Everyone talks about summer like it is this magical, carefree season. Longer days! Sunshine! BBQs and beach trips and "making the most of it!"

And meanwhile, my AuDHD brain is quietly having a meltdown because the routine I spent all of autumn and spring building has completely collapsed. The kids are off school or about to be. The schedule is a chaotic. Extra lunches and snacks, play dates, holiday clubs and just entertaining them so they won't pull apart the whole house. 

The heat is making my sensory issues ten times worse. And every social event in a 30-mile radius has apparently been scheduled for the same fortnight.

Whilst Sunmer is still my favourite season it’s a lot for my AuDHD brain because there is so much conflict. I love the warmer days but my body tolerates it less nowadays since perimenopause .  My autistic brain loves novelty yet my ADHD crumbles without consistent routines because without them my world crumbles, and my micro habits dissolve. 
 
If summer feels harder than it should, you are not being dramatic. You are neurodivergent and likely, perimenopausal. And the combination of those two things makes this season uniquely challenging in ways that Instagram's "golden hour" aesthetic completely ignores.

For most people, longer days are a gift. More light! More energy! More time to do things and I love this time of year…. BUT

For an ADHD brain, more daylight often means less structure. Your body clock gets confused. You stay up later because it is still light at 10pm and your brain reads that as "not bedtime yet." Your kids get even less sleep than the no and maybe your summer evenings just disappear. You wake up earlier because the sun is up at 5am and the blackout blinds are not doing their job. And somewhere in between, the sleep debt starts piling up.

Add perimenopause into that, with its frequent pit stops to the loo, its multiple wake ups between 1-4am, and its "wide awake but bone tired" paradox, and you have a recipe for the kind of exhaustion that no amount of iced coffee or green tea can fix.

Sleep is the foundation that everything else sits on. When it goes, your executive function goes with it. Your emotional regulation goes with it. Your patience, your focus, your ability to make decisions, all of it crumbles. And yet summer, with its late sunsets and early dawns, is actively working against you.

And yet despite all of this I love summer. Even though the reality, for my neurodivergent mind and menopausal body, is frequently overwhelmed and exhausted by the sensory overload and sheer exhaustion that comes with summer.

The heat. Not just "it is warm" heat, but the kind that makes your skin feel prickly and your clothes stick and your tolerance for anything touching you plummet to zero. If you are on HRT you might notice more skin rashes or irritation which is due to your histamine levels being disrupted. I certainly struggle more in the UK summers due to the intense humidity felt here. 

 If you have sensory processing differences, summer heat can be genuinely distressing. Not in a "oh it is a bit hot" way. In a "my entire nervous system is screaming" way. It can influence the fabrics you can tolerate without sweating profusely and the items you choose to wear - favouring loose, soft fabrics away from neck lines and pinching waste lines. If you are anything like me, I now favour flat shoes, stretchy jeans and comfort over fashion any day, but does it make me feel good in myself - not always, and that wanting to feel attractive and feel good in your own skin can start to diminish. 

The noise. Windows open everywhere. Lawnmowers. Music from gardens, noisy concerts and festivals. Kids playing more noisily and intensely in the heat. Ice cream vans belting out their noisy jingles. The ambient noise level of summer is significantly higher than winter, and if your brain already struggles to filter out background sound or certain high pitch sounds, that is a constant drain on your energy resources.

The brightness. Not everyone finds sunshine energising. For some of us, the relentless glare and the inability to wear sunglasses triggers headaches, visual overwhelm, and a bone-deep need to retreat into a dark room. Which is difficult to explain when everyone around you is celebrating the weather.

So many more outdoor events, (festivals, parties, family gatherings, celebrations, and travel all sound good on the face of it, but can layer on the anxiety and overwhelm for many. 

None of this makes you a killjoy. It makes you someone whose nervous system processes the world differently. And summer turns the volume up on everything.

This is the one that really gets me.

I spend months, actual months, building routines that work for my ADHD brain. Morning routines. Work routines. Evening routines. Meal planning. Exercise habits ways to remember the medication and supplements that keep me on an even keel. The scaffolding that holds my executive function together.

And then summer arrives and dismantles all of it. The kids are off school or on a different schedule. Social events appear out of nowhere. Plans change at the last minute because "the weather is nice, let us do something!" Every weekend is someone's birthday, someone's BBQ, someone's "impromptu get-together" that requires you to be spontaneously sociable with approximately three hours' notice.

For a neurotypical brain, flexibility is exciting. For an ADHD brain, the loss of routine is genuinely destabilising. Not because you are rigid or boring. But because your routine is doing the work that your executive function cannot. And when it disappears, so does your ability to cope with everything else. So if you find everything starts to crumble when your routine shifts - its good to acknowledge that we are not just being rubbish!

If you are perimenopausal on top of that, the brain fog and decision fatigue are already at their peak. Losing your routine is like removing the scaffolding from a building that was already shaking.

I am not going to tell you to "embrace the spontaneity" because that is deeply unhelpful. Here is what actually works for me:

Protect your sleep fiercely. Blackout blinds, earplugs, a consistent bedtime even when the sun is still up. Avoiding binge nights of telly which believe me I find hard!. Your ADHD brain needs sleep more than it needs one more hour of daylight. This is non-negotiable.

Keep a skeleton routine. Even when everything else changes, keep the anchors. Same time for smoothy or cuppa of your fave morning drink. Same time for meals and taking medication. Same time you stop looking at your phone. You do not need the full routine to function. You just need enough structure that your brain has something to hold onto.

Give yourself sensory exits. Sunglasses (not optional) or hats. Noise-cancelling earbuds for the garden. A cool, dark room you can retreat to. Loose, breathable clothing. Permission to leave the BBQ early. Plan your sensory escape routes before you need them.

Lower the bar. Summer with ADHD and perimenopause is survival mode. If the kids are fed, nobody has been injured, and you made it to bedtime, that is a win. You do not need to "make the most of summer and fit it all in." You just need to make it through.

Be Selective in the Social Events you undertake, the party invites you accept, allowing yourself to have time out to regulate, realise that it might be better to avoid crowds, getting the next tube rather than struggling to get onto a packed one. 

Track what is happening. If you are finding summer particularly challenging this year, track your symptoms alongside the season. You might discover that heat makes your brain fog worse, or that disrupted sleep correlates with your worst mood days, or that the sensory overload peaks at predictable points. My Cycle Tracker helps you log mood, energy, and sleep daily so you can see the patterns rather than just feeling overwhelmed by them.

Litha, the summer solstice, is the longest day of the year. In pagan traditions, it is a celebration of light, vitality, and the fullness of life.

But you know what else Litha marks? The turning point. After the longest day, the light starts to soften. The days begin, slowly, to shorten. The intensity eases.

I find that strangely comforting. Even at its peak, summer is already beginning to release its grip. The overwhelm is temporary. The routine will return. The nights will get longer and your body will get the rest it needs.

So if summer is hard for you right now, know this: you are not failing at a season. You are navigating a world that was not designed for your brain, in weather that was not designed for your nervous system, while your hormones do whatever they please. And you are still here. Still showing up. Still holding it together, even when it does not feel like it.

That is not weakness. That is extraordinary.

Go gently with yourself. Especially in the sunshine.

Cass x