---
title: 'Therapist Reacts: Why Do Gamers TILT So Hard? ADHD and Emotions'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xge957JuWzQ'
video_id: 'Xge957JuWzQ'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 903
---

# Therapist Reacts: Why Do Gamers TILT So Hard? ADHD and Emotions

> Source: [Therapist Reacts: Why Do Gamers TILT So Hard? ADHD and Emotions](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xge957JuWzQ)

## Summary

This video explores the link between ADHD and emotional dysregulation, particularly in the context of gaming. The speaker explains why individuals with ADHD experience intense anger and frustration while playing games like League of Legends, and discusses the neuroscience behind these reactions.

### Key Points

- **ADHD and Emotional Dysregulation** [00:03] — People with ADHD often experience emotional dysregulation, including mood lability, irritability, low frustration tolerance, and anger outbursts.
- **Self-Awareness and Research** [00:36] — The original poster recognized their ADHD and researched emotional regulation, showing how understanding science can empower individuals.
- **Normal vs. ADHD Rage** [01:03] — Raging in video games is normal, but for those with ADHD, it is worse due to emotional dysregulation.
- **Five Attributes of Emotional Dysregulation** [01:24] — Clinically, emotional dysregulation in ADHD includes mood lability, irritability, anger outbursts, low frustration tolerance, and motivation deficits.
- **Overlap with General Population** [02:42] — Emotional dysregulation is not exclusive to ADHD; there is overlap with the general population, but it is more severe in ADHD.
- **Shrinking Gap Between ADHD and Normal** [03:30] — The gap between healthy and ADHD populations is shrinking due to societal trends like technology addiction, leading to more emotional dysregulation in the general population.
- **Stop Signal Test** [04:36] — In the stop signal test, people with ADHD have difficulty stopping a task once started, indicating impulse control issues.
- **Delayed Gratification Test** [05:40] — People with ADHD struggle with delayed gratification, preferring immediate rewards over larger future rewards.
- **Sensitivity to Negative Emotions** [07:20] — ADHD brains are more sensitive to negative emotions due to frontal lobe dysfunction, amplifying frustration.
- **Blindness to Emotions** [08:16] — In ADHD, the more intense an emotion, the less aware the person becomes of it, leading to emotional overflow.
- **Why Gaming Triggers Rage** [10:05] — Video games offer immediate gratification, which ADHD brains overvalue, and the combination of low frustration tolerance, emotional blindness, and impulse control issues leads to rage.
- **Five Steps of Emotional Regulation** [11:45] — The five steps are situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, reappraisal, and response modulation.
- **Solution: Notice Emotions** [14:05] — The first step to improving emotional regulation is to notice and understand your emotions, which can improve all five domains.

### Conclusion

ADHD significantly impacts emotional regulation, making gaming rage more intense. The key to managing this is developing awareness of one's emotions, which can help improve emotional control over time.

