Courage and bravery, two things I talk about a lot in the work I do. Yet making the decision to be formally assessed for ADHD wasn’t an easy one, it took courage and to be brave. You may ask why; well, I still believe that an ADHD diagnosis has a stigma attached to it. It certainly has a stereotype. Historically and still to date, ADHD conjures up an image of boys who are hyperactive, disruptive and misbehave.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder in which the brain develops differently from typical brains. It is thought to affect between 2-4% of the population. Whilst the exact cause of ADHD is unknown, research points to people with ADHD experience abnormal amounts of dopamine in their brains as well as some problem in the transmission of this neurochemical. It is also suggested to be genetic. 

ADHD is more commonly associated with childhood, but research suggests that around a third of children with ADHD go on to be adults with ADHD, meaning somewhere between 2-5% of adults may be living with it. 

There are 3 recognised types of ADHD:

• Predominantly inattentive ADHD
• Predominantly hyperactive/impulsive ADHD
• Combined type ADHD (signs of both inattentiveness and hyperactivity/impulsivity)

And all of the above will show up differently for people, no one person with ADHD will be the same as the next, pretty obvious I suppose. 

It’s taken me months to think about if I wanted to write this blog and share it publicly for ADHD awareness month, which is October. A huge thanks to that friend who has helped me to consider even how my ADHD traits may be making me so overwhelmingly worried about pressing ‘publish’ because I’m such a huge over thinker! You know who you are!

So, in terms of assessment, this only happened within the last few years. Why now? I’m in my 40s, why didn’t I do this earlier? I refer you back to the first sentence above, I wasn’t aware of what it really was because I was one of the people who had the stereotype in my mind. As I’m neither a boy nor a child it didn’t occur until I read something which made me think differently and which became a catlyst for an intertesting journey!

I’ve lived my life with a background sense of ‘being different’. I don’t really even know what that means, I don’t believe in the concept of ‘normal’ but neuro-typical makes more sense to me. I’ve always had a sense of being on the peripheries of things, especially friendship groups. It always felt like there was just something missing, a piece of me that hasn’t quite worked as it should have. As I’ve aged and lived through more life experiences, I suppose I’ve noticed that there are things that I find ‘tricky’ to do, be, or understand. I notice them more, possibly because I have to as an adult with responsibilities. I notice how I live, work, parent and generally am in the world. Life has sometimes felt harder than it should, and I’ve never had the sense of contentment. Having said that, I’ve also experienced great joys and have done things that I honestly believe if I didn’t have ADHD I wouldn’t have done, and it’s also some of my ADHD traits which make me the best version of myself, who I am and how I show up in the world, the parts of me which I’m proud of.

I’d say I’m bright, I’ve managed academically, I have a MSc, but it hasn’t been easy, looking back, I don’t honestly know how I got through some of it. I found some of it challenging, which not knowing why, was always confusing for me, why I always felt tired and struggled to concentrate for periods of time. 

When I was diagnosed with ADHD, after the initial shock, feelings of bereft for my ‘normal brain’ I’m actually glad I decided to be assessed. It’s helped me make sense of my life, to understand why I’ve done certain things and why I do certain things. Above all else it helped me to show kindness to myself, to stop telling myself I’m rubbish, why can’t I do this, why do I do that. Why am I rubbish friend, why is there a reoccurring theme to my relationships, why am I so impulsive. Why does life feel hard, and I feel overwhelmed.

I’ve not told many people about my diagnosis (until now) just those who I felt would benefit from knowing, mainly those who I work with or family and close friends. Usually to explain my sometimes (often) chaotic nature, forgetfulness, going off on tangents of tangents in my nonlinear articulated thought processes. 

Why I forget what I’m saying constantly, which can be interesting at work and when presenting, facilitating, coaching…. Forget what I’m doing, struggle to navigate car journeys I’ve done 100 times…the list goes on and I will talk about symptoms later.

I’m on a journey of trying to see my ADHD as me, embrace it, and not get too pissed off at myself and my brain when yet again I’ve forgotten something really important. Most of my text messages to friends begin with sorry for the delay… it could be 2 weeks; I’d completely forgotten to text them back.

