Today I was heading into town to grab a little bit of shopping when my rear windscreen exploded.

Yes, exploded. Inwards and outwards. Three separate holes. No explanation.

Scared the absolute shit out of me.

Initially, my brain was surprisingly calm. There was an actual problem in front of me, and I needed to deal with it. ADHD superpower, right? Calm in a crisis...

Then came the thoughts.

What if I haven’t got windscreen cover? What if they don’t believe me that it just exploded? What if they accuse me of lying and I have to justify myself? What if the excess is more than I have in the bank? What if it takes a week to fix and I can’t get to work? They’ll think I’m lying. Or taking the mick. I won’t be able to do the school run. I’ve lost my freedom.

Within minutes, I was mentally defending my honesty, worrying about money, explaining imaginary absences and trying to organise a week without a car.

Meanwhile, the actual situation was still a broken windscreen.

Within 30 minutes of sitting down, finding my insurance policy and making a phone call, I knew I had cover. They connected me with the windscreen repair company, confirmed the excess and arranged a temporary repair while the replacement glass was ordered.

Boom. There was a plan.

The car still needed fixing, but the uncertainty had reduced enormously.

And I was exhausted.

From the fright? From the thoughts? From mentally living through several disasters before finding out whether any of them were going to happen?

Probably some combination. I cannot measure what happened inside my body this morning. But it got me wondering: what do we get from catastrophising, especially when we live with ADHD?

Because while it feels awful, I suspect there is often an attempt at protection somewhere underneath it.

Psychology describes catastrophising as a cognitive distortion: a pattern of thinking that exaggerates how likely or devastating a negative outcome will be. It can also involve underestimating our ability to cope. A possibility begins to feel like a prediction, and the prediction begins to feel like something already happening. Psychology Tools

The term is generally traced to psychologist Albert Ellis, who introduced it in his 1962 work Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy. Aaron Beck described cognitive distortions in his 1963 paper on thinking and depression, and catastrophising subsequently became an established concept within cognitive therapy. Quartana, Campbell and Edwards, 2009; Beck, 1963

I want to pause at that word distortion, though.

It can sound as if someone is telling us that our distress is unreasonable, or that the problem is all in our heads.

My windscreen really had exploded. Money, work and the school run were perfectly reasonable things to consider.

The leap was from “I need to find out what happens next” to “everything is going to unravel, people will blame me, and I won’t cope.”

That is where I recognise the catastrophising. My mind had filled every gap in the information with the most threatening possibility available.

ADHD may be part of that picture, but the research is more complicated than “ADHD brains always assume the worst”.

A meta-analysis found substantially greater difficulties with emotional regulation in adults with ADHD than in comparison groups. That helps us understand why emotional reactions can become difficult to manage, although it does not establish that everyone with ADHD catastrophises. Beheshti, Chavanon and Christiansen, 2020

Research involving adolescents and young adults with ADHD also found more self-reported catastrophising, rumination and self-blame than in controls. These patterns were associated with depressive symptoms. Mayer and colleagues, 2022

But here is something that made me stop and think. One study cited by the Inflow article examined 112 adults with ADHD. Once researchers accounted for mood, anxiety and personality traits, the relationship between ADHD symptom severity and cognitive distortions was no longer statistically significant. Serine and colleagues, 2020

That does not erase the experience. It tells us to be curious about what else is involved.

ADHD, anxiety, previous experiences and the pressures of everyday life can overlap. ADHD and anxiety are distinct, even though someone can experience both. ADDA

My interpretation is that, for some of us, the difficulty may involve having a frightening thought, struggling to shift our attention away from it, and finding it harder to hold alternative possibilities in mind while overwhelmed.

Add a history of things genuinely going wrong, and “it will probably be fine” may not feel especially convincing.

The Inflow article raises the possibility that repeated difficulties and negative beliefs about ourselves can contribute to this pattern. I find that a useful perspective to explore, provided we treat it as a possible explanation rather than everyone’s ADHD story. Inflow

So perhaps catastrophising sometimes offers us a feeling of preparation.

If I think through every terrible outcome, I won’t be caught off guard.

Psychologist Paul Gilbert explored cognitive distortions from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that some apparently unhelpful thinking patterns make more sense when understood in relation to threat detection and survival. This is a theoretical account of why thinking can favour protection over accuracy. It is not evidence that ADHD gives us a special danger-detecting ability. Gilbert, 1998

Applied to my afternoon, I wonder whether my brain was trying to get ahead of the next shock.

The trouble was that every imagined outcome created another problem to prepare for. There was no point at which my mind said, “Lovely, that’s enough imaginary emergencies for today.”

Another theory, developed by Michelle Newman and Sandra Llera, is called the contrast avoidance model. It proposes that worry can keep us emotionally braced, reducing the sharp contrast between feeling safe and suddenly feeling distressed. Remaining worried may feel safer than relaxing and being blindsided. This model concerns generalised anxiety, so applying it to an ADHD experience is an interpretation, not an established ADHD mechanism. Newman and Llera, 2011

I can recognise the possible appeal.

If I have already imagined being disbelieved, perhaps it will hurt less if it happens. If I have already pictured the financial disaster, perhaps I will feel more prepared.

Except I may end up experiencing the fear in advance, without gaining any useful information.

