The Holiday Challenges of an ADHD'er

You would think that waking up in a new, distant and beautiful land with complete free time, no schedule or morning alarm would be a dream come true.  This may be the case for a neurotypical person, but perhaps not for you if you have ADHD. Let’s explore the reasons why.

1 - Planning the holiday

So, before you can struggle to relax in Paris, you have to actually book the place to stay at, and this will be your first major difficulty. Initially, it feels extremely exciting.  You sit down to look for a charming Parisian hotel, and you end up 3 hours later with 20 tabs open on your PC, you have become an expert on the hidden secrets of the Louvres and where to find the best crêperies in Paris.  This research phase provides a massive, immediate dopamine hit because of the novelty.

However, when it comes to deciding which hotel to book, you freeze.  You tell yourself that if you book the wrong hotel, it will ruin the holiday, and your family will talk about it for years to come.  This fear of making the wrong choice is closely linked to rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD), which can feel like physical pain triggered by the perception of failure or rejection. A fight or flight response occurs over a simple hotel reservation, and your brain chooses to freeze to avoid the overwhelming potential for failure.  So, what do you do?  You close the tabs and decide you’ll book the hotel later.  Sadly, this comes at a price. You end up booking everything at the last minute, paying more as a result and making mistakes in the process because of the urgency of the situation you have created.

Dealing with the planning phase of a holiday can indeed be quite exhausting…

2 - Safety nets

• Insurance

Time blindness, the inability to sense the passing of time, can lead to chaos for ADHD’ers. One minute, you’re looking at the Coco Mademoiselle perfume range in the terminal, and before you know it, you hear your name being urgently called to the departure lounge.  This is why taking travel insurance is crucial for ADHD’ers.

• Medication

And what about your ADHD medication? Do you take a break while on holiday? It may sound nice to stockpile your meds, but without medication, the brain lacks the dopamine to regulate emotions.  As a result, reactions can be big and fast, and impatience can become problematic when you're just trying to sit and chat with your loved ones.  You can also end up hyper-focusing on a random stimulating activity for hours and missing out on the charm of the 'Ville Lumière'.

If on the other hand you decide to travel with your medication, you may need to bring a copy of your prescription or diagnosis and check beforehand that your meds are not restricted substances where you’re travelling to.

• Interpersonal safety net

To avoid the fear, decision paralysis and potential RSD of booking and planning, you may unconsciously delegate all the administrative tasks to your neurotypical family members or partner, leaving them in charge of the passports, booking the flights and managing the itinerary.  This might create resentment from your partner or family if they do not fully understand your internal struggles.  To them, you may be a highly capable, intelligent adult who appears to refuse to help book a simple flight.  Not a great start to a romantic getaway to Paris with your partner…

3 - The holiday experience

So, the flights and the hotel are booked, the medication has cleared through customs, your relationship is still intact (almost), and you are finally in Paris.  You're sitting on the balcony of your hotel, sipping a Pernod, everything is objectively perfect, but to just sit back and relax for a chronically under-stimulated brain that is starving for engagement, it can feel like a painful void. So, your brain starts searching for dopamine.  You start doom-scrolling on your phone, reading stressful news just to create an artificial sense of urgency and alertness as a way to self-medicate the boredom that is engulfing you. 

Other ADHD’ers may go the opposite way and seek extreme novelty in environments of low stimulation.  That’s where impulsivity can be a bit of an issue.  Like going on a long stroll through the streets of Paris without bringing water or sunscreen, resulting in sunburn and a much lighter wallet after buying drinks at an expensive café on the Champs Élysées.

Or you could have the entirely opposite reaction, and impose rigid routines on the holiday.  You may demand that the family eats at the exact same time every day or refuse to alter a pre-planned walking route. To a partner, this may look like you’re a bit of a dictator. But for an ADHD brain that struggles to naturally filter incoming information, the chaos of being in a new and different place can feel overwhelming, and imposing a rigid routine is simply a way to build a temporary 'exoskeleton' to manage the internal chaos. You’re not being bossy; you are simply trying to not feel overwhelmed.