By sharing my neurodivergence and writing this, I want to raise awareness of ADHD particularly in women. In the UK and Europe, around 90% of adults with ADHD are undiagnosed, especially girls and women. Of the 1.5 million adults who potentially may be living with ADHD in the UK, only 4.9% of women will be diagnosed compared to 12% of men. However, women are just as likely to have it.

Men under the age of 18 are 3 times more likely to be diagnosed than a girl of the same age

There’s still a widely held belief that ADHD is a male disorder. It’s easy for healthcare practitioners to overlook women presenting with symptoms of brain fog, inability to concentrate, tiredness, low mood, and struggling to balance a full life of work and family, children…. It can be forgiven that these women are often diagnosed with the comorbidities of ADHD such as depression or anxiety. Or menopausal. Or maybe it’s just the societal demands are too much. Research also demonstrates that ADHD has a disproportionate impact on women due to this. We miss opportunities for school age girls too, often due to the fact that girls tend to ‘mask’ or compensate more in learning to cover up symptoms, they work harder, study more to cover up. They also often show different symptoms to those of boys and the ‘stereotypical ’view we hold of what ADHD looks like. Girls often have more ‘attention deficit’ (although its actually not a deficit it’s that we focus on the wrong things) they may daydream, be emotional… struggle making friends.

The irony here is also that to be diagnosed in the UK you have to have had symptoms recognised usually by a parent or someone who knew you before the age of 13. However, we know that girls with ADHD don’t get recognised for all the reasons above, and therefore makes it more challenging to recall symptoms, especially if you’re an adult. A massive 50 – 75% of the 1 million plus women estimated to have ADHD in the UK are undiagnosed, and only 75,000 out of an estimated 1 million women aged 18-65 with ADHD in the UK are accessing healthcare. That’s a whole lot of women who have undiagnosed ADHD or who are not accessing healthcare. Could you be one of them?

Failure to diagnose girls in childhood can have a lasting impact on a woman’s emotional wellbeing, self-esteem and understanding of themselves and the world around them and how they see themselves fitting into that world. Once diagnosed though, ADHD is easy to treat, it’s the diagnosis part that’s hard. Comorbidities are incredibly common in adult women with ADHD and often lead to misdiagnosis and treatment of symptoms and not the route cause. I was shocked to recently read that comorbidities in women include:

‘Anxiety, depression, bipolar, eating disorders, OCD, body dysmorphic disorder, fibromyalgia, sleep disorders, substance misuse disorders, personality disorders, PTSD, PND and impulse control disorders.’

More frightening, that ‘women with undiagnosed ADHD are more susceptible to bullying, increased addictive patterns, self-harm, severe mental illness and admission to in-patient psychiatric hospitals. More likely to be pressurised into sex, suffer sexual exploitation, engage in risky sexual behavior, suffer intimate partner violence, and present with STIs and teenage pregnancy.’

Women are more likely to divorce, find difficulties in parenting and struggle to hold down a job. We are 18 times more likely to be convicted of a crime than the general population. If her ADHD is severe, it can see a woman’s life expectancy reduced by up to 12.7 years, mainly due to ‘unnatural causes’ such as accidents and suicide, according to one recent study’.

The way we have learnt to view ADHD and the variation and inconsistency in diagnosis and provision, means that there is huge gender-based health inequalities which results in the healthcare system drastically failing women and girls. Furthermore, even if you get a NHS referral for an ADHD assessment, in the `UK, the average NHS wait time is between 2-7 years depending on where you live and how your GP refers you. This is only for the first stage of the assessment and diagnosis; it can often be a further 12 months to get medications (should you choose to take that route) supplied and titrated.

So, let’s talk about symptoms in women…In no particular order…and recognising that not all women will have all these symptoms or the same ones…

Inability to concentrate on one thing, end up doing bits of everything and nothing gets finished. Oooh look an email just came in and off we go…. several hours later…

Zoning out, drifting off when someone’s talking to you, the feeling of ‘shit’ what are you asking me as I wasn’t listening… distracted by other people’s conversations nearby or own thoughts

Impulsiveness, not considering things fully, saying yes too often.

A sudden drive, like a sudden need to get the kitchen cupboards all cleaned out even though you only went in to make a cuppa.

Visits from the night monster, please don’t wake up, drift back off please, no, too late I’m already revisiting the previous day, ruminating and thinking of everything I’ve got to do over the next 50 years…

Hyperactivity/Fidgeting, having to get up when sat, interrupting people, talking over people, feeling compelled to get what you have to say out… not how we typically view hyperactivity. 