For me, that raises a distinction worth noticing: am I preparing a response, or repeatedly rehearsing the distress?

Checking my insurance gave me information. Making the call gave me options. Imagining the insurer accusing me of lying gave me an argument to have in my head.

And that brings me to rejection sensitivity.

Looking back at my thoughts, several were about being judged.

They won’t believe me. I’ll have to justify myself. Work will think I’m taking the mick.

I was anticipating having my character questioned before I had even spoken to anyone.

The term rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, is used to describe intense emotional pain associated with perceived rejection, criticism or failure. It is not a formally recognised standalone diagnosis, and its precise relationship with ADHD is still being investigated. Cleveland Clinic

A small qualitative study published in 2026 explored rejection sensitivity through interviews with five university students with ADHD. Participants described anticipatory distress, masking, withdrawal and bodily sensations. It offers valuable insight into lived experience, but five participants cannot tell us how common this is or establish that rejection sensitivity causes catastrophising. Rowney-Smith and colleagues, 2026

Still, I wonder whether rejection sensitivity can influence the content of our catastrophising.

If being misunderstood or disbelieved feels particularly painful, perhaps our worst-case scenarios gather around those possibilities.

For someone else, the spiral might centre on financial insecurity, losing control or becoming dependent on other people.

That is my interpretation, rather than a proven causal explanation. But it leaves me with a more useful question than “Why am I being so dramatic?”

What am I frightened this situation will mean about me, or cost me emotionally?

There is also the question of risk assessment.

Human beings can imagine possible futures. That ability helps us plan. But imagining a consequence, judging its likelihood and deciding what to do about it are different tasks.

I could generate plenty of possible outcomes that afternoon. I had very little evidence about which ones were likely.

I would be cautious about calling catastrophising an innate ADHD talent for assessing risk. The research discussed here does not establish that. In my case, it looked more like giving the frightening possibilities far more attention than the manageable ones.

I had imagined an accusation of fraud before considering that someone might simply say, “Yes, you’re covered. Here’s what happens next.”

And what about the chemistry? Does catastrophising stimulate us?

Stress has physical effects. The sympathetic nervous system and hormonal stress response can involve adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, preparing the body to respond to a perceived challenge or threat. Chu and colleagues, Physiology, Stress Reaction

Research also suggests that repeatedly thinking about threatening situations can help sustain physiological activation. A meta-analysis of 60 studies linked persistent worry and rumination with measures including higher heart rate and cortisol, and lower heart-rate variability. This was broader research on repetitive negative thinking, not a demonstration of what happens during every ADHD catastrophising episode. Ottaviani and colleagues, 2016

So the exhaustion may involve more than the effort of thinking. A frightened body and a busy mind can keep affecting each other.

Dopamine enters the discussion too, but carefully. Research on acute stress shows that dopamine and noradrenaline signalling in the prefrontal cortex can change, and excessive levels can impair the functions we need for flexible thinking and working memory. More is not automatically better. Arnsten, 2009

That does not establish that people with ADHD catastrophise to obtain a dopamine hit, or that we secretly enjoy the drama.

Chemical activation, pleasure and useful concentration are different things. The sources I have explored do not demonstrate a specific dopamine reward from ADHD catastrophising.

My own experience felt like being pulled into something frightening. Any sense of urgency came with a considerable emotional cost.

I am also interested in when this happens.

For me that day, the spiral followed the initial shock, as the unanswered practical questions began to multiply. For someone else, it might become more noticeable at bedtime or while waiting for a reply.

In a Reddit discussion, one person described recognising that their thoughts became especially negative at night and choosing to revisit the concern in the morning. That is a personal strategy, not research evidence, but the observation behind it is useful: the circumstances in which a thought appears may affect how much authority we give it. Reddit discussion

I would phrase it gently:

“This matters to me, and I’m very activated right now. I can return to it when I have more information or more capacity.”

A genuinely urgent problem still needs attention. But not every imagined consequence needs to be resolved immediately.

What helped me that afternoon was moving towards information. The fear that I had no cover became a question I could actually ask.

CBT approaches to catastrophising similarly encourage us to examine the evidence, consider other outcomes and recognise the resources available to us. The aim is a more balanced assessment, rather than a promise that nothing difficult will happen. Psychology Tools

For my own brain, I think I would keep it to three prompts:

• What do I know? My windscreen is broken. I do not yet know what my policy covers.
• What am I predicting? That I will be disbelieved, unable to afford it and left without options.
• What is the next useful step? Find the policy and make one phone call.

There is room for another question underneath those: “If something does go wrong, what support or options might I have?”

Because the frightening prediction often leaves my ability to respond out of the picture.

I do not want to shame myself for the spiral. Something genuinely frightening happened, and I was trying to make sense of it.

But I do want to notice the difference between the help I received from taking action and the exhaustion I experienced from mentally living through everything that might go wrong.

The insurance call gave me evidence that the situation was manageable. I want to remember that part too.

I was frightened. My thoughts ran ahead. And I still found the policy, asked the questions and took the next step.

So I’m curious: when you catastrophise, what does it seem to promise you? Preparation? Protection from disappointment? A chance to defend yourself before anyone has accused you?

And how do you recognise the point where thinking ahead starts costing you more than it gives?