WTF Are Emotions? (Part 1 of 3)
ADHD in 5-Minutes: From Frustration to Understanding [#009]
If you ask most adults with ADHD to define "emotion," you'll get everything from a blank stare to a brilliant, winding story that would take an hour or two to tease apart. Most of us can name a feeling or two—"stressed," "pissed," "bored," "overwhelmed"—but describing what an emotion actually is? Not so simple.
There are many reasons for this: our theories on emotions are regularly challenged or are difficult to test, emotions can't seem to be precisely measured (because we struggle to agree on a definition), and differences in societal organization lead to very different conclusions about emotions (for example, collectivist cultures focus on group cohesion and compliance, while individualistic cultures focus on a subjective perspective and individual expression). It's for all of these reasons (and many more) that most people struggle to define "emotion," and it's an even smaller minority who can name more than three of them.
And yet, one of the most central and frustrating aspects of ADHD is emotional dysregulation. This is the experience of being swept away and left adrift by feelings that seem to come out of nowhere and linger for far too long. Despite emotion dysregulation being a core feature of ADHD, most of us haven't actually been taught what emotions are or why they get so out of control. It's no wonder we end up struggling so hard…
If you've spent your whole life believing emotions are just unhelpful overreactions or something you should try to control, then, unfortunately, you're not alone.
So let's start at square one by trying to define these mysterious states.
What Are Emotions, Really?
Here's a working definition I often use in my therapy practice:
Emotions are contextually-constructed biopsychological states that provide individuals (and communities) the necessary guidance and action potential to adaptively respond to a given situation. The experience of an emotion includes bodily sensations, physiological reactions, cognitive appraisals based on prior experience, and are deeply connected to sociocultural values and evolutionary needs.
This working definition is too technical, overly wordy, and hard to grasp, so let's break it down into something that's easier to understand.
To begin, we first need to address a common yet inaccurate misconception: your body and mind are not separate things; they never have been and they never will be.
I could rant for days about this last sentence, which is partially why this issue is a 3-part series, but for now I want you to suspend the belief that the body and mind are separate. As we build an easier definition to wield, please adopt the clunkier, more accurate term "body-mind" as we move forward. This blended term is important to grasp because emotions are a blended experience.
When something relevant happens around you, your body-mind generates a "state" that is a mixture of:
Physical sensations (e.g., heart racing, stomach dropping, shoulders tensing)
Physiological changes (e.g., shifted breathing rate, hormone releases, blood flow changes)
Mental assessments based on your past experiences (e.g., "Is this like that time when…?")
Action potential (e.g., urges to run, approach, fight, connect, hide, or explore)
The mixture of these different experiences is the body-mind's best attempt to indicate significance and promote action relative to individual and communal goals.
In short, emotions try to indicate significance and nudge us toward action.
With that definition, let's return to the technical definition quickly to break down how your body-mind does this:
Four Key Parts of Every Emotion
1. Contextually-Constructed
Your emotions don't exist in a vacuum and never have. They're built from your perceptions of what's happening in the moment, your personal history and experience, cultural background, genetic factors, and what your brain thinks this situation means. The same event can trigger completely different emotional responses in different people…because the "same event" means something different to each person experiencing it.
2. Biopsychological States
Emotions aren't just "in your head" or are "just physical"—they're both simultaneously. Your mind and body create emotions together. You cannot separate them.
3. Guidance and Action Potential
Emotions exist to guide you toward action. They are indicators trying to help you respond effectively to what's happening. Sometimes that guidance is spot-on, and sometimes it's too general to understand at first glance.
4. Individual and Group Functions
Emotions don't just help you navigate situations—they also communicate to others around you. Your facial expressions, body language, and ways you articulate what you perceive as significant help coordinate group responses and maintain relationships.
Why ADHDers Get Derailed by Emotions
Now that we know what emotions actually are, let's talk about why they feel so overwhelming for ADHD brains.
Remember, ADHD brains are hypersensitive to context. And if emotions are contextually-constructed, and your brain is constantly picking up on shifts in context, you're going to have more frequent and intense emotional responses.
So, more shifts in context end up overloading this guidance system.
When you're bombarded with information, and less is filtered out, your emotional guidance starts firing off more intense and conflicting signals. It's
Imagine using a GPS that recalculates routes every few minutes because there's 30% more information feeding into its calculations.
Eventually, you stop trusting the directions and likely end up feeling lost…
No Clear Direction = No Movement = Energy Stores Up
ADHD brains often get trapped in high-arousal states where it feels like you need to DO something, but you can't figure out what.
So, as the subheader says: if there’s no clear direction then there’s no targeted movement, and without movement our body-mind stores up the ‘action potential’ that accompanies emotion (as we wait for a clearer direction).
And if enough energy gets stored, it’ll leak out and look like restlessness, impulsivity, or feeling wired-but-tired.
Ok, let’s take a quick pause to note what most of us likely learned about emotions, and what we’re considering in this issue:
Most of us learned that emotions are:
“Good” or “bad”
Something we should ignore, and if we can't, then try to reason them away
Signs of weakness for expressing them, or a sign of strength for suppressing them
Unhelpful experiences that our ancestors needed, but we're more sophisticated now
But emotions could be:
Information about your current situation, circumstances, and needs/goals
Body-mind guidance to help us notice and respond to what is significant
Prompt you toward specific actions by generating urges
Experiences that can learned from and understood
For everyone, but particularly ADHDers, the learned belief that emotions are unhelpful, weak, or “bad” is particularly costly simply because we are likely to emotions more frequently and intensely.
And when you don't understand what emotions are or why they happen, you end up trying to ignore or fight against them instead of letting them help you.
The Key to Understanding Emotions
Even though it's part of the earlier technical definition, it is critical to learn that emotions are "contextually-constructed.”
Because it’s through that knowledge you can learn how to work with them:
Instead of trying to control emotions, you can learn to interpret the guidance they're offering by noticing what context is present (e.g., “what information is being considered here?”)
Instead of giving up when emotions are intense, you can start to recognize your brain as highly sensitive, which means small deliberate actions can shift things too!
Instead of seeing emotional (stored-up) energy as negative, you can recognize it then find healthy ways to discharge some of it
This understanding of emotions becomes the foundation for everything else we’ll explore in this series.
Coming Next: Emotions and ADHD “Symptoms”
In Part 2 of this 3-part series on emotions, we'll invest time exploring:
Why emotional states are wired to grab and shift our attention
How this wiring drive symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity
Zooming in on the two major circuits of the brain’s executive centers
How avoiding emotions actually makes them stronger and more disruptive
If you found Part 1 informative and want to get notified when Part 2 drops, please consider subscribing:
Until next time, sending good vibes your way.
Cheers,
Michael