ADHD and the Power of Self-Efficacy Vs. Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is not considered a metric or a measure of any tangible thing in the academic psychology world. It’s pop psychology. Fluff. It’s marketing. The more you try to have good self-esteem and this vague notion of self-love, the worse your sense of self can get.
For the neurodivergent (ADHD, AuDHD, Autistic) who has internalized a lifetime of shame, trying to achieve self-esteem doesn’t help.
What we really need to be looking at is self-efficacy, the belief that you can follow through, manage problems, and reach your goals effectively.
Each problem, goal or project will have its own measure of self-efficacy and it’s okay if sometimes the measure is low - if it’s a realistic belief.
It sounds like a boring clinical term, but it’s not. It’s a super nuanced but sensible concept that changes our brains for the better - yes, even an ADHD brain.
In episode 50, we’re talking about:
What self-efficacy is
Why self-efficacy matters much more than self-esteem
5 strategies to build self-efficiacy in small, ADHD-friendly ways
You’ll be able to understand self-efficacy and start applying it in your life within an hour - truly.
Your brain will love this episode.
Listen below, stream it on your favorite podcasting app, or scroll to access the full blog post.
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What is Self-Efficacy?
Albert Bandura defined self-efficacy as "the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations."
Put simply, it is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation. This belief plays a key role in determining how people think, behave, and feel.
According to Bandura, self-efficacy is part of the self-system, consisting of a person’s attitudes, abilities, and cognitive skills.
This system plays a major role in how we perceive and respond to different situations. Self-efficacy is an essential part of this self-system.
Think of this as part of your sense of self.
Since Bandura published his seminal 1977 paper, "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change," the subject has become one of the most studied topics in psychology.
Why Has Self-efficacy Become So Important In Psychology?
As Bandura and other researchers have demonstrated, self-efficacy can impact everything from psychological states to behavior to motivation.
Self-efficacy determines:
What goals we pursue
How we accomplish those goals
How we reflect upon our performance
Our belief in our own ability to succeed plays a role in how we think, how we act, and how we feel about our place in the world.
Understanding Self-Efficacy in ADHD
Dr. Barkley’s Definition/Opinion of ADHD/Self-Efficacy:
“An individual’s belief in their ability to achieve goals, solve problems and manage life problems effectively. For people with ADHD, self-efficacy is often impaired due to inconsistent motivation, executive functioning issues, and repeated past struggles.”
For example, you might think, ‘I can totally put together this Ikea table because I’ve put 3 together before. I have a memory of this and it went well”.
However, with ADHD, we often struggle with things and often complete things imperfectly, so when we have to do the thing again, our memory differs from non-ADHDers. We’ll remember that we struggled with the task.
So, your belief in your ability to succeed has a neurological basis.
When you anticipate success, your brain releases dopamine, and that makes it easier to learn, making learning more efficient.
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Originally, Bandura’s work was specific in helping people with a phobia of snakes.
“In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.”
“People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.”
👉 You can see how the highlighted statement above, ‘challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided,’ relates to snakes, but it can also be prevalent in other challenges.
👉 The goal is to overcome challenges instead of avoiding them.
Quotes from Bandura to Further Explain Self-Efficacy
“It is not that people are solely reactive products of social influences; rather, they serve as contributors to their motivation, cognitive resources, and courses of action.”
“There are no fixed limits to human potential; they expand with the growth of self-efficacy.”
“When people believe that they have no power to control events, they tend to disengage themselves from efforts to shape their destinies.”
“People who regard themselves as highly efficacious act, think, and feel differently from those who perceive themselves as inefficacious.”
“The stronger the perceived self-efficacy, the higher the goal challenges people set for themselves and the firmer their commitment to them.”
“By sticking it out through tough times, people emerge from adversity with a stronger sense of efficacy.”
“The more people believe they can make a difference, the more likely they are to take an active role in shaping their lives.”
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How Does this Relate to Everyday Life as an ADHD or AuDHD Person?
If you’re having trouble getting started on something, it would be interesting to work backwards in your thinking.
Ask yourself:
Have I done this before?
How did it go last time I did this? If you feel it didn’t go well, you may procrastinate and worry.
In last week’s episode on hope, I discussed the concept of having an ‘avoidant’ goal (i.e., ‘I hope I don’t mess this up’). This won’t motivate you, so instead, you’ll focus on having a goal with positive intention behind it.
Self-efficacy is similar in that before you attempt anything, you will have certain thoughts about the circumstance. This is the key time to be aware of these thoughts before starting the task at hand.
Self-Efficacy vs. Self-Esteem
Self-esteem was a significant movement in pop psychology, which believed that praising people would transform their lives.
It’s more of a judgment that people make about themselves - an assessment of worth.
Self-esteem lost the research battle with self-efficacy because it was shown that improving self-esteem was harder to change, as it doesn't truly correlate with real-world benefits.
Self-efficacy is the belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task.
It’s anchored not in judgments about oneself, which are kind of imaginary, but in the real application of skills to concrete tasks.
Because self-efficacy is connected to work, to applying skills to tasks, it ends up producing the best outcomes.
Self-Efficacy & Emotions
Self-efficacy is directly linked to emotional regulation and expression.
