotionally during lengthy tasks.

For instance, they cannot stay focused on the conversation or continue feeling the same emotion (say, empathy) while a friend is talking for a long time.

Let’s explore this deeper.

Emotional permanence is a vital skill for regulating emotions. It lets us draw from past emotional experiences and apply them to the present, giving stability and resilience to our emotions.

But people with ADHD are not good at regulating their emotions:

• They have trouble directing and holding their attention, which makes it hard to control their task-focused emotions.
• They struggle with executive functioning skills — planning, organization, and decision-making — which further impairs their ability to manage emotions.

Lack of emotional permanence is a major issue for individuals with ADHD. So, they don’t always recognize that emotions are temporary and that they need to retain their emotional experiences.

As a result, they might switch away quickly from positive emotions or remain stuck in negative emotions.

These impulsive emotional responses and lack of attention can strain their relationships.

Did you know about the dark side of ADHD?

How Can ADHD People Develop Emotional Permanence

People with ADHD have these proven strategies to increase their emotional permanence:

1. Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness can help you develop better emotional control skills.

Regular mindfulness practice teaches us to be more aware of our emotions, while not becoming overly attached to any of them

• This lets us allow negative emotions to pass without triggering annoyance or violence.
• This also helps us savor the positive emotions more fully, as long as they naturally last.

• Book: The Mindfulness Prescription for ADHD: An 8-Step Program for Strengthening Attention, Managing Emotions, and Achieving Your Goals by Lidia Zylowska (Amazon).

2. Exercise and Physical Activity

Exercise can help manage emotions in those with ADHD.

Studies found that exercise can improve cognitive functions, attention, motor preparation, and emotional inhibition in people with ADHD. Exercise was also seen to boost mood, regulate emotions, and reduce inner tension in ADHD.

The neurochemicals released during exercise (dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor) could be responsible for this effect.

3. Social Support

Surrounding yourself with supportive friends and family members can be beneficial for managing emotions and improving overall well-being in individuals with ADHD.

4. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy) focuses on changing negative thought patterns and behaviors, and applying new coping techniques to real-world situations.

CBT can build sustainable behavioral changes in those with ADHD:

• CBT therapists guide patients to uncover the root causes of their ADHD struggles.
• They help ADHDers recognize and challenge negative thought patterns and self-beliefs that interfere with their daily functioning.
• CBT helps develop coping strategies and practical skills to manage their common struggles like procrastination, disorganization, and time management.
• It can improve their self-esteem, productivity, and overall happiness when used in combination with ADHD medication.

5. Prescription Medications

Medical doctors may prescribe certain drugs to help people with ADHD manage their impulsivity, improve their focus, and control their emotions.

10 Thought Patterns of An ADHD Brain

1. Fortune telling. Predicting that things will turn out badly.
2. Mental filtering. Seeing only the negative aspects of an experience.
3. All-or-nothing thinking. Viewing everything as entirely good or entirely bad.
4. Personalization. Blame oneself for negative events and downplay the responsibility of others.
5. Comparative thinking. Measuring oneself against others (often unrealistically) and feeling inferior.
6. Overgeneralization. Seeing a single negative event as part of a pattern, using “always” statements.
7. Magnification and minimization. Exaggerating minor issues while trivializing big accomplishments.
8. Mind reading. Thinking that one knows what others think about them or something they have done.
9. “Should” statements. Focus on how things should be, causing self-criticism and anger toward others.
10. Emotional reasoning. Assuming negative feelings reflect reality (whereas the truth is, our emotions are not always telling us the truth).

Final Words

Emotional permanence is a real challenge faced by ADHD’ers.

Despite this, with the correct support and resources, they can successfully manage the hurdles of emotional regulation and reach their full potential.

√ Also Read: How to Stop Self-Sabotage if You Have ADHD?

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» You deserve happiness! Choosing therapy could be your best decision.

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