A messy room can also be a sign that you have depression. If you're feeling a little less than hopeful, you might have a hard time understanding why you should even bother to clean up or organize things since, from where you're standing, everything seems to be going wrong anyway.
A sense of despair, sadness, and hopelessness often comes with depression. As a result, teens may feel that there's no reason to expend effort to keep their personal space neat and organized. Disregarding personal grooming and cleanliness is a common symptom of depression.
If you feel overwhelmed when cleaning, maybe you just have too much stuff to organize. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that you cannot welcome new things into your life if you don't release some of the old stuff. You need to begin to purge things from your life.
Is a messy house a sign of mental illness, you might ask. Psychology says that messiness can indeed be a sign that a person is having trouble. Just like someone who is suffering from OCD and has to control everything, being a messy person might show that they are dealing with depression or some other mental illness.
Many adults with ADHD have cluttered workspaces and homes. If you work well in those surroundings, then it's time to make peace with your organized chaos. If not, learn how to prevent clutter from overwhelming you.
People with ADHD who have a hard time keeping things tidy usually aren't being lazy or thoughtless. They have trouble with a group of skills needed to tackle cleanup tasks and stay organized. These skills are known as executive function.
Excessive clutter and disorganization are often symptoms of a bigger health problem. People who have suffered an emotional trauma or a brain injury often find housecleaning an insurmountable task.
Adults with ADHD often have problems dealing with day-to-day tasks. They tend to be forgetful, disorganized, and messy. This makes cleaning with ADHD nearly an insurmountable task, especially since cleaning seems like such a chore to neurotypicals themselves.
Often, when depressed, you might see everything as overwhelming. Cleaning your room can feel like a daunting and impossible task. Feeling overwhelmed is a symptom of depression, which can make any activity feel like it is “too much.”
Researchers theorized that people gravitate toward repetitive behaviors (such as cleaning) during times of stress. Why? It's all about control. "We want to be able to do something when we get anxious, and what we really want is to be in control and take action," says Alicia H.
Create a Chore File
Staying on top of chores is an overwhelming challenge for adults with ADHD. Creating a weekly plan can keep you on track. Over the weekend, write down the chores that need to get done in the upcoming week on index cards. Arrange them in order of priority, and keep them in a single location.
“A clutter-free environment might suggest someone who is not able to tolerate the untidiness or uncertainty inherent in life and relationships.”
Sometimes, living with anxiety, depression, or stress brings on clutter. If you're overwhelmed by sadness or other negative emotions, you might not have the energy to clean and organize. Or, you might use shopping or accumulating things to manage your feelings.
Junebugging is cleaning by distraction, a process by which you put some of the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, only to get distracted by the pile of the laundry that needs to go in the washing machine, which reminds you that there are a million LEGO scattered across the living room floor, which then alerts your ...
“Cluttering is another behavior typical in folks with ADHD. Leaving items out as visual cues is a common way of compensating for an unreliable memory or inadequate time-management system, but to the untrained eye it can resemble hoarding,” she says.
The 4 Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn: Examining The Four Trauma Reactions. According to a research on the neurobiological consequences of psychological trauma, our bodies are designed to respond to perceived threats with a set of near-instantaneous, reflexive survival behaviors.
“There are four types of clutter: paper, digital, emotional, and spiritual,” she says. “Physical and digital clutter are symptoms of emotional and spiritual clutter.” Years ago, Hemphill started as a professional organizer.
Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.
High-functioning ADHD isn't a formal diagnosis. It's a phrase used to describe people living with ADHD who see little to no major impact on daily life. Just because you've reached great success or have found ways to work around ADHD symptoms doesn't mean ADHD might not be affecting you.