Once thought to primarily affect overstimulated boys, ADHD diagnoses have spiked among adult women. For one writer, coming to terms with her diagnosis later in life has put her past and family history in a new light.
I quit drinking cold turkey when I found out I was pregnant. Alcohol had been my main coping mechanism for 15 years, but I didn’t replace it with anything except magical thinking. Motherhood would surely transform me into a woman with all her little ducks in a row, I thought.
This feeling of not quite knowing how to perform adult life was familiar, but combined with the guilt inherent to motherhood, it became unbearable. Girls are more often diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, meaning they struggle with focus, sensory overload, disorganization, and executive functions like planning, remembering instructions, and juggling multiple tasks successfully. It is much harder for women with inattentive ADHD to process information, especially if they’re not interested in it, which might explain why I did poorly in math.
Since women with ADHD and women in general are often socialized to act pleasant, be accommodating, and handle stress quietly, many girls with ADHD aren’t diagnosed until adulthood because we develop coping mechanisms to mask our challenges. Getting diagnosed with ADHD on the cusp of 40 brought my personal history into sharp focus. My past struggles in school, in relationships, with friendships and work, and in processing traumatic events, plus the many questionable choices I’ve made, all became part of a much larger story. And considering the disorder’s inheritability, I realized that story included my family members.
A stressful home environment like the one my aunt Tina experienced can directly affect one’s trajectory with the condition. “ADHD can change fairly drastically, and its symptoms and impairments are contingent on a very sensitive teacher or a warm and supportive home versus an argumentative home,” Hinshaw says. “It’s really sensitive to context and structure.”
Who falls through the cracks and who learns a way out is often unfairly dependent on access, privilege, and chance. If a girl with ADHD is never exposed to what researchers call “motivation and compensation”—or positive feedback and encouragement around interests or subjects she’s drawn to—she’s at increased risk for a litany of complications, including low quality of life, substance-abuse disorders, educational underachievement, and unemployment.
I went to a robotic place when I did. I had learned about the liminal space between earth and ether, where you could exist without feeling, in the hospital. But dissociation is a quiet practice, and I had to speak, so I forced my heart out of my body in order to describe what he did to it. He got community-service hours, and a few years later I would become a “troubled” teen.When the biological risk for ADHD is present, experiencing early traumas is a key indicator for developing the condition.
I struggled to pay attention in class and was committed to skipping school to smoke weed. My hyperfocus was deployed in other ways typical of a teenage girl with a trauma history: studying liner notes of CDs instead of studying history, bleaching my hair and eyebrows to look less like myself and more like Courtney Love, and self-harming when I needed a release.Life changes combined with societal pressures were tough for both me and my aunt Tina.
For grown women who find out we have ADHD, releasing ourselves from the shame of our fraught histories might not happen overnight, but we can reframe the way we see ourselves
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