The ADHD ‘Success’ Trap: when enough is enough

Last week, ADHD Works won the ‘most diverse and inclusive’ brand of the Soho Works Future 50 Awards. As I accepted the award, I gave a speech which probably completely undermined all of my work for the last 2 years, because I said I had no idea how I’d done it.

This is the thing about ADHD - we do things, but we don’t always know how. We don’t plan them out in advance - they just happen. Then it becomes very difficult to look back and figure out what to do with them, or how to ‘enjoy’ them. This can easily result in a workaholic cycle, because we’re distracting ourselves from the uncomfortable feelings by doing more.

Success means nothing if you can’t enjoy it, and if you have no one to celebrate you. Throughout this year, incredible things have happened - from training Disney to consistently selling out ADHD coaching courses - and I’ve just sat in my pyjamas at home alone wondering why I don’t feel like I’m ‘supposed’ to feel.

Usually, my answer to this was to do more work, in the pursuit of finding something that will finally feel like I can relax - but this traps me in the cycle of creating impossible dopamine chases, just like 33% of workaholics with ADHD.

The last time I did this was last week, by creating a new course to train ADHD Works trainers. It was a pretty amazing feeling to realise that I’d set myself an extremely stressful deadline of 1.5 months to make and sell an entirely new course, alongside training 30+ ADHD coaches at the same time - and to decide to delay it to the summer.

I am by no means perfect, but in comparison to myself this time last year, where I was driven purely by my own self-created adrenaline and constant stress, I am much better.

Here's how I'd describe the ADHD 'success' trap:

1) You become anxious

I hate setting goals almost as much as I hate achieving them. This seems to be common with ADHD-ers, as setting goals means setting expectations upon ourselves. Experiencing Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria makes it highly likely that we may then beat ourselves up and talk ourselves out of any goals that we dare to set.

A lot of my goals have been set impulsively, and often on waves of strong emotions. For example, I ended up presenting to Directors of the World Health Organisation on RSD because someone told me it wasn’t academically verified enough to feature in my book. RSD has resonated with every single person I’ve ever coached, and the only reason it’s not an ‘official’ ADHD symptom is because the diagnostic criteria is so outdated - so I tried to find out how to change that.

So, often the work I’ve done is driven by emotions, and then I have to figure out what to do with it. I try to finish the work as quickly as possible, because I know I might get distracted or bored, but this means operating under intense anxiety and stress. Once it’s done, then we have to deal with the consequences - I cried for weeks after publishing ADHD: an A to Z and realising I’d misspelt it as ‘AHD’ on the cover!

Being exposed to more external judgement and the risk of ‘failing’ is also highly anxiety inducing, and the most ‘successful’ you become, the more people will have an issue with you - especially if you’re doing something new that disrupts the status quo.

2) You set yourself higher standards

Achieving these goals is scary, because they set new standards to beat yourself up with. I grew up hearing the message, ‘you can do it if you want to, you’re just lazy’, all of the time. My undiagnosed ADHD meant that I could do things like teach myself an entire subject the night before an exam and get an A in it, but couldn’t do my homework at home.

When ADHD Works celebrated its first year of business in the summer, I felt quite depressed, because I felt like I’d set myself impossible standards for the future. Having trained Disney 6 times and created them their own ADHD Champions programme, and trained and certified so many incredible ADHD coaches, I felt like there was no possible way of being able to replicate - or continue, this.

Then Google messaged the next day, and within a week I was chasing a new high that had appeared out of nowhere, writing an entire book in a completely self-imposed deadline of one month. Having ADHD means we can be constantly chasing after dopamine highs, moving our own goal posts where nothing is ever good enough.

At the start of the year, I hoped that 10 people would do the ADHD coaching training, but 25 did, setting us a new target to meet each time. If we don't define what is 'enough' for ourselves, we're letting other people decide this for us.

3) You become lonely

Having ADHD means we may struggle with self-awareness ourselves, so to even remember to tell other people about our ‘successes’ may be difficult in itself, let alone expect them to celebrate these if we can’t even celebrate them ourselves. We may also subconsciously be afraid they won’t be happy for us, so isolate ourselves on purpose to avoid even potentially feeling rejected.

Probably most significantly for me, is that I never want to make anybody else feel bad. As soon as I ‘succeed’ in some way, I feel worried about upsetting other people who do not have the same ridiculous sense of workaholism daunting their lives. The more ‘success’ we have, the harder it becomes to share this with anybody else, as we start projecting potential judgements or intentions from other people.

I’ve also isolated myself significantly because I find it very difficult to say no, and more people ask for stuff. Whether it’s random people I don’t know asking for a conversation about ADHD, or friends of friends asking me for coffee to talk about becoming an ADHD coach, it becomes harder and harder to trust people - and myself.

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as being a workaholic means only being able to talk about work, which is probably fairly boring conversation for anybody else. At various points throughout this year, I’ve been so stressed out by working 7 days a week that I found it impossible to make any kind of conversation that wasn’t about ADHD coaching, because it was all consuming. This resulted in me giving way too much away in relationships, because I didn't know how else to simply 'be'.

