Emotional Modes with ADHD: Empathy

Shelly and Cam continue to explore emotions beyond ‘emotional dysregulation’ looking at a phenomenon they call emotional modes. Because of emotional variability and volatility, those with ADHD can be prone to ‘lock’ into a preferred emotional stance. They illustrate this autopilot approach by looking at how empathy tends to present in their own client population. 

Cam shares how he sees two distinct polar presentations of empathy - too much empathy for others with zero empathy for self or zero empathy for others resulting in isolation and lack of connection. Shelly brings in a metaphor of a swinging pendulum to describe this empathy imbalance and how listeners can start to loosen the emotional lock down and let the pendulum swing to allow for empathy for self and empathy for others. The hosts pull concepts from earlier shows like ‘seeing oneself in the picture’ and the importance of developing a curious practice to further explore the dilemma.

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