Blog: Detour From Hell; The Mind of a Hot Mess

✨ A Dangerous Trifecta: ADHD, Anxiety & PTSD: What I Learned This Year

My mom has “joked” since I can remember that I have ADHD. But…. she was right. The funny part of it is that when she and I are together, the shit show gets 10x worse 🤔😅. Before Dustin’s death, I would laugh with everyone else, making fun of myself, and go about my day. It was not nearly as severe and I was still successful, so it was a joke, I was just a spaz. I had learned to accept it (with the whiskey). But now? It’s embarrassing, and I’m painfully self-conscious about it. I feel like I broke my brain. I’ve asked myself more times than I can count if I pushed it so far that it just doesn’t work right anymore.

I wasn’t officially diagnosed with ADHD until after Dustin died, because it hadn’t started affecting my life daily. It’s been there the whole time. But life on life’s terms pushed me past the breaking point, and everyday living just wasn’t easy anymore. My EDMR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – trauma therapy) counselor in Wichita told me she’d read a study suggesting that every person with PTSD has some level of ADHD. I found that fascinating — and honestly, it makes sense based on my experience. But I couldn’t find the study myself, and I believe they say you are born with ADHD if I understand correctly, so I’m not claiming it as fact, just sharing what she told me.

🧠 Counselor’s Explanation (AKA: The Moment It Started to Make Sense)

My new EMDR counselor explained something last week that honestly made everything click and made me feel a little more competent. She said that with ADHD, anxiety, and PTSD (especially CPTSD) all mixed together, it’s not always that I forgot something — a lot of the time, my brain never processed it in the first place.

I might look like I’m listening, and I may even respond. But if my brain is thinking about twelve other things, trying not to panic, replaying an old memory, and/or mentally organizing tomorrow’s to-do list (even though I don’t mean or want to), then I don’t actually take in that information. So, it’s not that the information was “forgotten” — it never even made it through the door. And honestly… that explains SO MUCH. And scares me a bit less about memory loss.

She also told me with ADHD often comes the exact self-criticism, like the examples above, and she named some of the exact things I still will say to myself constantly during the bad times.

There is a lot to learn when you’re living with multiple conditions. It really is the dangerous mental health trifecta if not treated or understood — anxiety, CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and ADHD (plus the addiction history layered in). Many of the symptoms overlap, and when you put them all together, they intensify each other significantly. There aren’t many symptoms that differ — and that’s why the whole combo creates the perfect trifecta to make a hot mess.

🧠 My Brain Trying to Explain My Brain
Even though some of this scares the shit out of me — because so much of it feels out of my control — understanding the brain makes the whole mess feel a little less overwhelming. I started learning how each of these conditions physically affects different parts of the brain. Honestly, each one could be its own blog. And maybe it will be a few weeks in the future, because once you dig into the science, it’s wild how much it explains and teaches you about yourself.

What surprised me most was that out of all four conditions I looked into, addiction actually seemed to be the one that was affected the most, just as there are many more different things happening up there at once. This will definitely be a blog of its own.

I had no idea. You’d think I would, considering I grew up around addiction and lived in it myself, but it wasn’t something I ever thought about until I was in recovery and got sober, and had to start feeling instead of numbing. That alone confirmed to me that addiction is a disease. Not a moral failure. A disease — because the changes in the brain are physical and measurable (I’m not here to debate whether addiction is a disease. I just found the science interesting and validating, just my opinion). So I wanted to understand how ADHD, anxiety, CPTSD, and addiction all physically work together, and how that contributes to the symptoms I deal with, still today. I found a very helpful diagram that explains the overlap of Trauma & ADHD. However, I could not find any diagrams with anxiety or addiction too. However, I think it would look very similar.

Here’s where things finally started making sense:

The amygdala* is your brain’s alarm system — the part that detects danger and triggers fear, panic, or emotional reactions. In a healthy brain, it only fires when something is truly threatening. With trauma, anxiety, or chronic stress, it becomes oversensitive. It reacts to small things like they’re life or death. That’s why people with PTSD, anxiety, or high emotional sensitivity startle easily, go into fight/flight/freeze, or feel “on edge” even when nothing is wrong.

Right next to it is the hypothalamus*, your body’s stress switch. When the amygdala senses danger, the hypothalamus fires off a signal to activate fight, flight, or freeze. That means faster heart rate, muscle tension, adrenaline, stress — all the things that make you feel restless or overwhelmed. Chronic anxiety, trauma, ADHD, and addiction keep the hypothalamus firing constantly. It’s like a stress switch stuck in the ON position, leaving you overstimulated or mentally drained 24/7.

Then there’s the prefrontal cortex (PFC)* — the brain’s control center. It handles planning, logic, organization, impulse control, and emotional regulation. Mental health issues affect the PFC in a tremendous way, especially under stress. Anxiety overloads it. Trauma shuts it down. ADHD slows it. Addiction physically damages it. So when you’re under pressure, the part of your brain that’s supposed to keep you grounded simply doesn’t function properly, while the emotional brain becomes more prominent.

Me doubting myself, freaking out, panicking, breaking down emotionally — it’s not weakness. It’s not character flaws. It’s literally what my brain just does now. And I have no control besides learning how to cope better with it. And to do that, I need to understand why better, so I can work on coping instead of feeling hopeless or less than.

And when you look at how each condition affects the brain — and how much they intensify each other — it’s no wonder I’ve struggled! Honestly, anyone living with this combination would struggle. It really is a Mental Health Trifecta of chaos.

