10 Easy Ways to Purposefully Calm Overwhelm

Posted on13th March 202613th March 2026

10 Easy Ways to Purposefully Calm Overwhelm

We get overwhelmed when things become too much for us to handle, or when, subjectively, it feels that way.

When little stressors accumulate over time, or too many of them hit us all at once, it is natural to feel we cannot cope.

How overwhelm affects us.

Regardless of the causes, elevated stress levels or overwhelming feelings affect the body by releasing stress hormones like cortisol. The result is physiological changes, including a pounding heart, faster breathing, muscle tensing, and sweating. The body’s combined reactions to stressful events are called the fight, flight or freeze responses.

The normal cycle is for the body to recover after stress; at that point, it stops releasing stress hormones.

However, a constant release of cortisol with no recovery period after a triggering event takes a long-term toll on your body. If this persists over time, some expected outcomes are raised blood pressure, inflammation, and an increased predisposition for depression and anxiety.

When we have ADHD, it is all too easy to tip into feeling overwhelmed, as many of my coaching clients know first-hand. This is partly due to the large amounts of information we take in through our senses every second of the day. Without the ability to filter out and dismiss irrelevant or unhelpful sensory input, our brains will soon feel overloaded.

Overwhelm can also result from things coming in faster than we feel we have the resources to deal with. This perception can easily trip us up, as it is common for all human beings to underestimate our own resourcefulness and strengths. We can counteract this tendency by learning more about our strengths.

Our bodies hold the keys.

When we have ADHD, we are so often focused on our thoughts or on what’s next, we are largely oblivious to the signals our bodies send us about what’s happening below our necks.

Our bodies are a fantastic source of information we can tap into to understand how we navigate our environment.

A raised heart rate and faster breathing may signal a stress response, with the sympathetic nervous system dominant. In comparison, a slower heart rate and slower breathing give our brain feedback that the body is feeling relaxed. In this state, a branch of the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, becomes dominant.

For more on this subject, this article gives a clear explanation and breakdown of the various parts of the autonomic nervous system and how they connect to different areas of the body.

The parasympathetic system is also known as the rest and digest system.

When this is engaged, our breathing and heart rate are slower.

Techniques that work

You can use techniques that boost the parasympathetic nervous system to manage your stress responses. This is good for your brain and good for you, both short and long-term.

Activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System is a reliable way to reduce feelings of overwhelm.

When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, it produces a feeling of calm and relaxation in the mind and body. You can learn to activate your parasympathetic nervous system to immediately reduce stressful feelings. This will lift your mood, engage your immune system, and lower blood pressure.

There are many ways to strengthen and activate your parasympathetic nervous system, causing a relaxation response in your body.

10 easy techniques you can try for yourself:

Bring awareness to your breathing, and try this breathing technique to slow down your breathing rate. Lying flat on your back comfortably, with one hand on your abdomen and the other on your heart, focus on lengthening the out-breath. Feel your belly rise and fall as you breathe in and then out. At the same time, send some gratitude to your heart area to thank it for keeping you alive.
Feel compassion for yourself in your current situation.
Spend time in nature.
Get a massage.
Stroke a pet.
Focus on a soothing word like calm or peace.
Practice yoga.
Go for a slow walk and make a point of noticing your surroundings.
Try something you find relaxing, like taking a bubble bath with music.
Get a hug from someone you love.

Bonus way – Practice gratitude. Bringing to mind things that we can feel thankful for in our lives has a grounding and uplifting effect.

When life becomes overwhelming, it is useful to bring to mind the people and resources that we already have around us. Having a selection of favourite ways to get calm to choose from can form a part of those resources.

You can use calm deliberately to relieve and prevent overwhelm.
Experiment with different approaches in various contexts and times to find the most effective for you.

The more you practice techniques like those above, the easier it becomes to switch to and activate your parasympathetic response and feel more relaxed.

What would it be like to spend more of your life feeling calm?

If you are feeling overwhelmed and would like to explore ways to get to a space of more calm in your life, please contact me here for a free discovery call. I would love to hear from you.

Trees Can Help You Focus

Posted on21st November 202521st November 2025

Trees Can Help You Focus

Trees can help you focus.

What? You may ask? How does this work?

Will I need to sit under a tree in order to focus or concentrate? Or hug one?

Do I need to walk amongst them? Or, is it enough to see them from a distance?

Consider this: there is now a significant amount of research to support the idea that spending time among trees can help us focus better, reduce stress, and buffer against depression. When we spend so much of our time working in front of a computer screen these days, how can the ability to focus be improved by something as simple as this? I have spoken to many coaching clients over the years who describe sitting in front of the computer, trying to concentrate, and many minutes or even hours passing with nothing to show for it. It may seem counterintuitive, yet there are many excellent reasons for stepping away from the task at hand to find the company of trees.

The many benefits of trees

To start with, trees can benefit you by reducing mental fatigue and resetting your attention.
Getting outside for time in nature can provide you with a new perspective. A change of environment offers new things to look at, which stimulates your brain in ways which don’t happen when you are sitting still looking at a screen.
Trees create a calming atmosphere, reducing stress hormones like cortisol. Less stress means fewer distractions and better focus.
Trees absorb pollutants and increase oxygen levels, which raises air quality and enhances brain function and concentration.
Giving the brain a break from screens and artificial light, while surrounded by trees and exposed to natural light, can help refocus when returning to work.
Additionally, natural sounds experienced while spending time amongst trees, such as wind sighing through the branches, birdsong, and the sounds of other wildlife, provide a soothing background in contrast to the potential distractions of a noisy office.
The movement involved in walking in wooded areas or engaging in outdoor activities stimulates the production of dopamine. This vital neurotransmitter plays a crucial role in maintaining focus and motivation.

Movement has various benefits for focus.

Using the large muscles in the legs is grounding and calming, compared to sitting still. The body and brain become better oxygenated, and other chemicals are produced, for instance, nitric oxide, which helps cognitive functions such as learning and memory.

If you want to train your ability to pay attention, then practising mindfulness near trees—observing their textures, sounds, and smells— trains the brain to stay present, reducing rumination and intrusive thoughts that disrupt attention. Training attention in this way can be invaluable for many with ADHD brain types.

Trees can help soothe and regulate a jangly nervous system.

Trees reduce overstimulation and feelings of stress, and thereby promote activation of the parasympathetic nervous system (also known as rest and digest mode). Therefore, the ADHD nervous system in particular gets a welcome break from being frequently in a state of sympathetic nervous system activation arousal (also known as fight, flight, or freeze mode).

Hugging trees can be particularly beneficial.

Tree hugging stimulates the production of oxytocin, the “trust” hormone. “Studies show that people who regularly hug trees report feeling happier, calmer, and less stressed,” quoted from https://silvotherapy.co.uk/articles/benefits-of-hugging-trees.

Whether through visual exposure, movement, or mindful engagement, trees help regulate attention and sustain concentration.

Here are a few simple and practical ways to increase your focus with trees:

Take a mini tree break.

Simply observing a tree in detail, such as its bark texture, leaf movement, and sounds, will engage your senses and help refocus attention.

When could you fit in 5-10 minutes to give yourself this kind of mental reset?

Watch trees out of a window.

Improve your concentration and cognitive performance by looking at trees through a window if you’re feeling particularly short of time.

How will you recognise when it’s time to top up your focus levels?

Boost Dopamine with Tree-Based Movement.

Walking, hiking, or even stretching near trees encourages the release of dopamine, which is crucial for motivation and sustained attention.

How could you incorporate a “focus prowl” in a tree-lined area before or between work sessions to reset and refocus?

Reduce Sensory Distractions with Natural Sounds.

Nature sounds (rustling leaves, birds) provide soft fascination, a type of background stimulation that can create a calmer environment for deep work.

Have you tried playing nature soundscape tapes to help you focus yet?

Use tree-based sensory cues indoors.

Even when the cold or wet weather makes it challenging to experience the advantages of trees outdoors, you can gain their benefits by using sensory-tailored cues indoors.

Here is a selection of tree-based sensory cues you could try:

Olfactory cues (smell): Essential oils of pine, fir, and eucalyptus can promote calm alertness. You can use diffusers or simply add a few drops to a tissue, which works just as well.

Visual cues: Houseplants or a bonsai tree can reduce stress and restore focus. You could also try paintings of landscapes on a wall or images of forests or greenery as a screensaver for a calming effect.

Tactile cues (touch): Tree bark, driftwood, a pine cone, and wooden beads all have different textures to explore, handle and provide a grounding break.

There are so many ways to bring the benefits of trees into your life, your home and your workplace when you need a boost in focus and concentration. I’d love to hear about any strategies you have for improving focus that involve trees or time in nature.

Please do get in touch with me to share your experiences or thoughts at adhdcoachanna@gmail.com.

ADHD in Britain 2025 – Diagnosis and Treatment

Posted on8th October 2025

ADHD in the UK: The State of Play in 2025 – Diagnosis

In 2025, ADHD is receiving more attention in the UK than ever before, with referrals and diagnoses rising sharply over the past decade. By June 2025, there were 668,370 open referrals for a possible ADHD diagnosis across mental health and community services in England. Within that same month, more than 18,000 new referrals were made, reflecting the scale of demand. Despite this surge, experts agree that the actual prevalence of ADHD has not increased—what has changed is recognition, awareness, and access to diagnosis.

