#107 🛡️ Resilience Isn't a Shield: How to Process ADHD Setbacks Without Spiraling

Why building resilience means getting better at feeling bad, not avoiding it

Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog for navigating the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.

I am an ADHD and product management coach, helping you change one belief and take one action each week.

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Part 6 of the Inclusive Performance Coaching Series

🦋 The Takeaways

Belief: Resilience means being strong enough that setbacks don't hurt.

Reality: Resilience involves developing better tools to process emotions, rather than avoiding them.

Action: Build pattern recognition and strategies to catch yourself before you spiral.

⭐️ Introduction

I used to think resilience meant becoming bulletproof—that if I could get strong enough, work setbacks wouldn't sting anymore. That feedback wouldn't send me into a shame spiral. If I worked hard enough, life wouldn't be so hard.

Last week, I discussed confidence. This week, I wanted to explore resilience so that I wouldn’t have to experience the pain of what I went through last week again.

So I asked my fellow Tech Atypically Coaches and licensed therapist, Michael Asaku-Yeboah, and Coach Rupert Dallas about building resilience against self-loathing and anxiety. Only to realize my idea of resilience was wrong.

Resilience isn't about becoming invulnerable. It's about becoming better at being vulnerable—and navigating it more easily. Knowing how to process the big feelings, not avoiding them.

Today, I’ll discuss how to bounce back from your next “shame, pain, or I suck at life" spiral.

I bounced back from a 2.5-week hiatus with two issues in a week.

😵‍💫 The Belief - Resilience Means Not Getting Hurt

When I think about building resilience, especially in the workplace, I believe that resilient people are less affected by setbacks. They brush off criticism, never spiral from failures, and never get “emotional” with tough feedback.

For those of us with ADHD, this feels impossible. We experience rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Our emotions are hyperactive and unpredictable. A simple "let's discuss this approach" from a manager can feel like "let me tell you how you f’’ed up."

So you think the goal is to build thicker skin, to become someone who doesn't feel these things so intensely. You tell yourself to focus on work and not worry about everything else going on in your life, even though it’s a shitshow. You try to logic your way out of emotions or suppress them entirely.

With your remaining hope, you desperately cling to the idea that you’re one magical productivity strategy or tool that will magically solve all your work problems, and you’ll never feel behind again. Everything is spent hoping to avoid feeling the big emotions and hurt again.

But this approach backfires spectacularly for ADHD brains.

🤝 The Reality - Resilience Is About Processing, Not Protecting

Michael and Rupert helped me understand something crucial: resilience is an after-effect, not a shield.

You're still going to experience the same negative feelings when something goes wrong. The disappointment, the shame, the anxiety—those don't disappear when you become more resilient.

What changes is how you process and respond to those feelings.

Instead of the old pattern of self-loathing that keeps you stuck for hours or days, resilience gives you tools to move through emotions more quickly. But as Rupert points out, it's not just about processing those feelings efficiently—it's about how quickly you get back to your normal rhythm.

"Moving on from that place is the after-effect that creates resilience, not the fact that you can take it all on," Rupert explains. Without getting back to normalcy, you can get stuck at the bottom of the spiral even after addressing the negative feelings.

It's like upgrading your emotional suspension system. You absorb the shock, process it, and return to steady driving instead of staying pulled over on the side of the road.

For example, when you see a red squiggly line under misspelled letters. Instead of "Oh my God, I'm the worst writer in the world," it becomes "Oops, fix and move on."

The feeling still happens. But you've trained yourself to process it differently and get back to your flow.

🛠️ The Action - Build Your Emotional Processing System

Here's how to develop resilience for ADHD brains:

1. Understand the Self-Loathing Cycle

Self-loathing often serves a function for ADHD brains—it's a learned behavior from childhood. As Michael explained, "We often take on what was indirectly instilled in us growing up. When we make a mistake, we get punished."

Self-punishment becomes our way of processing emotions because it's what we learned. This shows up as physically avoidant behavior (procrastination, phone usage, video games, sleeping, binge eating) or emotionally avoidant behavior (telling yourself you don't care, they can just fire you, catastrophizing, convincing yourself it's not worth starting).

2. Practice Pattern Recognition and Use "Catch, Check, Change"

The first step is recognizing your self-loathing patterns. Ask yourself: "Has this happened before? When did it happen?" If you can identify that this is familiar—like always spiraling after performance reviews—you can prepare for it.

Once you know your patterns, use the CBT method "catch, check, change":

• Catch it: Notice when you're starting to spiral

• Check it: Is this thought accurate, or is it rejection sensitivity?

• Change it: Use your tools to respond differently

Write out your cycle so you can recognize it next time and implement a strategy to move through it faster. For example, last week I emotionally withdrew during work challenges, telling myself, "it's ok, they can fire me." My wife and close friend called me out on it. I decided to respond with self-love instead—I showed up the next day and did my best to process what was happening and address the challenge.

The key is catching yourself before you fall into the pit, not trying to climb out after you're already at the bottom.

3. Create a "Wins Bank"

Building on pattern recognition, Michael strongly recommends tracking your wins throughout the week. This isn't just positive thinking—it's building evidence against the lies your brain tells you when you're in a spiral.

When you mess up and your brain says "I never do anything right," your wins bank gives you concrete counter-evidence for the "change" step. You did help that teammate last Tuesday. You did deliver that project on time last week.

I keep a 1-on-1 doc with my manager, and the top of the doc each week is 2-3 wins. It's a reminder to me and to them of what I'm working on and the impact I'm delivering. When it's time for a performance review, throw it into AI to summarize and avoid the doom of "what did I do this year?"

4. Seek Objective Perspective

Sometimes your patterns are too ingrained, and you need someone else to help you see clearly. When Michael's clients come to him after difficult feedback, he asks: "What are some things you've done that have actually supported the team?"

This isn't about denial—sometimes the feedback is valid. But it's about getting the full picture instead of only seeing the negative through your rejection sensitivity lens. Having trusted people who can call you out on your self-loathing patterns becomes part of your "catch, check, change" system.

✨ Conclusion

I've spent so much time and money trying to find things that will "fix" me or make me more "productive" to live up to this image I have of who I should be.

Tech role leveling makes the "shoulds" even worse, as if a title or level makes you immune to failure. The most senior doctor in a hospital is still going to lose patients.

So I'm going to stop trying to live up to the "shoulds" of being immune to pain and shame. Instead, I'm going to accept them as inevitabilities and prepare for how I can best process them.

Building resilience against self-loathing and anxiety isn't about becoming someone who doesn't feel these things. It's about becoming someone who feels them and dares to move forward, rather than staying stuck.

What pattern do you need to start catching in your emotional responses?

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⏭️Next Week

Understanding how to make a trade-off decision before you drown at work.