📃 Table of contents

Friendship maintenance for ADHD brains

If you’ve ever gone way too long without replying to a text and now feel too awkward to reach out… welcome to the club. 🙃

ADHD “ghosting” usually isn’t intentional. It can happen because of challenges with several different ADHD symptoms, including working memory, time blindness, rejection sensitivity, task initiation, and ADHD paralysis.

The good news? It’s rarely too late to reach out. Most people aren’t angry, they just assume you got busy.

In this guide, we’ll cover the ADHD symptoms that make keeping in touch with friends and loved ones a challenge for ADHDers. We’ve also got some great tips, a handy friendship rolodex template, and even some sample scripts to help you reestablish contact when you’re not sure what to say. Even with ADHD, you can absolutely maintain friendships without the guilt**.**

📓 Click here to access the Friendship Rolodex

Before you move on

Make sure you make a duplicate of this Notion template. Find the duplicate button in the upper right. Click it and you’ll have your own customizable copy of this guide and the Friendship Log.

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Why this happens in ADHD friendships

ADHD can make staying in touch harder than it should be. It’s not because we don’t care; our brains are just wired in a way that can make relationship upkeep more challenging than we realize. Here’s what’s really happening:

🧠 Working Memory Challenges – Working memory is like the brain’s sticky note, it holds onto information for short periods while we use it. In ADHD brains, that sticky note fades fast or disappears completely. This makes it easy to forget to respond to messages, follow up on plans, or even recall that we meant to reach out in the first place. We might have the intention to text back, but if we can’t do so immediately, the thought may slip away for days, or even weeks, due to…
🕰️ Time Blindness – ADHD brains don’t naturally track time the way neurotypical brains do. Instead of feeling time as a continuous flow, we experience it in “now” and “not now.” A message we meant to respond to feels like it just came in, even if it’s been weeks. By the time we realize how long it’s been, we may feel so ashamed that we convince ourselves it’s too late to reach out, or we avoid it altogether to escape the guilt—making the gap even wider. Which brings us to…
💔 Rejection Sensitivity (RSD) – RSD is an intense emotional reaction to perceived rejection or disapproval, even when no actual rejection has occurred. For many ADHDers, just the thought of disappointing someone can trigger overwhelming distress, sometimes intense enough to manifest as physical pain**.** The fear that our friend might be upset with us can make it feel safer to withdraw entirely—even when, in reality, they’d likely just be happy to hear from us.
⏳ Task Initiation – Once you get past RSD, the next challenge is starting a task. No matter how small, starting any task can feel impossible for someone with ADHD. The part of the brain responsible for getting us going is underactive, so even when we really want to do something (like respond to a text), it’s like trying to start a car with a dead battery. We may keep putting it off simply because our brain isn’t able to start.
🌀 ADHD Paralysis – When faced with too many thoughts, emotions, or choices (like a backlog of unread messages), ADHD brains can freeze. Even something as simple as saying “Hey, I miss you” can feel impossible. Because our brains struggle to filter and prioritize stimuli, we get hit all at once with emotions, self-doubt, and decision fatigue. It’s like trying to have a conversation in the middle of a hurricane, so overwhelming that our brain shuts down instead of taking action.

ADHD Friendship Maintenance Hacks