Why ADHD College Students Are Burnt Out

Dropped a— somehow like threw the knife over at my thumb and like I think I poked my bone. It hurts.

That is such an ADHD thing to do.

I do it all the time and my partner's just like, ah. I—

yeah, I do things like that all the time. Hello, hello, hello! This is Katie and Danielle with ND Out Loud and ND High. We are here talking about why college students are burnt out. Yeah, because they are. Or they may not start that way, but they certainly get that way fast, especially when you are neurodivergent. It happens so fast and you don't even notice until it's too late.

No, that's what I was gonna say. You don't even realize it's happening until it's too late.

Way too late. And it's— but I see adults do this too, so it's not just college students. You don't realize That you're hitting close to burnout until you're way over the edge of that and it's hard to recover from.

And you're having the meltdowns and you're freaking out and yeah, you don't know what to do.

Mm-hmm. So what are some ways— because Katie is the expert at this, though I might be the closest to in college as anybody on the team. I, I I am a professional college student with too many degrees and stuff, so I, I'm not going to input here. So what are some tips and tricks to help college students not— well, we don't notice we're burnt out until we're burnt out. So how do you overcome that and come back from that?

Oh, find your community. No, I mean, seriously, that's the— no, I mean Find groups of people that are similar to you, understand you, and can help you notice when you're starting to get burnt out. So like at ND Hive, you know, part of what we do is we check in on each other. You know, if someone's having a really, really bad day or a really bad couple of days, maybe like me, you know, we check in on each other and we brighten each other's day and We give each other grace when it's just not your time, and that's okay to take a few hours away or like a day away or whatever you need to recoup and then come back.

Stepping away, I think that's one of the bigger things that I had to learn, is it's okay to stop and go reset and then come back.

Yeah, because that's really hard.

Oh yeah, I'm over an overachiever, so it's way hard for me. I have such— even now, even though I tell clients not to do it, I still struggle with that. So what I mean—

I tell my clients to do it too, and I have trouble with it. It's really hard doing it for yourself unless you have a community of people that can catch you and help, you know, bring you to that awareness. Be like, you know, even if you're doing fine and, you know, you see someone's been on body doubling all day and you see they're working really hard, or maybe you see something different. You know, you just message, are you okay?

So today I normally am pretty still and sedentary. I'm body doubling. I've had 2 people message me today and go, are you feeling good today? In a positive way, because I'm up and around and not sitting at my desk and I'm all over the place because my pain level is really low today. And then I had 2 people remind me that Hey, I see you moving around a lot today. Are you going to burn yourself out and make yourself sore tomorrow? And that's why community is so cool, because we get to know each other so well that we can— we notice each other's tells of, oh my gosh, this isn't the same as normal. Why isn't it the same? How can we support you in the moment? And like yesterday, you were having a really rough day yesterday. And I shared that with a few of the other coaches, and everybody got together and sent her flowers because—

Yay.

Sometimes we need that physical representation of somebody cares, and other times we just need the Stitch meme of giving us a hug, and that's perfectly fine. Other times we need to tell somebody, sit your butt at your desk and get the thing done that you said that you wanted to get done. Whatever that is, having that community that gets you, it gets you in a way that's not like criticizing you for you. Yeah.

Yeah, because you guys could have easily criticized me for— I mean, it's probably not easy for you guys because you guys would never do that. But, you know, it'd be easy for someone to say, you know, see me in tears and crying and be like, call customer support, figure it out, and just get it done. But that would have never worked because I wasn't—

That's not what you needed.

That's not what I needed. What I needed was for someone to see me and for someone to tell me, you know, you need to step away today. And that's exactly what I did. You know, I saw the guy come and I was like, are you supposed to be here? And he was like, he was like, are you Catherine? And I was like, yes. And, you know, they give you the—

Yeah.

But you know that when your team gets you and they're able to help you step away or help you move forward with the next step of recovering, then that's really what you need.

And I think that's a big thing, is having somebody that understands what ADHD burnout looks like, who understands what an ADHD meltdown looks like, who understands what, what, what ADHD hyperfocus looks like, what What ADHD procrastination looks like. What— and when we say find your, your hive, find your community, that's what we mean. We don't mean find a community of other college students who are trying to get the same assignment done. Because you want to know what? If you're in a group and there's 20 of you and only one person is neurodivergent, that neurodivergent person is going to feel left out.

Yeah.

maybe hyper-focused on, like they're worried other people are watching them because they are fidgeting while trying to do it, or humming or doing whatever. You don't feel safe to fully unmask, which means then your brain isn't fully able to do the task at hand.

Right, right. You know, and I'm thinking back to college. I was in a sorority, and I think some of my worst study times where I knew, you know, my— I did really well going to our reading room in the library, but, you know, that was a little distance away from where I lived, and we had a study room in our sorority house. So a couple times I was like, I'm gonna study with my girlfriends, my neurotypical girlfriends, and I noticed myself always getting really, really mad, and I noticed myself yelling at them sometimes, you know, Can you guys just shut up? Can you guys be quiet? Like, if you guys want to talk, can you go outside and do it? Because they didn't understand, and I partly didn't understand, that we needed different things in order to study. We were all studying the same thing, but I think they needed to be able to rely on each other to do the assignment. And what I needed was to be able to unmask and have my brain and you know, be able to take long walks in the library, to be able to go up and down the stairs 10 times when I'm getting tired, to be able to get on a phone call with a friend and just forget studying for 10 minutes. And that was— and I didn't realize that honestly until now reflecting on it. And because it's really hard to say if you have a community, but like a social community It's really hard when they're like, oh, you know, let's all study together. And then you feel like— I felt nervous because I didn't know if it was going to work for me, and I felt like it wasn't going to work for me, and I did it anyways because I felt— because that was my community and I didn't want to be left out.

