I Was Just Trying to Do My Devotional

A Therapist's Chaotic Morning With ADD

Why people with ADD laugh at things everyone else thinks look exhausting — and rage at things everyone else barely notice.

I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist.

I help people set boundaries, regulate emotions, and break unhelpful cycles.

 And this morning, I spent roughly two and a half hours trying to make a single cup of coffee... and never actually opened my Bible.

It Started With the Best of Intentions

I woke up thinking: Today I'm going to do my devotional first thing. Simple. Doable. Spiritually mature.

I made it approximately six steps out of my bedroom before the puppies started barking.

So I went downstairs and let them out.

While I waited, I walked into the kitchen and noticed my son had actually washed his dishes from the ground-beef concoction he made the night before — progress.

Except he'd left grease splatter all over the stove and my teapot.

So I snapped a picture, texted him a quick, "Thank you for washing your stuff, but next time please wipe the stove too," and hit send.

The puppies knocked, so I let them back in.

Then I spotted my daughter's NutriBullet still sitting there. She had left her smoothie cup "soaking," which is a very generous word for "still dirty and somehow now harder to clean."

So I took a picture and texted her too.

At that point, I was no longer starting my morning with the Lord. I was starting my morning with evidence.

Now I was irritated and talking to myself: "I don't ask for much — just pick up after yourselves."

My brain immediately did that thing ADD brains do, where one thought does not stay one thought. One thought becomes seventeen side thoughts, three imaginary conversations, and a full internal boundary-setting seminar.

Suddenly I'm mentally rehearsing what my kids are going to say when I bring it up, countering arguments no one has actually made yet, and trying to pull myself back into the room like, "Ma'am, come back."

I shook it off, set a quick internal boundary — "I will no longer clean up after grown people with functioning hands."

And that did help some.

So naturally, instead of doing my Bible study, I decided to put on calming music.

 Because nothing says I am centered and regulated like aggressively searching for lo-fi ambiance on YouTube.

The Spiral

My husband was letting the big dogs out, so I headed back to the kitchen. One of the big dogs appeared at the window looking hungry, which he never does, so I asked if he'd fed them yet. He hadn't.

So I went outside, fed the dogs, cleaned their water bowl, came back in, got my coffee cup out, and prepared to reclaim the morning.

It was not reclaimed.

Because on my way to making coffee, I remembered my husband was getting off work late, which reminded me I needed to take meat out for dinner. So I headed downstairs to get the meat out of the freezer in the garage.

Where I stepped in a wet spot on the carpet.

By this point, it had been forty-five minutes and I still had no coffee.

What followed was a perfect ADHD spiral. I pulled back the carpet, hunted for a leak, investigated the wrong thing, found a completely different leak, and started moving totes and reorganizing things that had absolutely nothing to do with my original mission... all while my coffee cup sat untouched upstairs.

This Is One of the Least Understood Things About ADD

From the outside, it looks random.

From the inside, every single detour makes perfect sense in the moment. Every visual cue, every unfinished task, and every sound feels equally urgent. There's no internal volume dial that says, "The leaky carpet is priority one and the creatine on the counter is priority four."

Everything registers at the same frequency. That's not poor prioritization. That's executive-function dysregulation.

Eventually, I came back upstairs and remembered I wanted coffee, so I went back to the kitchen to start making it. Then I noticed Nathan's creatine and Sydney's water bottle on the counter. I paused what I was doing, carried those items back to their rooms, came back down, and realized the music was off.

So I went back to the living room, turned on the TV, and queued up the lo-fi. Then I went back to the kitchen to finish making my coffee and noticed random belongings on my kitchen shelves. I put those away, started rearranging canisters... and kept smacking my head on the stupid kitchen light fixture.

Why is this even here?

A neurotypical brain might have thought, "That light is mildly annoying."

My ADD brain thought, "Well obviously this is a house-wide lighting crisis and I should fix it immediately."

So I unhooked the chain for the kitchen light, but now it hung too low. Then I wondered, "How low is the dining room light?" I walked into the dining room and decided that one was hung way too high.

Now both lights were hanging low. I had to fix this. Now I needed zip ties.

I found some in Nathan's room, came back to the kitchen, and — oh.

I forgot to make my coffee.

