You can't think strategically when you're emotionally flooded.

You can't think strategically when you're emotionally flooded.

Here's why.

Emotional management is a cognitive function. It's your brain's ability to process emotions in real-time without letting them hijack your other executive functions.

When you're emotionally dysregulated, it cascades down through everything.

Decision-making gets impulsive.

Planning derails completely.

Working memory tanks.

Your ability to hold multiple variables in mind while evaluating options? Gone.

Think about the last time you were really stressed - a difficult conversation with your boss, a major deadline looming, a conflict with someone you care about.

Could you think strategically in that moment?

Could you see the big picture, consider alternatives, make nuanced decisions?

Probably not. And that's not a sign you're not cut out for leadership. It's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do: prioritizing emotional and physical safety over everything else.

Here's the mechanism: When you're emotionally activated, your amygdala (the brain's threat-detection system) essentially hijacks your prefrontal cortex (where executive functions live). Your brain interprets emotional distress as a survival threat and allocates all available cognitive resources to managing that threat.

Everything else - strategic thinking, planning, problem-solving - gets deprioritized.

This is especially challenging for people with ADHD because emotional regulation is already one of the executive functions that tends to be weaker.

You're not just dealing with normal emotional responses - you're dealing with a neurological difference that makes emotional management require more cognitive effort.

The cascade works like this:

→ Strong emotion hits 

→ Prefrontal cortex goes offline

→ Working memory capacity drops

→ Can't hold multiple pieces of information

→ Planning becomes impossible

→ Decisions become reactive instead of strategic → More problems get created

→ More emotional activation

→ Cycle continues.

Understanding this mechanism matters because it changes how you approach emotional management.

You're not trying to "control your emotions" or "stay calm." You're recognizing that emotional regulation is a cognitive skill that uses specific brain resources - and when those resources are depleted, your other executive functions suffer.

Monday experiment:

Next time you feel a strong emotion at work, name it out loud or write it down: "I'm feeling frustrated." That's it. Just naming the emotion.

Here's what happens when you do this: The act of labeling an emotion activates your prefrontal cortex - the same part of your brain that went offline when the emotion hit. You're essentially bringing your executive functions back online by engaging them in the simple task of categorization.

This creates a micro-pause between feeling and reacting. In that pause, you have options.

You can choose how to respond instead of being driven by the emotion.

You can access your working memory again.

You can think strategically.

Notice what happens when you create that space.

Does the intensity of the emotion shift?

Do you suddenly have access to options you couldn't see before?

Can you think more clearly?

This one small practice - naming emotions as they arise - is foundational to emotional management as an executive function.

It's not about suppressing feelings.

It's about maintaining access to your cognitive resources while you're experiencing them.

See you next Friday.

Mineela