ADHD and Anxiety: Understanding the Overlap and How We Can Help Ourselves
ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast
Anxiety as an Alarm System
Russell describes anxiety's adaptive role, how past experiences sensitize it, and uses food-poisoning analogy to explain persistence.
In this wisdom episode of The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Podcast, we’re revisiting one of our top episodes of 2025 with clinical psychologist, Dr Russell Ramsay.
Together, we explore the powerful link between ADHD and anxiety, and why so many women experience both. This conversation offers a validating look at how ADHD’s constant uncertainty can fuel anxious thoughts, self-doubt and overthinking, and why there is nothing “wrong” with you for feeling this way.
We unpack how anxiety can act as an alarm system, what it might be trying to signal based on past experiences, and how tools like CBT, emotional labelling and distanced self-talk can help you move through anxious moments with more clarity and self-compassion.
My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is now available, grab your copy here!
Key Takeaways:
- Why anxiety and ADHD are so often intertwined stemming from a fear of uncertainty
- An explanation of why stimulants (for some people) can lower anxiety by improving focus and reducing mental chaos
- Understanding what your anxiety is trying to protect you from and how to build self-confidence
- Where RSD and social anxiety come from and why it they can feel more intense for ADHD women
- Seeing anxiety as an alarm system rather than a personal failing to support more confident choices
- How tolerating discomfort can help you get started with anxiety-provoking tasks
- Simple tools like emotional labelling and distance self-talk to calm your inner chatter and reduce catastrophic thinking
Timestamps:
- 00:06 - Reflecting on Previous Episodes
- 01:55 - Understanding the Connection Between ADHD and Anxiety
- 08:48 - Understanding Anxiety and Emotions
- 12:06 - Managing Anxiety and Emotional Awareness
- 14:38 - Understanding Distanced Self Talk
The More Yourself Community doors are now open!
More Yourself is a compassionate space for late-diagnosed ADHD women to connect, reflect, and come home to who they really are. Sign up here!
Inside the More Yourself Membership, you’ll be able to:
- Connect with like-minded women who understand you
- Learn from guest experts and practical tools
- Receive compassionate prompts & gentle reminders
- Enjoy voice-note encouragement from Kate
- Join flexible meet-ups and mentoring sessions
- Access on-demand workshops and quarterly guest expert sessions
To join for £26 a month, click here. To join for £286 for a year (a whole month free!), click here.
We’ll also be walking through The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Toolkit together, exploring nervous system regulation, burnout recovery, RSD, joy, hormones, and self-trust, so the book comes alive in a supportive community setting.
Links and Resources:
- Find my popular ADHD workshops and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
- Visit Russell's website www.cbt4adhd.com
- Check out Ethan Kross' book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
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