Moving With ADHD: Why It Feels So Hard, and What Actually Helps

This is the first conversation in my Community Spotlight series, and it starts with a question I hear in some form every single month: why does moving feel so impossible? I sat down with Stephanie Galindo, an ADHD coach here in Snohomish County, and she gave me the best answer I have ever heard.

Stephanie and I met years ago in a local women's networking group, the kind where people actually root for each other. Her work centers on people with ADHD, and she came to it the way the best coaches do: through her own story. Shame, she told me, was the thing she was meant to erase from people's lives, because she had carried so much of it herself.

there is no box called normal

The first thing Stephanie reframed for me is the idea of neurotypes as boxes. There is no ADHD box, autism box, and normal box, she explained. There is a huge range of human neurology, and a society that changed faster than our brains did. For most of human history, our brains were well matched to the lives we lived. Then, in a few hundred years, the expectations flipped: sit down, be quiet, manage forty open browser tabs of obligations. Only certain neurotypes find that an easy lift.

And the shame piece runs deeper than most people realize. Kids with ADHD get corrected far more often than their peers, so many absorb the message that something is wrong with them. Stephanie calls that shame the water they swim in. Here is the part that stopped me: shame measurably decreases executive function and working memory. The very skills you need to manage ADHD are the ones shame takes away. Her work starts with what she calls unshaming, and everything else follows from there.

why moving hits an ADHD brain so hard

Here is where her world and mine collide. Stephanie says people usually manage their ADHD fine until one more thing happens: postpartum, menopause, a health scare, an overwhelming season. And one of the biggest “one more things” on her list is moving.

The reason is beautifully specific. An ADHD brain spends years building pathways for daily life: where things live, which drawer, which route, which routine. Those pathways were expensive to build, and a move erases all of them at once. Suddenly every small step requires active thinking. Which box. Which room. Where did I put it. Add the decision fatigue of choosing what to do with every single object you own, and the load gets enormous.

Up to a year to feel like yourself again. Nobody tells you that. If you have ever moved and wondered why you were still living out of boxes and running on fumes months later, you were not failing. You were rebuilding every pathway at once.

a tool you can try right now

Stephanie keeps what she calls an ADHD first aid kit: four nervous system regulation tools for the moments when you are too worked up to think. She taught me one on the spot. Take a pen or your phone, hold it in one hand, and pass it rhythmically back and forth across the middle of your body, hand to hand. She explained that anxiety tends to overactivate one part of the brain, and crossing the midline like this forces other parts to light up. It untethers you from the spiral just enough to think about what you would like to do next, instead of sitting in a bundle of anxiety. Simple, free, and you can do it in the car before a showing.

She also shared a piece of brain chemistry I keep thinking about. ADHD conversations usually revolve around dopamine, the chemical that gives you the oomph to act. But serotonin and oxytocin, the connection chemicals, can drive action too. That is why body doubling works: having another person in the room while you pack or sort leans on connection instead of dopamine you may not have that day. Packing with a friend is not a crutch. It is chemistry.

where her work meets mine

Stephanie said something in our conversation that I will carry for a long time: that I take care of my clients emotionally while walking them through the sale, and that this is where her work and mine connect. It is the whole reason the Home Transition Team exists. The downsizing decisions, the packing, the repairs, the staging, even cleaning out the refrigerator: we built the team to carry the load that a move dumps on a person all at once. After hearing Stephanie explain what that load does to an ADHD brain, I understand better than ever why the families who need us most are the ones who feel stuck.

One more thing worth passing along. If you suspect you have ADHD but have never been diagnosed, Stephanie's take is refreshingly practical: if a tool is accommodating to people with ADHD, it will probably help you too. Borrow freely. Add ease to your life wherever you find it.

why a broker has a conversation series

Community Spotlight is new, so here is the why. After 17 years of selling homes here, I know that nobody moves because of a house. They move because life changed. And the people who help them through it, the coaches, the lenders, the contractors, the small business owners, are the ones who make Snohomish County work. They deserve a bigger spotlight, and I learn something every single time. About once a month, I sit down with one of them for twenty minutes, no script, and we just talk. If you know someone who belongs in this series, tell me. I am keeping a list.

find stephanie

Stephanie Galindo coaches at adhdwithstephanie.com, where you can also find her nervous system regulation toolkit. She runs a weekly coaching cohort built around exactly the unshaming work she described to me: a small group that meets every Monday and starts the week with acceptance instead of a to-do list. Her approach is called Shame-Free ADHD, and after an hour with her, I can tell you the name is the whole philosophy. Clips from our full conversation are rolling out on my social channels now.

Always, Kim

Kim Pelham, Designated Broker, The Pelham Group NW · 17 years in Snohomish County · 425.250.9422