Executive Functioning is a neurological process that enables us to get things done and is essential for thriving in life. Neurodivergent people are typically affected by underdevelopment in this area but poor executive functioning can also be experienced by those who have sustained head injury, chronic stress, grief, and trauma. Many of these challenges are experienced by those going through menopause as well.

‘Neurodiversity is an approach to education and ability that supports the fact that various neurological conditions are the effect of normal changes and variations in the human genome. ADHD, Autism, Dyspraxia, and Dyslexia all fall within the spectrum of “Neurodiversity” and are all neurodiverse conditions.’ https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

In the brain, the prefrontal cortex (the thinking part located behind the forehead) is responsible for directing our executive functioning, and there are 11 executive function skills that are developed and fine-tuned as we move through childhood, adolescence into adulthood. Struggling with executive functioning, can cause huge amounts of distress, stress, anxiety and overwhelm for neurodivergent people especially, as they try to live their lives, have relationships and meet their goals and expectations.

Executive Functions Skills that help us to get things done are defined as:

Response Inhibition 

This is the ability the think before you act or speak and can of course get you into a lot of trouble including arguments, breaking the law, risk taking behaviour, annoying people by butting in frequently, and causing relationship breakdowns. This is the cause of many accidents and could be one of the reasons, life expectancy is shorted for those with ADHD.

Working Memory

This is the ability to hold multiple pieces of information in mind at the same time….. such as listening to and following a set of instructions or remembering phone numbers. Those who struggle to listen to and follow directions somewhere will know this well, and you can see when under stress or under pressure the ability to focus on listening to instructions and remembering them becomes even harder.

Poor working memory may be one of the reasons people with executive function issues carry feelings of being stupid and unintelligent and can also contribute to feelings of overwhelm and frustration at not being able to remember important information.

Emotional Control

Emotional control not only includes the ability to control one’s emotional responses such as anger, frustration, injustice, sadness, jelousy or even over-excitability and joy. It may be very hard to not let other people’s behavior upset you and you may be labled ‘over sensitive’, ‘fragile’ and feel very emotionally vulnerable.

Emotional control is also about struggling to move through and past difficult emotions – becoming stuck in them and ruminating to the extent they can affect you for hours, days, and longer if not controlled. Emotional Control is another key function that can negatively impact relationships leading to falling out with people as well as isolation from people due to fear of being hurt / upset. For some, it may be the cause of violent behaviour as well as coping mechanisms such as self -harm.

Poor emotional control/regulation is one of the reasons why so many neurodivergent people experience so many feelings of shame and guilt which can compound already difficult emotions such as anxiety and depression.

Sustained Attention

Paying attention is easy when you are engaged, interested or it is fun and this is because the messages can connect much more easily in the brain when a person is feeling good, it takes less effort for the brain to focus. However, sustaining attention when things are boring, irrelevant or there are distractions in the environment can be extremely difficult for someone with ADHD or who is under chronic stress or emotional distress. Sustained attention is essential for learning, studying, and getting things done like paperwork and chores. Difficulties in sustaining attention may lead to giving up too early, not even trying or doing what is needed to be done as well as frustration leading to feelings of stupidity, blame, and laziness.

Task Initiation

This is the ability to start tasks or projects without procrastinating or without something more interesting tempting you into doing something else. Often people who struggle with this will operate brilliantly under stress, but this becomes a problem when this is the only way you can get things done – last minute and under pressure causing huge amounts of anxiety leading to burnout. Many people find this is easier when young but this strategy really can cause many physical and mental issues later on in life due to chronic stress, overwork (working too many hours to compensate), late frantic nights, and burning up too much adrenaline in the process.

Planning and Prioritisation

These skills require you to think in processes, to think of a goal in the future you would like to achieve, to create a set of steps to reach that goal, and to order things in order of importance and time urgency. A lack of these skills can greatly impact future planning and direction in life causing you to feel lost and rudderless as well as stressed and overwhelmed by knowing what you would like to do but struggling to make it happen and by having so many things that seem ‘urgent’ but not know which ones are and aren’t. This can lead to feelings of overwhelm, stress, and failure as well as stuckness and letting yourself and everyone down.

Organisation

The ability to create and maintain systems in order to keep track of belongings and information. Disorganisation can make you feel overwhelmed and stressed by missing appointments, being late, missing trains, and losing important things like keys, wallets, and phones. There can be feelings of shame especially among neurodiverse women who believe they should be organised and on top of things which is made more difficult when you have a family to care for. Disorganisation may also lead to relationship breakdown as birthdays, meet-ups and the shame of a messy home can impact on people feeling you don’t care and don’t make an effort. There is a lot of shame over disorganisation as this is one of the unspoken rules that is deemed essential to being a respected adult and is not a quality anyone finds endearing.

Time Management

Many people with ADHD have issues with time due to time blindness – an inability to understand or ‘feel’ the passing of time. This can cause issues with under or overestimating how long something will take, struggling to meet deadlines, and being late. Again, this can cause a lot of stress and anxiety, especially at work. Interestingly many people with ADHD may compensate for this struggle by always being super early…. We can see that disorganisation + time blindness + poor planning = chaos inside and out.

