The Perpetual Game of Catch-Up: On Feeling Overwhelmed and Left Behind

There’s a particular flavour of exhaustion that comes from always feeling like you’re running to catch a train that left the station before you even knew it existed. If you’re reading this, chances are you know exactly what I mean. That bone-deep weariness of watching everyone else seemingly glide through life while you’re still trying to figure out where you put your keys this morning.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this sensation of being perpetually behind—how it shapes our days, our self-perception, and ultimately, our relationship with the world around us. For those of us with ADHD brains, this isn’t just an occasional frustration. It’s the background music of our lives, a constant hum that colours everything we do.

The Timeline That Never Was

Here’s what nobody tells you about ADHD time: it’s not linear. While the rest of the world operates on neat, sequential timelines—wake up, get ready, commute, work, lunch, work, home, dinner, sleep—our internal clocks run on what I like to call “emotional time.” Five minutes can feel like five hours when we’re bored, while five hours can vanish in what feels like seconds when we’re hyperfocused.

Recent research from the Journal of Attention Disorders suggests that this time blindness isn’t just about poor planning. It’s a fundamental difference in how ADHD brains process temporal information. We literally experience time differently. So when we feel “behind,” we’re not just dealing with poor time management—we’re navigating two entirely different temporal realities.

This creates a unique kind of overwhelm. It’s not just about having too much to do (though that’s certainly part of it). It’s about existing in a world designed for brains that process time in a way that’s fundamentally foreign to us. Imagine trying to navigate using a map written in a language you can’t read, while everyone around you acts like it’s perfectly clear.

The Myth of the Level Playing Field

Society loves to pretend we’re all running the same race. Wake up at the same time, work the same hours, meet the same deadlines. But what if your starting line is somewhere completely different? What if you’re not even on the same track?

I recently came across Dr. Russell Barkley’s work on ADHD and developmental delays, which suggests that ADHD involves a 30% developmental lag in executive functions. This means that at 30, your executive functioning might be closer to that of a 21-year-old neurotypical person. Not in terms of intelligence or capability, but in terms of those specific skills that help us plan, organize, and execute daily tasks.

This isn’t about making excuses. It’s about understanding why the overwhelm feels so intense. When you’re constantly being measured against standards designed for brains that work differently than yours, feeling left behind isn’t a personal failing—it’s a predictable outcome of a mismatched system.

The Comparison Trap

Social media has turned comparison into an Olympic sport, and for ADHD brains, it’s particularly brutal. We see the highlight reels of others’ lives—their promotions, their organized homes, their consistent workout routines—and feel the gap between where we are and where we “should” be widening by the day.

But here’s what I’ve been learning: comparison assumes we’re all playing by the same rules. It assumes that my Tuesday looks like your Tuesday, that my energy patterns match yours, that my brain processes tasks in the same way yours does. It’s like comparing a fish’s ability to climb a tree with a squirrel’s—technically they’re both animals, but the comparison is meaningless.

The overwhelm intensifies when we internalize these comparisons. We start believing we’re lazy, unmotivated, or broken because we can’t maintain the same consistency as our neurotypical peers. But consistency itself is a neurotypical construct. Our brains are built for intensity, not consistency. We’re sprinters in a world that rewards marathon runners.

The Executive Function Traffic Jam

Picture this: your brain is a busy intersection, and executive function is the traffic light system. For neurotypical brains, the lights generally work in predictable patterns. Green, yellow, red. Traffic flows smoothly most of the time.

For ADHD brains? It’s like someone installed a disco ball instead of traffic lights. Sometimes everything’s green and traffic flows beautifully (hello, hyperfocus!). Sometimes everything’s red and nothing moves. Sometimes the lights are flashing random colors and causing a ten-car pile-up of tasks, emotions, and sensory input.

This is why simple tasks can feel monumentally overwhelming. It’s not the task itself—it’s the cognitive load of trying to direct traffic with a broken system. Every decision, every transition, every attempt to prioritize requires manual override of a system that’s supposed to run automatically.

New research in neuroplasticity offers some hope here. Studies suggest that while we can’t fundamentally rewire our ADHD brains to be neurotypical (nor should we want to), we can build alternative routes. Think of it as creating roundabouts where the intersections don’t work—different infrastructure for different needs.

The Emotional Weight of Always Catching Up

Let’s talk about the emotional toll, because it’s real and it’s heavy. There’s a particular kind of grief that comes with watching life happen around you while you’re still trying to get your shoes on. It’s the grief of missed opportunities, of relationships that withered while you were overwhelmed, of dreams deferred because you couldn’t figure out the first step.

