Unstuck: A Simple Strategy for Emotional Regulation with Your ADHD Brain

From the founder of The Center for ADHD, a clear and proven framework for understanding and managing the part of ADHD that no one warned you about: the emotions.

The email you can’t bring yourself to answer. The rage over the dirty dishes. The two-second look someone gave you in a meeting, that you’re still turning over at midnight. If you have ADHD, you may know these moments all too well—and you may have been told you’re too sensitive, too intense, too much. But what if there’s another way to understand them?

Emotional intensity is a key part of the ADHD experience. As many as 70% of the 15.5 million U.S. adults with diagnosed ADHD report emotional dysregulation so significant it impacts their life. Yet it’s the symptom that’s rarely talked about—until now.

Dr. Marcy Caldwell, a clinical psychologist and founder of The Center for ADHD, has spent two decades focused on understanding ADHD emotions—studying them as they build unnoticed until they arrive at full volume. In Unstuck, Dr. Caldwell lays out the approach to managing this that she’s built from decades of established research and clinical work. This book:

• Is tailored to keep the ADHD brain engaged with short sections, manageable exercises, visual aids (including plenty of charts and illustrations)
• Uses an evidence-based, client-tested framework of color-coded strategies to recognize the intensity of an emotion and de-escalate it (from a raging red to a calm green)
• Offers tricks for remembering and utilizing the system even in highly dysregulated moments
• Explains the neuroscience behind the ADHD brain’s regulatory system in easy-to-understand terms

Whether you have ADHD, suspect you do, or love someone who does, Unstuck provides the tools you need. The feelings will keep coming. This is how you stop losing days, weeks, and years to them.