## Transcript

so
let's start with this so anyone with
adhd get overly angry at certain games
so i get literal migraines when i lose
at league if i lose two to three games
my day is ruined until i go to sleep i
did some research and recently found out
that people with adhd have issues with
emotional regulation wondering if anyone
else has had this issue or if it's
related or if it's not adhd related i
love the game but the way it makes me
feel after losses isn't normal i
literally have to avoid my favorite game
because of how angry i get so this is a
really cool post not because this person
unfortunately gets super angry when they
play league but because first of all the
person recognizes that they have adhd
and they've done research about it and
they've started to discover that oh like
maybe my experience of life can be
understood through like science and by
understanding science maybe i can learn
a little bit more about my situation and
then like actually it can empower me to
like move in the right direction so what
we're gonna do today is talk a little
bit about the relationship between adhd
and emotional regulation so the first
thing to understand is that people who
play video games and rage in the video
game that's completely normal if you've
got adhd and it is worse for you than
for other people there's plenty of
evidence that one of the key features of
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
is emotional dysregulation okay so if we
think about adhd there are five
attributes of emotional dysregulation
that we kind of look for when we're
thinking from a clinical perspective
about adhd so that's mood lability and
mood lability means high fluctuations in
mood so what that sort of means is that
one moment you're feeling this way and
the next moment you're feeling a
different way okay so it's fluctuating
mood so a lot of people who say oh my
god i'm so bipolar i'm happy one minute
and then i play game of league and then
i'm so pissed off i'm so bipolar that's
not bipolar disorder that's mood
mobility so rapidly fluctuating moods
the second thing is irritability so one
of the signs of of emotional
dysregulation especially in adhd is that
people are prone to a lot of
irritability that can also turn into
anger outbursts and what we call low
frustration tolerance so your ability to
tolerate things that are annoying is
like quite low so people like it's easy
to get under people's skin and this has
been shown to correlate with adhd the
last attribute of motivational i mean of
emotional dysregulation is actually
motivation deficits so in people who
have adhd we see all five of these we
see anger we see irritability we see low
frustration tolerance we see rapidly
fluctuating moods and we actually see
motivational deficits as well and we'll
get to that in a second in adhd
unfortunately these things do somehow
correlate with the disease and let's try
to understand that for a second so when
researchers look at emotional
dysregulation within adhd the first
thing that we that they kind of
acknowledge is that these things happen
in people with adhd but they're not
exclusive to adhd and this is something
that i've seen a lot whereas if you like
if you look at like the normal
population okay so let's just use paint
for a second so let's say like here is
the normal population in terms of
emotional regulation and then here's
like adhd
so this is what it'll look like where
emotion dysregulation is is worse in
people with adhd than it is in the
normal population but even in the normal
population there's still this overlap
over here of people who are
maybe have adhd maybe normal but they
have emotional dysregulation the more
troubling thing is that we're seeing
trends in society so the rate of adhd
diagnosis is increasing even according
to theories like ayurveda and stuff with
technology addiction or vata is
increasing i think what we're beginning
to see
is that the overlap between the regular
population and the adhd population is
shrinking
so this is what it looks like now where
there there's like the amount of overlap
is increasing so these two curves are
actually getting closer together this
has been my experience so what i'm going
to talk to you all about today about
adhd and emotional regulation i'm going
to cite studies and stuff from adhd
research but it's been my experience and
i think we sort of see this
epidemiologically as well that the gap
between healthy people and adhd people
is shrinking that society as a whole is
becoming more emotionally dysregulated
that we're becoming our attention span
seems to be shrinking we're having
motivational problems and i think it has
a lot to do with the effect of
technology so let's try to dive in and
understand a little bit about how this
works so the first thing that i'm going
to do is share with you all a couple of
interesting tests that we use to study
adhd so the first is the stop signal
test which basically like you take
someone with adhd and then you show them
like a picture that'll say like go and
when when the screen flashes with go
they're supposed to start some task so
start stacking blocks as soon as you see
the screen flash go the screen flashes
go people with adhd start they start
stacking blocks and then what it does is
it tells them to stop so then the
screen's flashes stop and when you flash
stop you're supposed to stop the task so
if you look at the brain of someone with
adhd versus the brain of someone who's
normal or neurotypical let's say what