Then I looked up at the dangling light and had the audacity to think, "Why is this light hanging down?" As though I had not personally created that situation with my own two hands about forty-five seconds earlier.

That was the moment I realized my pill had clearly not kicked in yet.

And honestly, that part made me laugh. I snapped a picture and texted it to my daughter and my mom because it was objectively hilarious. I knew they would understand the absurdity of me standing in my kitchen with a half-finished coffee, a hanging light fixture, and absolutely no Bible study in sight.

My daughter texted back and asked if I had ever finished making my coffee.

I had not.

So I finally made the coffee.

Then Things Got Really Interesting

My mom called to ask why I was moving the light. While explaining it, I realized I no longer had the zip ties I had just found. So I began retracing my steps, which somehow included cleaning the couch while I searched, because apparently if I am already spiraling, I might as well be productive.

That search led me to the family room — found a bra. Living room — found another bra. Dining room chair — third bra.

Why are my bras all over my house? 

Eventually, I carried some pillowcases upstairs, walked into my room, and found the zip ties on my husband's desk. I have no memory of putting them there.

I came back downstairs, focused once again on the mission of fixing the light, stood on the step stool, realized it was too short, went to the garage for the ladder, saw laundry, remembered my husband would be turning the water off later, started a load of laundry, paused, remembered the ladder, grabbed it, started back upstairs, stopped mid-walk, and thought:

"Wait... what am I doing?"

Oh yeah. The light.

I finally hung the fixture with the zip tie. I'll trim the plastic tie later. I leaned the ladder against the dining-room wall and thought, "I'll put it away later."

And then, in one last plot twist, I remembered I had originally intended to spend the morning with the Lord.

At which point, I think my pills had finally kicked in.

But I still didn't start my devotional.

Instead, I had a new thought:

"I've been making blog posts lately... maybe I'll turn this into a blog post."

Which, in hindsight, is the most ADD plot twist possible.

The Part They Don't Show on the Funny Reels

Here's what people don't always know about ADD: the scatter isn't the whole story.

There's another side — and it's called hyperfocus. And it might actually be harder to understand than the chaos.

So I sat down and started writing from the beginning — from the moment I woke up to the dangling light fixture to the mysterious bra migration pattern in my home. Then I uploaded it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok, because apparently what this morning needed was more tabs open.

I was in it. Fully in it.

Reading responses, making notes, thinking about what I wanted to keep —

"Hey, can you turn on the kitchen faucet? I shut off the water and I need to release the pressure."

My husband. From downstairs.

I got up, turned on the faucet, came back, and found my place again. Then the puppies started crying at the front storm door. I could see my husband outside on the porch, teasing them through the glass. They were losing their minds.

Now I was irritated. I was running out of time — I start seeing clients at noon.

I got up and told him to stop so I could focus. He gave the puppies a sad face, but I did not feel bad.

I went back to the blog.

Next thing I knew, he was yelling from outside asking if the water was off. I yelled back, "Yes." Apparently he did not hear me, because next thing I knew he was knocking at the door, the puppies were freaking out, and I was getting pissed.

He asked again if the water was off. I said I already said yes, which was true, but somehow still not enough.

I went back to writing... and realized I had to use the restroom.

I ran upstairs, glanced at the clock — time was disappearing — and used the toilet.

Then it hit me: the water was off.

Luckily, there was still enough in the tank for one flush.

Crisis averted.

This Is the Part That Actually Matters

Back downstairs, the puppies were now scratching and crying at the back door because he had let them outside. I let them in, already annoyed at all the interruptions. I sat down again... and one puppy started crying.

I was about to blow a gasket.

I got up. His sister had hopped the baby gate — she was on the other side and he could not get to her. We have the gate up because, for reasons known only to them and the devil, they like to go into my office and poop.

So now I was convinced she had gone in there and committed a crime. Thankfully, she had not.

I put her back over the gate, closed the upstairs doors, and scolded her while my husband helpfully announced they were "just outside."

Yes. I know. And yet here we are.

Now I was hella frustrated. I just wanted to finish one thing before work.

Meanwhile, I could hear the big dog barking at the neighbor's dogs, the clock was ticking, and I realized I had crossed over into hyperfocus — that place where being interrupted does not just feel annoying.

It feels painful.

I want to stop here and tell you something, because this is the part that actually matters.

