When your brain is not working. What is really happening? Executive dysfunction explained

Apr 20

If you experience task paralysis, time blindness, executive dysfunction, or struggle to initiate tasks, know that nothing is fundamentally wrong with you. Neither you nor your brain is broken. These experiences are common among neurodivergent individuals or those with injury-related frontal lobe challenges.

In today's article, we will examine executive function and dysfunction from an ADHD and nervous system perspective. While my focus is on ADHD, readers experiencing executive dysfunction for other reasons may also find this article helpful.

If you don't experience it yourself, this article can help you better understand your loved ones. By making them feel accepted or acknowledged, you can make a significant difference in their lives.

You will find explanations, suggestions, and strategies for handling everything.

Let's start with your nervous system:

Before we even get to ADHD or executive dysfunction in this article, I want to talk about something more fundamental: your nervous system.

According to research, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is recognised as a key indicator of psychological health, as it reflects the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. When the PNS is active, people are more likely to feel calm and regulated, which supports the idea of a "rest and digest" state, according to Wagner and Waller. You feel relaxed and at ease. Remember this state, because this is when executive functions work the best for us. Even with ADHD.

Sympathetic (fight-or-flight): Your body perceives a threat, real or imagined. Stress hormones surge, altering your body’s chemistry. Your rational mind becomes less accessible as the survival instinct dominates. Planning, initiating, and organising become much harder in this state. Everyday stressors (traffic jams, work deadlines) or major life changes (loss, upheaval) can make you feel stuck here, especially if you don’t regulate your nervous system. More on that later.

According to the Polyvagal Theory by Dr Stephen Porges, we have an additional state:

Dorsal vagal (freeze/shutdown): When the nervous system is overwhelmed, it responds by neither fighting nor fleeing (fight or flight). This state manifests as numbness, disconnection, hours of scrolling, or feeling completely unable to move.

It matters so much for ADHD because when having ADHD, your nervous system tends to be more reactive, it can dysregulate faster, and it is often slower to return to baseline.

So when someone says "just get started" or "just try harder," they are asking a dysregulated nervous system to perform executive functions that require a regulated nervous system.

Now that we've covered the basics, let's look more into Executive dysfunction and how it shows up.

Allow me to start with an example.

You sit on the couch, and you know you need to wash the dirty dishes . But for some reason, you can't get up to actually wash the dishes.

You might even find yourself scrolling, tidying up, or making another coffee while the task remains unfinished. Sometimes it might even feel productive to attend to other to-dos, (subconsciously) avoiding what really needs to be done. If you have been called lazy, know that this is not always laziness or a lack of willpower.

It can be a sign that your executive function is struggling, which can be one of the most misunderstood and difficult parts of living with ADHD.

My experience and research tell me that your nervous system state is important to consider.

Executive function is connected to how safe, regulated, and resourced your body and mind feel in any given moment.

This is why you can easily wash your dishes on a Monday but not on a Friday after a long, draining week. Nervous system state, basic needs, sleep, and stress levels—all of it matters.

To better understand this, let’s explore what executive function means.

Executive function is a group of mental skills that enable you to plan, prioritise, start, and complete tasks. It involves working memory, cognitive flexibility, and the capacity to filter out distractions.

For many, these skills operate automatically in the background. If you have ADHD, you likely notice that they do not work as seamlessly. Planning, organising, beginning, or prioritising tasks may feel daunting or nearly impossible. Other factors, such as novelty and interest (or lack thereof), further contribute to these challenges.

According to the Cleveland Clinic:

“Executive dysfunction is a symptom that happens with conditions that disrupt your brain’s ability to control thoughts, emotions and behaviour. It’s common with conditions like ADHD, but it can also happen due to brain damage or degenerative brain diseases. Depending on the cause, it may be treatable with medications, psychotherapy, or both.

So if you find yourself unable to perform a particular task, although you really want to, you may experience executive dysfunction.

For people with ADHD, this can be challenging if not distressing.

Going back to the earlier example of not being able to get up off the couch and wash the dishes:

Some people are able to:

realise it's time to gett off the couch to wash the dishes before the day ends
make the decision to walk to the kitchen and sink
Start washing the dirty dishes.
might even clean up the kitchen afterwards,
leave the kitchen satisfied, knowing the dishes are done.

For someone with ADHD and a dysregulated nervous system, the same moment can look like this:
Hours pass without noticing (time blindness)
Realise it is somehow midnight and nothing is done.
Self-criticism and shame kick in, which further dysregulate the nervous system.
Try to get up, but the body feels frozen or impossibly heavy.
Finally, I make it to the kitchen, only to get pulled in a completely different direction.
Either push through well past the point of exhaustion, or postpone it and feel worse.