Sensory For me this relates to noise. Mainly competing noise. If there is too much noise, and from different sources it’s makes it challenging for me to focus on what I’m doing. It actually makes me feel quite frustrated. 

Feeling overwhelmed, not being able to switch off, too many tabs open in the brain, just don’t ever switch off…this can lead to actually not being able to do anything.

Memory Processing, losing everything all the bloody time! I know we all do this, but its beyond occasionally, I lose my keys and phone so many times a day, the reason I’ve discovered is that for most people you can replace your steps to find things, but for an ADHDer you’re not actually ‘present’ when you put things down to be able to retrace steps, you were daydreaming, distracted and actually have no idea where you put things.

Forgetting what someone’s just said to you seconds later, I found sometimes even notes I make don’t make sense or help me recall what was said. It’s just gone. Apparently, this is due to short term memory processing and not having as much short-term memory capacity as a neuro typical, we lose it before it gets filed to long term memory.

Time Blindness, not great with the concept of time, often late, even though you think you’ve planned enough time it’s unrealistic and you were never going to get there on time! This can also mean not being able to fully grasp how long things take, over promising things because you haven’t recognised the time required. 

Hyperfocus, a tendency to do things we like and enjoy and those things which we can emotionally connect with. and avoid those we don’t, procrastinate.

Emotional regulation, may ‘feel’ more than others and may have stronger reactions.

Talk and think fast move on quicker in thinking and thought patterns

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is one manifestation of emotional dysregulation, a common but misunderstood and under-researched symptom of ADHD in adults. Individuals with RSD feel “unbearable” pain as a result of perceived or actual rejection, teasing, or criticism. Overthinking things. 

And there’s more… 

Having ADHD comes with loads of positives… we tend to be creative people, with bags of energy and ideas.
We are generally tenacious people who are good at problem solving because of the way that our brains and thoughts move so quickly. We have a tendency to see the big picture and connect things, ideas, people. We have creativity in abundance, this is why often people with ADHD are entrepreneurs, we like to innovate and create. We can easily think outside the box.
It’s said that people with ADHD are often highly intuitive, with a great sense of observation. We can get stuff done, multitasking is easy, and we can often get more things done by doing more than one thing at a time.
Hyperfocus, if we are interested in something we can lose track of time as we get so involved in it. We are empathetic and have a strong sense of what is fair, we challenge status quo and fight hard for what we believe in. Spontaneity makes for great fun (most of the time) and coupled with a willingness to take risks means that we are life loving and are more likely to live an adventurous, full life.

Work is another blog all together 🙂 but we really do need to meaningfully find ways to value and include neurodivergence in our workforce, as currently our systems and processes exclude people rather than include them… TBC (maybe)!

Managing symptoms of ADHD will vary for each person. Medication is one option and for many people can be life changing. Coaching is also recommended to help develop strategies. 
For me I’ve found a few things help, I firstly avoid situations such as where there’s loud noise, cafes with lots of people all talking. And actually that doesn’t make me boring, it helps me to be at my best.

I’ve also started with a few hobbies, gardening (I’m doing a part time RHS course) & I’m learning to play the drums. Both feel really good.

At night without fail pretty much, I listen to sleep sounds all night. I really like ‘Alexa, play windy meadow, or rain on the window.’ Brown noise can be helpful to have on to help focus. Guided meditations has been great for helping me relax! 

And now, talking about my ADHD, sharing what I know and have learnt. Hoping it will help someone else and raise awareness, challenge the stereotype & remove any stigma. 

This is a whistle stop tour of ADHD, there are much more comprehensive informative sources out there… I would go off the beaten track (not the NHS info page)

Here are a couple to get you started…

Additude at www.additudemag.com has loads of great stuff…

ADHDadultUK’ who have loads of resources including the Adult ADHD Self Report Scale (ASRS) symptom checklist which is over 90% sensitive/specific for predicting ADHD and can be an excellent starting point in working out of you have the traits of adult ADHD. 

I really hope this has been useful and that by sharing, it helps other people to recognise some of the traits, and raise awareness of ADHD.

Thanks for listening – hope you paid attention and didn’t get distracted 🙂

Kirstie x