Several factors explain this rise in demand. Social media platforms like TikTok have amplified discussions of neurodivergence, encouraging people to recognise traits in themselves and seek help. Adults, especially women whose symptoms often went unrecognised in childhood, are increasingly receiving first-time diagnoses. Better training for healthcare professionals and broader assessment criteria have also helped capture cases that would have previously gone unnoticed. The validation provided by a diagnosis has been life-changing for many adults who have been struggling with feelings of inadequacy brought on by not realising their own neurodiversity.

How many people in the UK have been diagnosed with ADHD?

There are a significant number of people with ADHD in Britain. As of May 2025, it is thought that an estimated 2.5 million people have ADHD, including both those with and without a formal diagnosis. A UCL study found that between 2000 and 2018, diagnoses increased twentyfold, with the relative rise being highest among adults. Adult diagnosis reflects a cultural shift in how ADHD is understood; no longer viewed solely as a childhood condition, it is now accepted as a lifelong difference affecting people across all ages.

The challenges for services like the NHS

However, the growing recognition of ADHD brings serious challenges. NHS services are not set up to meet this new level of demand, with around 549,000 people waiting for an adult ADHD assessment in March 2025. Many wait years for a diagnosis, leading to frustration and misery by leaving people without the support or treatment they need. The situation was further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted services and exacerbated symptoms for many. The popularity of ADHD content online has brought greater acceptance and reduced stigma, but it has also led to some misunderstandings about symptoms and treatment.

Generally speaking, the rise in awareness of ADHD is positive; however, there is still much to do to get help to the people who most need it.

Some of the options available for diagnosis and treatment

The Right to Choose scheme has sought to address some of the rising demand for ADHD diagnoses by allowing people to get NHS funding to register with a private provider. However, over the past five years, this system has also struggled to keep pace with the rise in referrals, exacerbated in part by medication shortages, which have created bottlenecks in moving people onto prescriptions.

Although there are medication options available for some, other options such as talking therapies (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), programmes helpful for ADHD like those for Sleep, Rumination, or Mindfulness are only available through the NHS in certain areas, and are woefully underfunded, only reaching a minute proportion of those who would benefit every year.

There are, however, some other positives. The field of ADHD coaching has grown immensely in the past 10 or 15 years, with many more well-trained coaches offering a variety of ADHD coaching, support, and education specialisms for both children and adults. These can form a vital part of a multi–modal intervention plan, both at home and in workplaces or educational settings.

Towards the future

There is hope that AI tools will lead to faster and cheaper diagnoses, and some tests have already been trialled nationally and approved for use by the NHS, such as the QbTest, which aims to speed up diagnosis for children. There is, as yet, nothing similar for adults, although various hybrid models that use AI for clinical support appear promising.

Ultimately, the surge in demand highlights the urgent need for expanded specialist services to ensure timely, accurate, and supportive care for those with ADHD in the UK.

I’d love to know what your own experiences have been with either NHS or private services: please get in touch with me at

Time Blindness in ADHD: Simple Strategies to Implement Straight Away.

Posted on12th July 202512th July 2025

Blindfolded woman in front of clockface to represent time blindness.

Time Blindness in ADHD: Simple Strategies to Implement Straight Away.

Time blindness is a very familiar phenomenon for my clients with ADHD, and it may be for you, too. Broadly speaking, time blindness is a difference in the perception and awareness of time passing.

It can affect people in various ways, for example:

A) being unable to estimate the time it may take to do a task,

B) having no sense of time passing while engaged in something,

C) struggling to sense future events coming up and act accordingly.

Let’s look at the above three aspects of time perception and consider some possible strategies for each of them in turn.

A. Difficulty in estimating time accurately.

This difficulty can take the form of both under and over-estimating the time it takes to complete something.

Time underestimation.

The result of underestimating time can often have dire consequences in the workplace.

For example, when we believe that each job will take less time than it actually does, projects and assignments start to build up as we find they take longer, thereby pushing other tasks further into the future. At some point, the accumulated backlog of tasks becomes overwhelming, and we feel we cannot cope at work.

Another example would be a person who needs to leave the house by a particular time and reckons it won’t take them long to get ready. However, in reality, they are inevitably late leaving the house every day.

I have worked through this challenge with various clients over the years, and usually, the primary reason comes down to underestimating time in some way or another. Once we have established this, it’s relatively straightforward to work through each part of getting ready and develop a more realistic estimate to enable them to leave the house in time. For more on that topic, go here

Time overestimation.

Overestimating time is often associated with some of the less pleasant activities or those tasks which don’t hold so much interest for us. This can stop us dead in our tracks, as really, who’d want to start washing up believing it’s going to take 45 minutes or start writing an email, suspecting it will take at least half an hour – maybe more?

Strategies for time estimation

So, what’s the solution for these internal time warps?

Well, one of the most effective ways is actually to time yourself to begin with. YES, with a stopwatch if necessary. This enables you to accurately identify how long something takes to complete.