Goal-Directed Persistence 

An essential skill in life and society and revered in the self-development world where having goals, working towards, and ‘smashing’ them is seen as essential in order to ‘be the best version of you’. Those who struggle with visualising a future goal, struggle to create the steps needed to achieve it, and struggle to maintain motivation especially when not feeling good, may feel a huge sense of failure and sadness that they are not able to achieve the things they know they are capable of. This is compounded by observing others who seem to be reaching their goals so easily when you just can’t quite do it due to the amount of internal effort involved. This can lead to either just not bothering in the first place as it’s easier to feel you can’t, OR being in a cycle of persistence and failure leading to burnout and depression. Those with ADHD also have issues with patience and can be all-or-nothing thinkers…. Therefore, coming up with huge goals that take time to work towards really is setting you up for failure as no big goal is reached within a day!!!

Flexibility

Being mentally flexible means that you are able to be adaptive when things change, you are not wobbled as plans or situations change or when there are setbacks or you have made a mistake. Flexibility is important as it enables you to go with the flow rather than needing things to be exactly as planned pitting you in a stress response. Flexibility also helps you to learn from your mistakes and find different solutions. It is also important in relationships as it helps you see things from other people’s point of view. Inflexible thinking may lead to unhelpful beliefs about the world, people, and situations. Emotional responses to inflexibility may be anger, frustration or emotional withdrawal as may underline feelings of needing to be in control.

Metacognition

Meaning self-awareness – having the ability to observe yourself from the outside within a situation so you can modify or adapt your behavior to suit the needs of the person or situation as well as self-reflection afterwards. This is an important skill as it provides important feedback as to how we are doing, and how we are coming across and also helps us to look at ways we may improve so we can be and do better. Many neurodivergent people especially those with ADHD and have been heavily criticised may have a very critical self-reflective lens and may struggle to see what they did well, focusing only on what went wrong. This lens of course can lead to anxiety and depression where you cannot see or acknowledge your achievements.

Negative Emotion Feedback Loop

As you can see these ‘skills’ are essential in every area and aspect of life from work to relationships, and in order to make our lives more fulfilled. When we struggle with our executive functioning it can impact our emotional well-being generating feelings of failure, embarrassment, shame, anxiety, overwhelm, and distress at not ‘functioning’ as a human/adult is expected to within a society that heavily values productivity and ‘keeping your shit togetherness’, especially in the UK where women especially are expected to be organised, emotionally together (not too angry / not too excitable / calm and serene and able to multitask for everyone as well as themselves.

The issue with this is that these feelings when you are not able to be or do what is expected of you, feeds into a destructive feedback loop as the emotional brain (the reptilian brain) blocks the thinking brain (prefrontal cortex) from working resulting in further executive function challenges and then compounding more feelings of distress.

Everyone will relate to executive function challenges as I have said stress, trauma, perimenopause can all affect the functioning of the prefrontal cortex and you hear this is one of the main things you hear menopausal women freak out about most – forgetting things and feeling in chaos.  For those whose frontal lobe is developmentally different, neurodivergent people struggle with these challenges every hour of every day, and the extent to which they are in or out of control or manageable or completely scrambled mostly comes down to how much control you have over your nervous system and are able to control the flight, fight, freeze response helping the brain to function better.

Therefore, in order for the executive functions to operate as best they can so we can thrive, managing our lives so we are feeling emotionally stable is essential.

The GREAT NEWS is that all is not lost for those struggling with the neurological process of executive functioning. Due to our AMAZING biology, advances in neuroscience confirm that we all have the capacity and capability of building and improving our executive function skills due to neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change and adapt.

With the right support, guidance, and encouragement as well as having the flexibility of mind to believe we CAN change, we can improve our executive function skills with practice, determination, and loads of self-compassion

If you struggle with Executive Function Skills challenges, the following may help:

• Environment – think about the environment you spend most of your time in – usually home and work, including the different environments you need to do different activities in. Sometimes you may need a quiet space with zero distractions, for something else you may need loud music to get you going
• Nutrition – our brains are affected by what we eat and when we eat, in order for our brains to function well we need good nutrition including high protein and omega 3 diet, eating regularly helps maintain blood sugar levels for focus
• Stress management – stress management is essential for anyone struggling with executive functions and neurodivergent people tend to have higher levels of anxiety and stress than non neurodivergent people. Anything that helps you move out of fight or flight and into a state of calm will help your brain to work better.
• Sleep – sleep is essential for helping the brain function and work, because executive functions can take a lot of effort to harness controlling them can be tiring. Therefore, prioritising sleep AND rest and down time is crucial.
• Body doubling / accountability – having a body double or someone you can be accountable to can be a real game changer for getting things done.
• ADHD Coaching – can help you to work out your areas of struggle, can help you make a plan, work towards the plan / goal and stick to it as well as helping you to embed constructive habits that can help you thrive in life and work.
• Holistic Therapies – to help with stress, anxiety and overwhelm and the impact of emotions on the physical body

If you can support your executive functions you will improve your overall emotional well-being as you start to feel more in control and more fulfilled.

As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, and who is supporting neurodiverse children, I am now doing my Executive Function Coach Training which is super exciting….. more info to follow….

What is your Executive Function Profile?

You can check out your Executive Function profile on the Connections in Mind website here