What Is Emotional Overcontrol? A Guide to Overcoming Perfectionism in ADHD Women
The goal of every overachiever is to be the best. The best parent, spouse, boss, sibling, friend, neighbor. The best at parking, baking, crafting, cleaning, gift giving. The best.
But with ADHD, it can be hard to stay on top of your monster to do list so you can hit your high standards (standards, btw, that are usually based on your kickass ability, not just pie-in-the-sky dreams). .
Oftentimes, navigating the gap between what you know you can do (and expect yourself to do) and what actually happens creates some tricky strategies. So instead of having the original issue (I can’t seem to get my to do list crossed off), you have a different issue (even though my to do list is crossed off, I don’t feel like I can rest).
Maybe you’ve been smiling through the stress with a perfectly cultivated mask for so long, you feel like it’s not even a mask on. It’s just your face. You’re wondering, “am I stuck feeling this stressed all the time?” or “how does my ADHD cause perfectionism?”
It can make you feel stuck, stressed, and isolated.
Buckle up butter cup - today I’m going to share everything you need to know about emotional overcontrol, how it triggers perfectionism in women with ADHD, and how to treat emotional overcontrol as a way of overcoming ADHD perfectionism. And don’t worry - at no point will I ask you to aim lower, try a new system, or just use “mindfulness.”
Keep reading for more!
What Is Emotional Overcontrol?
Emotional Overcontrol is the pursuit of total self control over your emotions - inhibiting emotions, suppressing emotional expression, and lowering emotional awareness.
At first it sounds innocent enough. Emotional overcontrol aims to have mastery of your emotions and a total control over your feelings. For women with ADHD, that can sound like a silver bullet. Controlling impulsive emotional outbursts, regulating feelings that seem way too big, and looking like you have it all together can be the dream.
But emotional overcontrol isn’t just self discipline or self control. It sets any person up for failure, regardless if they’re neurotypical or neurospicy.
Emotions are a complex cascade of neurological phenomenon in the body. We never have perfect control over our feelings. So pursuing complete self discipline over your emotional world will only end in frustration, self doubt, and ultimately shame.
Because we can never have perfect control over our emotional experiences, emotional overcontrol asks us to have perfect control over our emotional expression. Specifically, to borrow language from our favorite ice princess - conceal, don’t feel, don’t let it show.
Never let them see you sweat.
Smile through the stress.
Keep your messy feelings all inside, behind a perfectly curated overachieving mask.
Why Is Emotional Overcontrol Important in Overcoming Perfectionism for ADHD Women?
Statistics show that women are far more likely to be perfectionists than men - 72% of women compared to 65% of men in a 2022 study.
Perfectionism is an adaptive strategy for women in a patriarchal society. In order for us to survive and thrive, we have to hit unrealistically high standards. One way to make that happen in real life is to embrace those standards and push yourself to super-human feats. Having it all, if you will.
It makes sense that perfectionism is frequently observed in women with ADHD. Women with ADHD are trying to channel their unique neural networks into typical society - a square peg into a round hole at times. If perfectionism helps women stay safe and even be successful when they’re neurotypical - then it’s definitely a strategy women with ADHD can hyperfocus on.
Emotional overcontrol is the heartbeat of perfectionism.
t’s not just high standards, ruthless self judgment, or anxiety spikes. It’s a desire to control the uncontrollable - your emotional landscape.
If the kitchen was sparkling clean everyday, then you’d feel relaxed.
If your work emails were always checked and filed just so, then your boss would be ecstatic and you would feel proud.
If only there was a workout routine that allowed you to get in amazing shape in short bursts of time, then you could feel confident.
It’s not just the rubric. Perfectionism is trying to guarantee positive emotional outcomes. And that unfortunately is not part of the human condition.
And here’s the really nasty party - perfectionism is sneaky.
It’s easy to beat yourself up, believe that you and your ADHD are the real problems, and then double down on the emotional overcontrol. Triple down on the perfectionism. It’s a vicious cycle.