But knowing what’s happening gives me power.
I can learn.
I can adjust.
I can grow.

And the fact that I’ve survived everything that I have, and am coping better than ever before — all while living under constant stress and trying to build something new from scratch — that takes a damn strong person. And then the faith it takes that things will work out, even when life hasn’t always given me reasons to trust that….. that takes courage.

But I see it.
I feel it.
I genuinely believe Serene Efficiency is going to become something real — something that helps people in ways I wish I’d had years ago.

I’ve wondered many times over the course of life how much more I can handle. But giving up has never been an option for me — even if the thought crosses my mind sometimes. And that sure won’t change now.

*I got into a rabbit hole of articles while researching this topic but this information came from several articles: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

✨ Learning to Catch Myself
Yes — I absolutely still have days where I freak out, incredible overreacting (ask Justin 🫠). I still have moments where I’m convinced my brain is broken like a cheap Temu gag gift.

But now? I catch myself quicker — sometimes almost instantly. I can say, “Okay… I’m being TOO extra! No need for a full freak-out. Walk away.” And walking away might look negative to some people, some want to get it over with right away, and I used to be like that. However, these things have also made the way I communicate different. So now it’s absolutely necessary so I can think before I act — even if it’s just five minutes.

I pause. I breathe. I think. And I try my hardest to pull myself back before the spiral gets out of control and things get toxic, like I had been accustomed to. I basically do a Step 10 in my brain on a regular basis — if you’ve been in recovery, you get it.

On the flip side, I also don’t allow people to treat me the way I’ve been treated in the past. So yes, there are times I speak my mind and someone may not like it. That is not a freak-out. That’s just me. 😁 I’m an open book — messy, beautiful, and complacent. I am persistent to a fault at times when it comes to things I am passionate about, I hustle until I have to when I have a goal, and I am a total bulldog when it comes to people I love. And I do not apologize.

But I’m not used to the level of toxicity I used to be. So I don’t stay stuck as long. And that’s growth — messy growth, but growth nonetheless. Not perfection. Not the expectation that everything suddenly becomes strawberries and orgasms forever. Just growth. And that takes strength too — bettering yourself always takes strength.

It probably takes me ten hours or more to write this blog every week (usually more, because there’s always something going on in the background). I reread it ten times, rewrite it ten times, reread it again, overwrite it, and then have to cut half of it out because apparently weekly blogs aren’t supposed to become novels 😅🤦‍♀️and the process starts again. It always feels like I’m cutting out something important. But there’s next week — and that’s what I remind myself. My brain wants perfection. It wants everything included. That’s just how it works.

I’m learning to let that go.
I’m learning to trust myself.

This week was even harder. I guarantee I spent over 15+ hours this week; I was up until almost 4A last night because there is so much to this topic, and I couldn’t decide how to shorten it, its difficult to break it down. And I have been sitting here rewriting this since I woke up. That is my mental health cocktail just torturing me. But ADHD is still a newer topic for me educationally, and researching it made a lot of moments I’m not proud of make a lot of fucking sense. Things I’ve dwelled on for years. But I’m improving. I’m growing. I’m becoming more comfortable sharing my thoughts with the world without doubting myself 20 times. That growth…. that takes strength and courage too.

I have an amazing partner who NEVER wants to make me feel worse about myself. If he finds out something he said hurt me, he’s visibly upset. He hates seeing me miserable or cry for any reason — something that may seem normal, but wasn’t in my past relationships. My mind tries to tell me he’s just saying what I want to hear to shut me up because I’m being annoying (far too often🤦‍♀️) but that’s not true. He’s patient. He’s kind. He reminds me I’m capable. Smart. Strong.

He is right.
After everything I’ve survived — would I be able to open an LLC and trying to launch a business, help side hustle to make ends meet, and juggle everything behind the scenes if I were incompetent? No fucking way in hell. I would lose my mind, quite literally.

And he’s also the person who said three specific things that will always stick with me, that helped me leave the toxicity that was slowly killing me (corporate in this case):

“I dont care how little you make, or how much an education costs, figure out what really makes you happy. I got you”. I had never trusted anyone to care for me like that.

“I won’t let you go back to finance unless you truly think it will make you happy.” Which gave me the validation I was looking for to walk away from a 15 year career and I never thought that would be possible.

“I don’t think you’ll succeed inside the box.” I was worried that my business model is too unique, out of the box, etc. I feel its very necessary but would everyone else? Which reminded me how special and unique I am. I have something to offer the world. I am still here for some reason and I don’t plan to waste it anymore.

Dustin’s death didn’t destroy me — it pivoted me. My brain changed. My direction changed. My communication changed. And it led me to a career that is deeply personal, deeply meaningful, and genuinely needed. I believe in what my business stands for — including reaching schools, rehab centers, sobriety programs. All of it. It’s a dream right now, a long-term goal… but it’s not impossible.

This is just me learning to understand the one mental health issue I’ve had all along (even though it was the most recent diagnosis).

My brain — it’s messy, but it’s healing. And so am I. And I am the happiest and most content with my direction than I’ve ever been in my life. That feeling, after everything I’ve survived? It’s unexplainable. It’s everything.

Hope everyone has a peaceful and serene week! Talk next time. 💚 And if you feel you got anything out of this, a piece of new info, something you could relate to, please share! Im starting from scratch so need all the support I can get. Thank you for taking the time to read!

This song was so relatable the first time I heard it, before I educated myself more. This is what it feels like when you don’t know what is happening or why.