I recognized in that moment what was happening in my body. I wasn't just frustrated. I wasn't just irritated.

I was enraged.

Not because I'm dramatic. Not because my husband was evil. Not because the puppies were out to destroy me. But because I was in that ADD state where I had finally locked in, and every interruption felt physically invasive.

When Focus Locks On

When you have ADD, attention problems do not always look like not enough focus.

Sometimes they look like focus that locks on so hard that being pulled away from it feels like somebody grabbed the wheel of a moving car.

It's neurological. And it doesn't mean you're out of control — but it does mean you have to know what to do when it shows up.

So I stopped.

Slow breath in.

Deep belly breath, let it out.

Five things I can see.

Four things I can feel.

Three things I can hear.

Two things I can smell.

One thing I can taste.

I came back to myself.

And then I sat back down, took a breath, and tried — really tried — to finish writing before noon, keeping the chaos outside my body instead of letting it in. 

That part? That's the work. Not just the scatter of the morning. Not just the bras or the lights or the zip ties. The work is noticing when I'm overloaded, recognizing what's happening in my nervous system, and bringing myself back before I let the chaos crawl all the way inside me.

If You Have ADD, This Story Is Probably Funny

Not because it is easy. Not because it is cute. But because it is painfully, absurdly familiar.

You know what it is like to start with one pure intention and then get yanked around by every visual cue, every unfinished task, every responsibility, every object out of place, every sound, every thought, and every tiny thing that suddenly feels urgent.

You also know what it is like to finally lock in and then feel borderline enraged when that focus gets broken for the sixteenth time.

If you do not have ADD, this probably just sounds exhausting. And honestly, that is fair too. It is exhausting. It is frustrating. It is mentally loud.

But it is also funny sometimes, because when you live inside this kind of mental ricochet long enough, humor becomes mercy. Laughter takes the edge off the shame. It reminds you that being scattered is not the same thing as being lazy, careless, or incapable.

Sometimes it just means your brain noticed fifteen things before your coffee had a chance to help.

Before You Tell Me to Just Use a Planner

I'm a therapist. I know the strategies. I have the planner, the systems, and the medication — which is exactly how I can tell you my pill had obviously not kicked in yet.

ADD doesn't go away with the right tools. It gets managed. The tools help — genuinely. But there are mornings where one unexpected thing collapses the scaffolding in ninety seconds.

And on those mornings, the work isn't just doing the thing. The work is regulating through the disruption and coming back.

For a long time, I carried shame about this. I'm a therapist. I'm supposed to have it together. But shame doesn't fix executive dysfunction — it just adds suffering on top of it.

If You Love Someone With ADD

Please hear this:

They are not doing this at you.

They are not lazy.

They are not immature.

They are not uncaring.

They are living in a nervous system that processes the world differently. What they need is not constant exasperation or another lecture about priorities. They need patience, a little humor, and someone who does not make them feel like a problem to be solved. 

Not a Bad Morning

Yes, I was just trying to do my devotional. And maybe that is the most ADD sentence I have ever written.

I did eventually finish the blog. After work.

It was hard to stop writing. When I finally stopped — not finished, just stopped — I had five minutes to spare before work.

I never did get to my devotional.

But I handled a water leak, fed two sets of dogs, set boundaries with my kids, reorganized a garage, rehung a light fixture, did a load of laundry, successfully flushed a toilet with no running water, collected three bras from three separate rooms, grounded myself through a hyperfocus rage spiral, and compared four AI models' takes on my own chaos.

Not a bad morning. My brain got a lot done. It just didn't get done in the order anyone would have chosen.

And maybe that is grace too. Not that the morning was peaceful. Not that I did everything in order. Not that I had some serene, Pinterest-worthy quiet time before the house woke up.

But that I was not consumed. That even in the noise, I noticed myself. I grounded myself. I came back. And I kept going.

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.”

— Lamentations 3:22–23

That verse landed differently for me after a morning like this one. Every time I got derailed, I started over. Every time I got interrupted, I came back. That's not just a coping strategy. 

That's mercy in motion.

And this blog post — the one you're reading right now — is proof that the hyperfocus eventually won. 

If any of this is your life too: 

You’re not behind.

You’re not failing.

You’re not lazy or scattered or broken.

You’re doing it with ADD.

And that, my friend, is enough.

The coffee was worth the wait.