Dr. Thomas Brown’s research on ADHD and emotions reveals that emotional dysregulation isn’t a side effect of ADHD—it’s a core feature. The same executive functions that help us manage tasks also help us manage emotions. When the system is overwhelmed, everything gets amplified. The frustration of being behind becomes despair. The anxiety of having too much to do becomes paralysis.

I’ve started thinking of this emotional overwhelm as climate rather than weather. Weather passes—a bad day, a missed deadline, a frustrating morning. Climate is the overall pattern. And for many of us, the climate has been consistently stormy for so long that we’ve forgotten what calm feels like.

Building Your Own Timeline

So where does this leave us? How do we navigate a world that seems designed for brains that work differently than ours?

First, I think we need to radically reimagine what “keeping up” means. What if instead of trying to match everyone else’s pace, we identified our own rhythms? What if instead of forcing ourselves into neurotypical schedules, we built lives that honor our unique patterns of energy and attention?

This isn’t about lowering standards or giving up on goals. It’s about recognizing that there might be different paths to the same destination. Or—and here’s the radical part—that maybe the destination itself needs rethinking.

I’ve been experimenting with what I call “ADHD-native planning.” Instead of fighting against my brain’s natural patterns, I’m learning to work with them. This means:

• Energy mapping: Tracking when my focus is naturally strongest and scheduling important tasks accordingly

• Buffer building: Adding twice as much time as I think I need for transitions

• Shame reduction: Actively challenging the voice that says I’m behind

• Interest anchoring: Connecting boring tasks to things I genuinely care about

The research supports this approach. Studies on ADHD and motivation show that interest-based nervous systems (common in ADHD) respond poorly to importance-based planning but thrive with novelty, competition, urgency, and passion.

The Community of the Overwhelmed

Here’s what gives me hope: we’re not alone in this. There’s a growing recognition that neurodiversity isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. The more we share our experiences of overwhelm, of feeling left behind, of struggling with systems not built for us, the more we create space for alternative ways of being.

I’ve been connecting with others who get it—people who understand that “just try harder” isn’t helpful advice, who know what it’s like to have seventeen browser tabs open in your brain at all times, who’ve felt the particular exhaustion of masking your struggles to appear “normal.”

These connections matter. They remind us that feeling overwhelmed isn’t a personal failing—it’s a reasonable response to navigating a world with a differently wired brain. They offer practical strategies that actually work for ADHD minds, not just neurotypical solutions with ADHD window dressing.

Redefining Success

Maybe the ultimate answer to feeling left behind is to question where we’re supposedly going. Who decided the destination? Who set the timeline? Who benefits from us constantly feeling like we’re not measuring up?

I’m learning to define success differently. Success might be remembering to eat lunch. Success might be sending that one email I’ve been avoiding for three weeks. Success might be recognizing when I’m overwhelmed and taking a break instead of pushing through.

These might seem like small victories to some, but for those of us navigating life with ADHD brains, they’re revolutionary acts. They’re declarations that we refuse to measure ourselves by standards that were never designed for us.

Moving Forward (At Our Own Pace)

The overwhelm isn’t going away entirely. Neither is the feeling of being behind. These are part of the ADHD experience, as integral as creativity, intensity, and the ability to see connections others miss.

But what can change is our relationship with these feelings. What can change is how we respond when the overwhelm hits. What can change is our willingness to build lives that work with our brains instead of against them.

I’m not writing this from a place of having it all figured out. I’m writing it from the middle of the mess, from the heart of the overwhelm, from the exact place where so many of us find ourselves. But I’m also writing it from a place of hope—hope that by naming these experiences, by connecting with others who share them, by reimagining what success looks like, we can create something better.

The train metaphor I started with? I’m beginning to think maybe we were never meant to catch that particular train. Maybe we’re meant to build our own form of transportation entirely—something that moves at our pace, stops when we need it to, and takes scenic routes that others might miss in their rush to stay on schedule.

So to everyone reading this who feels perpetually behind, chronically overwhelmed, and tired of trying to keep up: you’re not alone. Your pace is valid. Your struggles are real. And your way of moving through the world, different as it may be, has value that a world obsessed with neurotypical efficiency might be too rushed to see.

Let’s build something different together. Something that honors our complexity, respects our challenges, and celebrates the unique gifts that come with brains that refuse to color inside the lines.

The revolution starts with refusing to apologize for taking up space in our own lives. It continues with creating systems that work for us. And it flourishes when we connect with others who understand that feeling behind might just mean we’re on an entirely different journey altogether.

What resonates with your experience? What strategies have you found for navigating overwhelm? I’d love to hear your thoughts and continue this conversation in the comments below.