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 show up to help us navigate obstacles and let us know if we're getting closer or farther away from things we need or want.

There's plenty more to be said about emotions, but that's pretty much our best understanding of them: they 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.

ADHD brains are hypersensitive to context. Remember, emotions are contextually-constructed. If your brain is constantly picking up on shifts in context (i.e., environmental changes, social cues, and difficulty filtering irrelevant information), you're going to have more frequent and intense emotional responses because context is changing more rapidly for you than neurotypicals.

The guidance system gets overloaded. When you're bombarded with information that is harder to filter out, your emotional guidance starts firing off warning signals (because, perceptually, there is a more complex set of obstacles ahead). It's like having a GPS that recalculates routes every few minutes because there's a stream of less relevant information constantly feeding into its calculations. Eventually, you stop trusting the directions and just feel lost…

Your action potential builds up waiting for a clear direction. ADHD brains often get trapped in high-arousal emotional states where it feels like you need to DO something, but you can't figure out what. This shows up as restlessness, impulsivity, or the feeling of being "wired but tired." Your body-mind stores up energy until a clear path emerges…sometimes waiting until opportunities pass you by.

What We Should Have Learned Instead

Most of us learned that emotions are:

• Good or bad, positive or negative

• Something we should ignore, and if we can't, then try to reason them away

• Signs of weakness (for expressing them) or strength (for suppressing them)

• Unhelpful experiences that our ancestors needed but we're more sophisticated now so they can be discarded or dismissed

But emotions are actually:

• Information about your current situation (interpreted based on prior experience)

• Body-mind guidance to help us notice and respond to what is significant

• Prompt you toward specific actions by generating urges

• Experiences you can learn to understand and work with rather than control

For ADHDers, this misunderstanding is particularly costly because our emotional systems are more active and sensitive. 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.

Context: The Key to Emotions

Even though it's part of the earlier technical definition, learning that emotions are "contextually-constructed" is critical to understanding them. Because it’s through that understanding 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 (i.e., “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 it can be more intentionally influenced by you)

• Instead of seeing emotional energy (that stored up action potential) as negative, you can find healthy ways to discharge some of it so it doesn’t burn you out

This understanding becomes the foundation for everything else—including why traditional "think your way out of it" strategies often fail for ADHD brains, and why you need different approaches when your system becomes overwhelmed, shuts down, or gets stuck in a loop.

Coming Next: Emotions and ADHD Symptoms

In Part 2 of this 3-part series on emotions, we'll invest time in figuring out:

• Why emotional states are designed to shift our focus and, for ADHDers, how they drive symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity

• The difference between "hot" and "cold" executive brain circuits

• How avoiding emotions actually makes them stronger and more disruptive

I'm currently putting together Part 2 and hope to post it later this week. If you found this informative and want to get notified when the next issue drops, please consider subscribing!

Until next time, sending good vibes your way.

Cheers,
Michael