One thing which crops up again and again in my psychotherapy work with neurodivergent clients is a sense of endlessness which comes with emotions and moods. More than once, clients with ADHD might arrive at a session feeling that there’s not really anything to talk about Because things are feeling OK at the moment. It's as if it’s not possible to ‘hook in’ to a mood different to this one.

In the 1950s and 60s this might have been described as the ability to cathect into and out of mental states. It's not just about remembering a time when you felt like life was life was difficult, but being able to summon some felt sense of what that is like. In my experience, this seems more challenging, especially for people with ADHD. Instead, if they arrive at a session feeling like life is going well, it feels pointless somehow to try and talk about the ways in which life is difficult, as they cannot summon up a meaningful sense of what that is really like.

Of course the opposite is true as well, when life feels difficult, there can be a sense that these challenging feelings will never end. They feel “forever-ish”.

The research shows us that for autistic people and people with ADHD, differences in emotional processing, interoception, and working memory can all play a part in this “forever-ish” quality of experience. Feelings can both be felt more strongly, but they can be less context-bound. Without a reliable felt bridge between past, present, and future states, each emotional moment can take on a kind of totality. It becomes the whole landscape, rather than one kind of weather passing through it.

For some people, this connects to a concept called ‘emotional permanence’. This is about being able to know (not cognitively, but in more of a felt way) that emotions don’t just disappear or stay fixed, but can come and go, overlap, and change over time. When that’s harder to access, the current feeling can start to feel like the whole story. So if you’re calm and content, it can seem like things have always been fine, or that there’s no point talking about when they weren’t. And if you’re overwhelmed, it can feel like this is just how life is now and will forever be.

This can impact what therapy feels like. At least in the early stage, it can feel as if each week we start from scratch. You might struggle to connect with what brought you to therapy in the first place, not because it no longer matters, but because it is not emotionally available in this moment. This is not a problem to be overcome, or evidence that you are ‘resistant’ to psychotherapy, it’s just how you are. And it doesn’t mean we need to try to “get back into” a previous feeling state, so much as finding ways to  begin to build bridges between moods and emotions over time.

Some clients find it helpful to externalise this process, writing notes on their phone or on paper, making voice recordings, to capture something of what a particular experience feels like. Or you might notice me ask more questions during a session, slowing things down a little, to stay close both to what is present now while also wondering about what else has been true for you. You’ll also almost certainly hear me name the “forever-ish” quality directly. Pointing it out can help us both together to create just enough space to relate to it differently.

In person-centred psychotherapy, Rogers (1961) writes extensively about the moment-to-moment flow of experience and the importance of being in contact with your “organismic experiencing.” People relate differently to their internal states, and the process of therapy is about increasing access to and trust in that shifting inner process, rather than fixing any one feeling.

My experience (both personal experience and experience of what happens for clients) is that over time, it’s possible to develop a more flexible relationship with your inner world. To build trust that feelings can move, even if that movement isn’t always accessible in the moment. That no feeling ever lasts forever and they always shift and change in time. The intensity of feelings might not change (and we might not want it to!), but there can be a trust and certainty that this current feeling is not all there will ever be.

Reference
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.