False. All of it. Listening to your body is absolutely the treatment for ADHD. The post has confused listening with soothing. The problem is we aren't taught how to listen and are stuck in an endless cycle of soothing overstimulated nerves.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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Could you please give a couple of examples of what listening to your body looks like? I'm trying to understand myself better, I've existed as this body for 40+years and still don't understand it. I was 30 before I realized hunger and thirst feel the same for me. Halp
Hunger thirst and tiredness can all feel the same. "I WANT SUMFING!" (I don't understand my cat when she says this either)
I figure this is a low blood-sugar thing. I didn't used to get tired when I was hungry, but being my 30s has meant a lot of changes around how my body reacts to hunger, including getting tired. Then if I go too long without eating, I end up in physical pain. Long gone are the days where I could skip breakfast, skip lunch, and survive just fine until after my school/work day.
Sigh.
I don't know if it'll help you, but I've noticed that my cravings for "sweet" are usually a sign of thirst. I don't eat a lot of candy, so my go-to sweets are usually fruits. Fruits are hydrating, so it makes sense that the sensations got crossed somewhere in my nervous system. Now I sometimes drink water when I think I want something sweet and it works. (For me, at least. YMMV)
I was 30 before I realized hunger and thirst feel the same for me.
I relate. The amount of times I’ve said “am I hungry or thirsty?… hmm, don’t know.” And then done nothing about either one.
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This is a fantastic comment. Not necessarily because it's universally true, but because it highlights variance in lived experience. There is a truth, but not the truth.
It highlights the reality that your body sends a demand for action, but it diminishes and oversimplifies the great challenge, the true mountain, of consciously mapping a instinctive solution, to a true need, to an optimal course of action to meet the need.
I want chips? Am I hungry? Is my blood sugar low? Am I experiencing an acute deficiency of saturated fats? Are my electrolytes imbalanced? Although it's likely chips will solve it, there are several distinct underlying issues your body says chips are the solution. "Belly not full" is a gross oversimplification of what the issue may be, and without a full comprehension of the specific nature of the desire for chips, it's possible and likely an attempt to outsmart yourself will end in failure.
I bring this specific case up... I even shared it and my surrounding confusion with my doctor... because a few weeks after starting vyvans I had the desire to eat a vegetable for the first time in approximately 40 years. It was SHOCKING to me to realize that my body was already able to add meaningful specificity to my brutish and animal nature.
And to be honest... "chips" is probably by a large margin the least complex. A cigarette. An energy drink. Alcohol. The depth of confusion of root cause on the alchemy your subconscious has been formulating for decades of trial and error, behind your back?
When Karen says to listen to your body, they are saying one thing. It is not the thing that ADHD people need to hear. They are not the same thing. That is OPs point, and they are right. The mechanics are fundamentally different. It isn't wrong to highlight that Karen's communicative intention is flatly based on a distinct experience which is not directly applicable in a meaningful way.
You're saying "Listen to your body... and know that it is giving you a solution rather than telling you a problem, your goal is to bridge that gap".
Karen isn't false. OP isn't false. You aren't false. You're all just expressing lived experience.
"Listen to your body" and "Listen to your brain" are two very different things. Your body isn't going "hmm, we're a bit low on salt, EAT CHIPS NOW", it's just reporting low sodium levels to your brain. It's your brain taking that signal, interpreting it through the lens of your experiences and how you've trained it to think, and making the decision that you should seek out and devour chips. If you had never tried chips, your brain would not have that association, and would come up with a different approach to fixing your sodium levels.
That's the difference between listening to your brain, which is screaming for the quick fix of junk food, and promising itself dopamine as a reward, and listening to your body so you can make a conscious decision on how to approach the situation. It's not necessarily easy, and it takes practice, but it is possible.
So what else do you listen to instead? Asking for a friend…
I think you have to, like, psychologically reanimate the ghost of your mother and then have her tell you what to do.
Doesn't matter if she's still alive, you need a functioning ghost.
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Treat yourself like you would that Labrador puppy. Set guardrails and habit patterns in place. Use positive feedback to turn them into good habits and behaviour loops.
And just like training said Labrador, it's a LOT fucking easier to say than to actually do!
Aaand it walked in to traffic, again... Comeback here litlle buddy!*
*I once raised a pup with the positive reinforcement method. Such a good and loving dog. I aged very quickly the first 12 months
The autistic part of my brain (It doesn't always work out well)
Yeah, that’s not worked for me either, it just micromanages my current hyper-fixation in great detail and depth. It’s a two-wolves situation, with impulsivity and in-depth nerdery
My wife. Saves a ton of money.
A therapist.
Personally, a strict routine and a veritable army of spreadsheets to do what the brain will not.
You have to imagine yourself giving advice to a friend.
...The problem is following through
"Listen to your body"
My body: eat pizza
That's as much your brain saying it.
