How to Calm Your Anxious Mind

If your mind feels like a bag of popcorn, with worries popping up faster than you can catch them, you’re not alone. Anxiety and ADHD often travel together because worry, overthinking and rumination are more common in ADHD brains. You might also be more prone to anxiety if you’re constantly running on stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol,or fuelling yourself with caffeine and sugar. 

As a Clinical Psychologist specialising in assessing, diagnosing and supporting ADHDers, and navigating ADHD myself, I want to offer a compassionate, practical roadmap for calming an anxious ADHD mind. 

Here’s something important to hear: anxiety is uncomfortable, but not dangerous. 

Your anxious mind is shaped by your biology, your lived experience, and your nervous system wiring. You may have learned to look out for danger, trying to get ahead of criticism, mistakes, or the pain of failing. 

An ADHD brain processes the world quickly: fast thoughts, fast feelings, fast leaps into the future. Everything can feel intense and urgent. Your brain is not broken. And you don’t need to fight anxiety — the more you struggle against it, the worse it gets, like quicksand. 

Why Anxiety Feels Bigger When You Have ADHD 

One helpful way to understand anxiety is through the three emotional systems described in Compassion Focused Therapy: threat, drive, and soothing. 
 
1. The Threat System – your inner smoke alarm 

This system scans for danger, including emotional threat: criticism, uncertainty, getting things wrong, being judged or abandoned, and mobilises through fight/flight/freeze/appease. Your smoke alarm may be more sensitive - not because you’re “dramatic”, but because your brain is trying to protect you. 

When your threat system activates, you might notice: 

• racing thoughts and catastrophising 
   
• faster heartbeat, tightness, sweating or a dry mouth 
   
• irritability or snapping 
   
• shame, guilt or fear 
   
• an urge to escape or numb out 
   

Because ADHD affects executive functioning, the tools you normally use to settle yourself (logic, perspective, memory, problem-solving) are harder to access. It can feel like the thinking part of your brain switches off. 

2. The Drive System – your inner engine 

This system helps you act, solve problems, pursue goals, and get things done. When balanced, it brings motivation, vitality, excitement, and joy. 

But for many ADHDers, drive becomes fused with threat - you’re driven because you’re anxious and low on dopamine. You push harder to avoid feeling not good enough or to outrun the fear of failing, fighting hard starting or finishing tasks. 

This often leads to: 

• urgency and rushing 
    
• compulsive doing and difficulty stopping 
   
• perfectionistic tweaking 
   
• forcing yourself through shame or fear 
   

Eventually, you burn out and crash into procrastination or inertia, which then increases anxiety. And the cycle repeats. 

3. The Soothing System – your inner anchor 

This is the calm, grounded state where clarity returns. It’s more than the absence of danger — it’s a sense of safeness that activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the “rest and digest” response). 

It can look like: 

• steadiness and groundedness 
   
• feeling safe and connected 
   
• clearer thinking and intentional action 
   
• the ability to rest without guilt 
  

Soothing doesn’t make you passive - it helps you respond wisely, rather than react impulsively. But ADHD can make it harder to access this system, especially when threat and drive are dominating. 

 
The Pause Purpose Play® framework 

My signature framework is simple, ADHD-friendly, and effective for anxious minds. For more on Pause, Purpose, Play here.

1. Pause 

Pausing isn’t procrastination. It’s a mindful slowdown to help your nervous system settle so you can rest, recover, think more clearly, and act with intention. 

A pause interrupts the autopilot of anxiety and brings you back into the present moment. It can be as small as three deep breaths. 

Try: 

• planting your feet on the floor 
   
• placing one hand on your chest and one on your tummy 
   
• inhaling through your nose and exhaling slowly through your mouth 
   

If breathwork increases anxiety, try shaking instead: flick your fingers, shake out your arms and legs, and loosen your whole body as if shaking off water. 

2. Purpose 

Reconnect with what matters to you - the values and intentions you want to live by. Anxiety often pulls you away from your values because avoiding something scary feels easier than approaching it. Try to choose actions aligned with meaning rather than fear. 

Ask yourself: 

• What is my threat system trying to protect me from? 
   
• If I avoid this, does it take me closer to the life I want or further away? 
   
• What would I say to a friend feeling this way? 
   

3. Play 

This is about experimenting and playing around with what helps, with curiosity. When you’re stuck in a spiral of doom, you may need movement or sensory input to shift your physical state before your mind can settle. 

Ask: Do I need to upregulate or downregulate? 
 Do I need a burst of energy or a moment of soothing? 

Try: 

• shaking your body 
   
• dancing or walking to one upbeat song 
   
• a cold splash on your face or a warm hot water bottle 
   
• holding a textured or spiky object 
   
• a sour sweet or strong mint 
   

Calming Your ADHD Nervous System: What Actually Works 

Name it to tame it - label your thoughts as stories 

ADHD minds are brilliant storytellers. Thoughts like “everyone hates me” or “I’m failing at everything” can feel true, but they’re just stories. Labelling them helps you step back: 

“Ah, here’s the ‘I’m a failure’ story again, I know it well.” 

You don’t need to argue with the thoughts (that’s the quicksand again). Notice them, name them, and gently engage with something in the present moment.  
 

Remind yourself that you’re safe 

You might freak out because you’re picturing a worst-case future scenario that isn’t even happening yet and may never happen.  
 
Try anchoring yourself with: 

“That’s not happening right now. In this moment, I am safe, doing [whatever you’re doing, like sitting on a chair].” 

Compassionate motivation 

As self-criticism activates the threat system, it spikes your anxiety and floods you with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. You literally can’t calm your mind while attacking yourself. 

Try soothing yourself with: 

• “This is hard, and I’m doing my best.” 
   
• This is rejection sensitivity; I’ve felt this before.” 
   
• “I don’t need to push through; I can pause or ask for help.” 
    

When to Seek Extra Support 

If your anxiety becomes constant, overwhelming, or interferes with daily life, you’re not failing - you might need help. Therapy can help you to reframe unhelpful thinking, soften self-criticism, learn emotion regulation skills and accept yourself with compassion, and for some ADHDers, medication or hormone treatment can be useful to further calm the anxious mind.  

About the Author 

Michaela Thomas is a Senior Clinical Psychologist, author, and founder of The Thomas Connection. She specialises in compassion-focused approaches for ADHDers and anxious minds, helping people move from overwhelm to clarity with gentle, evidence-based tools. 

Michaela has created a free nervous system reset experience, which you can access here.

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