Why December Felt Different When You Have ADHD

How do you feel right now, as December comes to a close?

If you’re being honest, your answer might include exhaustion, overwhelm, or a quiet sense of relief that it’s finally over.

If so — you’re not imagining it.

December asks more of ADHD brains than most people realize. And if you’re here reading this, chances are you felt it. It’s been a long month. This is a longer blog. Go at your own pace.

Here’s the reassurance up front: If you make it to the end, you’re doing okay.And even if you don’t, you may still walk away with a clearer understanding of why December felt the way it did.

The point of this article is simple:

December places unique demands on attention, emotional regulation, and executive functioning — the very systems ADHD brains already work hardest to manage.

Why December Hits Differently

In the United States, December is culturally dense with celebration and expectation. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, solstice gatherings, office parties — the month is layered with social scripts about connection, reflection, and fresh starts.

Even for deep thinkers, being asked to reflect while also celebrating can be a lot.

Even if you didn’t personally celebrate any of these events, the cultural narrative was hard to escape. The buzz was in the air. There was implicit pressure to show up (at least to the office party), be present, feel festive, and end the year with something meaningful to show for it — preferably alongside a solid plan for the year ahead.

For many people, this season is simply busy or even energizing — a welcome chance to reconnect with family and friends they don’t usually see.

But for those with ADHD — especially women whose nervous systems are already working overtime to regulate emotions and navigate social expectations — December often feels less like a celebration and more like a minefield.

It’s not just that the month is full.

It’s that December demands consistent performance from internal systems that were already stretched thin.

When interpersonal dynamic alone feel taxing— reading social cues, managing emotional reactions, staying regulated in group settings — the cost tends to rise even higher during the holidays due to layers of expectations quietly pile on.

Should that be no big deal? Right?

The Functioning Tax

What December Actually Costs

Emerging research is confirming what many people with ADHD already know from lived experience: ADHD nervous systems are more sensitive to sensory input than non-ADHD nervous systems.

A large 2025 meta-analysis found that individuals with ADHD experience significantly greater challenges across sensory sensitivity, sensory avoidance, low sensory registration, and sensory seeking (Jurek et al., 2025).

In plain terms, your brain is already working harder to process the world around you.

Lights feel brighter. Sounds are harder to filter. Crowds are more draining.

December intensifies all of this. Holiday lights, crowded stores, loud gatherings, overlapping conversations, and constant stimulation are everywhere during what’s often called the most wonderful time of the year. Unlike a typical workweek or a single social event, December rarely includes true recovery time. There are fewer pauses, fewer days without social obligations built in, and very little space to recharge. Even finding a quiet bathroom to hide out in can feel harder to come by.

When your brain is busy filtering sensory input, it has less capacity left for everything else. And because increased stimulation is essentially the name of the holiday season game, it makes sense that this creates a clash of needs.

For neurodivergent people, everyday social interaction already requires extra effort. Adding more social rules — and the emotional weight attached to those rules — places additional strain on an already sensitive autonomic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze). December adds another layer: more expectations, more emotional demands, and more opportunities for nervous system burnout.

This is the holiday functioning tax.

And it compounds quietly, day after day.

Belonging vs. Loneliness

The Emotional Paradox

One of the heaviest experiences many ADHD women face in December is the tension between wanting connection and being overwhelmed by it.

Holiday gatherings often amplify this paradox. You can be surrounded by people — coworkers, family, familiar faces — and still feel strangely alone.

This isn’t just anecdotal. A 2024 meta-analysis found that individuals with ADHD experience significantly higher levels of loneliness than their non-ADHD peers (Jong et al., 2024). Importantly, loneliness is not the same as social isolation.

Loneliness reflects a perceived lack in the quality of connection, not the quantity.

In plain terms:

• You can have a full social calendar and still feel disconnected

• You can be at a party and feel like you’re performing rather than participating

• You can love the people around you and still need to step away just to regulate

  
  

This is the belonging paradox: the more you want connection, the more overwhelming it can feel when your nervous system is already overloaded.

December — with its endless invitations, heightened expectations, and subtle pressure for “mandatory fun” — turns that tension up even louder.

Executive Function Overload

Why Planning Feels Impossible

Executive functions are the brain’s management system — the processes that allow us to plan, organize, shift between tasks, manage time, and regulate emotional responses (Diamond, 2013). For individuals with ADHD, these systems function differently. Research has consistently shown that ADHD involves differences in working memory, self-regulation, and planning (Barkley, 1997).

This isn’t about intelligence or effort.

In plain terms: your brain’s filing system works differently.

