We shouldn’t be training our young people to ignore difficult emotions; here’s why and what YOU can do to help – Part 2

Michelle Stephens

My name is Michelle and I’m a neuropsychologist (LM51), educational coach and qualified teacher (PGCE) with nearly 20 years of experience in the field. I’m working with Oxford School of Padova to bring inclusion topics into the field of English teaching and education in general. This article is part of a series in which we’re exploring different neurological and neuropsychological concepts which aim to not only improve accessibility to education, but also give YOU – the parent or teacher – concrete ways in which you can achieve this with your students.

We spoke about the neural mechanisms behind guilt in neurotypical brains, and how that affects learning in our last blog –  in short, the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex are highlighted for higher level tracking, but guilt also ropes in more primitive parts of the brain, like the insula and the amygdala to give bodily feedback on the feeling.

Today we’re going to talk about two of the most popularly discussed neurodivergences – ADHD and ASD (autism spectrum disorder). Please remember though, neurodivergence comes in many different types – as do brains – and this advice may not work for all of them.

1. ADHD

Let’s start with ADHD brains, my favourite thing to talk about.

I’ve seen many parents tearing their hair out when their ADHD child says they feel bad after being told off, but then goes and does exactly the same thing again. It’s frustrating for everyone involved… so, why does it happen? If you truly feel badly about doing something, why do it again?

Well, ADHD brains have many strengths but they have difficulty with things that neurotypical brains might not have. We saw that guilt acts, in neurotypical brains, as a signal for behavioural change. In ADHD brains it’s not that there’s no guilt signal, or that they are lying about feeling bad, it’s that the mechanisms required for behavioural change don’t function in the same way that they might for other brain types.

In fact, many people with ADHD report frequent guilt and self-criticism, but the stronger evidence is for repeated criticism, shame, and difficulty translating intentions into action (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8856522/).  In fact some sources report that kids with ADHD receive 7 times the amount of negative feedback their NT counterparts get. Others cite numbers like “ADHD children receive on average 20,000 negative messages by the time they’re 12” (https://chadd.org/adhd-weekly/use-summer-to-improve-your-parent-child-relationship/).

While this isn’t empirically founded, it’s certainly believable. 

So why do ADHD kids “let” themselves be told off so often? Why not just do what they should?

Well, it’s not so much about “letting” themselves do anything, nor is it as simple as getting up and doing the thing. Let me explain why:

ADHD is associated with dopamine regulation, dopamine is key for motivation, reward anticipation and task initiation. Guilt is a NEGATIVE emotional signal, which means it doesn’t generate enough interest for the neural systems to reward the behaviour. This isn’t DESIRE, it’s literally like a car engine that doesn’t have enough fuel to start. No matter how much you try, there’s never going to be any kind of ignition if there’s no fuel.

This is why ADHD is often described as being interest based and not importance based – ADHDers tend to focus heavily on things that are salient to them, and ways to make things salient are through reward, novelty, urgency and interest.

The second neurological reason is that emotional overload actually blocks learning. 

Many neurodivergent profiles have strong emotional responses and a greater difficulty in regulating their emotions – meaning that they’re often longer-lasting or more all encompassing than with NT kids. This can even be amplified by factors like rejection sensitivity dysphoria.

This means that guilt becomes overwhelming instead of informative, attention gets pulled inwards and redirected at the “self” and cognitive resources are consequently reduced – more are being used to berate themselves and manage the emotional reaction.

They want to make things better, but they lack the tools, so instead they get stuck in a guilt loop – you feel bad, but never change. In fact, EEG studies show INCREASED emotional responses AND less inhibition over that feeling, this suggests they feel guilt even more overwhelmingly than neurotypicals do (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393205001260).

The shift from guilt to shame may also happen faster (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8856522/).

Because the person has repeated experiences of trying and “failing”, forgetting things and being corrected (often harshly) guilt can quickly transform from “this action was wrong” to “I’m a problem”. Shame is a separate but equally strong emotion to guilt which is linked to avoidance of tasks/people, disengagement and reduced learning – “if I suck at this what’s the point in doing it?” and when we use guilt to try to regulate behaviour, especially in ADHD kids, it can cause a loop of avoidance:

do “bad” thing – get told off – feel badly – internalise – guilt turns into shame “I’m the problem” – avoid activity or person – feel bad for not doing what you should do – internalise more and so on.

External regulation works better than internal guilt

Research and clinical models suggest ADHD brains rely more on:

external structure, immediate feedback and social presence instead of internal signals like guilt.

That’s why things like body doubling, deadlines with accountability and real-time feedback work better than: “you should do this” or “you should feel bad for not doing this”.

So how does that work, practically? What can you do as a parent or educator to help?

1. Externalise the signal

• timers – these give clear, visceral reminders. Don’t use a mobile phone alarm, but use an alarm that MUST be attended to.
• visual reminders – these need to be changed and moved regularly, or they’ll just blend into the background noise of the ADHD brainscape.
• structured steps – rather than “do X”, it should be “first step is U, then do V, next you need to do W and you’ll end up at X”.

