The distraction isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.
Somatic Business Coach for ADHD, HSP & Neurodiverse Founders | Your sensitivity isn’t the problem - dysregulation is | I help you regulate and build without burning out
You know the loop.
The meeting ends.
The pressure lifts for exactly four seconds.
And then your hand reaches for the phone before your brain has even decided to.
Not for anything specific. Just... scrolling. Checking. Tapping. Moving your attention to something - anything - that isn’t the thing you’re supposed to be doing.
You’re aware of it. That’s the maddening part.
You watch yourself do it. You’ve even named it. “My phone thing.” “My distraction habit.” Maybe your partner’s named it too, less kindly.
And you’ve tried to stop. Screen time limits. App blockers. Leaving the phone in another room. Willpower at 8am that’s completely gone by 2pm.
None of it sticks. Because you’re treating the symptom like it’s the disease.
Probably what nobody told you about the compulsive reach for distraction is this..
It has nothing to do with it being a discipline problem.
It’s your nervous system doing its job.
When your body has been running on high alert for hours (aka managing demands, reading rooms, switching between ten priorities, holding a performance mask in place) it hits a threshold.
Not a dramatic one. Nor is it a breakdown.
It’s simply a biological limit.
And at that threshold, your system needs to discharge.
Offload.
Move the energy somewhere.
Anywhere.
The phone is the fastest exit ramp your brain has found.
Sure, it’s regulation.
Bad regulation.
But regulation nonetheless.
I work with a lot of people who carry this pattern. High-performing, emotionally intelligent, often ADHD or neurodiverse.
People whose brains were never designed for the sustained, linear focus that most work environments demand - but who’ve spent decades white-knuckling their way through it anyway.
One person I worked with described it perfectly.
He said his biggest disconnect wasn’t actually work.
It was being a father.
Not because he didn’t love his daughter - he was quick to clarify that.
But because the weight of everything else (ie the job, the properties, the finances, the decisions that never stopped coming) left him with nothing at the end of the day.
Not nothing as in no time.
Nothing as in no presence.
He’d get home and the kid’s there and the dinner needs making and the bath needs running.
And he’s physically in the room but mentally still processing the eleven things from work that didn’t get resolved.
Or scrolling. Or just... gone.
Checked out behind his own eyes.
And then the guilt hits.
Because this was supposed to be the thing that mattered most.
The parenting.
The presence.
The showing up not just as a provider but as a father who’s actually there.
And he couldn’t get there, not because he didn’t want to... but because his nervous system had already spent everything it had.
I see this pattern constantly with neurodiverse leaders.
The ones who put enormous pressure on themselves to perform - and have done so for so long that they genuinely believe the pressure is what makes them good.
“It doesn’t affect me negatively,” they’ll say. “The pressure is how I arrive at my best.”
And on one level, they’re right.
The pressure has produced results.
The ADHD hyperfocus, the pattern recognition, the ability to read a room and pivot instantly - all of that runs on urgency fuel.
But urgency fuel has a cost.
And the cost doesn’t show up at work. It shows up at home.
It shows up in the 6pm version of you who can’t be still.
Who reaches for the phone while your kid is talking.
Who snaps over something small because you’ve been holding it together all day and your capacity is at zero.
It shows up as the gap between the parent you want to be and the parent you have energy left to be.
Most of the people I sit with already know what’s happening.
They’re self-aware.
They’ve named the pattern.
Some have been to therapy.
A few found it helpful.
Most didn’t stay long enough to find out what might have worked - because the ADHD brain that’s brilliant at crisis management is terrible at sustained, slow processses...
And so the awareness just becomes another weight.
You know you’re dysregulated.
You know the phone is a crutch.
You know the compulsive checking is a way to occupy your thoughts when things get stressful.
You know alcohol used to serve the same function.
You know all of it.
And knowing hasn’t changed anything.
Because this isn’t a knowledge problem.
It’s a nervous system problem.
Your body learned a long time ago (probably in childhood, probably before you had any say in it) that the way to survive high demand was to override your own signals.
Push through.
Don’t stop.
Don’t feel.
Just perform.
And now you’re 38 or 41 or 44, and the override is still running.
But the engine underneath it is redlining.
The fear underneath all of this (the one that wakes you up at 3am, the one you can’t quite say out loud - isn’t about the job)
It’s about the kid.
It’s: “What if I’m too tired to be the parent they need?”
It’s: “What if my dysregulation becomes their normal?”
It’s: “What if the thing that made me successful is the same thing that makes me absent?”
That fear is real.
And it deserves more than another productivity hack or meditation app.
So what actually helps?
Not more self-awareness. (You have plenty of that.)
Not more strategies. (Your brain eats strategies for breakfast and abandons them by Thursday.)
What helps is building a different kind of capacity in your nervous system.
Not adding more to your plate - but teaching your body that it’s safe to come down from high alert.
That rest isn’t failure. That presence doesn’t require performance.
That the version of you who shows up at 6pm doesn’t have to be running on fumes.
This is body work, not brain work.
It’s about rewiring the automatic response -
the one that reaches for the phone,
the one that checks out behind your eyes,
the one that turns presence into one more thing to perform at.
It’s about learning to arrive home not as the depleted version of yourself, but as someone who still has something left to give. Not because you pushed harder. Because you stopped leaking energy all day into a system that was never built for your wiring.
More on how that actually works (practically) in my next newsletter.
- Daniel
If this landed, and you know a father or parent navigating something similar - high pressure, late diagnosis, that invisible gap between the parent they want to be and the one they have capacity for - I’d be grateful if you passed it along.
Sometimes the most important shift starts with someone saying: that’s me. I thought I was the only one.