Overstimulated and Over It: A Podcast for Women in Perimenopause with ADHD

Episode Description

Ever found yourself crying over a commercial, raging at the sound of someone chewing, or standing in the grocery store wondering why everything suddenly feels like too much?

If so, you’re not alone.

In this episode of Overstimulated and Over It, Blair Pfeiffer explores the emotional roller coaster that so many women experience when ADHD and perimenopause collide. From mood swings and overwhelm to irritability, anxiety, and emotional meltdowns that seem to come out of nowhere, Blair explains why these experiences are more common than you might think—and why they aren’t a sign that something is wrong with you.

You’ll learn how fluctuating hormones can amplify ADHD symptoms, why emotional regulation often becomes more challenging during perimenopause, and most importantly, what you can do when your nervous system feels overloaded.

Blair shares practical tools for building your own “Emotional Emergency Kit,” including how to become more curious about your emotional patterns, identify what you’re really feeling, create space before reacting, and develop a personalized list of strategies that help your nervous system recover when life feels overwhelming.

This episode is a reminder that emotions are not flaws to fix. They are information. And when we learn how to listen to them with compassion instead of criticism, we can navigate even the hardest moments with more understanding and support.

Resources & Links:

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.

If this episode resonated with you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who needs a reminder that she’s not alone in the mood swings, meltdowns, and “what the hell is happening to me?” moments of midlife.

Ever gone from “I’m fine” to “I need to disappear into the woods and never speak to another human again” in under ten seconds?

In this episode of Overstimulated and Over It, Blair Pfeiffer breaks down three practical DBT skills that can help when big emotions take over and your nervous system is running the show.

If you live with ADHD, are navigating perimenopause, or both, you know how quickly emotions can escalate. One text message, one change of plans, one comment in the wrong tone, and suddenly you’re drafting a novel-length response, spiraling into worst-case scenarios, or fighting the urge to shut down completely.

Blair walks you through three powerful emotional regulation tools she uses personally and teaches to clients every day:

• STOP: Create space between the trigger and your reaction • Check the Facts: Separate what you know from the story your brain is telling you • Opposite Action: Respond in a way that supports your long-term well-being instead of following the emotional urge of the moment

You’ll learn why these skills are especially helpful for women in perimenopause with ADHD, how to use them in real-life situations, and why emotional regulation isn’t about becoming calm all the time. It’s about making choices that don’t make things worse.

Whether you’re dealing with rejection sensitivity, anxiety, rage, shame spirals, overwhelm, or emotional exhaustion, this episode will give you practical tools you can use immediately.

Resources & Links:

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.

If this episode resonated with you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who might need a reminder not to send the text. After all, sometimes emotional regulation starts with one minute, one breath, and one better choice.

You sat down to answer one email. Somehow you are now forty-seven minutes deep into researching patio furniture you do not need, your tea is cold, and the original task has completely left the building. Sound familiar? This episode is for you.

Blair tackles the gap between what we mean to do and what actually happens, and more importantly, what to do when shame shows up to make it worse. Because the side quest is not actually the problem. The shame spiral that follows is.

She starts with the science, breaking down why distraction and follow-through get harder during perimenopause as estrogen fluctuations impact dopamine, making tasks harder to start, boring things more painful, and novel things almost irresistible. Your brain is not being dramatic, Blair explains. It is trying to regulate. And once you understand what your brain was actually looking for during the side quest, you can redirect instead of spiral.

The centerpiece of this episode is a skill Blair calls the comeback. Not perfect focus. Not staying on task forever. Just the ability to notice you have wandered off, say "side quest noted," and gently return. She walks through practical tools including the five-minute return, breaking restart steps down to embarrassingly small actions, and how to decode the emotional avoidance that sometimes disguises itself as productivity.

Blair also spends time with the grief that can come with late ADHD diagnosis, the complicated mix of relief and sadness that arrives when you finally have an explanation and start looking back at everything it cost you. She holds that grief with real tenderness, and then moves into an expansive and honest conversation about rest, relationships, and what midlife clarity can do to your tolerance for performing, masking, and contorting yourself into someone else's comfort zone.

This one is warm, funny, and genuinely validating. The message is simple and it lands hard: coming back counts.

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.

Forget the 4:30am wake-ups and the cold mushroom water. This episode is for the women who have heard every productivity tip in existence and are still standing in front of their fridge at 7pm wondering what to make for dinner while emotionally recovering from the day.

Blair breaks down real, practical, friction-reducing life hacks built specifically for ADHD brains navigating perimenopause. Not because you need to become a different person, but because the systems most people recommend were never designed for brains like yours. And when hormone shifts are also messing with your sleep, focus, energy, and sensory tolerance, the usual advice stops working even faster.

She covers a wide menu of supports including meal delivery boxes and pre-chopped vegetables as legitimate accessibility tools, not laziness. Autoship for everything you repeatedly forget until it becomes a crisis. Duplicates of the things you use most, placed where you actually need them. Visual anchors so the things you need to remember stay in your line of sight. One-touch cleaning to stop tiny messes from becoming emotional monuments. Default meals, default outfits, and default routines to fight decision fatigue. Timer names that actually get your attention. Transition time between tasks so your nervous system can catch up. Digital wallets for the inevitable forgotten purse moment. And AI tools, including Goblin Tools, for breaking overwhelming tasks down into something your brain can actually start.

