Ten Parts Wonderful, Nine Parts Uncomfortable: When Joy Is Dysregulating for an AuDHD Nervous System

Yesterday I went to Pride in my hometown of Holyhead.

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I had an amazing time.

I felt happy. Excited. Connected. Part of a community. I was surrounded by people, colour, noise, movement and celebration. I work with many LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people, and there was something wonderful about being out in a community that feels, in many ways, like my tribe.

And then I came home.

I was socially overwhelmed. Thrilled. Peopled out. Jumpy. Nervous. Tired. Confused. Bouncy. My whole system seemed to be fizzing.

My first thought was that I was anxious.

But then I stopped.

What was I anxious about?

Nothing, really.

I was happy.

And somehow I was also profoundly uncomfortable.

It felt like one part wonderful and nine parts discomfort.

Except, as I sat with it, I realised that wasn’t quite right either.

Perhaps it was actually ten parts wonderful and nine parts uncomfortable.

Because the discomfort didn’t cancel out the wonderfulness. And the wonderfulness didn’t prevent my nervous system from becoming overwhelmed.

Both were true.

Positive emotions can be dysregulating too

We often talk about emotional regulation as though there are two straightforward categories of experience.

There are the “bad” feelings that dysregulate us: fear, anger, anxiety, grief.

And then there are the “good” feelings: happiness, excitement, love, connection.

Surely those should feel… well, good?

But nervous systems don’t necessarily divide experience that way.

Excitement is activating.

Joy can be activating.

Social connection can be activating.

Being seen can be activating.

Belonging can be activating.

A day filled with people, noise, colour, movement, conversation, novelty and emotional significance can be absolutely wonderful — and also an enormous amount for a nervous system to process.

This can be particularly familiar to neurodivergent people.

The AuDHD experience — the intersection of autistic and ADHD traits — can sometimes involve a particularly interesting relationship with stimulation. There can be a tremendous appetite for novelty, excitement, interest, movement and connection alongside sensory and social systems that can become overloaded.

I can want more and have had enough.

I can be delighted and overwhelmed.

I can want to keep going and desperately need to stop.

I can be having the best time and simultaneously feel as though my nervous system is shouting, “THIS IS TOO MUCH!”

These aren’t necessarily contradictions.

Maybe it isn’t anxiety

This has also made me curious about how often I have used the word anxiety as shorthand for physiological activation.

My heart is going.

I’m jumpy.

I’m restless.

I can’t settle.

My thoughts are moving quickly.

There’s energy running through me.

Something feels urgent.

I must be anxious.

But anxiety is not the only emotion that produces activation.

Yesterday, underneath much of that activation, was joy.

I wonder how often neurodivergent people learn to interpret the experience of being highly activated as evidence that something is wrong.

Perhaps sometimes the question isn’t:

“How do I make this feeling go away?”

Perhaps it’s:

“What is my nervous system trying to process?”

Yesterday, mine was processing a lot.

A really big, really good day.

The strange aftermath of having a wonderful time

When I got home, I wanted to calm down.

And I also didn’t.

I was aware that I didn’t want to move from this glorious, bouncing aliveness into collapse.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my Saturday flattened on the sofa, exhausted and low.

But I also couldn’t stay at Pride-level activation indefinitely.

There was something important in recognising that perhaps I didn’t need to calm down.

I needed to calm down slowly.

There is a difference.

Regulation doesn’t have to mean extinguishing ourselves.

It doesn’t have to mean taking all that exuberance and excitement and stuffing it back into a box.

Perhaps there can be a decompression chamber between:

PEOPLE! COLOUR! PRIDE! BELONGING!

and

quiet Saturday evening at home.

Perhaps I can move around. Potter. Eat something. Spend time outside. Listen to music. Talk about my day. Look at photographs. Let myself remember what happened.

I can allow my nervous system to metabolise the experience rather than demanding an immediate transition from 100 to zero.

The happiness won’t disappear when my body becomes quiet.

I don’t have to remain physiologically activated in order to keep the joy.

The day happened.

It belongs to me now.

And then there is the shame

As I sat with all this, I noticed something else.

Self-blame.

I recognised my bounciness. My nervous energy. My excitement. The slightly chaotic, overfull quality I can have when something has been wonderful and my system hasn’t quite caught up with itself.

