Why “Good Change” Still Feels Overwhelming When You Have ADHD

About this episode

David and Isabelle discuss the challenges neurodivergent individuals face during transitions, particularly moving, and offer insights on managing overwhelm.

This week, David and Isabelle unpack why moving can hit neurodivergent brains so much harder than people realize. Yes, there’s the obvious stress of boxes, clutter, visual chaos, and trying to remember where literally anything is. But underneath that, they get into the deeper part too: what happens when your routines disappear, your environment stops making sense, and even the tiniest automatic actions suddenly don’t exist anymore. Because this episode is really about more than moving. It’s about that awful, disorienting in-between where something is objectively good… and your nervous system is still like, “Absolutely not.” David breaks down why change itself can land as painful, why losing patterns can feel like losing your footing, and why so many neurospicy folks get slammed by overwhelm before the new environment has had a chance to make sense yet. And instead of just naming the problem, they get to what actually can help. The conversation gets into why your brain may need to physically build new patterns before anything feels manageable again, why body doubling can interrupt the buffering, why visual overwhelm matters more than people think, and how different neurospicy…

People in this episode

Hosts: David Kessler, Isabelle Richards

Topics covered

• ADHD
• neurodivergence
• change management
• overwhelm
• moving
• mental health

Keywords

• ADHD
• neurodivergent
• moving stress
• visual overwhelm
• routine disruption
• body doubling
• mental health

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