The throughline of this entire episode is simple: using tools is not cheating. It is adaptation. It is building a life that respects your actual capacity instead of demanding you perform like a brain you do not have.

Blair closes with a challenge so small it is almost embarrassing, and that is exactly the point.

Not on hormone replacement therapy? Not sure if you want to be? Still figuring it out? This episode is for you.

Blair tackles one of the most requested topics she gets: how do you actually survive perimenopause without HRT, or while you are still weighing your options? She is quick to make clear this is not a "you should" episode. Whether you love HRT, cannot take it, do not want it, or are simply waiting on an appointment, all of those experiences are valid and all of those women deserve support.

She also addresses something a lot of women have experienced but rarely talk about: medical gaslighting. The "your labs are normal," the "you're just stressed," the "maybe try an antidepressant" responses that leave women feeling dismissed instead of heard. Blair reminds listeners that normal labs do not always mean everything feels fine, and that you are absolutely allowed to ask questions, track your symptoms, seek second opinions, and advocate for yourself.

From there she gets into what actually helps. Tracking symptoms to find patterns so your body stops feeling random and unpredictable. Nervous system regulation and why rest is maintenance, not laziness. Sleep protection as a survival strategy, not a wellness flex. Movement that supports your body instead of punishing it. A grounded, no-nonsense take on supplements. And a refreshingly open conversation about sexual health changes in perimenopause that too many women suffer through in silence.

This episode is practical, validating, and wonderfully free of celery juice advice. If you are trying to build a version of wellness that works for your real life, not some idealized version of it, Blair meets you exactly where you are.

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.

If you have ever felt like your ADHD suddenly went into overdrive in midlife, this episode is going to explain exactly why, and more importantly, why it is not your fault.

Blair breaks down one of the most common things she hears from women in perimenopause: "Why does my brain suddenly feel like it stopped cooperating?" She walks through the science in a way that actually makes sense, explaining how estrogen helps regulate dopamine, and what happens to an ADHD brain when estrogen starts fluctuating. Spoiler: it is not pretty, and it is also not a personal failure.

She covers the five symptoms that make women feel like they are losing their minds during this phase: brain fog, emotional whiplash, routine collapse, sleep disruption, and sensory overload. If you have ever forgotten a word while staring directly at the thing you were trying to name, Blair has been there too. Recently. With her calendar.

Blair also gets into what actually helped her stop blaming herself and start working with her brain instead of against it. Think smaller tasks, visible systems, protected sleep, and emotional regulation skills that do not require perfection or a mountain top meditation retreat.

This episode is equal parts validating, educational, and refreshingly honest. If your routines have collapsed, your emotions feel bigger, and you are quietly wondering if you are becoming a worse version of yourself, Blair wants you to hear this: you are not broken. Your brain and body are asking for new support. That is a very different thing.

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.

In this episode, Blair gets personal.

Instead of theory or strategies, she pulls back the curtain on her own story and shares exactly how she ended up here: sitting in her own confusion, watching everything that used to work suddenly stop working, and asking herself what the hell was happening to her.

Blair talks about what it felt like to be a licensed therapist with all the knowledge, all the skills, and all the training, and still have her routines collapse, her brain fog take over, her emotions go sideways, and her motivation disappear entirely. She shares her late ADHD diagnosis, what it felt like to finally have language for things she had struggled with her entire life, and what happened when perimenopause showed up shortly after like, in her words, a wrecking ball.

She talks about the women she kept hearing from in her practice saying the same things over and over: I feel chaotic, I don't recognize myself, I can't keep up, I feel broken. And how that pattern led her to create her program, The Emotionally Organized Woman, built around the belief that emotional regulation and nervous system support have to come before routines and productivity, not after.

Blair also gets refreshingly real about what actually helps her brain: keeping things visible, using timers for everything, making tasks embarrassingly small, and redefining consistency not as perfection but as returning.

This one is personal, honest, and deeply relatable. If you have ever felt like your brain and body were working against you, this episode will make you feel a whole lot less alone.

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.

If perimenopause showed up and blew your entire life sideways, and you also happen to have ADHD, congratulations: you have found your people.

Overstimulated and Over It is the podcast for women in midlife who are exhausted, emotionally overloaded, hormonally chaotic, and completely done pretending they're fine. Hosted by Blair Pfeiffer, licensed therapist, ADHD and perimenopause coach, and AASECT-certified sex therapist, this show is here to say what nobody else is saying out loud.

Like the fact that perimenopause can absolutely wreck your ADHD coping systems. Or that brain fog, rage spirals, rejection sensitivity, and burnout are not character flaws. They are a nervous system doing its absolute best under impossible conditions.

Each episode covers the real stuff: hormones, emotional regulation, executive dysfunction, boundaries, relationships, identity, and strategies that actually work for brains like ours.

No toxic positivity. No "just use a planner." Just honest, validating, occasionally hilarious conversation for women who are overstimulated, over it, and ready to stop suffering in silence.

Pull up a chair. You belong here.

For more information about working with Blair: ⁠www.blairpfeiffercoaching.com⁠

⁠Join the ADHD and Perimenopause Support community.