ADHD with Jenna Free EP. 51: Is this ADHD, Anxiety or both?
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Mar 16, 2026 Explores the idea that anxiety and ADHD can both be forms of nervous-system dysregulation. Breaks down how fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses affect thinking and focus. Covers why rumination drains energy and offers simple, present-moment moves to signal safety. Encourages curiosity and small repeated actions to soften anxious states.
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Anxiety Is Dysregulation Not A Separate Monster
- Anxiety is a form of dysregulation where the nervous system is stuck in fight or flight.
- Jenna Free explains that ADHD brains often remain in that state, shifting resources away from the prefrontal cortex toward threat scanning.
Fight Or Flight Steals Planning Capacity
- Fight or flight reallocates blood flow away from planning centers to scanning and predicting threats.
- Jenna Free compares this adaptive response to being chased by a bear, which becomes unhelpful for modern stressors like emails and deadlines.
Four Ways Dysregulation Shows Up
- Dysregulation shows as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behaviors like irritability, avoidance, shutdown, or people-pleasing.
- Jenna Free links rumination and overthinking to the brain's attempt to predict and prevent danger, which exhausts energy without productive results.
