Friendship That Fits

This month can feel like a highlight reel of love, but today we’re talking about the everyday version: where you can exhale. Today, we’ll focus on friendship expectations, mutual understanding, and choosing a connection that fits your capacity.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🔬 Science Spotlight: Cognitive load shows in blinks…
🗣 Therapist Corner: Friendship with ADHD, reframed…
📰 Mental Health News: Youth risk, systems strain…
🫂 Community Voices: Listening without fixing, first…

Let's check in on where you truly belong and where you're performing:

This week, when did you feel most like yourself? That's where belonging lives. And when did you feel most like you were playing a role? You don't have to quit every space where you perform, but you deserve to know the difference and build more of your life where belonging is the baseline.

Help us understand capacity-expectation alignment; are your friendship expectations matching what you can actually sustain?

How to Sit With Your Feelings Guide

Learning how to sit with difficult emotions can change the way you experience stress and overwhelm. This free “How to Sit With Your Feelings” guide offers a gentle, step-by-step approach to understanding emotions without judgment, grounding your body, and responding with compassion instead of avoidance. Download it now and give yourself permission to pause, feel, and heal.

Friendship with ADHD—Different, Not Deficient

Answered by: Allison Stephan, MA, LPC

It is a commonly held idea that friendships are a vital source of comfort, safety and happiness where memories are knitted together into beautiful tapestries. However, for many people with ADHD, friendships are stressful obligations that stir anxiety, shame and guilt. While many believe that ADHD is solely a focus problem, it is a much deeper-rooted neurological difference.

The ADHD brain moves at lightning speed, is intensely creative and needs a constant source of "what's next", but that breeds symptoms such as rejection sensitivity dysphoria, executive dysfunction, time blindness, dichotomous thinking and emotional dysregulation—making connection not only difficult, but impossible for some.

What's more is that the struggle to maintain friendships is often misunderstood. While a cursory examination reveals what appears to be a general lack of care and effort, a deeper look uncovers misunderstood symptoms, a deep-seated feeling of loneliness even when surrounded by people, small social battery, and a struggle with satisfaction where nothing is quite right. Couple that with task initiation difficulty, time blindness, and procrastination—all hallmarks of ADHD—and you have a recipe for missed connection and potential disappearance from friendships.

Light at The End of The Tunnel: Solutions for Connection and Maintenance

Relationships should allow and encourage you to be your authentic self. They shouldn't run down your battery and require constant masking that can leave you feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, and in need of a vacation.

Set Realistic Expectations

While some people may feel comfortable being the life of the party, it is okay not to share that need. Many people with ADHD prefer to have a few friends and see them occasionally. Acknowledging that friendships take time and investment and normalizing that ADHD makes that commitment to time and investment difficult, will better set you up for success.

Address the Elephant in The Room

While it shouldn't be your job to educate others, it is helpful if friends can understand what having ADHD really means. Explaining that the same things that make you great—sharp wit, fast thinking, and creative prowess—also require that you need more time alone to regulate, rest, and process stimulation to prevent system shut down. This will better create foundations on which to build relationships.

Seek Out Like-Mindedness

You don't have to disqualify those without ADHD, but relationships with those who value your differences and make space for flexibility will be more sustainable. They get it if you're late or forget to call back. They understand when conversation looks like rapid-fire and moves through topics like a pinball machine, but most importantly, they understand the gift of grace in a friendship that can banish the stigma of ADHD.

Connect in Groups

Some people with ADHD have found connection in groups to be easier as a group tends to have less expectation and a lower bar for communication, thus less need to mask. Think running clubs, book clubs, even game groups like bunco or mahjong.

Tackle the Executive Dysfunction and Time Blindness

Use technology to your advantage. Set reminders in your phone, use sticky notes on your computer screen and throw them away when the task is complete. Many times, creating a physical reminder can combat "out of sight, out of mind," and the ability to initiate and complete a task is a win.

Shed the Guilt and Shame

Yes, this is easier said than done, but it is highly likely that if the above boxes can be checked, successfully shedding the guilt of being a "bad friend" is possible. The greatest gift that a person with ADHD can give themselves is the gift of acceptance and understanding—knowing that ADHD is a difference and not a deficiency. While ADHD can make some things difficult, the ADHD brain wiring also creates advantages in many ways.

Allison Stephan is a published writer and Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas, specializing in neurodivergence. Her passion is helping her clients reauthor their stories and love themselves and their spicy brains. Find her at wfipc.com/our-therapists/allison-stephan or on Psychology Today at psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/allison-stephan-spring-tx/1026266

Your Nervous System Isn't Working Against You — It's Protecting You

When your body stays on high alert — racing thoughts, tight chest, trouble sleeping, or that heavy "shutdown" feeling — it's not a sign that something is wrong with you. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do: keep you safe.

The challenge is that sometimes these protective responses get stuck on repeat, long after the threat has passed. That's where somatic tools come in — body-based practices grounded in polyvagal science that help your system complete the stress cycle and return to calm.

A quick update on the Nervous System Regulation & Somatic Healing Bundle:

Already purchased? Your full bundle (28 resources) is ready for instant download right now. Check your inbox for access details.