And I realised something rather funny.

When I see those qualities in other people, I think they are absolutely adorable.

Honestly.

Adorbs.

There is something deeply endearing to me about a person who is so excited that they don’t quite know what to do with themselves.

So, on some level, I know that I find this quality adorable in myself too.

And yet…

There are memories.

Memories of people who criticised me.

People who chastised me.

People who communicated, in one way or another:

You’re too much.

Calm down.

Stop being like that.

And when those experiences happen repeatedly, something can become internalised.

Eventually, the other person doesn’t even need to be there.

We carry their gaze with us.

We become excited — and monitor ourselves.

We become exuberant — and feel embarrassed.

We become visibly delighted — and wonder whether we’re annoying.

We experience ourselves not from within our own aliveness, but through the imagined eyes of someone who might disapprove.

“This is too much for me” is not the same as “You are too much”

There is an important relational distinction here.

Someone else is allowed to find me overwhelming.

Someone is allowed to need quiet when I am bouncy.

Someone is allowed to dislike my exuberance.

Someone is allowed to discover that the amount of stimulation I enjoy is more than their nervous system wants.

But there is a profound difference between:

“The way you’re being right now is too much for me, so I’m going to take responsibility for what I need.”

and:

“The way you’re being right now is too much for me, so YOU need to become different.”

The first is a boundary.

The second can become control.

We are all affected by other people. Relationships require negotiation, sensitivity and compromise. But another person’s discomfort with my way of being does not automatically mean there is something wrong with my way of being.

Sometimes I may need to modify my behaviour because I care about someone.

Sometimes they may need to accommodate me because they care about me.

Sometimes one of us may need space.

Sometimes we might become curious together about what is happening between us.

And sometimes we may simply discover that we are not particularly compatible.

But:

“I don’t like what you’re doing”

is not automatically the same statement as:

“You are doing something wrong.”

And:

“Someone found me too much”

does not necessarily mean:

“I am too much.”

Looking at myself through my own eyes

This feels particularly important to me.

How much of our shame comes from looking at ourselves through the eyes of people who did not understand us?

People whose nervous systems worked differently.

People who wanted something different from relationships.

People who experienced our excitement, sensitivity, intensity or spontaneity as inconvenient.

What happens if we turn around and look at ourselves through our own eyes?

Today I can see myself coming home from Pride absolutely fizzing.

Happy. Overwhelmed. Excited. Peopled out. Jumpy. Delighted. Tired. Unable to settle. Completely full.

And instead of saying:

For goodness’ sake, calm down.

I can say:

Oh, look at you.

You’ve had such a big day.

You’ve had such a wonderful time.

You’re absolutely fizzing.

Come home.

Bounce around for a while.

Tell me everything.

We’ll get something to eat.

You can land when you’re ready.

And perhaps this is part of learning to live well in a neurodivergent nervous system.

Not forcing ourselves to become less sensitive.

Not treating dysregulation as proof that we’ve done something wrong.

Not assuming that overwhelm means we should avoid the experiences that make us feel alive.

But learning ourselves.

Learning our rhythms.

Learning how we move from excitement into rest without falling into collapse.

Learning that we might need recovery after wonderful things as well as difficult ones.

And, perhaps most importantly, learning to recognise the difference between regulating ourselves and suppressing ourselves.

• Today I had a wonderful day.

  
  

• It overwhelmed me.

  
  

• Both are true.

And perhaps, for some of us, a really good life won’t always feel calm.

Sometimes it might be ten parts wonderful and nine parts uncomfortable.

And perhaps that’s okay.

Because when I look at other people who are excited and nervous and bouncy and don’t quite know what to do with all the feelings they’re having, I find them adorable.

And today came the rather startling realisation:

I think I’m adorable like this too.

Actually, I know I am.

I do.

⸻

If you recognise yourself in this - perhaps you are neurodivergent, exploring your relationship with your nervous system, or trying to understand the difference between who you are and who you learned you needed to be for other people - these are some of the themes I explore in my therapeutic work and teaching.

My work draws on embodied and experiential approaches including Focusing, Hakomi and mindfulness, creating space to become curious about our inner experience rather than immediately trying to change it. I offer individual psychotherapy and therapeutic work, supervision, and experiential courses and workshops.