Don’t have time? The brief:

• If you have ADHD, being hard on yourself can feel necessary, but it’s just a pattern your brain has practiced for years.
• Self-compassion doesn’t mean giving up. It means being honest enough to stop making things harder.
• Catching it, zooming out, and redirecting takes repetition—not perfection.

The full piece goes deeper and makes the vague part clearer.

How ADHD Trains You to Be Hard on Yourself (and Why It Feels So Justified)

Yeah, yeah… have compassion for yourself. You’ve heard that a million times, and all the self-help stuff tells you it’s bad and that it makes things worse. Especially if you have ADHD, where years of missed deadlines, forgotten tasks, and inconsistent motivation have trained you to expect self-judgment as a baseline. But if self-criticism is what you’ve always done, it’s really hard to stop.

Look, you can keep calling it tough love if you want. But if it hasn’t worked in the last 15 years, it’s just well branded bullying.

Why Self-Criticism Feels Necessary When You Have ADHD

Part of the reason it’s such a stubborn pattern is that you are most likely still holding on to the belief that it works. That you are the exception to the rule, and that you need to be hard on yourself because self-criticism is the only thing that eventually pushes you to be better… and once you are better, then you can revisit this self-compassion nonsense.

And that’s the big trap. If you’re constantly caught in these self-judgment spirals but on some level they feel completely justified, or even productive, you’re not going to trust yourself to try something else. In fact, self-compassion feels dangerous.

But here’s the first thing you need to understand: Being kind to yourself doesn’t mean just letting yourself off the hook and pretending everything’s fine when it’s obviously not. Self-compassion is not all sunshine and rainbows; it’s about being honest with yourself. It’s the honest assessment that allows you to see the next step without the cloud of a doom spiral* and from there you can get on your own team.

Three Steps to Stop Being Hard on Yourself with ADHD

Catch yourself in the pattern (before it takes over)

Start by catching yourself. It sounds simple, but if being hard on yourself is your default, you might be shocked by how often it’s running in the background. For example, you’ll be scrolling through your phone and hear, “Wow, you’ve wasted your whole life.” It’s Tuesday. You’ve been awake for six hours. Get a grip. It also shows up when your expectations are completely untethered from reality. Like catching yourself expecting to be as good at something as someone who’s been doing it for 15 years, even though you’re two weeks in. Or beating yourself up for not being able to write clearly when you’re trying to think through something you haven’t figured out yet. Or assuming you’re lazy when you’re actually just paralyzed by a dozen competing priorities that all feel equally urgent and impossible. That’s not failure. That’s… thinking.

Zoom out from the shame spiral and get real

Is this actually the end of the world, or did you just forget to reply to an email? Again. The internal drama might feel justified, but following it usually leads to one thing: more suffering. If your brain is dragging you into a shame spiral over something fixable, or something that is actually absolutely fine, it’s time to get a wider lens. Especially with ADHD, where time blindness, impulsivity, and missed details can make even normal human error feel like a personal failure.

Redirect your brain without lying to it

You don’t have to fake confidence or go into denial. If you try to tell yourself “I’m doing great” when you’re clearly not, your brain will roll its eyes and make things worse. You can choose a thought that’s actually useful. Something like: This is frustrating, but I’ve figured out worse. Or I don’t love how that went, but I know what I’m going to try next. You’re not trying to feel amazing, you’re just finding some ease.

ADHD Makes Self-Sabotage Feel Safer Than Self-Compassion

The truth is, your brain doesn’t always want what’s better, it wants what’s familiar. Even if that familiar thing is a loop of self-loathing and disappointment, at least it’s predictable and it feels like control. That’s why self-sabotage can feel safe. That’s why breaking this pattern takes time. You have to be willing to sit in the discomfort of not knowing exactly who you are without it.

These three steps are simple to understand, but they take practice to apply—especially if your brain is wired for fast reactions, guilt spirals, and internal overcorrection. It’s not about doing them perfectly. It’s about doing them often enough that your brain starts to realize there’s another way to respond.

Coaching helps because it gives you a place to watch the pattern unfold without judgment and start calling it what it is: a habit, not a truth.

If self-loathing actually worked, so many of us would be billionaires with perfect abs by now. Time to try something new?

*Fun science fact for the geeks like me, self-acceptance has been linked to more accurate self-assessment.