By focusing on emotional overcontrol specifically instead of perfectionism generally, you can unlock an incredibly effective tool kit for releasing yourself from this toxic trap.
This way, you will overcome ADHD perfectionism in the process of working through your emotional overcontrol, instead of feeling stuck reverse engineering it.
Also, emotional overcontrol gives you an entirely different perspective on your perfectionism so you can begin focusing on tactile helpful skills instead of vague self help principles.
That means you’re not going to have to spend hours on a meditation app, writing positive self affirmations, or add some vague ‘self care’ to your entirely too long to do list.
Examples of Emotional Overcontrol in ADHD Woman
If Emotional Overcontrol sounds confusing, I get it. It’s a little therapese/jargony.
The term comes from Dr. Thomas Lynch’s research (which means it’s backed by some serious brain power), but it still has that stiff sciency feel to it.
So I put together the examples below to break it down for you so you can easily identify emotional overcontrol in your ADHD experience.
Smiling when Stressed
This is as simple as it sounds - putting on a smile when you’re feeling stressed out.
Although this may seem like a totally normal thing to do, maybe even polite - but it’s actually a confusing social signal that can confuse the person you’re talking to and make them feel ill at ease.
Plus, it causes more stress in your own body.
Suppressing your stress response can keep the stress alive in your body much longer than is comfortable. It sounds like a small habit, but it can create havoc in your nervous system.
That means struggles digesting food, sleeping well, controlling body temperature, and an impaired immune system can all stem from excessive stress staying in your body.
Frequent Social Comparison
Social comparison is the only way you can know if you’re ‘hitting the mark.’ The more you compare, the faster you can figure out if you’re performing well, or hopefully performing exceptionally well.
That’s where feelings of inadequacy, self doubt, and the overthinking “oh my gosh, are they mad at me?” spirals come in.
Perfectionism says you get to feel safe and like you belong if you do it all, and do it flawlessly, and do it without a single bead of sweat. But how do you know what “all”, “flawlessly”, and “sweat” mean without looking around at what others are doing?
Social comparison is often how women with ADHD learn that they aren’t neurotypical. That ability to discern differences helps them adapt to situations and become highly successful. But it also can come at a big cost -
Knowing it’s ok to be you.
Obsessive Planning
The more you can create rules, structure, and routine, the easier it will be to feel competence, confident, and calm.
That’s where obsessive planning and rehearsal come in.
Obsessive rehearsal is where you act in a small play in your own head - you script out what you’re gonna say, what they’re gonna say, and then how you’ll respond.
For example:
You’re in the shower, thinking about the meeting scheduled for the morning. You’re mouthing the playful opening joke, and then how you can segue into the data you need to present. You’re imagining your bosses faces, and their questions. Planning a smooth response. And then suddenly you realize you’re actually in your shower still, feet red from the heat of the water.
Rehearsal can be helpful… obsessive rehearsal can make it hard to live. Or handle the actual meting when a boss asks a question you didn’t prep for. Life is more improv than stage craft anyways.
Related Post: 4 Beliefs About Productivity That Are Secretly Sabotaging Your Rest
Tips for Overcoming ADHD Perfectionism
Now that we know why emotional overcontrol is at the heart of perfectionism, here are a few tips on healing emotional overcontrol to help you maximize your ADHD perfectionism recovery.
First, Embrace Learning
To achieve the find the best blend of adaptive self control and the creative magic of your ADHD, you have to continually commit to learning.
When you look at mistakes as inevitable parts of a learning process, you effectively take those in stride.
There’s no need to beat yourself up, and now you have some info on how to approach it differently. That’s flexibility.
I’m talking about experiential learning, which has a standard process:
When you’re struggling in that conscious incompetence place, the way to make peace with your high flying abilities and desires is to embrace that learning step. You don’t get to expert level without a moment in ‘what the hell am I doing?’ Now you can know you’re at one step in the journey.
Next, Embrace Kindness
Okay - before you roll your eyes, notice I didn’t say “be kind to you.” I know that if you knew how to be “nice” to you”, you’d have already done it. Part of perfectionisms allure is that you get to be kind to yourself when you hit those rubrics.
