For years, my therapist kept talking about emotional regulation. Emotional dysregulation. She’d mention issues I had with it, over and over.

I remember thinking: you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I was a theater kid. Not a dramatic kid (though I was that too), but an actual drama kid. I could cry on cue. I could perform rage, heartbreak, joy, whatever the script called for. I had control over emotions when they were someone else’s.

So when people kept saying I had problems with emotional regulation, I thought they were stupid. Obviously I could control emotions. I did it on stage all the time.

The fact that my own emotions were feral felt like a completely different thing. Plus, when you’re young, there’s always that excuse, that promise that one day you’ll just… grow out of it. Everyone believed that. I believed that.

Spoiler: I didn’t grow out of it.

The Dragon Reveals Itself

I have two moments seared into my memory.

The first was 2020. I turned 30, and something shifted. I wasn’t a kid anymore. Full stop. No more hiding behind “that’s just how young people are.” I was supposed to be stepping up to the plate, like adults do.

Then my generalized anxiety disorder (which I’d known about for 8 years at that point) went absolutely nuclear. Maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe it was turning 30. Maybe it was both. I would wake up hysterically crying. Nothing could stop it. I’d be in a Zoom dance class, and the second it ended, I’d collapse on the floor sobbing. Sometimes I’d have to leave midway through. Sometimes there were reasons (and when you have anxiety like mine, reasons are easy to manufacture). Sometimes there was just… nothing. Just crying. Just suffering. Endlessly.

I read Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and the part where she talked about starting Lexapro felt revolutionary. So I started taking it. It helped. For a while.

The second moment was 2022. I was 32, getting kicked out of my second counseling graduate program. The first time, I thought maybe it was a fluke. The second time, I knew: it was me. They couldn’t tell me exactly what was wrong; they just knew they didn’t want me there. My personality. My energy. Something about me rubbed people the wrong way, and I couldn’t figure out what.

I was trying so hard to stay in control with the faculty that my emotions started leaking out everywhere else. Little fights with my husband. Crabbiness. Distance from everyone. I was so on edge all the time. Then I got kicked out, and I could finally cry about it, but it was this horrible mix of relief and horror. What does it say about me that two different programs rejected me and I still don’t know why?

A few months later, I was training to become a CASA volunteer, feeling like finally I could do something meaningful. Then, the day before I was supposed to be sworn in, they called to tell me I was being kicked out. People said I looked inebriated during training. I wasn’t. I said I wasn’t. They didn’t care. The trainers didn’t feel comfortable with me.

That might have been the worst time of my life.

I flew back home to see my family after 10 years (of not coming to visit), thinking I’d get pampered and loved so I could feel like myself again. My dad was dying of ALS. My mom was out of her mind with stress. Instead of home cooked meals and hugs, I got a hotel room and “I don’t cook anymore.” Even my husband, who promised to keep me safe and grounded, kept disappearing to see his dad. That trip was also the last time I ever spoke to my father. He couldn’t speak after that; not even through texting (he passed away the following year).

All of this happened in six months. Maybe less.

And through it all: the cops kept coming to our apartment. At least five times in three months. Noise complaints. Because I was screaming. I can really scream. One time they put my husband in handcuffs while asking if I was okay, checking my arms. He hadn’t done anything. I was the one who threw something and made the noise. My journal is full of screenshots of horrible text exchanges with my husband, pictures of me sobbing. It’s almost comical from the outside. It sure didn’t feel that way.

The worst part was being 32 years old and feeling like a loose cannon. At a certain point, you can’t blame hormones or circumstances. It’s just you. I could feel my body deteriorating. My heart racing constantly. I kept thinking: am I going to have these tantrums in my 40s, too?It wasn’t just embarrassing anymore. It wasn’t even shame. It was: get it together, woman. You’re going to die like this.

By the end of 2023, I was 33 and had just purchased my first house with my husband. A home. A home. And I decided: I’m ready to know who I am, once and for all.

I was ready to face the dragon.

Facing the Dragon Isn’t One Thing

Everyone with ADHD has at least one dragon. Some have multiple. These are the specific executive functions that don’t just malfunction but actively terrorize you. For some people, it’s time blindness. For others, task paralysis or working memory or impulse control. Some people are battling all of the above.

For me, it was emotional dysregulation.

And which dragon (or dragons) you get isn’t random. It’s shaped by your history, your wounds, what people said about you, what kept getting you hurt. The severity varies too; we all struggle with executive dysfunction to different degrees, but there’s usually one or two that cut deeper than the rest. Mine was emotional control because of those nights with police at my door, my husband in handcuffs over nothing, people treating my pain like violence. The specific shame carved out my particular nightmare.

