ADHD: Beyond the Brain to Whole-Body Connection
Why Dysautonomia, Hypermobility, and Inflammation Matter
For years, most people have thought of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a problem with how the brain works. Something to do with brain chemicals and how we focus or pay attention. A problem giving the notion that it is something that needs to be fixed. We are broken. Dysfunctional. In need of a tune-up.
But new research is showing that this isn’t the whole picture.
What if ADHD isn’t just about the brain? What if the whole body is involved, especially when it comes to things like how the body regulates itself, handles stress, and deals with inflammation?
For those of us who are ADHD, this won’t come as a surprise. We’ve been dealing with a range of connected and wide-ranging additional complexities throughout our whole lives. (If only the researchers and modern medicine listened to us in the first place, right?)
This is why supporting people who are ADHD to thrive and embrace their whole Selves is becoming a bit of a mission to me. It’s why approaches like parts work and IFS, coaching that includes Acceptance and Commitment, and somatic techniques can help us attune to our true selves instead of believing the broken narratives we’ve grown up with.
The Body’s Role: Dysautonomia, Hypermobility, and Inflammation
Let’s look at three big issues that the research is now associating with ADHD, that ADHDers, especially women, have been noticing for decades: dysautonomia, hypermobility, and inflammation.
What is Dysautonomia?
Dysautonomia relates to the part of your nervous system that controls body functions you don’t have to think about, like your heartbeat, breathing, or digestion. When you have dysautonomia, these automatic functions aren’t working quite right.
In people with ADHD, this system can be out of balance – you might feel “on edge” or tired all the time, have trouble sleeping, or find it hard to calm down after stress. This is more than just feeling nervous, it’s a real physical problem where your body has trouble settling into a relaxed state.
Somatic therapies are designed to help with this. When we work somatically, we don’t just talk about feelings – we use gentle, body-based methods to help your nervous system relax and feel safe. By paying close attention to how your body feels you can finally move out of that constant “fight or flight” state and into a calmer “rest and digest” mode.
Hypermobility – More Than Flexible Joints
Many people with ADHD also have hypermobility, which means our joints are extra flexible. This isn’t just about being able to do the splits. Because people with hypermobility have lax connective tissue, our muscles have to work overtime to keep us steady, leading to aches, pains, and extreme fatigue.
Connective tissue isn’t just about joints though. We have this collagen rich tissue throughout our bodies: in our fascia, skin, around our organs, throughout our circulatory and respiratory systems, in our gut. So people with symptomatic hypermobility may have difficulties with their joints being wobbly, which affects the information about how our body perceives the space it occupies, meaning we are clumsy. With their heart rate variability, varicose veins, and pooling blood. Gut issues including how they digest food, and what foods can be tolerated, as well as gut mobility, reflux and other digestive problems. And so much more.
It is no wonder people with hypermobility are tired.
Somatic therapy can help here, too. It teaches us to notice where we hold tension or pain, and how to move and rest in ways that support our bodies systemically, instead of just pushing through discomfort. We can be more compassionate with ourselves.
Inflammation – The Body’s Alarm System
Inflammation is how your body reacts to stress or injury, but if it happens too much, it can cause problems. Stress is a big trigger for inflammation, especially in people with ADHD. This can show up as allergies, chronic pain, stomach issues, or always feeling tired. The body’s mast cells, which are part of the immune system, can become overactive, overproducing histamines amongst other chemicals, which can cause a huge variety of symptoms. These can include:
Skin related issues like urticaria (hives), redness when scratching (skin writing), flushing/blushing for no reason, itching with no visible rash
Digestive distress including reflux, diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, abdominal cramping
Cardio problems ranging from racing heart, blood pressure fluctuations, lightheadedness to fainting
Neurological issues that include sudden changes in mood when having a flare, headaches and migraine, brain fog and memory issues
Breathing and mouth related problems like feeling like you can’t catch your breath, runny nose, nasal congestion, tight throat, mouth sores
Musculoskeletal pain that seems to travel around the body, bone pain and osteoporosis
Whole body system issues like anaphylactic shock and extreme fatigue that isn’t relieved by rest
These symptoms are usually episodic, meaning they occur in bouts related to external triggers. These triggers can include certain types of food, oxidative stress, environmental pollutants, perfume and modern cleaning agents, exercise, and hot or cold temperatures.
One of the main goals of somatic therapy is to help the body process stress instead of getting stuck in it. When your body can recover from stress, it’s less likely to stay inflamed, and you might notice fewer aches, pains, and allergy-type symptoms. Bringing greater awareness to your triggers is also helpful as you can begin to eliminate some of them that you have control over, and learn how and when you need to support your body when you’re exposed to triggers you don’t have control over.
Why Does This Matter?
The key learning here is that ADHD is not just about attention or hyperactivity – it can be a sign that your whole body is struggling to keep things in balance. By understanding how dysautonomia, hypermobility, and inflammation play a role, people can find new ways to understand their bodies and support themselves compassionately.
Supporting the whole body, not just the mind, can make a real difference. With the right support, people with ADHD can learn to listen to their bodies, calm their nervous systems, and reduce pain and inflammation, helping them live healthier, happier lives.
