Why You Feel Overwhelmed, Dumb, and Lost When Faced With Financial (Or Any) Decisions

You're not able to make a good financial decision because your ADHD brain is a hot mess. I've dug into the academic papers and I've discovered why our brains can't seem to get its act together. We're going to apply some stuff to financial situations. We're going to learn about the parts of the brain that just flop all the time it feels like, and it's going to be great. So let's get into it. Your brain is a mess and we know that. We feel as every single day when the most innocuous wrenches completely blow up our entire day. Like when we go into our closet in the morning to get dressed and we stare at the clothes for so long. We don't know what to do. We pick one thing out, we're like none and I don't know, and then you just sit there and stare and then you get frustrated and it's dressed out and we can't even get dressed. You finally put some clothes on, but you look in the mirror. You're like, well, this sucks, but you don't have the time to go back in there. So you're like, whatever, I'm going to wear this, it sucks. And we can't even do that. How are we supposed to make complex financial decisions with variable after variable being thrown in and this and that and everything like it's too much. So today we're going to talk about some of the things I discovered reading some research papers the parts of our brain that aren't working. We're going to listen to some names of the brain, so get ready for that and we're going to apply it to financial situations. And I mean, I hope you're going to learn from this, you're going to build some awareness and be like yo why is my brain doing this? Well now I know because my ventral sciatical norovary cortex is just flopping right now and that's why I can't quite make this decision. And that's what we're going to talk about. In a research paper from E Sonuga, bark Escortese, g Fairchild, a Stringaris these people, these smart people they used existing empirical research to hypothesize causes of our impaired decision making for ADHDers. They went back and looked at all the research that discovered stuff. They kind of amalgamated it together and decided to make their own hypothesis, based on that research, of why we can't make decisions. So, in short, get a load of this. This is going to sound fun. They hypothesized that those with ADHD have alterations in multiple brain systems which interact to disrupt self-referential meaning thinking about yourself, pondering, day dreaming, executive and reinforcement processes. Reinforcement meaning like solidifying, like my brain is thinking this and my brain is saying this is it not very good at that? And that act across multiple stages of processing to produce decision making that is deficient, inefficient, insufficiently reflective, inconsistent and impulsive, with a strong bias towards, of course, immediate rewards. I want that instant gratification over delayed rewards. Phew, so that's rough, but let's go a little deeper to give you a sense of the scope of the real dysfunction that we have to contend with. Alongside these examples, I'm going to introduce you to a hypothetical ADHD guy who is named Richard, and Richard is going to be having a bit of a struggle. I'm sorry, I think I named him Jordan. His name is Jordan. Jordan is struggling to decide some financial things and he's struggling, so we're going to learn about what parts of his brain are struggling in these moments. All right, so one of the brain systems that's hypothesized and this is actually something you would have read about if you read Russell Barclay's book but the default mode network More fondly, we're going to call it as the dreaming mode network. This is a network of brain regions that are more active when we are just at rest, daydreaming and reflective. Now, we're usually pretty good at just being in this mode. I mean we kind of just like back into that mode. But it's been showed that in ADHD there's a disrupted connectivity in these areas really hurts our ability to project ourselves into the future and consider long-term consequences. We can put ourselves in the future, but when I do that, the future that I'm in is like this complete fantasy, idealistic world that really I did not follow the step-by-step process of what's going to take to get there and what it's going to actually be like. The future never is quite what I seem it seems like. So that's kind of how I relate to that. But in this example we got Jordan, the ADHD guy. He gets a raise and must decide whether to use the extra money for mortgage payments or for investing. He heard that you should make a decision between this and so while trying to focus on the pros and cons, jordan's mind just keeps wandering. He's trying to make a spreadsheet put the pros, put the cons, make a great decision. But he keeps getting distracted with unrelated thoughts and he just keeps switching back into some reflective anxiety mode. That is not helping and that is him going from his task-focused mode to the default mode, network mode, which is the daydreaming mode, whereas a lot of people would be able to just be like, okay, I'm in task-centered mode until further notice. We're just kind of like back and forth, back and forth, and it's Exhausting. Jordan's mind wandering is making this decision extremely hard. Next, we've got the ventral front-toe striatal circuits, which is involved in reinforcement, learning and the processing of rewards. So with our ADHD, there's weakness in these circuits and it can impair our ability to estimate the value or utility of different choices. So you have five different choices. You need to value them. Which one's better? Which one's relatively not as good? Which one's the worst? There's these different variables for each one. Then you have this one that has this one thing and this one doesn't have that one thing. How are we going to square all this and say, okay, this is definitively the choice for me and it just hurts us? So the ventral front-toe striatal circuit here, and this weakness ultimately contributes to a preference for immediate rewards, as the brain struggles to send the reinforcing signal that solidifies the value of the optimal long-term reward. So you might read or think yourself this is really what I should do, I think, but your brain is unable in the way that I kind of relate to this and, again, I'm no neuroscientist so I'm just kind of reacting to kind of what I'm reading. Is that like a lot of times I'll think and be like this is what I should do, but there is no emotional connection to it. The emotional connection does not happen. It's like as if my brain is not truly