Why Grief Keeps Finding You at 2 AM

If you have ADHD and grief shows up, do you stay busy? Keep moving? Find something else to do? Stay ahead of the quiet? And then through it all does it find you anyway? Waking up at 2 AM, out of nowhere, when you thought you were past it? That's not you doing grief wrong. That's just how ADHD brains grieve. And this episode is about what to actually do when it catches up. Last time, David and Isabelle unpacked why ADHD brains seem to grieve in the wrong order. Why you can stand dry-eyed at a funeral and then fall apart completely at a graduation. And why neither of those things means something is wrong with you. Then they get into the part nobody usually makes time for: what to actually do when it shows up. In this episode: Why ADHD brains get practical when grief shows up, and what it costs when everyone goes home The empirical case David makes from his own life for why how much you cry has nothing to do with how much you loved What it actually means to grieve something that isn't a person. A city. A chapter. A version of yourself that no longer fits. Isabelle's therapist's tool for making a date with your grief so it stops ambushing you at 2 AM ------- Wait, What's That? Here are some of the terms and people mentioned in this episode explained: Time Agnosia The ADHD experience of not being able to feel time passing the way neurotypical brains do. In this episode it comes up as one explanation for why grief doesn't hit when everyone expects it to. Your brain isn't programmed to feel things on the service's schedule. It hits when it hits, in its own time, in a future moment you weren't ready for. Asynchronous Processing What happens when your brain doesn't process the big emotional stuff in real time. You can be right in the middle of something and feel completely fine. Then weeks later on a walk, out of nowhere, it lands. That's not numbness. That's just how your brain works. Moral Reasoning Isabelle brings up something from a philosophy course that's stayed with her. The idea that a friend is someone you agree to mourn if they die before you. That choosing to be close to someone is already a quiet acknowledgment that one of you will miss the other. She has never forgotten it. Practical Griever The person who, when loss shows up, immediately pivots to action. Makes the calls, brings the food, goes and cleans the house. David and Isabelle both recognize themselves here. The thing is, the grief doesn't go anywhere. It just waits until the room gets quiet. Ambiguous Losses Grief without a clear name or a socially accepted reason to mourn. Moving away from a city you loved. Losing a version of yourself. A friendship that ended without a conversation. Isabelle talks about still carrying grief from leaving Chicago. These losses are real. They just rarely get the space real grief deserves. "Nora" David and Isabelle's shorthand for norepinephrine, the brain chemical wired into mood, attention, and stress response. Comes up here in the context of making sure your basic needs are met before you try to sit with the hard stuff. Nora has to be okay before grief can move through you the way it needs to. Duration Measure Isabelle's term for the container David's timer approach creates. When you decide you're going to sit with grief for a set amount of time and then get up, that's a duration measure. It makes the feeling tolerable because it has edges. You're not drowning in it. You know when it ends. Bobby Richards Isabelle's husband and the new Executive Producer of Something Shiny: ADHD. Gets a very well-earned shoutout in this episode for the audio upgrade you're hopefully hearing right now. Autonomic Nervous System The system that runs the involuntary stuff including heart rate, breathing, and stress response. Comes up in Isabelle's deep dive into dyspraxia and how the brain's predictive processing works differently in neurodivergent people. Dyspraxia A motor coordination difference that often shows up alongside ADHD and autism. Isabelle has a paradigm shift in this episode about what dyspraxia actually is and how it connects to the brain's predictive software. Why change is so dysregulating. Why your body is always ten steps behind your brain. AuDHD Having both autism and ADHD. Comes up as Isabelle and David get into the overlap between the two and what it means for how neurodivergent people process change, repetition, and sensory experience. ------- 💬 When has grief caught up with you in the quiet? On a walk, at 2 AM, weeks after you thought you were fine. Leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We read them. 🎧 Follow Something Shiny: ADHD for more conversations that help you understand your ADHD and remind you, you were never too much.