ADHD and Chronic Pain: The Double Challenge of Remembering What Hurts

Sticky notes, brain fog, and the hilarious chaos of coping

Living with both ADHD and fibromyalgia feels like trying to juggle spaghetti—slippery, messy, and somehow always landing on your head. One minute you’re laughing at a meme you forgot you saved, the next you’re trying to remember if you took your meds—or already took them twice.

Some days, my brain forgets I’m in pain until I try to stand up and my joints scream like they’ve just run a marathon without telling me. Other days, I’m acutely aware of every nerve ending. But the cruel twist? I still forget what exactly hurts, and why.

The Pain Is Real… and So Is the Fog

Most people think chronic pain means you’re just in pain. But no one warns you about the forgetting. The brain fog. The mental chaos that swirls in like an uninvited guest and overstays its welcome. You tell yourself, “I need to refill my magnesium.” Then you stare at the empty bottle for three days straight, wondering why you feel like roadkill.

Now sprinkle in ADHD, and it’s like your brain has 57 open browser tabs—half of them playing theme music from a forgotten sitcom, one of them ordering supplements you already own, and none of them helping you remember the word “laundry.”

It was getting so bad, the sticky notes started haunting my dreams. I dreamt I’d written dozens of them—one even told me to go read another sticky note. I stuck one to my iPad in the dream, thinking that would help, but I still couldn’t remember what it was for. The note read, “Switch back pain meds.” I’m sure it made perfect sense when I wrote it… but throw ADHD and brain fog into the mix, and suddenly nothing makes sense. Needless to say, the dream didn’t help at all. I woke up more confused than ever—my ADHD senses tingling, but no clue what for.

The Science Behind the Chaos

According to the Cleveland Clinic, fibromyalgia affects how the brain processes pain, often increasing sensitivity due to imbalances in neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. . (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4832-fibromyalgia)

Similarly, people with ADHD often have impaired dopamine and norepinephrine regulation—chemicals that help with attention, motivation, and memory. As Cleveland Clinic also explains, this imbalance is central to ADHD symptoms like forgetfulness, disorganization, and lack of focus. . (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4784-attention-deficithyperactivity-disorder-adhd)

When both conditions coexist, your body may overreact to pain stimuli, while your brain underreacts to everything else. It’s not a lack of willpower—it’s literally a double-whammy of neurological noise.

There’s also emerging evidence from research published in journals like Pain Research and Management that individuals with ADHD experience heightened pain sensitivity and may be more prone to central sensitization—the same process implicated in fibromyalgia. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9857366/)

I once cried because someone bumped into me at the grocery store. Not because it hurt that much, but because it was one more drop in a very full bucket.

Living in an Invisible Venn Diagram

ADHD and fibromyalgia are both “invisible” conditions. Most people can’t see our struggles. They just see us smiling one day and lying in bed the next.

Cue the usual comments:

• “But you looked fine yesterday!”

• “Can’t you just focus?”

• “You don’t seem like you’re in pain.”

And my personal favorite:

“Maybe you just need to exercise.”

Ah yes. Let me just hop off the couch where my bones feel like concrete and go for a jog. I’ll add that to my list—right under “fix brain.”

The inconsistency is one of the hardest parts. I can be high-functioning one moment, and a puddle of fatigue the next. Not because I’m lazy. Not because I don’t care. But because I am managing two conditions that both demand more from my body and mind than I have to give.

So How Do We Survive This Combo?

Honestly? Some days I don’t know. But here are a few strategies that sometimes work—and on a good day, make me feel like a genius.

1. Body + Brain Journaling

I keep a log of everything: pain levels, sleep, what I ate, what meds I took, what emotions came up, how stressed I was. It sounds like a lot, and it is—but over time, patterns emerge. Like noticing that I crash two days after a big social event. Or that dairy turns my joints into angry cacti.

2. Weird Alarm Labels

A regular “Take your meds” reminder doesn’t work on my ADHD brain. But a text that says, “Hey sweet pea, don’t forget your brain vitamins or your kneecaps will protest” somehow gets my attention.

3. Humor as a Coping Strategy

If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry—and let’s be real, I still cry sometimes. But laughing about the absurdity of having a body that forgets how to function and a brain that forgets why you walked into the room? That’s power. That’s resistance. That’s survival with style.

4. Permission to Rest

This one is still a work in progress. I grew up with the idea that rest equals laziness. But living with ADHD and fibro means I have to pace myself. If I burn out today, I’ll pay for it tomorrow—with interest. I’m learning that rest isn’t weak. It’s wise.

5. Letting Others In

Explaining what’s going on can feel awkward. But the more I share—honestly, vulnerably—the more I find others who say, “Me too.” And suddenly, I don’t feel so broken. Just… human.

If You Relate, You’re Not Alone

Maybe you’re reading this from your bed, wrapped in a heating pad burrito. Maybe your brain forgot why you opened this tab in the first place. That’s okay.

You’re not imagining it. You’re not making excuses. You are living with a brain and body that often refuse to cooperate—and still, you show up.

That’s courage.

You’ve probably juggled appointments you forgot to write down, prescriptions you forgot to pick up, and guilt that never seems to forget you. But hear this: your worth isn’t tied to productivity. Rest is a right, not a reward.

So take the nap. Set the weird alarm. Laugh when you can, cry when you need to. And if all else fails? Blame the sticky notes.

I do.