Episode 109: Regulating Our ADHD Emotions with Dr Tamara Rosier

With ADHD, it can be difficult to regulate our big emotions and feel calm, with everyday triggers causing us to feel dysregulated. We can see this show up in young children, but it can be shameful and guilt-inducing when we're adults. This week’s guest is Dr Tamara Rosier, author of one of my favourite ADHD books, Your Brain's Not Broken.

Dr Tamara has been a college administrator, a professor, a leadership consultant, a high school teacher, a national public speaker, and an ADHD coach. Through those adventures, she has developed valuable insight into ADHD and how it affects one’s life. As founder of the ADHD Center of West Michigan, she helps individuals, parents, and families develop an understanding and learn practical skills to live with ADHD effectively. Her book Your Brain’s Not Broken provides strategies for navigating the powerful, significant emotional aspect of ADHD healthily. 

During this week's episode, we spoke about 

• Our big emotions, being embarrassed and the shame we have around our emotional regulation.

• How to regulate our overwhelming emotions

• Prefrontal cortex 'butler' - how it calms and helps with sequencing

• The limbic centre is our anger, frustration controller

• 'Living on the grid' - four quadrants, solve it grid

• Burnout from constantly being in the red zone

• Making intentional choices to help our health and stress management. Such as diary management, delegating our butler tasks and borrowing people’s butler (neurotypical) brains

• Learning not to cram and live fueled by adrenaline and cortisol

• The importance of prioritising deep cleansing sleep

• Sleep is so important for our health - ADHD symptoms are exacerbated when we don't sleep enough.

• Learning to relax and transition from a busy day to downtime and sleep.

Have a look at some of Kate's workshops and free resources here.

Have a read of Kate’s articles in ADDitude magazine here