So how can you embrace kindness without hanging up a nauseatingly sweet affirmation posted on your bathroom mirror? Embracing an ancient meditation phrase - the loving kindness meditation.
There is a lot of evidence for how the loving kindness meditation can create feelings of warmth, openness, and calm.
Applying this practice to perfectionism requires a slightly different approach - instead of wishing yourself happiness, health, and peace, you can wish this for different aspects of yourself.
For example:
May my anxious mind be happy
May my anxious mind be healthy
May my anxious mind be at peace
By wishing your anxiety, your worry, or the tension in your chest happiness, health, and peace you can have the benefits of this practice without the self-help hang ups.
Finally, Embrace Play
Overachievers prefer performance - we wanna get sh*t done. After all, that’s how we feel good about ourselves and get recognized by others.
But if you really want to be able to accomplish amazing things AND actually enjoy your life, you really can’t overlook this crucial element.
First, what do I mean by ‘play’? Play is any activity that involves curiosity, creativity, and enjoyment. Notice I use the word ‘activity’ - watching The Residence on Netflix can be enjoyable and spark your curiosity (is it Harry Hollinger???), but you are not active. Nor are you using your creativity. Think exploring a new hiking trail, cooking a new dish, learning an instrument, or (my personal fave) crafting.
Play also encourages perfectionists to engage in learning on their terms. When you’re learning how to play a new piece on the piano, it’s inevitable you’ll make mistakes. That’s what practicing is for. By practicing Claire de Lune, you’re also practicing moving through conscious incompetence into conscious competence, strengthening that neural pathway.
Don’t believe me? Listen to what Anita Collins has to say on the subject!
And if the idea of play makes you feel hesitant or skeptical, consider the neurological benefits, especially for women with ADHD:
Decrease in cortisol (goodbye overwhelm)
Increase in dopamine (hello excitement and satisfaction)
Increase in oxytocin (hi warm fuzzies)
Increase in GABA (hey calm nervous system)
Increases our ability to self soothe
Practice integrating your entire brain
Not only that, but play can rewire the prefrontal cortex, making it easier to regulate emotions and engage in long term planning. These are two key areas that trigger perfectionism in women with ADHD
One thing you can do is re-engage in an old childhood hobby - playing piano, taking a dance class, or breaking out the old crochet hook.
Grab my free guide to knitting for healing anxiety here.
Start Overcoming ADHD Perfectionism Today
I hope this guide on emotional overcontrol has been helpful. If you take anything away from this guide, remember that if you want to overcome perfectionism related to your ADHD, you need to wrestle with the beliefs about control and feelings that made perfectionism a no brainer coping skill.
The best way to heal your emotional overcontrol is to start with embracing the entire path of learning, that way you can set yourself up for enjoying your whole life, not just the ticked check boxes.
If that still sounds like I’m asking you to run a marathon when you’ve only just downloaded the Couch to 5k app, I get it. I’ve been there. And so have dozens of my clients. This is what makes therapy a helpful next step.
If you’re reading this and you’re a perfectionist and a woman with ADHD, I know you’re probably thinking “I can hack this together. I can figure this out on my own!” And you totally can.
I just know that you will feel better and make progress faster if you have a seasoned guide like me to help you. If you live in South Carolina and you’re an anxious woman who resonates a little too much with the ADHD memes you keep seeing on your Instagram… then maybe it’s time to chat.
Schedule Your Free Consult Call Now
Stitch by Stitch
Now that you know the ins and outs of emotional overcontrol and perfectionism, it’s time to find your play space.
If you don’t know where to start, may I humbly suggest - knitting. I have a entire guide breaking down why knitting is so good for the anxious brain, how to start knitting, and a selection of patterns uniquely suited to soothing your nervous system and engaging in playful knitting.
Stitch by Stitch has everything you need to begin using yarn (yes, really, yarn!) to naturally heal your anxiety and perfectionism.