Haven't grabbed it yet? This is your last chance. The bundle — including fillable workbooks, state-specific toolkits, 110 regulation cards, somatic practice guides, trackers, and more — is still available at 95% off.

Once the timer runs out, this price is gone for good.

No subscriptions. No hidden fees. Just one small investment in tools your body has been asking for.

Your Blinks Reveal How Hard Your Brain Is Working

The Research: Researchers found that blinking isn't random; it's strategically timed by the brain. Researchers used eye-tracking glasses to measure exactly when people blinked while listening to spoken sentences through headphones with varying levels of background noise.

The pattern was clear: people blinked significantly less during sentences compared to before or after them, and the reduction was strongest when background noise was loudest and speech was hardest to understand. A second experiment tested whether lighting could explain the effect. The same blink suppression appeared regardless of lighting, proving the effect was driven by cognitive effort, not visual conditions.

Why It Matters: Your eyes are constantly showing how hard your brain is working. When you need to focus on important information, whether visual or auditory, your brain automatically suppresses blinking to avoid missing anything. Every blink creates a brief interruption, and your brain strategically postpones blinking during moments that matter.

This provides objective evidence for something people with hearing loss often report: conversations are mentally exhausting, even when they can technically hear what's being said. Their reduced blink rates reveal the extra mental effort required to process speech in noisy environments.

Try It Today: If you regularly communicate important information, consider the cognitive load you're asking listeners to manage. Speaking clearly matters, but so does the environment. Reducing background noise, facing your listener so they can see your lips, and pausing between key points all reduce the mental effort required to process what you're saying.

I can seek relationships where understanding flows both ways. True friendship isn't one person always explaining and the other always receiving; it's mutual effort to truly see each other.

Think of one person who understands you and whom you understand in return. That reciprocal knowing creates safety that one-sided relationships can never provide.

It's okay to want friendships where you're not always the one translating yourself. You deserve to be understood, not just to understand others.

Reflect on your closest friendships. Ask yourself: "Is understanding flowing both directions here? Am I being seen and heard as much as I'm seeing and hearing them?" Let honest answers guide where you invest your relational energy.

“The Night I Stayed Up Till 4AM Talking to My Teenager"

Shared by Linda

My son turned into a stranger around age fourteen. The kid who used to tell me everything suddenly lived behind a closed bedroom door. Conversations were one-word answers. "How was school?" "Fine." I missed him even though he was right there.

One night, I couldn't sleep and went downstairs at 2AM to get water. He was sitting in the dark on the couch scrolling through his phone. We hadn't been alone together in months. I almost went back upstairs. Didn't want to invade his space or get another eye roll. But something made me sit down on the other end of the couch and just be quiet.

After maybe ten minutes, he said, "Can't sleep either?"

I shook my head. More silence. Then he started talking. Not about anything deep at first: some drama at school, a video game, a teacher he thought was unfair. I just listened, didn't try to fix anything or offer advice.

Then we got into heavier stuff. He told me he'd been feeling anxious a lot. That he worried about disappointing me and his dad. That social media made him feel like everyone else had it figured out and he was falling behind. That sometimes he felt lonely even when he was with his friends.

We talked until the sun came up. Not the whole time, there were long pauses where we both just sat there. But it was the most honest we’ve been with each other in over a year. I don't know if it'll happen again. He's back to the usual teenage distance. But now I know that kid I missed is still in there, and I’ll always here to support him whenever he needs me.

Share Your Story

Have a mental health journey you'd like to share with our community? Reply back to this email. All submissions are anonymized and edited for length with your approval before publication. Each published story receives a $10 donation to the mental health charity of your choice.

Evening Reset: Notice, Write, Settle

Picture a bridge connecting two shores. If it's only built from one side, people can walk halfway across and then have to turn back. But when both sides build toward each other, meeting in the middle, the bridge becomes a crossing that works. Friendship is that bridge. Understanding has to be built from both directions. Tonight you can ask yourself: which of your friendships are full bridges, and which ones have you been building alone?

Spend three minutes writing: Where do I feel mutually understood in my friendships, and where am I doing all the work of being understood while never feeling truly seen in return?

Close your notebook and ask yourself: Who made an effort to understand me today? Where did I give understanding without receiving it? How can I seek more reciprocal relationships tomorrow instead of settling for one-sided effort?

"One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Friendship requires understanding in both directions; if you're always the one being translated, it's not friendship.

Article: Are You Protecting Your Peace or Just Avoiding Hard Situations?

Read: Are You Protecting Your Peace or Just Avoiding Hard Situations?

The Gottman Institute reveals that "protecting your peace" has become a convenient excuse for avoiding hard conversations and backing out of commitments—all dressed up as self-care. Real peace in relationships isn't the absence of conflict; it's having trust, respect, and a path back to connection after stress. The crucial distinction: healthy space sounds like "I need a moment, then I want to return to this," while avoidance means withdrawing permanently from solvable conflict or using distance as punishment.

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Coming Monday: The surprising path to world-class performance; analyzing 34,839 elite achievers reveals that early stars rarely become adult superstars, while future top performers explored multiple activities and improved gradually rather than specializing early.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.