When it comes to our emotions…
Self-efficacy helps people feel more in control of their emotional responses
Self-efficacy shapes how we interpret physical/emotional states
It affects emotional recovery after failure
In mental health treatment, increasing self-efficacy reduces emotional suffering
Low Self-Efficacy…
Increases vulnerability to stress, anxiety, and depression
Low self-efficacy is linked to externalizing blame and hostile reactions
High Self-Efficacy…
Promotes restraint and emotional regulation
Means you are less likely to catastrophize or escalate
The uncertainty about whether we can handle anxiety in a certain situation is the biggest underminer of our self-efficacy.
You can be sure that no matter the adrenaline, you can flip it and go into a flow/hyperfocus, so you can reframe your thoughts
The sense of the alarm that you have within you can mess you up. You need the ability to go from fight/flight into flow.
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5 Strategies To Build Self-Efficacy
Dr. Barkley says that Building Self-Efficacy requires:
Structured support
External scaffolding
Strategies that accommodate our wiring
We can’t depend on willpower and discipline only. We have to target our self-efficacy.
Here are some solutions…
1. Start with a Mantra
Change mantra from “I can’t” to “I can” or “I haven’t finished yet, but I’ve done this.”
2. Create a Wins/Accomplishment Journal
Acknowledge your accomplishments by capturing your wins in written form.
Every time you have a win, write it down - focus on small wins as a priority (Mini-tasks and goals, make us happy)
We can’t just focus on what didn’t get done. We have to at least acknowledge our wins, what we finished, or what we made progress on.
This shows that we can be happy with the small things
3. Understand What Hasn’t Worked in the Past To Support Yourself For Next Time
Don’t think of it as YOU failed, or personalize your failure. It was most likely the system you used, or tools that you didn’t know you could utilize.
4. Connect with other people for external support.
Body double
Ask a friend to join you
Message boards with ADHD people
Access my Patreon chat community - You can talk in the chat even as a FREE member.
5. Study What You’re Good At
Start on the path to self-efficacy by studying:
What you’re good at
What you’re passionate about
What works well in the world
If you balance those three variables, learn to set and achieve big goals one small goal at a time, and celebrate your successes, you’ll begin building self-efficacy. That feels good.
Knowing what you’re good at is imperative. If you believe you’re always prone to failure, as many with ADHD do, you build a reserve of shame that keeps regenerating itself, even as you try to cover it up.
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As Dr. Wes said from Attitude Magazine, ‘You don’t have to hang out long with ADHD people to know how much the disorder can mess up how you see yourself… ADHD and depression often go hand in hand. That’s because, as you grow up struggling to make your brain do what you tell it to, you learn not to feel good about yourself.’
This is why working on improving your self-efficacy is so important.
Final Thoughts
To wrap up, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Self-efficacy is task-specific. You might feel capable in one area and stuck in another. That’s expected.
It’s built through action and evidence. Completing small tasks — even partial ones — builds trust in your ability to follow through.
ADHD can wear down self-efficacy over time, but it can be strengthened with the right strategies, structure, and support.
Self-esteem is a vague concept. Self-efficacy gives you something more concrete — something you can observe, work with, and build over time.
The way you handle stress, emotions, and decisions is connected to how much you believe you can manage what’s in front of you.
If you’re working on this, track your wins. Name what helped. Adjust what didn’t. That kind of attention creates momentum.
FAQs:
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Perceived self-efficacy significantly influences behaviour in several ways.
It affects whether people will even attempt to cope with a situation
Impacts thought patterns and emotional reactions
Plays a role in self-regulation, perseverance, and resilience
People with strong self-efficacy tend to:
Embrace difficult tasks as opportunities to learn
Recover quickly from setbacks
Attribute failure to effort or poor strategy
Have lower stress and are less likely to develop depression
People with low self-efficacy tend to:
Avoid challenges or give up easily
Focus on weaknesses and negative outcomes
Believe failures are due to a lack of ability
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There are four key areas that give you self-efficacy according to Albert Bandura…
Mastery experiences - doing something successfully
Vicarious experiences - seeing someone like you succeed
Verbal persuasion - being encouraged
Physiological and emotional states - e.g., when we’re NOT in anxiety or fatigue
Other Key Points:
You can feel capable in certain areas (high self-efficacy) even if you don’t feel great about yourself overall (low self-esteem), and vice versa.
If you believe you’re not capable of completing a task (low self-efficacy), that belief can cause you to perform poorly, which then confirms your original belief, even if it wasn’t entirely true to begin with
High self-efficacy on a task improves performance
Self-efficacy influences and relies on emotional regulation
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People with a strong sense of self-efficacy approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.
To see challenges as something to be mastered, so you can develop mastery.
Self-efficacy thinks of reframing as the kind of mastery you want to be developing in a given challenge. So, another way of looking at it is that self-efficacy is always a kind of prediction that you will be able to attain an outcome by applying a skill well.
How do we shape prediction?
There are two ways we shape our brain's ability to predict what's coming next.
Breaking it down into steps that we will follow when doing it.
Reframing the entire challenge as an opportunity for some kind of learning, growth, and practice.
The reframe gives you the pattern of how you want to grow, and then you break it down into steps. So you're always thinking strategically about the challenges that you face.
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