Transform Your Recovery Journey
When You’re Doing Well… Then Ruin It: The ADHD Shame Spiral No One Talks About
Discover how to navigate the complexities of eating disorder recovery with compassion and understanding. Embrace a path that honors your unique experiences and fosters genuine healing.
Understanding the Shame Spiral
The High Before the Crash
Strategies for Change
Interrupting the Spiral: Tools for Recovery
You’ve finally got a rhythm.
Your eating is steady. You’ve done the food shop. You even remembered your keys three days in a row.
You feel proud, and maybe a little surprised.
But then…
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You miss a meal.
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You cancel a gym class.
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You eat something “bad” (whatever that means).
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You scroll for two hours and forget dinner entirely.
Suddenly, the voice creeps in.
You’ve ruined it now.
Typical you.
Back to square one.
Sound familiar?
This is the ADHD shame spiral. And if you’re neurodivergent, it might be your most well-worn mental path.
Understanding Your Journey
The “Fuck It” Response Is a Trauma Response
When we live with undiagnosed ADHD, past trauma, or internalised shame, our brains learn a very simple rule:
⚠️ If I mess up, I deserve to feel bad.
⚠️ If I can’t do it perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all.
So what happens when something goes “wrong”?
We don’t just feel disappointed, we self-destruct.
We throw the day, the week, sometimes the entire recovery journey into the Fuck It Bucket.
It becomes all or nothing.
Black or white.
Perfect or failure.
Words of Encouragement
Why ADHD Brains Are More Vulnerable to This
ADHD isn’t just about attention; it’s about emotional regulation and dopamine response.
👉 ADHD brains struggle with consistency, especially around boring or repetitive tasks
👉 When we finally get things going, we feel high on dopamine, like we’ve cracked it
👉 But one disruption, a change, a trigger, a late night, can cause that whole fragile system to collapse
And the drop is brutal.
The crash isn’t just chemical, it’s emotional and identity-based.
You’re not just someone who missed lunch.
You’re a “failure.” A “waste of space.”
This isn’t logical. It’s neural.
And it’s something I see every day in the people I support, and something I’ve lived myself.
Empower Your Healing Process
My Personal Experience
I’ve ridden this wave more times than I can count.
I’ll be doing well, with sleep, food, work, and CrossFit all lined up, and then boom.
A stressful email. A missed session. A day with no structure.
Suddenly I’m not just off track, I’m in the shame gutter.
What helped wasn’t just tracking behaviour.
It was understood that emotions drive the sabotage.
That I wasn’t lazy, I was overwhelmed.
And that healing meant letting “good enough” be enough.
How This Affects Recovery
This spiral shows up everywhere—especially in recovery from eating disorders.
Clients often tell me:
“I was doing well. Then I had one bad day, and it felt pointless.”
“I binged, so what’s the point now?”
“I missed breakfast, so I may as well start again Monday.”
These aren’t failures. These are moments.
But shame makes them feel like the end of the story.
In trauma-informed therapy, we work on creating a middle ground:
A place between “perfect” and “give up.”
Empower Your Healing Process
Interrupting the Spiral – What Helps
Here are the tools I teach (and use myself):
🔹 Name the Shame Voice
Give it a name. Voldemort. Carol. The Drill Sergeant.
Create separation. You are not that voice.
🔹 Switch from Outcome to Pattern
Instead of “I messed up today,” say “I usually binge when I’m tired.”
Patterns invite curiosity. Shame demands punishment.
🔹 Choose One Thing
The spiral says “fix everything.”
Instead, ask: What’s one thing I can do next that helps me feel proud?
🔹 Build “Safe Defaults”
Have a go-to food, a default outfit, a friend you can text.
ADHD brains need scaffolding. Not spontaneity.
🔹 Therapy That Gets It
Work with someone who understands ADHD, trauma, and shame cycles—not someone who just hands you a meal plan or says “try harder.”
Navigating Your Path to Wellness
This Is Not Who You Are. It’s What You’ve Learned
You are not your spiral.
You are not your worst day.
You are not the binge, the skipped meal, or the moment of avoidance.
Those are survival behaviours.
They’re habits rooted in a nervous system that’s been under pressure for far too long.
And the good news?
They can be unlearned, with time, with care, and with support that meets you where you are.
Embrace Your Healing Path
Final Words
If you’ve been in the spiral lately, you’re not broken.
You’re likely doing more than anyone knows.
But you don’t have to keep surviving alone.
I support teens and adults with ADHD, trauma, binge eating, restriction, emotional burnout, and self-sabotage.
My approach is flexible, non-shaming, and grounded in real tools that work.
Becky Stone
I’m Becky Stone, a trauma-informed eating disorder and neurodivergent therapist based in Canterbury, UK.
I support clients with ADHD, autism, body image issues, binge eating, and emotional overwhelm, through compassionate, practical, lived-experience-informed therapy.
In Her Own Words
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