believing the words coming out of my mouth and it's saying, no, you're gonna stick with the thing that makes me get dopamine. No, so that's kind of how I think of that, and if anyone out there is a scientist, a neuroscientist, please correct me if that's not exactly how it works, but that's how I was understanding it as I was reading it. Jordan tries to think about the future rewards of paying off the mortgage or investing the money. However, he finds himself more attracted to the idea of using the money for immediate pleasures, like a vacation. So Jordan is focusing so hard, he's trying so hard to get himself in line for the right thing, but the vacation just keeps popping in his head, popping in his head, and he goes with it. He goes with the vacation and he's not fully accounting for and understanding the consequences. The reward of the vacation is an emotional feeling that is way overwhelming. That thing far out like security, stability, treating your future self with kindness and care, leaving a legacy, all the stuff. No vacation, that's what I get from that. So next we've got the amygdala, the good old amygdala. Basically it's like the emotional center of your brain. It's especially tuned into your feelings like fear and pleasure. And in ADHD the amygdala can be overactive. It's shown to be overactive in research, making you more sensitive to delays, meaning more sensitive to waiting, and much more likely to want rewards right away. And this can lead to quick reactions and sometimes helpful, sometimes not helpful. Most of the time, in my experience, my own impulsive, fear driven reactions lead to decisions that are not optimal by a long stretch. So, mr Jordan, here the thought of him waiting years to see the benefits of investing or paying off mortgage payments. Now he's trying to make a decision between investing and mortgage payment, you know, to pay off mortgage faster or to invest and get long term returns. He is doing neither of them because he keeps thinking about the idea of waiting that long and it's just not working out for him. So this makes him anxious and uneasy. The thought of like, intellectually, again he gets it go into the market, you know, pay off that mortgage faster. This all kind of makes sense, but it makes him uneasy, especially when he thinks about actually starting to do it. Meaning he's now kind of a screed with himself and he's going to do it, but now he's got to kind of get into the investment platform, make the investment, and then he gets in there and it starts going up and down. Maybe he's going to pull it out right away and say you know what? I think I'm going to get a lot more value out of this new gadget right now, like the gadget that I can have tomorrow that's going to help me. You know, maybe it's some new fancy brain thing that's going to help solve his ADHD or something, you know. Just not aligned at all and the fear center, the emotional center in his brain, is overreacting and causing all this, this stuff. All right, so there we go. So next is the front toe striatal and front toe periadal or yeah, I'm going to say periadal. I probably should have looked up how to pronounce that. But whatever, these are the areas critical for executive control, beyond, obviously, the prefrontal cortex, which we know is also really important for that. But the front toe striatal and front toe periadal circuits are important for managing attention, controlling impulses and planning, and disruptions here can slow down decision making processes and reduce their efficiency. Adhd might involve does involve lapses in attention and difficulties in staying focused. Yep, okay, compounded by interference from the dream mode network, like we talked about earlier, and this interference can lead us to have weak control over our brain, switching from task focus mode to default daydream mode. Okay, so I just read that off the notes that I had, but basically executive control, so we don't need to talk about that one too much more. Essentially, I've just gave you two more parts of the brain that are shown in research to be weak. We've got the amygdala already and we've already got the ventro striatal circuits and the default mode network, which is, you know we've got. So we're already dealing with a lot here, but there's more. But wait, there's more, just of course. We've got the medial prefrontal cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and these parts of the prefrontal cortex are involved in higher order, like smart and strong executive functions, like planning, decision making and moderating social behavior, and disconnectivity between these areas and the, again, the default mode network, one of the big sort of overarching things that I was reading in this report, which I'm going to link in the description and show notes, is that a lot of this has to do with the connection between the default mode network and these parts of the brain. Basically, disconnectivity here leads to challenges and consistently generating and implementing plans. I mean, let's just get past generating the plan. You know like implementing is like a is like what implementing a plan like generating the plan alone is hard unless you're deeply hyper focused and stimulated by the plan. You're making that part so hard. Okay, so Jordan makes a preliminary plan to invest the extra money, but then he second guesses this decision repeatedly, over and over again, going back and forth between paying the mortgage and investing. He just can't make a decision. His prefrontal cortex is just playing games with him. It cannot just feel solidified on a plan. It just, every single time he feels like he's going to do one thing, something kind of just throws that little tiny wrench. It doesn't have to be a big wrench at all, it's just a little tiny, loose screw and it swings you all the way back to something else, thinking that's better, it's all or nothing. It's all kind of crazy. So this inconsistency in his decision making in this situation is causing him to be completely unable to commit to a decision and he's feeling unsure, he has anxiety, he does not know what to do, and when you don't know what to do, it's much easier at that point to bury your head in the sand and just do nothing and just try and forget about it. All right, so that's all these brain parts, but wait, there's more. Now we've got the anterior cingulate cortex and the orbital frontal cortex. The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in functions like error detection, like hey, you're making a mistake right now, you should probably stop, you should probably not do that, you should probably not buy the thing and emotional regulation, motivation. And