I have created a simple tool you can use to help you do this. It’s called the Time Estimation Tool, or TET for short, and you can download your copy here.

The TET enables you to keep testing out your “guesstimates” and then adjusting your techniques based on the real-life results you get. Mostly, when people have done this exercise, they are surprised to discover the actual amount of time things take. With practice, and applying it to various different life situations, this can revolutionise people’s time management skills in all kinds of positive ways.

TIP: Using clocks and watches, various timepieces and reminders and alarms on our phones or smart watches can help familiarise us with common time periods in our individual circumstances.

Find out what works for you, either audio or visual ways of seeing the passage of time or a combination, until you know for sure how long these things take you.

The effect of having small chunks of certainty in an often windswept existence is strangely comforting and provides a firm foundation to build on.

B) Having little sense of time passing when we are engaged in something.

It is hard enough to get going on something and feel we can sustain focus on something without interrupting ourselves to look at the clock. That is what many of my coaching clients have told me over the years. We are usually talking about hyperfocus.

For those not in the know – you could liken hyperfocus to very heavy sleep where nothing gets through; even a loud bang next door or a car alarm going off is not enough to wake you. On the other hand, the kind of sustained focus with awareness is more like a light sleeper, one who is sleeping, but noises like thunder or a ring on the doorbell would waken them sufficiently to notice what’s happening around them.

One is so intensely focused on the matter at hand that there is no awareness of anything else. The other is still focused, yet with the possibility of dipping in and out of focus on the task to notice, for instance, hunger, noises, other people, and, of course, what time it is, as well as the significance of that information.

Strategies for noticing time passing while engrossed in something.

Again, you can use anything that gets your attention, like a noise, a timer, or a message; some people even ask someone to come and tell them it’s time to eat, stop, or whatever else needs to be done.
Another effective strategy is to set yourself up with an intention beforehand. For example, I will work for 20 minutes on X, then stand up and walk to fetch water and stretch for 5 minutes.

In this way, you are priming yourself to bear time in mind when you first set out to do something.

3. You can also make a pact to check in with yourself at intervals throughout the day, say mid-morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon, and (at a time which can be particularly tricky for many with ADHD) at the close of the working day. Yes, you may well need a check-in at 5 pm to tell you to wrap up and literally get ready to go home. Many people overwork and extend their working hours more by accident than design, simply due to not noticing time going by.

You can build this up in small increments until you have more awareness of time passing throughout the day.

C) Not sensing future events coming up and acting accordingly.

Time blindness results in perceiving events as literally less “real” the further away they are in the future. This lack of awareness of the distance of future dates and events causes ADHD-ers to be chronically underprepared when the time inevitably does come. Life will be full of unpleasant surprises as a result, leaving you feeling demoralised and often at a disadvantage.

Examples:

Lack of awareness of how close or far away events are in time leads to leaving things to the last minute – e.g. Not realising the due date for a bill until you get a final notice or a court summons.

Not seeing your holiday dates coming up might lead to you not packing the suitcase until the last minute or realising your passport is out of date when it’s too late to do anything about it.

Another common circumstance of time blindness comes when preparing for well-known future events – knowing there is a deadline for handing in a piece of work, for example, but being very hazy about when that is. In coaching sessions, many people have told me,” Oh, it’s in a couple of months, I think.” When I asked them the exact date to put in their calendar or planner, they had to go and look it up and were, in many cases, surprised to find it was rather sooner than they thought.

Once these clients firm up their knowledge around due dates and record them where they can easily refer to them, they find it much easier to make a realistic plan to get the work done in time.

Not doing things for our future selves is another result of time blindness. Often, because of impulsivity added to time blindness, we enjoy ourselves so much in the moment that we forget the needs of our future self. This can lead to burnout, energy crashes, or just plain overwhelm, as our self-care needs continually get put on the back burner.

Strategies for dealing effectively with future events.

Make time visual and external to your brain whenever you can, using calendars, wall charts, and diaries. If you are OK with checking digital devices, then use those too.
Identify precise dates and times when events are happening to be sure to set reminders and timers for them. You may want to remind yourself a few times they are coming up soon, as well.
Practise asking yourself, “What would future me thank me for doing right now?” That extra glass of water, healthy option, or money in the bank can very likely help “future you” maintain your equilibrium.

Fortunately, there are many strategies that you can employ to combat time blindness.

Using methods which make time more “real” for you,
Experimenting to find out which of them works for you, and
Implementing one or more of the above strategies, you will be able to bring more awareness and skilfulness into your dealings with this elusive construct we call time, and live your life more smoothly and enjoyably as a result.

Anna Schlapp B.A., ACC, ACCG, is a certified ADHD coach, coaching people to understand and manage their unique time perception more productively. If you would like to explore this or any other of your ADHD traits with a highly experienced coach of more than ten years, you can contact Coach Anna here.