This is where integrative models like somatic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) become invaluable. They provide a compassionate and comprehensive framework for managing not just the attentional symptoms, but the full "lived-experience" of a dysregulated system.
This is not about looking at your body and seeing that it is broken. It is about understanding how your body operates differently so you can scaffold it to thrive in a culture, system, and environment that wasn’t set up for you.
People with inflammation, hypermobility, and dysautonomia do not thrive in our fast-paced, digital first, production-focused way of living. Our bodies thrive when we slow down, spend time in nature, heal our psychological wounds, and support our bodies to feel safe.
How An Integrative Healing Approach Helps
Somatic Healing: Listening to the Body's Signals
Somatic therapy is founded on the principle that our physiology, our nervous system and bodily tissues, hold the stories of our stress, trauma, and health.
Regulating the Nervous System: Dysautonomia is understood to be an autonomic nervous system dysfunction that triggers or enhances some ADHD traits like emotional dysregulation. Somatic therapies are designed to work directly with this system. Instead of just talking about feeling dysregulated, gentle, body-based techniques like tracking sensations help the nervous system move out of chronic "fight or flight" (sympathetic) and into "rest and digest" (parasympathetic).
Inflammation as a Stress Response: There is a clear link between stress and inflammation, with stress being a potent trigger for mast cells activation. Somatic therapy's primary goal is to down-regulate this chronic stress response. By helping the body complete "stuck" stress cycles, it may directly help to calm the physiological source of this mast cell activation and inflammation.
Addressing Physical Pain: There is a high prevalence of chronic pain, fatigue, and hypermobility-related issues in the ADHD population, especially in women. Somatic work provides a language for the body's pain that isn't purely "broken." It explores the bracing, tension, and disconnection that often accompany chronic conditions, helping individuals develop a new, more supportive relationship with their physical selves.
Parts Work and IFS: Befriending Your Inner "Parts"
IFS and parts work proposes that our psyche is made up of multiple "parts" (subpersonalities) and a core, compassionate "Self”, or higher self. What might be perceived as being "problematic" behaviours are seen as the actions of parts forced into extreme roles in their attempt to protect us.
ADHD Traits as Protective Parts: The domains of dysregulation can be viewed as a map of a stressed internal system. For example:
The "impulsive" part might be a "firefighter" part desperately seeking a dopamine hit from the dysregulated "Pleasure seeking / reward" domain to extinguish internal pain.
The "procrastinating" part might be a "protector" shielding the system from the overwhelming "brain fog" or deep "chronic fatigue" that stems from systemic inflammation.
Inflammation as an "Exiled" Part: From an IFS perspective, the body's physical symptoms are not separate from the psyche. The chronic pain, the allergies, the gut distress can be seen as "exiled parts" of the body, crying out for the Self's attention and love. The inflammation itself is a physical "protector," a system on overdrive trying to manage perceived threats, whether those threats are food, toxins, or stress.
Healing with Self-Compassion: The goal of IFS is not to fight the traits or get rid of the parts. It's to approach them with the curiosity and compassion of the Self. By "listening" to the impulsive part, we may find it's just trying to help us feel alive. By "befriending" the fatigue, we may learn it's a part that desperately needs rest. This non-adversarial stance is revolutionary for a system already at war with itself through autoimmunity and inflammation.
ACT: Accepting the "Mess" and Living a Valued Life
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a powerful framework for navigating the "mess" of complex, chronic conditions. Its goal is not to eliminate traits and difficulties but to build psychological flexibility, allowing you to live a rich, meaningful life alongside what may feel deeply challenging within our neurodivergent-adverse culture.
Acceptance of What Is: The first step is acceptance. This isn't resignation; it's a radical acknowledgement of reality. The reality is the dysregulated attention, the emotional intensity, the sensory overwhelm, and the physical pain. Instead of wasting energy fighting this reality, ACT teaches skills to gently "make room" for these uncomfortable sensations, thoughts, and feelings.
Defusion from Traits: ACT helps you "defuse" from, or unhook from, your thoughts and traits. You are not "your brain fog." You are a person experiencing the sensation of brain fog. This "cognitive defusion" creates critical space between you and your challenges, reducing their power over your actions.
Committed Action Toward Values: With the energy freed up from fighting your internal experience, you can focus on what truly matters to you - your values. Even with fatigue, what small step can you take toward "connection"? Even with sensory overwhelm, how can you honour your value of "creativity" in a manageable way? ACT is about gently moving toward your values with small, deliberate, intention actions, even when the inflammatory, dysregulated "mess" is present.
An Integrated Path Forward
Viewing ADHD as a systemic, inflammatory difference of regulation opens the door to a more compassionate and effective path to wellness.
Somatic therapy gives us the tools to listen to the body and regulate the nervous system.
IFS provides a map to understand and heal the internal "parts" that have become overburdened by this dysregulation.
ACT offers the guiding philosophy to accept the lived experience with mindfulness and move forward with loving purpose.
Together, these approaches allow us to take a step back, notice the patterns and then make connections. This helps us move beyond a narrow focus on the brain and toward a healing that addresses the whole, interconnected person.