the orbital frontal cortex plays a role in decision making and reward processing, like helping you decide what you should probably do in this situation to make the best decision. Okay, so when these two areas aren't talking to each other very well, it can degrade our ability to learn from experience by impairing the process of prediction errors, which is the difference between expected and actual outcomes. Let's create a little scenario here we're going to call, just for fun, the anterior cingulate cortex and we're going to call the orbital frontal cortex Orville. Let's say that Jordan gets his monthly paycheck and this time you know he got a raise and he wants to use the raise for continuous investing or continuous mortgage payoff, like we've been talking about. However, jordan also really loves shopping and Jordan also really loves gadgets, electronic gadgets Like, for instance, the one that if I was Jordan, I would be going out and getting that sensei device, that neurofeedback device. That's like $1,500. I really want that thing, I just do. Okay, jordan's thinking about buying that, and the anterior cingulate cortex would help Jordan notice when the purchase decision might be a mistake, that it's not in line, that something's wrong with it, it's not really supporting his goals and all of that. And Orville would weigh in, which is the orbital frontal cortex, would weigh in on whether or not this purchase is really worth it, considering the reward and Jordan's long-term savings goal. So Orville would be like, well, you got this goal and you've got this much money. You should probably do this and get to that goal. And so, yeah, and if they're not talking well together and in Orville here, then things will go wrong. So when Jordan sees that flashy advertisement for the expensive new sensei device and the anterior cingulate cortex well, I can't remember the rest of it, whatever, you know she's failing to flag this as a potential error because she's not effectively communicating with Orville and he's supposed to be helping Jordan obviously understand that saving money feels rewarding in the long run, but he's just not helping him understand that and is also not getting the right information from and so and is not telling Orville hey, orville, like he's making a mistake right now, tell Jordan to focus on his long-term goal. You do your thing, I'm doing my part. I'm detecting the error, the mistake, that don't buy it. You go tell him what to do, but if and is not saying that, then he's going to buy it. And if and is giving him a moment to pause, but Orville is like, well, I think the reward of this is pretty darn good, then she's just going to buy it. So, as a result, jordan gets the sensei normally and would help Jordan learn from this mistake by creating some sense of regret or reminding Jordan about the savings goals. So and can help Jordan reflect upon and help him have some emotions that are going to be like, yeah, you shouldn't have done that, but even then, even if he gets that regret in the future and is going to not have him hold on to that regret long enough or have it affect him strong enough so that he is going to not do it again in the future. So he's not learning from his mistakes very well and since Ann and Orville are just not in sync, jordan is just not going to process this as a learning experience. Instead, jordan's going to feel happy with the new sensei device or whatever it is, but later struggle with financial stress due to the diminished sort of savings and investing and extra equity he would have in his home. He's going to deal with that stress, but the cycle will just repeat because they're still not going to be able to talk to each other. So in this example, jordan just falls on his face and I know a lot of us feel like that a lot of the time. So it's quite stressful. So at the end of the day, I don't have answers how to deal with, like how to fix your brain itself. There's things you can talk to your therapist and you know psychiatrist about, you know medication wise and things you can do to try and rewire and all of that. But what I can do, what I can help you with, is I'm giving you this education which, again, I am not a neuroscientist. So take this as half entertainment, half light education fact. Check me please. I don't really know what I said is true, but I was reading off of a research paper, so I have got that going for me. But, like now that you kind of know this stuff, it's not harmful to know what I've just said, because maybe you'll be like in the moment you're gonna be like, wow, I can't make this decision between my clothes right now because my frontostriatal circuit is impairing my ability to evaluate the decision or to evaluate the value of these two different options. Not nice frontostriatal circuit, and so you being able to understand that there's real crap going on in your head, I mean, like this research is crazy, like there is so much research suggesting all of these weak areas in our brain, and that should, in and of itself, at least give you the comfort of knowing that, like, you're not alone. This is a struggle, this is difficult. Financial decisions are hard. The financial part of your life is something that you shouldn't struggle with on your own. I highly recommend a coach, a planner, the tools, accountability, partners. All of this stuff is really gonna be important because you're gonna struggle with it, if it's not something that you're just naturally gifted at and have a passion for. It's gonna be a struggle, people with ADHD. As Ned Hallowell says in this book, which is I just got this and I like it. He says ADHDers would rather watch paint dry than look at their finances. So, with that said, it's gonna be a struggle. You have to accept that and understand that you do still need to make the right decisions, at least enough of them, to outweigh, over the long term, the bad decisions, because you don't wanna end up in 20 years in a situation where you are so far behind that the rest of your life is gonna look even more stressful because you're getting older, you're getting tired, you don't wanna work anymore. You just need to do the right things now. So you gotta get the help you need. You gotta get the support you need and you'll be okay. But I hope this helps you understand at least and make you have some comfort in knowing that we have a lot to deal with. So we gotta fight it, we gotta tackle it. But just know that it's not like you're just a terrible bad person. You just have ADHD in a brain that is trying to sabotage you at every turn. So I hope this was helpful. Thank you so much. I look forward to giving you more content and talk soon.