4 - The return journey

The holiday has been this constant, exhausting, tightrope walk between under-stimulation and sensory overload. But eventually, the trip has to end, and the dopamine from the novelty of the trip is entirely gone, you're physically fatigued, and your working memory is completely depleted. Object permanence can completely fail on the way home, as you navigate an unfamiliar airport, retrieve luggage and go through security protocols.  It can take up all of your available working memory.  So, this is when you are the most at risk of losing something, like leaving your phone charger plugged in the airport waiting lounge or your sunglasses on a restaurant table.

Finally comes the challenge of remembering where you parked your car. You're wandering around for an hour, clicking your key, desperately listening for a faint beep in a sea of cars in the airport carpark.  This is exactly why having strict habits is vital. For an ADHD’er, taking a photo with your phone of the level and aisle number where your car is parked is a vital survival skill.

5 - The post-holiday adjustment period

For the ADHD brain, returning home triggers a motivational crash, because you have to transition back to the mundane reality of daily life. But the original exoskeleton of work and routines that kept you functioning before the trip has to be entirely rebuilt from scratch.

Task initiation drops to rock bottom and your suitcase may stay unpacked on your bedroom floor for a few more weeks...

Doing laundry, going through the mail, answering emails, can also feel like your brain is struggling to boot back up.

These transition periods, both leaving your routine and trying to re-enter it, are always hard to navigate for a neurodivergent brain.

6 - Solutions for a happier holiday

Recognising the underlying mechanisms, the dopamine-driven research, the RSD paralysing your booking, the need for routine amid sensory chaos, and the working memory failures is the first step. Once you see the patterns, you can plan a holiday that can genuinely restore you!

• Start with reframing how you view structure. We tend to think of structure for a holiday as confining, but for the ADHD brain, structure creates freedom because it eliminates decision fatigue. You don't have to make a plan before breakfast about what you are going to do, which drains all your executive energy.  An effective strategy is to have just one or two priority anchor activities a day, like for example plan a museum tour at 11am or a dinner reservation at 7pm.  You then have the freedom to be spontaneous in the spaces between those anchor points without feeling paralysed by the infinite possibilities of an entirely blank day.

  
  

• Use visual packing lists and organise your toiletries and electronics in clear bags.  This will save you rummaging through bags and emptying them at airport security.

  
  

• Another strategy for the planning phase is body doubling : have a friend or partner sit in the room with you while you tackle the booking or the packing. They don't even have to help, they could be doing their own thing, but their presence provides a gentle external anchor that keeps you tethered to the task. If you start drifting into a 45-minute digression about French Restaurants near the Eiffel Tower, their physical presence reminds your brain of the actual goal.

  
  

• Once you are actually on the trip, the focus has to shift to sensory management. Bring noise-cancelling headphones for airports or noisy cities, a sleep mask to ensure you can get restorative sleep in a bright hotel room, and rely on alarms to wake up, take your medication and eat meals to prevent feeling hangry.  Maintain regular sleep and wake times if you can, familiar exercise habits and self-care routines.  When a plan goes wrong (it inevitably will…), try not to make any decision if you are hungry or running on empty.  Instead, eat something or take a nap to let the initial frustration pass, and then think of an alternative plan.

  
  

• Play to your actual strengths: Acknowledge your challenges, communicate them clearly and divide the responsibilities based on actual capabilities, not societal expectations. This requires a real level of self-awareness and unmasking, it is about designing a trip for the brain you have, not the brain you think you're supposed to have.

If holidays consistently leave you exhausted, it's not a character flaw or a personal failing, it's just a sign that your brain is operating without its usual exoskeleton, and it needs a different kind of support to navigate all that ‘freedom’.

Perhaps true relaxation for you may not be about doing nothing, but more about finding the exact right kind of something to engage with.

Lots to think about before you book your next trip to Paris!