It's 11:00 PM. You sit up in bed with your chest tight and your heart going. Nothing happened. You went to sleep fine. You lie there trying to work out what's wrong with you, and the answer is nothing — except your body has been running a two-hour delayed reaction to a school email you read, closed, and forgot about at 9:02 PM.

What We Cover

The 9:02 PM email, the 11:00 PM panic, and why the two never show up in the same room at the same time
Why a neurotypical mum who gets the same email feels it right then — and what that looks like when Jane asks one about it directly
The five stages your body moves through between the trigger and the moment you finally register it — and how long you can spend in each one without knowing
Why the quiet moment you've been waiting for all day is exactly when the queue decides it's your turn
The misdiagnosis cost: when a doctor treats the reaction as the whole story, what gets written on your medical file — and what keeps walking through the door every day unmanaged
Why both can be true — the SSRI doing real work, and an interoceptive delay nobody's ever named for you

Free Resources

Energy Accounting Guide — https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-mums-energy-accounting-guide/

Related Episodes

Start with the rest of this series:

MUM RAGE #1: 3 Reasons It Feels Like It Came Out of Nowhere. (It Didn't.) — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/3-reasons-adhd-mum-rage-feels-like-it-came-out-of-nowhere-it-didnt/

MUM RAGE #2: 3 Reasons 'Just Breathe' Has Never Worked for ADHD Mums. (And What Actually Does.) — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/mum-rage-2/

Also from the archive:

S2 EP84 — I Love My Family But I'm So F*cking Angry: Mum Rage Part 1 (with Jacinta Thomson) — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-84-i-love-my-family-but-im-so-fking-angry-mum-rage-part-1/

EP71 — When You Can't Relax Even When It's Quiet — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/why-adhd-mums-cant-relax/

EP93 — When You Remove the Stress — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/when-you-remove-the-stress-and-start-wondering-whats-wrong-with-you/

S3 — I'm Gentle With My Daughter for Ten Minutes. Then I Tell Myself to Stop Being Such a F*cking Embarrassment. — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/im-gentle-with-my-daughter-for-ten-minutes-then-i-tell-myself-to-stop-being-such-a-fcking-embarrassment/

EP81 — The Hidden Cost of Being the 'Good Girl' — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/the-hidden-cost-of-being-the-good-girl-how-the-mental-load-became-ours/

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References & Further Reading

Seli, P., Risko, E. F., Smilek, D., & Schacter, D. L. (2016). Mind-wandering with and without intention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(8), 605–617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.05.010

Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2015). The science of mind wandering: Empirically navigating the stream of consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 487–518. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015331

Murphy, J., Brewer, R., Catmur, C., & Bird, G. (2017). Interoception and psychopathology: A developmental neuroscience perspective. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 45–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2016.12.006

Taylor, G. J., Bagby, R. M., & Parker, J. D. A. (1997). Disorders of affect regulation: Alexithymia in medical and psychiatric illness. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511526831