And we don't all need the same kind of community, which we have. We have our community, our main core community, and we have 2 different ways our community communicates. We have a silent body doubling and we have a very chaotic, not so silent body doubling. And Katie tends to, you tend to gravitate towards the silent body doubling. That's what you need. And we have a few people who do. And then we have Rebecca who bounces in and out of like 4 or 5 times a day sometimes, depending on what she needs for the task at hand.

Yeah.

And I will tell you, I always need chaos body doubling. I need that chaos. Once in a while I need the silent, but for the most part I always need chaos doubling. Yeah, because I can't think unless my mouth is going. Um, and other people are like, how can you have a conversation about this thing over here and be working on this thing over here and have it turn out? Like, how do you do that? And I'm like, if I don't do more than one thing at a time, it's not gonna happen.

Yeah. But if I have that noise and chaos, you know, I like that internal chaos, or, you know, for me it's internal creativity. Like, I like being able to bounce here, here, here, and here.

Yeah.

But if I hear something else, then that's frustrating, and I'm like, ooh, like, I— it gets me distracted. I'm like, I forget it's not good for my groove. But, you know, like you said, other tasks like cleaning, I like being, you know, but then that might be distracting to me. I don't know, but it's something worth trying.

And sometimes we have to, like I said, Rebecca bounces around all day long depending on what she needs for the task. And she's heard, she's worked with me for a few years now and she's learned what she needs in the task. And it depends on my day too, like my energy level, my hormone levels, where I am in my cycle. Like, what do I need today? And even for our male counterparts, we have one male counterpart that does not come into body doubling at all. He is very much part of our team, but he does not show up for that because body doubling is— He can't do it. It just is not gonna work for him, but that's okay. But man, he's jumping in with the memes and the snide comments and the sarcasm and the stupid videos and stuff when he needs that input.

Yeah, and the DMs, and he's there for the support.

Exactly, exactly. So how do you need support? And, and that's the big thing that college students need to learn Because you have to learn why you're burning out so that you can combat the burnout. Because you do not want to spend your whole entire college career burned out.

No, you're not going to make it. Or if you are, you're going to be like dead when you— yeah, sick, sick. Yeah, very sick. And you know, that's also a really good point is when you're working really, really hard and pushing yourself really, really hard, that's something that We forget that our body—we're not Superman—and we can't even if you're—I mean, I'm young and healthy, but I notice when I'm really, really stressed, like I get chronic back pain. I get arthritis in my neck. I—it starts to get like tense in my hips, and I start to feel really kind of like stuck and really tense and jittery, and. If that continues, you know, I wake up one morning and, oh, I'm feeling a little stiffly. Oh, my throat's kind of hurting. And I notice if I can take a little bit of a step back and, you know, take more deep breaths that day and maybe give myself a little more support and space to breathe and not stress myself, then, oh my gosh, I wake up the next morning, my throat's feeling a lot better. And it doesn't turn into a full-blown cold in the middle of the summer, which is terrible.

Very terrible.

Who wants to be wrapped up in blankets in the middle of the summer?

So I would say that one of the biggest things as a college student to really pay attention to is why are you getting burnout? Why are you sick? Why are you struggling?

Why are those instances when— what's the context around What are you doing? Where are you? Who are you around?

And that's going to be one of the biggest things. And even as adults, if you are an adult with something going on and you don't know what it is, start looking at why and what, what is the trigger. Is it that you're too warm? Is it that you're too cold? Is it that you haven't eaten? Have you not had something to drink today? Is it too loud? Is it too quiet?

Have you been outside today?

Have you been outside? Have you gotten yourself some sun today? We are very much like plants. We need to eat. We need to drink. We need to— we need our sun. We need to change our location, change our temperature. Sometimes we need to transition differently in between tasks. And that's all it is, is we need to give ourselves actual transition time in between tasks. You just need to take a look at why. Why? Why am I here right now? What is causing it? And if you can't figure that out on your own, Reach out to us because believe me, that list of questions I just asked you, I have about 9,000 more that I could ask to help you figure out why you're so burned out. Yeah, I know Katie does. Katie has some really specific ones that she asks for school and college and things like that specifically. So reach out to us, ask why, help us let you lead you through the process of asking why so you don't stay burned out. And you have to do it alone. You don't have to do it alone. And you can do it in a way with other people who get it so you don't have to explain.

And you don't have to feel shame.

No shame. No shame allowed here. I hope you learned something from this today. If you have any questions, reach out at the link below. We are happy— both Katie and I are always happy to answer all of your questions. You have an amazing day today.

And stay punchy.

Yes, stay punchy. I like that. Have a good one, everybody. Bye.