A nerdy deep dive into ADHD and Anxiety

Therapy in a Nutshell

Therapy in a Nutshell -Emma McAdam

Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Education, Health & Fitness:mental Health, Self-improvement

4.8 • 657 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Let’s talk about the link between Anxiety and ADHD—how executive function challenges fuel both conditions and how you can improve anxiety with an ADHD approach. Learn the skills to Regulate your Emotions, join the membership: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/membership Download the ADHD Anxiety symptom overlap chart: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/pl/2148705851 What is Executive Function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RoWB8tYLMM Are you ready for a nerdy deep dive into the brain differences (and similarities) with ADHD and Anxiety? Because I am! 😀 ADHD and anxiety share a ton of symptoms: racing thoughts, sleep problems, worry about forgetting something, and fidgety hands. But while they have a lot of the same symptoms, they do have some fundamental underlying differences in what’s going on in the brain, and a lot of it has to do with Executive Function…so let’s dive in and figure it out. Looking for affordable online counseling? My sponsor, BetterHelp, connects you to a licensed professional from the comfort of your own home. Try it now for 10% off your first month: https://betterhelp.com/therapyinanutshell Learn more in one of my in-depth mental health courses: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com Support my mission on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/therapyinanutshell Sign up for my newsletter: https://www.therapyinanutshell.com Check out my favorite self-help books: https://kit.co/TherapyinaNutshell/best-self-help-books Therapy in a Nutshell and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. Although Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the views expressed on this site or any related content should not be taken for medical or psychiatric advice. Always consult your physician before making any decisions related to your physical or mental health. In therapy I use a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Systems Theory, positive psychology, and a bio-psycho-social approach to treating mental illness and other challenges we all face in life. The ideas from my videos are frequently adapted from multiple sources. Many of them come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, especially the work of Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Russ Harris. The sections on stress and the mind-body connection derive from the work of Stephen Porges (the Polyvagal theory), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) Francine Shapiro (EMDR), and Bessel Van Der Kolk. I also rely heavily on the work of the Arbinger Institute for my overall understanding of our ability to choose our life's direction. And deeper than all of that, the Gospel of Jesus Christ orients my personal worldview and sense of security, peace, hope, and love https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe If you are in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or your local emergency services. Copyright Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to another episode of the Therapy in a Nutshell podcast. I'm Emma McAdam and I'm a licensed
0:05.6	marriage and family therapist. And this podcast is all about taking the life-changing, but usually
0:11.0	kind of complicated topics of therapy and boiling them down into simple, easy-to-understand concepts
0:16.8	that you can use in your daily life. If you find today's episode is helpful to you,
0:21.0	please pass it on to someone else who could benefit from it as well. Each podcast episode
0:24.8	comes from a corresponding video you can find on the Therapy in a Nutshell YouTube channel.
0:29.0	Also, these podcasts are educational and don't replace the advice or direction you may be
0:33.7	receiving from a therapist or other health professionals. Now please enjoy the episode.
0:37.9	What if your symptoms of anxiety are better explained as ADHD? But first, check out this
0:44.7	tree guys. It's a nice tree. It's got nice leaves. But this tree represents anxiety. Let's call it
0:51.8	the anxiety tree. Okay, that's such a bad joke. This tree is actually two different trees with two different roots. One of those trees is a lemon tree. And for today's video, that's going to be our tree that's rooted in anxiety. And the other tree is a lime tree. The leaves look the same. It still has anxiety leaves, but it's actually got
1:12.2	different roots. This tree is better explained as ADHD. Okay, up to 50% of people with ADHD
1:19.9	have an anxiety disorder. The symptoms can look super similar and they have a ton of overlap
1:24.1	from racing thoughts to difficulty sleeping to memory problems. Today we're
1:28.5	going to be talking about the overlap between anxiety and ADHD, the two separate
1:32.9	root causes and how brain differences might explain why this is happening. And of
1:38.0	course the whole point of this is if we look at some forms of anxiety as being
1:42.3	fueled by ADHD that gives us some great options for treating it.
1:47.0	When I learned the crucial role that executive function plays in processing emotions,
1:52.0	it completely changed how I manage my own anxiety and how I help clients.
1:59.0	Okay, do you know that feeling? Where your thoughts bombard you and everything feels awful and frightening and overwhelming?
2:04.6	We can describe this as anxiety, but it also sounds like ADHD sometimes.
	...

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