December dramatically increases executive demands. Coordinating schedules, buying gifts, preparing meals, managing travel, moving between work events and family gatherings — often with very little downtime. For ADHD brains already working hard to manage these tasks on a typical day, December requires sustained high-level executive performance across weeks.

That’s exhausting and stress makes it worse.

Stress directly impacts the prefrontal cortex — the brain region responsible for executive functioning and already under strain in ADHD (Arnsten, 2009). Under stress, the prefrontal cortex becomes less efficient, reducing the very abilities needed for planning, organization, and emotional regulation.

In plain terms: when stress rises — as it does in December — the systems you rely on most become less effective.

Emotional Regulation

A Core ADHD Challenge

Emotional dysregulation is not a secondary feature of ADHD — it’s central to the experience. Research shows that ADHD affects how intensely emotions are felt and how difficult they are to regulate in the moment (Shaw et al., 2014; Mohammadi et al., 2020).

In plain terms: Your emotions aren’t just “bigger.”Your nervous system processes and regulates them differently.

December adds specific pressures that make regulation even harder:

• The pressure to perform joy, even when you’re exhausted

• Family dynamics, where old roles and expectations resurface

• Increased social demands, layered on top of sensory and executive overload

  
  

It’s not that you can’t handle emotions.

It’s that December asks you to regulate emotions under conditions that are uniquely dysregulating for your nervous system.

This is often why others notice changes — “You’re so different this month” — not because you changed, but because the load did.

Decision Fatigue

Why Every Choice Feels So Hard

Research shows that individuals with ADHD already expend more cognitive energy on everyday decision-making, making them especially vulnerable to decision fatigue (Fisher et al., 2023).

December multiplies decisions:

• What gifts to buy

• Which events to attend

• What to wear

• What to bring

• When to leave

• What to cook or order

  
  

Each decision drains limited cognitive resources.

By mid-December, many ADHD brains are running on empty, leading to:

• Procrastination

• Impulsivity

• Analysis paralysis

  
  

This is decision fatigue — and for ADHD brains, it hits faster and harder.

Which brings us to something many people don’t give themselves permission to do.

Permission to Participate at 70%

You didn’t have to show up at 100% to every December obligation.

Did you allow yourself to:

• Leave parties early

• Say no to events

• Participate on your terms

• Acknowledge that December was hard?

  
  

You weren’t failing. You were practicing self-compassion if you only had 70 percent to give. That was your best, and that's all we can do. If you did push yourself to 100% and now feel completely depleted? That’s understandable too. You were doing what you were taught to do.

Moving forward, you get to choose differently.

Moving Forward

ADHD doesn’t disappear in January — but the cultural noise does quiets a little for a little while. If you’re finishing December feeling depleted, know this:

You didn’t fail December. December asked for something your nervous system couldn’t sustainably give — and you made it through anyways, because here you are.

That matters.

If You’d Like Support Moving Forward

If this resonated with you and you’d like support navigating the patterns you’ve been noticing, you don’t have to do that alone. Therapy has been shown to help people work with patterns that quietly shape their nervous system responses — often long before we’re consciously aware of them.

The approaches which inform my work integrate somatic awareness, mindfulness, and relational insight can help reduce nervous system reactivity, increase emotional regulation, and improve attention and self-trust over time — especially for adults with ADHD.

You don’t need to wait until things are falling apart again.

My hope is that next year you can dance at the parties, leave when you’re tired, and wake up without the emotional hangover — not just in December, but year-round.

I offer a free 15-minute consultation where we can talk about what you’re experiencing and explore whether therapy might be a good fit to help you dance to the beat of your own drum.

You’re allowed to move at your own pace and I would be honored to help you find your rhythm.

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References

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Barkley, R. A. (1997). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 65-94.

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135-168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750

Durmaz, A., & Türkoğlu, S. (2024). Sensory processing in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and its relationship with executive functions. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 145, 104659.

Fisher, J. T., Hopp, F. R., & Weber, R. (2023). Cognitive and perceptual load have opposing effects on brain network efficiency and behavioral variability in ADHD. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1015102.

Gmehlin, D., Fuermaier, A. B., Walther, S., Tucha, L., Koerts, J., Lange, K. W., Tucha, O., Weisbrod, M., & Aschenbrenner, S. (2016). Attentional lapses of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in tasks of sustained attention. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 31(4), 343-357. https://doi.org/10.1093/arclin/acw016

Jong, L. M., Tan, S. H., Maybery, M., & Steele, M. (2024). Loneliness in young people with ADHD: A meta-analysis. Journal of Attention Disorders, 28(6), 743-755. https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547241229096

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