Hello, I am your neurofabulous friend, late diagnosed ADHD, and today I'm talking about everyone's favourite festive tradition, trying to survive a holiday party without crying in the bathroom or pretending you suddenly like Secret Santa. So today we're going to kind of unpack why the holiday season is so stressful for autistic ADHD and ADHD brains. We'll look into the science behind sensory overwhelm, masking fatigue, emotional whiplash, the microaggressions that tend to come out once the tinsel goes up, but hopefully by the end of this video you'll understand what's happening in your nervous system, why you're not imagining it, and practical ways you can actually protect your energy these holidays.
So hi, I'm late diagnosed autistic ADHD woman. I work in safety and risk and well -being in complex places. I spend my days helping others understand stress responses and especially safety in the workplace. For myself, I am always masking, I've got a tonne of executive dysfunction and I love to focus in on psychological safety. So I know both personally and professionally that December does our brains a little number because I live it and I also research it. So if you want to help navigating December, you know, give us a subscribe. I would be so excited. I also wanted to mention that for Black Friday we now have beautiful cool merch, the entire site is filled with it so go over and have a look. And also releasing a book in December literally all about this. So if you need a secret Santa gift, this is the one. Secret Santa yourself up.
All right, let's get into why the season hits us all in the wrong places. So for autistic and ADHD brains, routine is one of the strongest regulators of the nervous system. Research constantly shows that when routines break down, anxiety and stress increases, holidays flip everything. Sleep changes, work hours shift, food patterns change and our calendar fills with unpredictable events. The amount of events I have to go to in December, I can't. For ADHD brains, this means more executive load. For autistic brains, this removes predictability and for ADHD brain, we get both at once. So many studies describe November to January as a period where executive dysfunction spikes because the level of planning, coordinating and decision making is significantly higher. That's before you add travel, people staying in your house or the pressure to be cheerful even when you're exhausted. So if this is already resonating with you, please hit the subscribe button because my entire channel is dedicated to helping neuro divergent professionals live and work in ways that fit your brain.
So give us a like, share this around. I would love for other people to come into this community. So holidays, like the holiday environment, are full of sensory events. Bright lights, flashing decorations, loud music, competing conversations, perfume, the smell of eggnog, cooking smells, crowded rooms, like it is a nightmare when you think about it from a neuro divergent perspective. Research on autistic sensory profiles show that overwhelm occurs when sensory input exceeds what the system can filter. And that's why shutdowns and meltdowns increase at this time of the year. It's not a personality flaw, it's a neurological response to a tonne of input. Parties are some of the worst spaces for this. You're often stuck somewhere, loud, crowded, without control over the environment.
The holiday season creates the exact conditions that overload autistic brains. So masking and social performance. On top of that, holiday gatherings demand a certain kind of script from us. Be cheerful, be social, make small talk. Join in! Yay! Masking. You can see I'm already excited. Dead. Live, laugh, dead. Masking research shows that autistic adults often camouflage heavily in social settings and this is linked to burnout, anxiety and emotional exhaustion. December is full of situations where the safest option is to mask. Office parties, partner events, extended family gatherings. You can spend weeks performing a version of yourself to avoid judgement. So let's talk a little around microaggressions at parties. Holiday events create perfect conditions for microaggressions. Alcohol loosens social filters and people ask intrusive questions. Others may make comments that seem harmless to them, but land as invalidating for you. And classic examples include, oh but you don't look autistic.
We're all a bit ADHD. You're just being so sensitive. If it's really that hard for you, why are you so social today? Um yeah. So as someone who has come up with a couple of strategies which I will share in a bit. Research shows that these microaggressions accumulate and affect mental health. Many autistic adults describe them as emotional paper cuts. They kind of build over time and they're not small and they're not harmless. They reinforce stigma and misunderstanding. Also if you want some scripts for responding to these without having to educate everyone at the party, head over to the freebies site because there's tonnes of scripts and one-liners and things you can keep on your phone and just make it easy for yourself so that when you are spiralling out, you've got something just available to you to help you out. So for ADHD, this time of year also ramps up emotional dysregulation. Studies show that both autistic and ADHD profiles have heightened responses to perceived judgement or rejection. We know. We've had this conversation previously in rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, which is an entire different chapter.
