Women and ADHD - Some Pertinent Points
While the condition may be the same, the experience may be different for women and call for different responses in treatment.
Girls and women meet the same criteria for an ADHD diagnosis; however, women may have different experiences than boys or men.
Women are more likely to have ADHD, inattentive type, while boys and men often have ADHD, with hyperactivity.
Girls with ADHD in the classroom may be gazing out the window and daydreaming or doodling on their homework assignments while boys have difficulty staying seated, are running around the classroom, or are tapping their toes and pencils.
In other words, the boys are getting all the attention from the teachers while the girls are quiet and not distracting other students.
As women, we have been socialized to take a quieter, submissive role in general; inattentive symptoms may help women appear to be fitting in.
The daily structure of school routine works as an organizer, and the person with inattentive type ADHD may be supported by this structure.
When they leave the structure of school, enter the workplace, and/or manage children and a home, they may have difficulty creating a structure which allows symptoms to become more apparent.
Some researchers are exploring how the menstrual cycle may impact ADHD with the fluctuation of hormones interplaying with the neurotransmitters that underlie an ADHD diagnosis.
Women with ADHD may also have anxiety and/or depression.
These diagnoses may be in addition to the ADHD (comorbid) or they may have developed because of the life impact of ADHD–feeling anxious about deadlines, or feeling bad about yourself because you don’t live up to a standard that is simply beyond you, for example.
Women are socialized to “get over” troubles and issues.
ADHD is not “curable.” You won’t get over it.
Your brain may not be neurotypical in the way it works, but you are still intelligent, caring, and a good person.
The ways you have been trying to “get over” it may not be working because those ways don’t work.
“Pills aren’t skills” reminds us that while medications may resolve the symptoms they do not cure the condition.
Antidepressants may reduce symptoms but they don’t “cure” depression.
In the case of ADHD, medications often do make adjustments to the brain so that a person can function better.
Even so, you will still need to learn new skills.
You won’t get “over it” but there are ways to live “with it” and ways to understand and gain respect for yourself that can be life changing.
With deeper understanding of ADHD and yourself, support of others, and a growing self-compassion, you can live life more deeply, more fully, and with more joy.
True North Counseling & Development offers individual counseling for adults with ADHD. If you are interested in joining an ADHD therapy support group, please call 859-740-7374.