I've been extremely fortunate to have Beth Lewis by my side throughout the chaos of the last 2 years - without whom I seriously doubt anything would have happened! Although it has been incredibly lonely, having Beth there to talk to every day has reminded me that I am not as alone as I think.

4) You become depressed

These uncomfortable feelings can lead us to feel empty and aimless. If you feel nothing but anxiety if you’re not working, it’s easy to lose the purpose of it in the first place. It can be easy to let work take over your life and to self-identify with it, but your job is not who you are.

It’s not going to give you a hug when you're sad, and there will never be an end point - it will take and take from you until you’re burnt out and exhausted. The amount of money or sales or followers or products you have are all immaterial - there is only so much we can experience at one point in time.

Success can drive you into a hole of isolation where the goalposts are constantly shifting, and we experience this odd self of competitiveness and protectiveness alongside immense imposter syndrome. At several points in the last 2 years, I've had to take some time to reflect on the kind of person I was becoming, because it was making me feel numb.

Helping other people is fulfilling, but not if it's at the complete expense of ourselves. It's the best job in the world to be able to coach and support people to live life on their terms, but if that's all you do, you can easily become a ghost version of yourself, existing only to empower others.

How to beat the cycle

I am obviously not the expert on this, but this time last year, I spent months on end not leaving the house and working myself into oblivion, 7 days a week. In comparison, I have now experienced this magical concept of a 'weekend', and my life has changed dramatically, with a 3 week holiday in sight.

If this resonates with you, here's what I'd recommend:

1) Define when 'enough' is on your terms

In the world of phones and emails, it's easy to work 24 hours a day, from any location in the world. In our capitalist society, it's easy to just keep saying 'yes' to any opportunity, because why not?

However, our purpose in life is not to simply work. Work takes away from other areas of our life, like our relationships, or relaxation, or hobbies. We can try to blend these all together, but ultimately, we are still working. Deciding in advance what the end point is - whether that's your business, your goals, or simply your tasks for the day, will let you decide when to stop.

2) Define what 'work' is

Would you count reading this as work? How do you define work? For me, this is technically work, as is going on LinkedIn. I have 41k followers on here because I post most days, because it is my work.

It's easy to trick ourselves into thinking social media is 'relaxing', but it's still work - we're probably just not being paid for it! Getting clear on what is and is not work is immensely helpful to start to draw boundaries between things like checking our emails in bed and working throughout the night, because we can then set working hours.

3) Find other things in your life that make you happy

This is probably the hardest of all to do, because of the self-fulfilling prophecy of workaholism. Finding relationships or hobbies or adventures that are not work, and allowing ourselves to enjoy them and prioritise them, means that we can allow other focuses into our life.

It can feel more vulnerable to go for these things, instead of simply working, because they may not be as controllable as work. Caring about something - or someone - that we can't control is scary, because we have to trust instead. Breaking this addiction to work and attempts to create self-contained environments will be the best thing you can do, because you are ultimately not a human doing, you are a human being.

Prioritise relationships with people in your life, because success means nothing if you have nobody to share it with. This doesn't have to be romantic, but family, friends, anybody who you care about - and there will definitely be people out there who care about you. If you can't think of anyone, find them!

4) Get support like ADHD Coaching

I know its ironic for me to say, but I am really, really good at helping other people not exist as workaholics. A lot of my coaching revolves around slowing down and countering burnout, supporting people to set boundaries and take steps to break these cycles. We're often best at helping people with the particular problems we struggle with the most!

Getting support like ADHD coaching or a support worker from Access to Work can be life changing, because it's tailored to how your brain works. Having someone who 'gets' you and who can meet you where you're at, who you can trust to be honest with and share the realities of what's happening inside your head, is incredibly helpful.

For example, when Beth Lewis and I started working together, I had to tell her when I went outside each day! Having coaching from Jacqueline McCullough enabled us to figure out a routine to work together effectively, and I slowly stopped working 18 hour days by thinking about my future in an ADHD-friendly way and saying no to certain things.

5) Remember that you don't have to do it all

Being able to ask for help is a great strength, as is trusting others to actually help you. Delegating and saying no don't come naturally to impulsive, dopamine seeking brains, but we can develop these habits.

This time last year, I realised it was unsustainable for me to keep going the way I was, so I created an ADHD coaching training programme as an attempt to get some help. I never could have imagined ending 2023 with 13 coaches working in house at ADHD Works, and with individuals responsible for entire areas of the business (where my brain stops engaging, like finance or technology).

Being as specific as you can with people when delegating out, and taking the time to ensure they understand exactly what they need to do, will mean you can trust them to get the job done. Yes, it might feel 'easier' for you to do it all yourself, but this isn't actually sustainable or kind to others in the long run.

It might feel like if you don't do it all yourself this 'success' and identity you've created for yourself will disappear, but that isn't necessarily the case. Once we allow other people in, we can create a team and share this 'success' with others, making it meaningful, sustainable, and feel as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

I’ve been to the top of the mountain and know there’s nothing there but more mountains to climb. It never ends, so try to enjoy the climb instead of racing to get it all done as quickly as possible - you're already doing enough.

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To become an ADHD coach in January, head here. For coaching with ADHD Works , head here.