This is a real-life example of someone who struggles with ADHD. In fact, this was me a few years ago, when I was unaware of my ADHD or any strategies that could have helped me to manage it.

If you dont suffer from Executive dysfunction (or ADHD), but read this article, I hope that it will provide you insight into how those challenges can feel.

To a neurotypical person, whose frontal lobes and brain work “as expected”, this may even sound a little bit ridiculous.

Your basic needs are not optional extras.

This is an aspect I feel strongly about and believe is under-discussed in the ADHD community.

Your nervous system cannot fully regulate when your basic needs are not met. And your executive function cannot work well when your nervous system is dysregulated. These things are connected in a very direct, physical way.

When you are sleep-deprived, your prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain primarily responsible for executive functions) is significantly less active. When you are dehydrated or have not eaten, your body already enters a mild stress state. When you have been sedentary for hours, physical tension accumulates, and your nervous system signals that something is wrong. When you feel emotionally overwhelmed and lack an outlet or recovery time, your window of tolerance narrows.

All of these things compound for people with ADHD, who are already working with a more sensitive nervous system baseline.

This is why I always look at basic needs with my coaching clients before we even touch productivity strategies. We touch base on your basic needs, lifestyle and life circumstances to look at the whole picture.

Imagine you try to drive a car that has an empty fuel tank.

Some honest questions worth sitting with:

How is your sleep and sleep hygiene?
Are you eating regularly and enough?
What foods are you eating, and how much of them is sugar?
Are you drinking water throughout the day?
Does your body get to move in ways it enjoys?
Do you have any way to decompress or release tension?
Do you practise self-regulation or soothing practises? (Meditation, breathwork, etc.)

These are not small things. For an ADHD nervous system, they are part of the foundation.

How executive dysfunction can show up

In my experience, from living with ADHD but also from supporting people with ADHD (1:1 coaching), executive function challenges often show up in the following main categories. They can also overlap.

Task paralysis:

I’m sure you can relate. A to-do list with a lot of tasks on it. Never mind all the outstanding chores, household, or parents' duties. Not to mention all your own ideas, projects and all the things you want or could do. Have you ever sat down, feeling completely overwhelmed and literally unable to start with one task on your list?

Then, my dear reader, you may have also experienced Task paralysis before.

In short, your brain feels overwhelmed by the (perceived) heavy workload you are facing. I write perceived, because with ADHD, we often think tasks are much more time or energy-intensive than they actually are. A topic for another time.

When the brain/body feels overwhelmed, our sympathetic nervous system is activated, and we often find ourselves in the fight-or-flight, freeze, or freeze response.

For example: Instead of starting the first task, you completely numb yourself (scrolling on your phone) or go do something else (avoiding/flight). There can be many different responses to this, which I help my clients become more aware of when coaching.

There is a lot to say about task paralysis itself, but for now, I hope it helps you understand that this is one way executive dysfunction can manifest.

Time blindness

This is probably the most common issue I hear about. I don't think I ever had a client for ADHD coaching who didn't bring up challenges with understanding, perceiving, or calculating time correctly. This highlights how integral time management difficulties are for those seeking ADHD coaching.

It is common to underestimate how long things will actually take. If you find yourself “lost in time” or dont realise how many hours pass sometimes, it can also count as time blindness.

Being on time, starting on time, and snapping out of time (for example, hyperfocusing can make you lose track of time completely, often also overriding your need for hydration, eating, bathroom breaks, etc.).

A recent example of my own: I wanted to finish some notes before wrapping it up for the day. I genuinely thought it would take no more than 5 minutes. For some reason, it took an hour. I felt very productive, did what I wanted to do, but it baffled me how I used up a full hour instead of only 5 minutes. Of course, I didnt just complete my notes, I had to tie up a couple of other tasks with it (unexpected), which led to the hour.

Another common comment I hear during coaching is “It feels like I’m lost in time, and I dont know how to snap out of it when it happens”.

Initiation failure

There can be a big gap between deciding to do something and actually being able to start. The reason is the difficulty in starting it.

From the outside, it might look like procrastination or a lack of caring, but that is not the case.

Because ADHD brains work slightly differently and are physically different to neurotypical brains, we are impacted by a couple of factors that lead to a “failed start”.

