People love to say, “Just start.” As if that phrase is a magic spell. As if the only thing standing between me and a completed project is the tiniest push. But here’s the ugly truth: for brains like mine, starting is the boss level. Finishing? That’s the easy part.
The weirdest thing about ADHD paralysis is how disproportionate it feels. My brain can leap into a ten-hour hyperfixation spiral without blinking. Once I’m moving, I can bulldoze my way through exhaustion, hunger, and the laws of physics just to get to the end. But getting from zero to one? That first movement? That’s where the whole machine seizes up.
It’s not laziness. It’s not even procrastination, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s standing in front of a task, no matter how small, and feeling like my brain has blue-screened. My body knows how to do the thing. My mind can picture the steps. But I stand there, frozen, waiting for the spark that will somehow break the lock. Sometimes it comes. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Here’s the kicker: the tasks I stall on are rarely massive undertakings. They’re insultingly small. Replying to an email. Putting a single dish in the dishwasher. Starting a document I’ve already outlined. Making a phone call. In theory, these are ten-minute tasks at most. In practice, they sit on my list for days, weeks, even months, growing heavier with each pass. The shame piles on, the task mutates into a monster, and I’m left with the paradox of knowing that once I start, it’ll take less time to finish than I’ve already spent avoiding it.
It’s like standing at the edge of a pool knowing the water is fine, but my body refuses to jump. And the longer I stand there, the colder and more impossible it seems.
When I do start, the relief is ridiculous. Ninety percent of the time, the task isn’t nearly as bad as I built it up to be. Sometimes I finish it in under five minutes and then sit there wondering why I tortured myself for three weeks. But that realization doesn’t stop the cycle. Next time, I’ll stall all over again. Because the paralysis isn’t logical. It doesn’t learn from experience. It just… is.
I’ve tried to hack it. I set timers. I break tasks into smaller steps. I bribe myself with coffee, snacks, stickers, whatever carrot I can dangle in front of my own face. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I stare at my planner, filled with neatly written steps, and still can’t lift a finger. Because the barrier isn’t knowledge, or resources, or ability. It’s the invisible wall my brain builds between intention and action.
And that wall costs more than time. It eats at my self-worth. It makes me feel incompetent, lazy, unreliable — words I know aren’t true but feel true in the quiet moments when the paralysis wins again. It strains relationships. It makes me afraid to commit. It leaves me drowning in guilt, even as I know my brain isn’t wired to “just start” the way others can.
But here’s the part I try to hold onto: once I’m moving, I’m unstoppable. The same brain that paralyzes me at the start carries me through to the finish with a kind of stubborn fire. I may take forever to start, but when I do, I finish fast, hard, and with more intensity than most people would ever choose. That has to count for something.
So yes, starting is harder than finishing. Starting feels like standing on the edge of a cliff with no rope. Starting feels like failure before I’ve even begun. But finishing...finishing feels like proof that I can, and I did, and I will again.
And maybe the only way forward is to stop shaming myself for the paralysis and start celebrating the fire that comes after. To stop measuring myself against people who can leap at the word “go,” and instead build a life that makes space for the messy, sputtering, reluctant starts that are part of who I am.
Because at the end of the day, I do finish. And that rush of "yesssssss" carries its own weight too.