you find is that both of them are really
good at starting right away so as soon
as you see the the screen flash go they
everyone starts stacking blocks but then
when the screen flashes stop a
neurotypical person will stop right away
whereas there's a lag time for the
person with adhd so what people have
discovered is that someone with adhd has
difficulty restraining their impulses so
you can start things easily but if you
have to stop doing something and shift
your attention somewhere else that's
much more difficult in adhd the second
thing that we're going to talk about for
a second because this is going to relate
to gaming okay second thing that we're
going to talk about is the delayed
gratification test so if you look at
people with adhd they seem to have
problems with executive function and so
what executive function is the
definition of executive function is
self-directed actions needed to choose
goals and to create and act and sustain
actions towards those goals so basically
what the internet is bad at right like
the ability to self-direct create goals
enact goals and sustain actions towards
goals so people have found that their
executive deficits and in researchers
have found that their executive deficits
and adhd right it's attentional problems
so i'm not able to restrain my attention
therefore i can't create goals and act
towards them in a sustainable way so the
way that we measure there's a there's a
test here that becomes important as well
which is like if you give someone with
adhd let's say you say i'll give you a
dollar now or i'll give you five dollars
in five minutes for a neurotypical
person it's easier for them to choose
five dollars in five minutes it's easier
for them to choose delayed gratification
and for the person with adhd it's much
harder to choose delayed gratification
so there's something about the way that
their brain kind of assesses choices
that makes them default towards like
instant gratification and this also gets
explored in terms of impulsivity we're
kind of not going to go into that
because the neuroscience of adhd is like
awesome and complicated it's so
fascinating so these are kind of two
tests that teach us a couple of
important things the first is that
people with adhd tend to go impulsively
towards like easier things like low
hanging fruit and secondly like their
ability to restrain those impulses is
relatively low so what does all this
have to do with emotional dysregulation
so let's talk about that very quickly
okay we also know through research that
people with adhd have difficulty
regulating their emotions and there are
a couple of important dimensions to this
the first is that it appears that the
brains of people with adhd are more
sensitive to negative emotions so that
means is that if something bad happens
to two people and you have an adhd brain
in their neurotypical brain that
frustrating thing is more likely to feel
worse in the brain of adhd and why is
that that probably has to do with this
executive dysfunction and this inability
to like restrain impulses so there's
some evidence that the frontal lobes are
part of what restrains or suppresses our
experience of negative emotion so when
that pro that part of our brain isn't
functioning what we sort of think of as
neurotypically anytime an adhd person
gets exposed to something that pisses
them off like losing a game of league of
legends their brain amplifies that
negative emotion much more than a
neurotypical brain the second thing
about emotional regulation that's a
little bit different for people with
adhd is that they tend to be more
unaware of their emotions so this is a
really fascinating study that was
published in neuropsychology about 20
years ago but researchers essentially
took neurotypical people and adhd people
and they assessed their awareness of
emotion and what they essentially found
is that for a neurotypical person the
more powerfully you feel an emotion the
more aware you are that you feel it i
know this sounds kind of weird but like
if i lose a loved one as the intensity
of my grief increases i'm more likely to
be aware that like i'm grieving right so
the more powerful the emotion is the
more aware i am that i'm feeling it so
like if i'm super super sad it's easier
for me to detect sadness within myself
so they found something really
interesting which is that in adhd the
more powerful the emotion is the more
that the adhd brain becomes blinded to
it okay which is a really interesting
it's an interesting dichotomy and so
it's a fascinating paper so this is this
kind of becomes more important for adhd
folks because as you begin to feel more
intense emotion you kind of become
blinded to it so like if you're playing
a game of league of legends like even
though you're starting to feel angry
like you're not going to become aware of
it the more angry you feel like it sort
of like suppresses your ability to
become aware of it and so what it does
is kind of rises to the surface and then
overflows like a volcano so this is
really common in people with adhd who
play video games is that their their
sensitivity to the emotion is greater
their ability to restrain the emotion
from a frontal lobe standpoint and kind
of like suppress it is weaker and their
blindness to the emotion actually
increases so it's really fascinating but
it does appear like there are a lot of
things about video games that really
like interact with the adhd brain in a
very specific and unique way so if we
kind of go back to like delayed