As mentioned above, some mental skills dont work as easily for us, for example, to accurately plan a task and its first or next step. Time blindness can also feed into this. And because people with ADHD are highly sensitive and tend to feel emotions more deeply, often not being able to regulate them, the repeated frustration about not being able to start a task can leave a serious impact on us. The fear of failure (or the pain that comes with it) also often prevents us from getting started. We struggle to regulate our attention and focus, so we often lose track of what we wanted to do before we can get started.

Have you ever walked into a room, wanting to grab something from there, only to end up doing something completely different?

Multiply this experience by 1000; this is what happens almost every single time when someone with ADHD wants to get started on a task.

It can be exhausting, not to mention leading to many missed opportunities, underfulfilling our potential, and other serious issues that might result from not being able to start (or finish) a task.

It might sound dramatic, but this is the reality of someone with ADHD who is not managing or does not know a strategy for managing ADHD symptoms.

Why Willpower Won't Fix It

As you may have guessed by now, it is not as easy as simply “get it done” or “just start”. Willpower is unfortunately not enough; there are a couple of factors we need to consider when developing an ADHD-friendly strategy. (non-medication)

What often happens is that people are told to just try harder, make better lists, set more alarms, or build stronger habits. It can be helpful or be part of your strategy, BUT it only really works best when your executive function is working well enough to use it.

I see this in my coaching sessions all the time. Clients are trying out visual aids or alarms, only to realise later that they won't last in the long term. UNLESS they make it work for them. (I specialise in what works for each client, considering their lifestyle and circumstances and their mindset and ADHD brain).

Real solutions only work if you know how your brain functions, what your body and mind need. Not just treating the symptoms.

The prefrontal cortex works best when the nervous system is regulated, basic needs are met, and the emotional state is stable. Willpower is not a reserve you can draw on when all those conditions are absent. It is more like a function that only runs properly in the right environment.

**Some Approaches That Can Work With Your Brain**

If you are eager to find out how you can help yourself, the following might help.

I highly recommend working together with a coach if you need extra support.

Regulate first, then do

This sounds counterintuitive when you are already behind on tasks, but it genuinely changes the outcomes. A short, mindful walk, slow breaths for a few minutes, some water, and eating something. This can shift your state and make the next step more accessible.

According to a 2023 article in Scientific Reports, breathwork—including techniques that regulate breathing—can help promote mental, emotional, and physical health, which may be beneficial for people with ADHD. A full breathwork practice is not required to experience these benefits. Even a few intentional breaths before sitting down to work can shift something.

This is particulary helpful when you feel overwhelmed and stressed.

Use external structures instead of your internal willpower.

Many people with ADHD find it easier to get things done with external accountability and structure. We often seek as much freedom as we can, but freedom works best with some structures and frames when having ADHD.

Working alongside someone else, joining co-working sessions/body-double sessions, or having an accountability partner can be very helpful. As a coach, I also provide accountability check-ins between coaching sessions, which helps create real momentum.

They are just a few ideas and supportive ways to work with how your brain functions. It is okay to set up systems that give you the support you need.

Systems and structures can also change or be changed up to create novelty and excitement.

Lower the initiation barrier.

Getting started is often the hardest part. It helps a lot to break down a task into the smallest possible first step. For example, instead of 'write the report,' try 'open the document' or 'type one sentence.' Making the first step as easy as possible can help you build momentum. Preparing in the evening to help you get started in the morning is a common theme I notice in my coaching sessions, and it works really well for people with ADHD.

Replace time estimation with time tracking.

Trying harder to estimate time does not usually help with time blindness. Instead, try tracking how long tasks actually take for a couple of weeks. This gives you real information to work with, rather than relying on guesses. Many people find that tasks take longer than expected, which is useful information for planning better.

“Time-boxing” can be really useful too. Set your timer to 25 minutes and take note of how much you can get done during that time. Take a 5-10-minute break and repeat.

Work with your interests.

People with ADHD often find it easier to focus when something is interesting, new, urgent, or challenging, rather than just important. Instead of fighting this, try to work with it. You might add something new to a boring task, like changing your environment or listening to music. You can also create a sense of urgency or find a part of the task that interests you. These are practical ways to support yourself.

In a coaching session, we often look at it in more depth, discovering your real WHY or finding ways to support you.

Example: When writing this article, I changed the location. I sometimes go to places I really like and where I can focus to help me stick to my goal. In this case, the writing goal.

Prioritise: Only one thing, not everything!

It is very common for people with ADHD to have many ideas and goals. It feels overwhelming and, as mentioned earlier, can leave you feeling stuck. A helpful skill is learning to focus on fewer things. Try picking one priority for the day or one main goal for the next few months. One step at a time. And if you have some extra time and energy left, allow yourself to “go with the flow” and work on any “bonus goals”