STUCK MOMENT · ADHD-LED ANSWER · 4 SECONDS

I got feedback and I'm spiraling.

Tell me what was said. I'll give you the plain version of what's actually happening, what your brain is adding, and one small thing to do.

Why this happens

Rejection-sensitive dysphoria is an ADHD-adjacent pattern: one piece of mild critical feedback gets amplified into a catastrophic narrative about your job, your worth, your future. The brain treats specific, contextual feedback ("slide 7 framing") as global feedback ("I'm not strategic"). Naming the actual size of what was said — narrow, specific, fixable — creates enough distance to put the spiral down. The work is to feel the feeling without believing the story.

The example we'll start with

My manager said in our 1:1 that my Q2 deck "was solid but the framing on slide 7 wasn't quite landing." That was 90 minutes ago and I haven't done anything since. I'm spiraling that they think I'm not strategic, that this means a bad performance review, that I'm about to get put on a PIP, even though objectively the rest of the feedback was positive.

Click the button above and the textarea pre-fills with this example. Edit it to match your real situation, or use it as-is.