I didn’t slay my dragon in one heroic moment. There was no sword. No battle cry.

It was a slow accumulation of tiny shifts that eventually added up to something real.

First, I became an ADHD coach. After getting kicked out of two grad schools, finding a path where I could actually help people felt like resurrection. I could be the advocate. The person in someone’s corner. I got a scholarship to a coaching program based on my life story with ADHD, and suddenly I could see myself again as someone capable of helping, not just someone who needed to be managed.

Working with clients felt like magic. I didn’t (I don’t) give advice. I just listened and asked questions, and they came up with their own solutions and actually acted on them. It was like being Tinkerbell telling Peter Pan he can fly (I think that’s part of the story?).

At the same time, I got serious about meditation. I’d been trying since 2018, but it finally started working. Not daily; more like monthly. But consistent enough that the muscle developed. I stopped judging myself so hard. I started feeling resolved. Happy. At peace. And that feeling went everywhere with me, not just during meditation. I was finally able to leave myself alone. To stop badgering myself.

By mid 2025, I’d started Wellbutrin, lowered my Lexapro, and began walking 5 miles a way. I started noticing things: how leaves and blooms change with the seasons, the colors of everything, the magic in ordinary moments. I knew that someday, for whatever reason, I wouldn’t be lucky enough to only think about the good. So why force myself to focus on the bad now? Life would make me do that later anyway.

Slowly, this changed how I responded to bad things. It wasn’t toxic positivity. It was mindfulness mixed with coaching perspective: “Okay, this sucks. Now what?” Instead of spiraling in “this sucks this sucks this sucks why oh why,” I’d think: is dwelling on this going to help me resolve it? If yes, let’s think strategically, not self-pityingly. Because nobody’s coming to rescue me, and I don’t want to need rescuing anyway. If dwelling won’t help, let’s think about something else. Maybe what I can do later to make today suck less. Maybe a different perspective that helps me reconcile this.

I’d had over 30 years of experience thinking as hard as I could about bad stuff, and I could tell you definitively: it doesn’t make the bad stuff go away. It just destroys my days. My memories. There are periods of my life (2022, for instance) that are just marred by darkness because I wasn’t taking even a second away from everything bad that was happening.

Looking around, noticing, paying attention to the world: that became my antidote. Not about finding all the solutions or having all the answers or being at peace with everything bad. Just knowing I have two options: remember this period as gloomy, or remember beautiful things from this time. I chose the latter. So I made sure to bring beauty into view and turn it into memory.

It would be so easy to not get out of bed when I’m upset or anxious. That’s what my brain and body beg me to do. But once I’m out, taking things in, those flowers, those leaves changing colors, those people waving at me and my dog—those are the memories that pop up when I think back on this past year.

The Test

In late February 2025, I was rushing to pilates when I got pulled over for speeding.

I knew it was somewhat arbitrary (everyone around me was speeding), but also that it was end of month and cops have quotas. The officer said I was going 20-25 over the limit. But I was nice and calm, so he wrote it as 5 over.

That had never happened to me before.

I’d been pulled over before and always been kind, but I’d also always been intensely anxious. That anxiety got me in trouble. People say “I cried and they let me off with a warning,” but that’s not how it worked for me. I’d cry and panic and the cop would lose patience immediately, which made me panic more.

This time was different.

Sure, I was late to pilates. But who cares? Life happens. The officer pulled me over for a correct reason; I was speeding. Then he did me a favor he didn’t have to do. You can look at that moment as bad or good. I chose good. He was going to pull me over no matter what, but he did the least to me. Unlucky and lucky at the same time.

I viewed that moment as a test. I’d left the house on time, done everything right, and still ended up late. The old me would have seen that as proof that nothing works, that trying is pointless. But so what? I missed ten minutes. A stretch. Life is good. My life is good.

That was the moment I knew: I slayed the dragon.

Not because I never get upset anymore. And my ADHD is still ADHD-ing. But I’m not out of control. And if I’m not out of control here, with my deepest wound, then I can handle the rest. The procrastination, the dopamine seeking, whatever. That stuff is annoying, but it’s not existential.

You Are the Author

If you’re facing your own dragon, know this:

It’s not always productivity. It’s not always the things people talk about when they talk about ADHD. Your dragon is yours, shaped by your specific history and pain. And you have to face it or it will burn your life down.

But facing it doesn’t mean one heroic battle. It means slow, unglamorous work. Building skills. Trying things. Failing. Trying again. Finding what works for you, which might not be what works for anyone else.

And at some point, if you keep at it, you’ll have your test. The moment where the old you would have lost it completely, but instead you’re just… okay. Present. In control.

You are the author and narrator of your own story.

Take the pen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit embrain.substack.com