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If you didn't know, people with ADHD (and Autism) have problems with interoception, your internal perception of your body and its states, though ADHD and Autism can both affect it differently. I like Cleveland Clinic's description, though I wouldn't say it's prescriptive to everyone with ADHD/Autism or that it will always be the same way for those who do experience it.
Autism . Interoception accuracy (how correct you are at identifying feelings) is low. For example, it might be hard for you to regulate or express your emotions. You might also have trouble identifying bodily needs, like hunger.
ADHD . Interoception attention (how often you notice signals) is strong but you may have trouble acting on those signals. For example, you feel thirsty but can’t decide what you want to drink.
It could be that you simply don't even notice your body saying you have to eat or go to the bathroom because you're hyperfocused on something, you mix up hunger with thirst, or it could be that you notice but can't bring yourself to do something about it.
Either way, ADHD and Autism can both affect how you understand the state of your body. That is not the same as your impulse control, desires, cravings, or planning skills. You can listen to your body saying it's hungry, be tempted to get the high-dopamine cookies out, but make a sandwich instead.
Listening to your body is NOT the same as doing exactly what your brain wants. That doesn't necessarily mean it's easy or always possible to actually do what's best for yourself when your brain is actively working against you, but I think that painting listening to your body as something that fundamentally means giving up control to your impulses is just plain reductive and stupid.
If anything, choosing not to listen to your body can mean you don't listen to signals that could prevent those unwanted behaviors. For the longest time I just ate as many treats as I could because I felt as though I couldn't stop myself, and eating sugar just felt too good, until I eventually realized that it always gave me a stomachache and made me feel sluggish, so now I can more readily stop myself by comparing my current state (no treat, feeling fine) with my possible future state (momentary treat, stomachache for the rest of the day), and decide that maybe I shouldn't have my 10th cookie of the day 💀
I spent YEARS putting myself through pain while overeating unhealthy food because I simply didn't pay enough attention to my body to realize that I didn't always feel this way... until I began overeating treats that day. And now that I'm medicated, if I don't pay attention to my body, I won't realize I should be hungry and I won't eat food until the evening when I've been running off 400 calories all day.
The 400 calorie day sounds like me before I started calorie counting, to make sure I at least eat a minimum of 1500 calories. I just don't notice when I should eat, and then food is hard to put together so I put it off.
Drink, on the other hand, I'm good at. I'm up to maybe 3 liters a day because salty water helps my circulation and makes me feel good.
Your story about overeating sweets and feeling like crap and not putting it together... that reminds me of taking a daily multivitamin with my lunch, then consistently feeling so very sick to my stomach an hour later. Took me maybe 2 weeks to figure out the pill was the problem. (I went back to Flintstones with iron, no problem. I'm hesitant to try an adult multivitamin again because I had such a bad reaction before. Plus, I like chewable pills.)
And then there's my body:
"Drink. Water. Always.
Also sometimes Whiskey, and 1-2 'caffeine' a day, but have a water open at the same time."
It's in my hand as I type this..
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This is damn near Shakespeare level prose
Yes that lady is a poet.
If I listen to my body I'd be in diabetic ketoacidosis within a day. My body wants to kill me and I will not give it the satisfaction.
I'm not a woman, but I think I am that woman.
You and me both brothersister
And my axe!
Listen doesnt mean thoughtlessly obey all its urges.
My body just wants to sleep. If I listened to it I could easily do 16h+ sleeps every day. It's a fucking daily battle to exist in the real world and stay awake long enough to get anything done.
So fuckin real I can literally sleep as long as I want in a day, sometimes 14-20 hours at a time. Funnily enough I can never sleep when I WANT to.
Awake for 36 hours with 2 hours if sleep, and have an important meeting tomorrow? ZERO sleep. Nothing urgent? 17 hours of sleep.
I'm distracted by "skip fire". Fire in a boat? On a pallet? Game for sadistic children?
Listen to your body; not your brain. Stomach says "I want salt" that's okay, have a salty snack. If the brain says "I need to binge 137 episides of anime RIGHT FUCKING NOW" you can ignore it.
Stomach says "I want salt"
It's not the stomach. It's still the brain.
That's just the brain trying to take credit for what the stomach said.
Edit: This is the toes: these posts are coming from inside the brain! Don't trust it!
learn welding and sourdough please
The welding trades are rampant with adhd mfers. See also, fire departments.
So many times I'm having a shit day or can't fall asleep and then there's a volunteer fire call and suddenly I'm putting my gear on in the back of the engine with the windows down going 65mph and everything is right in my brain
if you dont want to work with your hands, learn microsoldering instead
Welding, sourdough, Mandarin. The body wants one of them. The other two are wrong signals. Nobody taught the feral little cunt to distinguish one from the other.
'The Haunted Shopping Trolley' sounds like the title to a YA book that is actually a maths course pretending to be a fantasy novel.
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