So go have a read of that if you want to understand this a bit more. But mix that with family opinions, workplace gossip, alcohol, festive pressure and the recipe for emotional whiplash. I wish it was emotional whipped cream but it's not. Many of us walk into December already carrying the weight of being misunderstood. Seeing relatives who commented on your behaviour as a child or colleagues who don't get your communication style, that can re-trigger a lot of old memories of shame or criticism and it's completely normal for your nervous system to feel overloaded before you get to the event even. So, a couple of strategies. Now, I'm going to start with my first one. I hide myself in the kitchen. So I'm not terrible at cooking. So I will go and hide in the kitchen and cook all the things and then I can sit in the kitchen with my headphones on and I can be cooking and I'll be like, watching a show while I'm cooking to get myself entertained.
And then I can focus on what I'm doing and I'm not really in the thick of it, which I don't hate, which helps me. But that's, again, just me. If you're terrible at cooking, maybe that's not the plan for you. But we have some other strategies. So, sensory support strategies. Use pre-planned sensory management. Bring earplugs. Choose comfortable clothes. Seat yourself at the edge of the room rather than the centre. For me, I always position myself with my back towards the door because I don't like people coming up behind me. It freaks me out. So I like to position myself so that I'm almost like escape route. These are definitely supports that regulate that kind of sensory system.
If you're staying with family, create a quiet space. They don't even need to know about it. But even five minutes of reduced sensory input can help reset the system. So also helping managing masking and what you're doing in that space. It's unrealistic to mask everywhere. So choose when and where you decide which events really matter socially or professionally and where you can be more yourself. Research shows that intentional masking rather than constant automatic masking helps reduce burnout. So also create an exit plan. Have a phrase you can use when you hit your limits. Something as simple as, oh, I just need a moment of quiet is enough. You don't need to justify yourself. Talking about microaggressions. Oh my God, the idea of conflict. I can't. You do not need to engage with every comment. Research suggests that preparing low energy responses helps reduce cognitive load.
And as ADHD, I love a script just saying. There's no one way that autism looks. Oh, I'm pretty comfortable with my diagnosis. Let's talk about something else. If you don't feel safe responding, you can also walk away. Your comfort matters more than educating someone who isn't ready to listen. So last one, use tools that reduce planning load. Make short lists. Choose one thing you can absolutely need to do each day rather than 10. And if you struggle with transitions, give yourself warm up and cool down time, especially around events that might include using timers, alarms, or giving yourself some buffer zone before you need to get dressed or leave.
I've noticed that coming into the December season, especially with the changing season, it's brighter for longer. I'm finding it a lot harder to transition between bed and getting out of bed. I will lie in bed, but I will do stuff while I'm lying in bed. I'll check my phone, my emails. It's the transition of actually physically getting out of bed that is the struggle for me at the moment. And that is okay. So I'm just going to work through that. That's okay. Either way, December is not hard because you are difficult. I just want to make that clear. It's hard because the season is designed in ways that do not fit autistic, ADHD, and ADHD nervous systems. When you understand the research behind your reactions, it becomes easier to plan, create boundaries, and protect your wellbeing. So head over to the website, grab some cheat sheets, scripts, templates. They're all free. Cool, cool, cool.
While you're there, cast your eyes upon the delicious merch that is now available on the website.
I spent the weekend spending way too much time designing stuff because I ended up having too much fun doing it. So there's stuff on there I don't understand. It's cool. Go have a look. You can laugh with me. Come back and comment about what I've put on there because lols. Anywho, and then please remember the book is coming out on the 10th of December. And the book is really exciting. I'm actually going to read a little, read a little, little detail about the book.
The book comes out 10th of December. Unmasking Leadership is a book about the gap between how we think leadership should work and how it actually feels to lead when you're neurodivergent. So after 20 years in like senior roles and doing health and safety and all this other stuff and masking without knowing it, I realised that the traditional model of leadership was never designed with brains like ours, and particularly mine, in mind. So the book brings together research, lived experience to show how autistic or ADHD and audio HD professionals can navigate the workplace that reward performance over authenticity. So instead of treating neurodiversity as a problem to fix, I show how it becomes a real leadership advantage when the environment is built for clarity, predictability and psychological safety.
It is practical as well as personal. I introduced tools like the safety spectrum, which I thought was a cool thing to bring in psychological safety um and neurological spectrum, and neuro-inclusive leadership compass, which really helps leaders design teams and systems that are safe and fair and genuinely accessible. So at its core, the book is an invitation to rethink what good leadership looks like. When we stop forcing people to fit a mould and start designing for human variation, everyone performs better and the workplace becomes places where people can thrive, not like the Christmas holidays. All right, have an amazing Black Friday sale if you're into that, and I will see you next week..
Leave a comment