On Starting, Stumbling, and Habit Formation

A path to somewhere

Starting is hard—at least it is for me, and for many folks with ADHD or Autism.

Habit formation, or the act of developing a habit or pattern of behavior (or thought or emotion), is complicated for everyone. As humans, we rely on habits to make our daily processes more automatic, reducing our dependence on limited resources like energy, motivation, and even money. Some habits form seemingly incidentally, like doomscrolling on social media. But even those habits are created through the same human processes. In the case of social media use, there are often people behind the algorithms who intentionally shape our behavior.

I am a therapist by trade, but a researcher by hobby. For as long as I can remember, my curiosity has driven me to deeply understand the world and to retain small bits of information—either for myself or, ideally, to pass on to someone else who might find them useful or interesting.

I am also a person with ADHD, and at times, it can be hard for me to do a lot of things. I run my own business. I set my own schedule. I have to attend to chores and relationships. And honestly, I can struggle with forming and maintaining the habits that would make all of this feel less effortful and more meaningful.

Because I have built my private practice to support other neurodivergent folks—especially adults with ADHD and Autism—I spend a lot of time thinking about how to build meaningful habits (which I often refer to as tools or strategies). To some, it might sound ironic that I struggle just as much as my clients when it comes to habit formation. But to those of us with ADHD or Autism, I don’t think it’s all that surprising.

If this sounds like the blind leading the blind, in a way, it is. But I would push the analogy a step further: it’s like a blind person who has devoted their life to learning how to accommodate their blindness—an expert in blindness, if you will.

I don’t want to be an expert only for my own sake, though that is certainly part of my motivation. I want to use my expertise to help others save time, energy, effort, money, frustration, and despair. I want to help point out the path while walking it myself. I will get scraped up along the way. To me, the beauty of this work is that I get to witness others persist and grow as I, too, attempt to persist and grow.

It’s been about a year since I last made a serious effort to post blogs or share content on social media. This is something that matters to me, but like most things involving habit formation, I have found it difficult to start. It will likely be messy—and if I’m honest, inconsistent at times. Still, I want to persist in this effort to better help those who may be struggling, even if I have a thousand reasons to focus solely on therapy and let marketing take a back seat.

I am a good therapist. I am a novice marketer.

I don’t like marketing. I’m not overly fond of social media. But I want to grow my business on my own terms, so I have decided to try. I hope you enjoy the journey.

This blog will likely be a hodgepodge of personal reflection, therapeutic insight, and a healthy mix of research related to ADHD and Autism. This month, we’re focusing on habit formation. I am already behind my original content release goals, but I don’t want that to excuse my attempt before I’ve truly had the chance to start.

A Brief Look at Habit Formation

Let’s take a look at some of the research related to habit formation. First, I want to briefly explain a few of the mechanisms that affect everyone. Then, I’ll spend some time discussing how ADHD and Autism can further complicate the process.

Habit formation occurs largely in areas of the brain responsible for executive functioning, which are primarily located in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex helps us make decisions by integrating information from many different brain regions. It incorporates emotions, memories, values, and lived experience into our decision-making processes. This part of the brain does a tremendous amount of work each day to keep us on top of what needs to be done.

The prefrontal cortex is one of the last brain regions to fully develop (around age 25) and is also one of the newest areas to develop from an evolutionary perspective. In many ways, it sets us apart from other species. Executive functioning is a bit like a manager within the brain. A good manager needs to understand what their team is doing in order to coordinate effectively—and the prefrontal cortex plays a similar role.

Habit formation also relies heavily on the neurotransmitter dopamine, which reinforces behaviors by making them feel rewarding. Dopamine fires whether we intend to form a habit or not. When we scroll through social media and encounter content that aligns with our interests or stirs our emotions, dopamine is quietly doing its job in the background.

However, when we are intentionally trying to form a new habit, dopamine is not always cooperative—especially if the new behavior isn’t intrinsically rewarding. Eating vegetables, for example, may be good for us, but dopamine may be far more interested in foods that are sugary or highly palatable.

To encourage dopamine to fire at levels that support habit formation, we sometimes need to modify the reward source or repeat the behavior long enough for the brain to begin associating it with reward. Often, both of these things are happening simultaneously as we attempt to convince our brains to lock in a new behavior.

Over time, we begin to anticipate the dopamine reward, and we may require more stimulation to achieve the same effect. Once a habit is formed, it can be reinforced with other supportive behaviors. At this point, the goal shifts from habit formation to habit maintenance, which places less demand on both the prefrontal cortex and the dopaminergic system. Eventually, the behavior can become second nature.

Of course, habits can still fall apart. When that happens, it may take effort to return to a place where the habit feels easy again. There is much more happening beneath the surface, but these are some of the major pieces relevant to our discussion today.

For folks with ADHD and/or Autism, habit formation is often more complicated and more effortful—for reasons we’ll explore next.

Come back Sunday to learn more.