2. Replace guilt with clear next actions

not: “this is wrong”, but: “here’s what to do next”.

3. Use reward, not pressure

• immediate feedback – “you did this well, but this needs to be changed by doing V, W and X”
• small wins – praise!
• visible progress

4. Reduce emotional load

• normalise mistakes
• separate behavior from identity – just because you’ve done a “bad” thing doesn’t mean you’re (necessarily) a bad person.

2. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

In autism, the pattern is similar. Some early studies suggested autistic children showed reduced guilt, but more recent work clarifies that Autistic children may show: lower or less consistent expressions of guilt and shame or difficulty describing those experiences (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29437299/).

This is often linked to:

– differences in self-reflection

– differences in understanding social context

It’s not necessarily that guilt isn’t felt — it may be experienced or expressed differently.

Unlike in ADHD, Longitudinal research shows that in autistic children, expressions of guilt may decrease with age.(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34689849/) while in neurotypical children guilt tends to increase or stabilise with age .

That suggests that the developmental pathway of guilt itself may differ, meaning it may not become a stronger behavioural guide over time in the same way. It’s not an effective learning tool here.

When talking about the effect of negative emotions in ASD, we have to consider that guilt belongs to a group called self-conscious emotions (guilt, shame, pride).

Research suggests autistic children may have difficulty with introspective emotions like guilt and shame because these require: reflecting on yourself, evaluating your behaviour and comparing it to social expectations. So the issue isn’t so much emotion as it is the meta-processing of emotion (https://academic.oup.com/chidev/article/94/4/e181/8255250) that is, applying it to context and giving it the correct “priority” by societal standards.

Guilt is a self-conscious, social emotion which depends heavily on: understanding others’ perspectives recognising social norms and evaluating how your behaviour affected someone else. These processes are tied to Theory of Mind. Research shows that differences in Theory of Mind in autism can affect moral emotion understanding interpretation of social situations (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00523/full). It’s not that autistic people don’t understand what’s going on, it means that they don’t always understand why it was considered wrong. 

A key behavioural trait in most ASD people (and some other neurodivergent profiles) is understanding and sticking to “rules”. The trouble is, is that most neurotypical behaviours don’t follow logical or rule based patterns and they’re not always fair, or clear. For example, the most confusing for many neurodivergent people being when people say things they don’t mean – “see you later” doesn’t literally mean “see you again today” but often means “I’ll see you again sometime in the near, but undefined future”. 

Another example might be changing rules based on context – this can often even be seemingly arbitrary, but for instance: being able to speak directly to your colleagues, but that’s often frowned upon if you do so with your boss. Wearing sensible shoes for every day use, but being expected to wear high heels (or dress shoes) in an everyday situation that’s contextually formal- maybe a dinner with your partner’s parents for instance. 

Or being late – being late to class, or to work is frowned on, but it’s normal or even expected in some social situations.

They’re small actions which seem obvious to most people, but they’re socially guided and somewhat unpredictable and confusing if your brain views the world in a different way to the “norm”.

Putting this all together, we get a message that reads something like:

In neurotypical kids: guilt → “I did something wrong” → repair → learning

In autistic kids, instead we get something like: “I did something wrong” → confusion about what it is → vague bad feelings that become generalised → learning to feel bad in a vague and uncontextualised way

(often contributing to higher levels of generalised anxiety in ASD people – this is often estimated to be 30% higher than in the general population: https://autism.org/autism-and-anxiety/)

This different response to guilt in autistic kids, is because the pathway can break at multiple points:

And these are the reasons you might see very little response when there’s a “guilt inducing” behaviour, or a full melt-down:

1. The signal may be unclear

“Was that wrong?”

“Why was that wrong?”

2. The meaning may be different, autistic brains often tend to focus on: rules, fairness and logic, rather than social impact.

3. The emotional label may not match the experience, many autistic (and neurodiverse profiled) people have difficulty identifying emotions: “this feeling = guilt”

4. The behavioural link may not form, as it’s not automatically seen as a signal for change by the brain. If you don’t understand why you’re supposed to feel bad, you may not – or have vague and un-directional bad feelings which means that guilt does not automatically → behaviour change.

Practically, instead of relying on guilt in autistic learners do the following things:

1. Make expectations explicit: don’t assume “they’ll feel bad and infer the rule”. They don’t know what they don’t know.

2. Explain the why: This upset X because…”

3. Focus on clear cause → effect: rather than assuming they will  infer emotionally, explain the how the behaviour affects a consequence.

4. Use structure over emotion: rules, routines, predictability help autistic brains.

⚠️ BUT…

Remember. Autism is highly variable and what might work for one individual may not work for another.

In short:

In neurotypical brains, guilt can act like a signal for change. In ADHD, the signal doesn’t translate into action. And in autism… the signal itself can be harder to read.

Follow us for more as we launch our new inclusion programme aimed at increasing accessibility to education for neurotypical and neurodivergent students alike!

For more information on the programmes, workshops and coaching we offer please contact inclusione@oxfordschool.com or 049 656180