ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Life & ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women
Aug 20, 2026 · 48 min · 11 segments
Nervous-system regulation in ADHD vs. emotional regulation in ADHD, what's the difference? This is one of the fascinating questions we will explore in today's episode. Dr. Roseann, author of *The…
Kelsey SpronkHostIt's everybody is talking about the nervous system, and, uh, me being Dr. Roseann the geek who gets her daily alerts from Google couldn't be more excited.
So what is the nervous system, right? Our nervous system, our, uh, it manages our stress response.
It does a lot of things, but we have something called an autonomic nervous system, and it's our stress management system.
So we have a, we don't have an unlimited capacity in our nervous system, which is why we're struggling, and I'll get back to that.
But w- our autonomic nervous system has a relaxed state, which is called a parasympathetic state.
You get into a hot tub and you're like, "Ah." That is going into a parasympathetic state.
Then we have sympathetic dominant, and so when a stressor happens, you're, you're about to miss an important phone call, and the phone's ringing, and you're running to it, your cortisol, everything will jack up, your adrenaline, and you go into a sympathetic dominant state.
And, and by the way, at the tippy top of sympathetic dominant, we have fight, flight, or freeze.
These are biological responses that your body perceives as stress, uh, danger.
If your body sees something as a threat, it's gonna go into fight, flight, or freeze.
Now, what's really happening is we are constantly adding stress to our stress cup.
So a- and just like you think about a regular cup, if you keep dripping things in, like before we got on, I realized that we weren't using video, so I said, "Hey, Kelsey, do you mind if I turn the lights off?" Because too much light, for me, causes my nervous system to overload.
And all of a sudden, all day, all these stressors build up in your cup.
It's everybody is talking about the nervous system, and, uh, me being Dr. Roseann the geek who gets her daily alerts from Google couldn't be more excited.
So what is the nervous system, right? Our nervous system, our, uh, it manages our stress response.
It does a lot of things, but we have something called an autonomic nervous system, and it's our stress management system.
So we have a, we don't have an unlimited capacity in our nervous system, which is why we're struggling, and I'll get back to that.
But w- our autonomic nervous system has a relaxed state, which is called a parasympathetic state.
You get into a hot tub and you're like, "Ah." That is going into a parasympathetic state.
Then we have sympathetic dominant, and so when a stressor happens, you're, you're about to miss an important phone call, and the phone's ringing, and you're running to it, your cortisol, everything will jack up, your adrenaline, and you go into a sympathetic dominant state.
And, and by the way, at the tippy top of sympathetic dominant, we have fight, flight, or freeze.
These are biological responses that your body perceives as stress, uh, danger.
If your body sees something as a threat, it's gonna go into fight, flight, or freeze.
Now, what's really happening is we are constantly adding stress to our stress cup.
So a- and just like you think about a regular cup, if you keep dripping things in, like before we got on, I realized that we weren't using video, so I said, "Hey, Kelsey, do you mind if I turn the lights off?" Because too much light, for me, causes my nervous system to overload.
And all of a sudden, all day, all these stressors build up in your cup.
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