“Throwing” could be a potential sign of ADHD. Do you ?

You may have heard of a term that has gone viral on TikTok: the DOOM pile.

An acronym for “didn’t organize, only moved,” a DOOM pile could be a junk drawer of receipts, bills, and other papers you’ve been putting off sorting. It might be a cardboard box in the corner of your room full of desk cluttered with your old job and other items you forgot you owned.

For many people with ADHD – or others who stare at DOOM piles and feel overwhelmed – it’s easy to default to a less-than-ideal solution to all this organizational chaos: throwing. Yeah, I’m throwing all that aside, fingers crossed there’s nothing too important there.

Cate Osborn, an ADHD author, advocate, and educator, threw away her DOOM pile and said she knows many others in the ADHD community who have done the same thing.

“It’s not something I would brag about or say I’m particularly proud of, but I know what it’s like to be so completely overwhelmed that it’s easier to say ‘you know what, I don’t need all that’ and throw it all away.”

Osborn, known online as Catieosaurus and host of the podcast “Sorry, I Missed That: The Complete Guide to ADHD and Relationships,” gave an example to illustrate: organizing your desk.

Inevitably, some objects don’t have an assigned place in one’s home. She will put this junk in a box to sort later today. But later comes and Osborn is out of breath and out of concentration.

“I say, ‘OK, I’ll put this bin aside and go through it later,’ but because I also struggle with prioritization and task management and working memory, I always forget about the box until I see the box, and often when I see the box, I’m in the middle of another task, so it stays longer,” Osborn explained.

Finally, days, even weeks later, she will cross the line, only to find herself paralyzed in her choices: “What should I keep? she will ask herself. “What if I need it? What if it’s useful later.”

Just like that, the DOOM boxes pile up, until one day she finally decides to sell the hardware online or, more likely than not, throw it away. (In his case, drop it off at a local donation center.)

“It makes total sense that someone with ADHD would feel overwhelmed and say, ‘I don’t have the time, space or energy to go through this process, I’m just going to throw out the whole box and free myself from the mess,'” she said.

Madison Perry, psychologist and owner of Austin Holistic Psychology, has heard clients talk about throwing. She likens the impulse to close all your Internet browser tabs at once: It’s a dangerous activity, but it seems amazing.

“Similarly, people with ADHD have too many mental tabs open at once,” she said. “They may feel overwhelmed and need to find a way out of a tab or two. Throwing something away requires maintaining that item or finding its rightful storage space in the overwhelming to-do list.”

Of course, you don’t have to have ADHD to be guilty of throwing: think of the feeling of relief you feel when you can hide your laundry pile and your toddler’s toys in a spare closet right before a guest arrives. Soyour house is clean, at least temporarily.

Unfortunately, sometimes during the process of throwing out bulk trash, you accidentally throw away important items (like mail or crucial documents), as has happened with some of Perry’s clients.

“They were in such a rush to declutter,” she said.

Throwing is directly linked to executive dysfunction, a behavioral symptom that interferes with the ability of people with ADHD to begin tasks and understand what is needed to complete them, explained Oliver Drakeford, a psychotherapist in West Hollywood, California.

“It’s not just impulsive decluttering; for many people with ADHD, it’s an automatic, reactive behavior that helps people avoid the feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and overwhelm that occur when the brain is overstimulated by a large pile of clutter or disorder,” Drakeford told HuffPost.

Throwing may also be related to experiential avoidance, which, broadly speaking, involves attempting to avoid thoughts, feelings, memories, physical sensations, and other internal experiences, even if it harms you in the long run.

“For example, rather than the uncertainty and anxiety generated when you look at the pile of letters and bills that have accumulated, you avoid — hopefully momentarily — throwing them all into a raffle until you are ready to go through them one by one,” Drakeford said.

Drakeford sees “throwing” as an attempt to generate the same feelings of tranquility that a blank page (or a tidy room) can bring you. This feels like a win for people with ADHD because it provides instant relief, but the reality is that it’s a band-aid for deeper feelings of emotional overload or uncertainty.

“In the long run, throwing doesn’t really help develop distress tolerance for these uncomfortable feelings, nor does it help develop healthier ADHD management skills,” he said.

The first step to making therapeutically meaningful change is becoming aware of the emotions that motivate your actions, according to Drakeford.

“If you’re not aware of feelings like anxiety, uncertainty or stress, you’re more likely to operate on autopilot and throw things impulsively,” he said.

By recognizing your emotional state, you create space to address and soothe those feelings, which gives you more options, which can still include throwing, but in a more mindful way, he said.

Look, it’s totally okay to throw away takeout containers that are still full or give away coffee cups that you know you’ll never use.

“I think as people with ADHD it’s important to try to avoid wasting and contributing to the piles of plastic in our landfills, but sometimes taking ownership of our space means making tough choices and having to decide where we draw the line,” Obsorn said. “If being surrounded by moldy dishes is affecting your quality of life, it may be time to take drastic action.”

The ADHD brain often assumes it has to accomplish everything at once, leading to stress and anxiety — exactly the kind of disappointing feelings that result in DOOM boxes and then launching.

To curb this tendency and help reduce large tasks into smaller, manageable ones, try the “10 Things Game,” Drakeford said.

“For example, instead of tackling a whole stack of bills, start by opening just 10,” he said. “Or instead of cleaning the entire kitchen, start by washing 10 dishes. Accomplishing these small tasks often seems manageable, and if so, you can always do 10 more.”

If a task takes you less than two minutes, do it now, Drakeford said.

“For example, after breakfast, take two minutes to wash your cereal bowl or immediately put it in the dishwasher. Don’t wait until you get home from work, do it now,” he said.

Osborn said she reads a lot of comments on articles about ADHD and sees so much criticism and hurtful attitudes: things like “you’re just lazy, you’re just not trying hard enough, just buckle down, you’re immature, what a terrible person and wasteful.”

What she wants people to understand is that ADHD is an executive function disability.

“It’s not that we’re not trying hard enough, it’s not that we’re lazy, it’s that our brains literally process information differently, and those differences really show up in situations like this,” she said.

When you talk about ADHD, you’re not talking about a few easy steps like “sit down, go through the box, donate,” Osborn explained.

“For the ADHD brain, it’s a series of hundreds of much smaller tasks, all of which require energy to process,” she said. “It’s no fun feeling so overwhelmed by a pile of stuff that you throw it in the trash. When you do that, it’s because it’s a last resort.”

As you work on this, remember to be kind to yourself, Osborn said.

“It’s so easy to feel bad about creating waste or to feel powerless over your space,” she said.

“There are great resources available to help with learning organization strategies ― sites, podcasts ― and it’s very important if you have a child with ADHD to teach them skills that work with their brain, not against it.

The original version of this story was published on HuffPost earlier.