If You Say You Have No Choice, You’re Still Choosing: ADHD, Agency, and Staying Stuck

ADHD, executive functioning, and understanding where influence really sits

Feeling stuck is one of the most common experiences adults with ADHD describe, particularly those who are thoughtful, self-aware, and frustrated by how often they find themselves repeating patterns they already understand.

It’s rarely a lack of insight or effort. More often, it’s the sense of being caught between knowing what might help and feeling unable to move towards it in any consistent way.

When people begin to reflect more closely on this experience, a subtle shift often happens. Feeling stuck starts to make more sense when it’s viewed not as passivity, but as a response to pressure, uncertainty, and the need to feel some degree of stability when things feel overwhelming.

In that context, staying where you are can feel more predictable than experimenting with change, even when the current situation isn’t comfortable.

Feeling stuck as a response, not a failure

For many adults with ADHD, feeling stuck doesn’t mean nothing is happening. It often means something important is happening beneath the surface.

When demands feel too high, emotions feel intense, or expectations feel unclear, the nervous system looks for ways to reduce risk and regain a sense of steadiness.

Familiar patterns can provide that, even when they come with downsides. Avoiding certain tasks, relying on last-minute pressure, or telling yourself “this is just how I am” can all function as ways of keeping things contained when they otherwise feel too much.

Seen through this lens, feeling stuck becomes easier to understand as a protective response rather than a personal shortcoming.

Where choice actually sits

Many people describe feeling as though they have no choice, particularly when ADHD-related challenges have been present for most of their life.

Executive functioning difficulties are real, and they place genuine limits on what is possible in any given moment. Emotional regulation, time perception, and task initiation don’t operate in the same way for everyone.

At the same time, having limited options is not the same as having no influence at all. Often, what sits underneath the sense of having no choice is a quieter calculation about safety and predictability.

Staying with what’s familiar can feel more manageable than stepping into something uncertain, especially when past experiences of trying to change have been painful or exhausting.

Becoming aware of this doesn’t remove the constraints ADHD creates, but it can make it easier to see where small degrees of choice still exist, particularly around how you support yourself within those limits.

Default patterns and conscious awareness

When certain patterns repeat often enough, they can begin to feel inevitable. In practice, many of these patterns develop as default responses under pressure rather than fixed traits. They emerge because they work, at least in the short term, by reducing discomfort or restoring a sense of control when things feel overwhelming.

As awareness grows, it becomes possible to relate to these patterns differently. This doesn’t mean forcing change or trying to override automatic responses. It involves noticing when a pattern appears, what it is protecting, and whether it is still serving you in the way it once did.

Awareness alone doesn’t fix anything, but it can widen the space between response and reaction, making it possible to choose how you want to proceed rather than being pulled along automatically.

Urgency, pressure, and the ADHD nervous system

Urgency plays a significant role for many people with ADHD. As pressure increases, attention often sharpens, focus narrows, and action becomes possible in a way it wasn’t before. This happens because urgency increases arousal and creates conditions that ADHD brains often rely on in order to engage.

This can lead to a familiar cycle where things are delayed until pressure forces movement, followed by exhaustion and a sense of having narrowly kept everything together. Urgency can feel effective in the moment, but when it arrives unpredictably or too late, it can take over the system entirely.

The issue isn’t urgency itself, but whether it arrives by accident or by choice. When urgency is the only thing creating momentum, control tends to sit with the deadline rather than with you.

Sarah Hardy ADHD Coach Manchester, England

Executive functioning through a more compassionate lens

Executive functioning challenges often show up in everyday ways, such as difficulty starting tasks, managing time, or regulating emotional responses. These challenges are not a reflection of effort or intent. They reflect differences in how the brain organises attention, manages energy, and responds to pressure.

When starting feels impossible, it’s often because the task feels too large, too emotionally loaded, or too undefined. Avoidance can become a way of protecting energy and reducing the risk of getting things wrong. Time blindness can make planning feel unreliable, leading to repeated experiences of being caught out. Emotional reactivity can take over before there’s time to pause and reflect.

Understanding these patterns doesn’t make them disappear, but it does make it easier to work with them rather than constantly fighting against them.

Participation, awareness, and coaching

Coaching isn’t something done to you.

It’s a process that works through awareness, reflection, and experimentation over time. Change doesn’t come from being told what to do, but from beginning to notice how patterns operate in real life and how they affect you.

Participation matters not because you’re expected to change, but because awareness is what creates choice. Without noticing what’s happening, patterns continue by default. With awareness, it becomes possible to decide where you want to add support, structure, or containment, and where you’re content to leave things as they are.

Coaching doesn’t aim to control ADHD or remove its challenges. ADHD creates real constraints. Coaching supports you to understand those constraints more clearly and to work within them in ways that feel realistic and sustainable.

Ready to make start making more concious choices?

If feeling stuck has been part of your life for a long time, it’s likely because it has served a purpose. Many familiar patterns develop because they help us cope, even when they come with longer-term costs.

Shifting the focus from why you can’t change to how you want to support yourself within what’s possible can open up different options, without requiring everything to change at once.

If you’re curious about exploring ADHD, executive functioning, and choice in a way that feels reflective, supportive, and grounded in how your brain actually works, coaching and group work can help create that space.

You can find out more or book a discovery call

And if now isn’t the right time, that’s fine too. Just make it a conscious choice.

Sarah Hardy ADHD Coach Manchester, England

References

Barkley, R. A. (1997). ADHD and the nature of self-control.

Brown, T. E. (2013). A new understanding of ADHD in children and adults.

Pychyl, T. A., & Sirois, F. M. (2016). Procrastination, emotion regulation, and well-being.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory.

Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight.