Obsessing over an upcoming conversation? Playing out scenarios: how you would say it, what you would say? You may think: “If I play it out enough times, I won’t over-share, become dysregulated, or say the wrong thing.”
Meanwhile, this type of mental rehearsing often fuels excessive anxiety. And when you get to the actual conversation, it rarely goes the way you plan. You freeze. You Fumble. Simply put, you forget your lines.
Mental rehearsing is something we all do sometimes to feel ready. From job interviews to dates, it’s human to want to be prepared.
But ADHD mental rehearsing can turn into something different. We don’t just rehearse job interviews. You rehearse entire conflicts and conversations in your mind or replay social interactions. You plan out phone calls, how to order coffee, or how to act at a new job. And what starts as wanting to be ready turns into rumination.
While not in the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis, mental rehearsing is one of those subtle signs of ADHD often overlooked. To help you better understand your own brain, this blog explores the science of mental rehearsing and ADHD, and offers some solutions to rehearsing less and living more.
What is Mental Rehearsing?
Mental rehearsing is the act of mental preparation. For example, reviewing upcoming conversations in your head or talking to yourself. Like an actor preparing their lines or a public speaker preparing to give a speech. Mental rehearsing is designed to help you avoid messing up. That everything goes as well as it could.
What mental rehearsing looks like in daily life
- Playing out how a difficult conversation with your spouse might go
- Practicing asking for a raise or promotion with your boss
- Preparing for a social hangout by running through 100 different ways you could make friends
- Reviewing past conversations in your mind over and over and over again
The Link Between ADHD and Mental Reasoning
The Default Mode Network
Research shows the ADHD brain has a weaker connection between the frontal lobe and the “default mode” network than the non-ADHD brain. This leaves the ADHD brain vulnerable to mind wandering (hence the attention issues).
Emotional Dysregulation
But mind wandering isn’t the only way the ADHD brain gets lost in thoughts. Emotional dysregulation is another core feature of ADHD. The frontal lobe struggles to recognize, regulate, and sort through emotions.
Emotional dysregulation means mental rehearsing may be an act of anxiety or even shame. For example, a person with ADHD might anticipate being rejected, feel fear, and rehearse in an effort to avoid actually being rejected (despite no evidence that would have happened).
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
An overlooked yet profound part of ADHD is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). RSD is a type of emotional dysregulation that comes with the ADHD brain. It causes hypervigilance to criticism, rejection, and failure. It can be crippling and painful, causing many people with ADHD to overthink and rehearse in an attempt to avoid criticism.
Depression and Anxiety
A 2024 study also found that the degree of rumination in ADHD people was worsened by depression and anxiety. It makes sense: the more worried and sad that emotional brain becomes, the more the ADHD brain struggles to regulate those emotions. Since thoughts and emotions are tied, reviewing negative possible outcomes would be worsened by anxiety and depression.
Is Mental Rehearsing Part of ADHD Testing?
What makes ADHD testing a specialized service is the awareness of the subtle ways the ADHD brain is impacted. Topics like ADHD masking, RSD, overthinking, and mental rehearsing aren’t in the criteria for ADHD but are part of the life of most ADHD people.
One part of ADHD testing is a structured, in-depth clinical interview that will help tease out both ADHD symptoms and secondary traits.
The Upside to Mental Rehearsing
Mental rehearsing has many upsides. In fact, mental rehearsing is a key component of survival. We can prepare for threats. Many high-performing athletes use mental rehearsing to prepare for events.
On the other hand, there’s a line between mental rehearsing and rumination. When reviewing past or present events fuels fear and shame, and when it feels impossible to shut off, it’s likely negatively impacting your mental health.
The Downside to Mental Rehearsing
Mental rehearsing is often a form of ADHD masking. A desire to cover up our quirks. But when the moment of performance comes, we realize we’ve lost our ability to go with the flow. In fact, sometimes rehearsing has made us so anxious that we can become even more dysregulated when the moment arrives.
As we try to mask, rehearsing leads to inauthenticity, which leads to misunderstandings and disconnection in relationships.