gratification and and that kind of stuff
the stop signal test we can also see why
people play league of legends and get
really frustrated right so the adhd
brain is like looking at my options for
the day and like literally my brain is
going to overvalue things that offer
immediate gratification i'm more likely
to be impulsive and not be able to
restrain my decisions so i can apply for
a job today which my brain is going to
like devalue because of literally the
way that it does calculations and it's
going to emphasize things like playing
video games because those have very
immediate gratifications so that's why i
start to play the game as i play the
game and i start to get emotional
remember that my brain is a little bit
more prone to emotional dysregulation i
have low frustration tolerance that
probably has to do with my frontal lobes
as well and then as i start to get angry
i start to become blinded to that
emotion which then lets me perpetuate
and not restrain and adjust my behavior
causes the anger to compot compound kind
of builds on itself and then it kind of
overflows and then you wind up with
headaches so for this person who's
saying is it normal like as have other
people experience this like what you're
experiencing is completely in line with
what we understand about adhd in video
games which is like low frustration
tolerance blindness to your emotion and
experiencing emotion and raging more
than a neurotypical brain another
important caveat to remember is that
remember as is the difference between
neurotypical and adhd starts to shrink
we start to see people who may not have
adhd start to manifest with some of
these behaviors and so you know people
will sort of ask okay like what do i do
about it and this is interesting because
the first thing that you have to do is
understand the emotion that you
experience there's a model of emotional
regulation which basically breaks
emotional regulation and the value of
emotional regulation into five steps
okay so what's the value of emotional
regulation and like how do i get it the
first step to emotional regulation is
situation selection and this is where we
are our emotions influence
which situations we'll let ourselves go
into situation modification which is
changing relevant aspects of a situation
based on how it could like how i could
feel emotionally if i'm gonna be anxious
by going to a party like i may not go to
the party because other people are there
i may go to a small gathering right so
my emotions and my anticipation of how i
feel emotionally will select the
situation that i go into the second
thing is situation modification so if i
do go to a party and i'm anxious if i'm
aware that i'm going to be anxious i may
bring a friend with me so it reduces my
anxiety attentional deployment is the
third piece of kind of emotional
regulation and that's once i'm at the
party what am i going to choose to focus
on because if you know this if you have
social anxiety that your mind like is
paying attention to the 20 people who
are like who may be thinking things
about you and what you're wearing and
you can't restrain your attention and
actually like attend to the conversation
that you're having so that actually has
to do with emotional regulation as well
because our emotions will dictate where
our attention is deployed another aspect
of emotional regulation that's really
important is reappraisal so this is
altering the way that we think about a
situation so that our emotions are not
like really influencing it so if i'm not
aware of emotions like if i'm filled
with shame and i go and i like try to
get a job and then i get i don't get the
job what's going to happen is like that
shame will appraise that situation in a
particular way the way that i make
judgments about that situation are going
to be due to my emotional appraisal
right so i'll conclude oh you know i'm a
terrible person they're gonna have far
more qualified candidates whereas like
there are a thousand reasons why i may
not get a job it may have nothing to do
with me but i have to be aware of that
emotional contribution to my judgments
and then the fifth thing is response
modulation so p people who have a high
degree of emotional regulation can
literally modulate their emotional
responses when i rage in a game of
league of legends like how do i regulate
it how do i modulate that response so i
don't get as upset so these are kind of
the five components of emotional
regulation and people with adhd tend to
be not great at those and so the
question becomes okay how do i fix this
how do i like regulate my emotions and
it all starts with being able to
recognize emotions and so i know it
sounds kind of unsatisfying but to a lot
of people what i'll say is like just
notice your emotions like you can't
start anywhere except for noticing your
emotions and there's good evidence that
people who train themselves in
understanding their emotions will
improve in all five of those domains and
this is what's kind of interesting is if
you're listening to that solution and
you're saying like that's not enough i
need to modulate my emotions i'm not
like understanding emotions feels
insufficient that's probably your adhd
brain like looking for a short term
solution and devaluing like a long-term
solution that doesn't appear to
immediate gratification right so it's
kind of interesting because even if you
say that's not enough that's not what i
want
where is that judgment coming from
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you