In fact, when people start ADHD treatment, they begin to realize that the best version of themself is often the one that doesn’t need rehearsing. While it can help to be prepared,
learning to trust yourself more can lead to more authenticity. And authenticity leads to more connection across the board.
Productive vs Unproductive Thinking
To know if rehearsing in your mind is helping or hurting, consider the following criteria for productive thinking:
- Goal-oriented
- Generating new insights
- Deadline-driven
- Non-critical
The slippery slope into unproductive thinking lies within the emotional brain. Are you truly working out a problem or just bouncing between anxious thoughts? Are you considering all the ways a person could respond and trying to avoid failure, or are you genuinely practicing things you might want to say?
Mental rehearsing can be very helpful if it’s goal-oriented. Let’s say you need to have a tough conversation with a boss or employee. By all means, consider your talking points. Consider the top three things you want to be sure you get to, or how someone might best hear your point.
Disrupting Unproductive Mental Rehearsing
If mental rehearsing has become rumination leading to anxiety, see below for some ways to break the overthinking cycle.
Meditation
Meditation is the awareness of awareness. It is the best way to practice being aware of thoughts. Developing a daily meditation practice through apps like CALM can help you learn to quiet an overactive ADHD mind.
Body Regulation
Another way to get control of anxious thoughts is to regulate the body. Consider slow, deep breathing, physical activities like yoga or walking; even humming can help regulate the nervous system. Because the body and the mind work together, regulating the body can help regulate the overactive mind (and if you have ADHD, you for sure have an overactive mind).
Deadlines
Any time you are mentally rehearsing, give yourself deadlines. Don’t allow yourself to ruminate for hours and hours. It will impact sleep, relationships, and mood. Practice the speech for an hour, and give it a rest.
Across the board, the key to ADHD management is learning to regulate energy and effort.
Living and Loving with ADHD
People living and loving with ADHD often find themselves learning when to rehearse and when to show up unmasked. It’s a delicate balance between wanting to feel prepared and allowing yourself to be authentic.
At Focused Mind ADHD Counseling, we sometimes hear the question, “What makes ADHD therapy different from other forms of therapy?” One answer is that ADHD therapy helps people recognize when their coping strategies, such as mental rehearsing, are helpful and when they may become maladaptive or negatively impact outcomes in their lives. Ultimately, it’s about learning to use ADHD strategies intentionally while feeling more comfortable showing up as your most authentic self.
Begin Adult ADHD Testing in Columbus, OH
Still wondering if you have ADHD? You don’t have to live your life feeling scattered and stuck without knowing why. Comprehensive ADHD testing can help you find answers. Our Columbus, OH, counseling practice has caring therapists who specialize in ADHD treatment. To start your counseling journey, follow these simple steps:
- Fill out the contact form to schedule a free 15-minute phone call.
- Meet with one of our caring therapists.
- Stop feeling distracted and overwhelmed and start finding focus and calm.
Other ADHD Services Offered at Focused Mind ADHD Counseling
Adult ADHD testing is not the only service we offer at our Columbus, OH, counseling practice.
At Focused Mind ADHD Counseling, we offer a variety of mental health services, including ADHD treatment, anxiety treatment for ADHD, counseling for men with ADHD, counseling for women with ADHD, ADHD-focused couples therapy, teen ADHD testing, and depression counseling for ADHD. You can also view our blog for more resources and helpful info.
About the Author
Billy Roberts, LISW-S, LCSW, is the founder of Focused Mind ADHD Counseling and a licensed psychotherapist specializing in ADHD. Based in Columbus, Ohio, he provides ADHD testing and therapy to help adults better understand challenges related to time management, focus, emotional regulation, and relationships. He held a position at the NYU Child Study Center and has been a practicing psychotherapist for over a decade. His holistic approach to ADHD to assessment and treatment has been featured in Time Magazine, CNN, HuffPost, and Forbes, where he shares insights on helping individuals with ADHD manage their relationships, emotions, careers, time, and more. He is also the author of the book: Wired to Please: Unmasking the ADHD People-Pleaser.
