February 3, 2023

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Now that I know I have ADHD (inattentive type) it makes perfect sense that it has taken me two and a half months to write this blog.

Since being diagnosed in late August, I have spent many hours lost in my thoughts about how to approach this blog. I wanted it to be compelling, coherent, free from tangents, helpful, vulnerable (but not too vulnerable), factual, and well… pretty much perfect overall.

Why the agony over this? 

Well… truth be told… I go through this every time I write or produce any content for you my friend because… well… let’s face it… painful rejection or amazing approval hangs precariously in the balance and this particular blog is hitting extremely close to home for me right now.

And so, I have been endlessly thinking and ruminating about what to write, and how to write it, until I ruminated my way into a major state of anxiety. And not even my trusty ole’ sidekicks; “Deadline” and “Hyperfocus” could get me to take action.

And so I procrastinated and procrastinated until my procrastinator was sore, eventually turning to my familiar vice “perfectionism” to keep any potential progress at bay, until it became clear to me (as my new medication kicked in) that all of the thoughts, beliefs and behaviours that were preventing me from writing this blog are the very things I have been wrestling with my entire life!

The “things” that have held me back and held me down for as long as I can remember were right here in front of me… preventing me from taking action, keeping me stuck in my head, and creating cycles of disempowering emotions like guilt, fear and shame.  

I have spent 52 years expending incredible amounts of energy suppressing, compensating, and masking these “things”, that I now know are classic symptoms of ADHD in women, in order to avoid experiencing failure, rejection and judgement.

What a roller coaster of emotions it has been since I embarked on the journey of getting myself diagnosed in the spring of this year. I have experienced everything from…relief to despair… self-compassion to self-loathing… joy to anger…

humility to shame… confidence to crippling self-doubt and everything in between.

But most poignant for me has been the bouts of grief that I have experienced for the little girl in me who demonstrated so much strength and resilience throughout the course of my childhood and adolescence. I do occasionally wonder what might have been different for her had this diagnoses come then instead of now?

Rest assured I don’t spend a lot of time living in the past but I have allowed myself the time and space to sit with all of the emotions that have been coming up for me, with self compassion,  so that I can heal and grow.

And it’s because of all of this that I summoned up the courage to share my story with you. I wanted to give you a little peek into my soul as I take this big step towards embracing who I truly am, proverbial “warts and all”, and hopefully create a safe space for others to do the same.

I am also learning that there are a whole lot of other women out there who have gone undiagnosed, and who… just like me, have suffered with an overactive “inner critic”, people pleasing, perfectionism, procrastination and persistent bouts with burnout due to performing and pretending their entire lives thanks perhaps in part to ADHD! 

YES! All of these and more are very common to ADHD women.

And so I thought it might be helpful to share with you some of the symptoms I have experienced that eventually led me to suspect I had it and getting diagnosed. You might just see yourself in these descriptions or someone you know. 

10 Symptoms of ADHD

  1. Organized chaos – Women with ADHD often have everything but the kitchen sink in their purse including, but not limited to… shopping receipts, expired make-up, petrified snacks, concert tickets (long expired), coupons (long expired), unfilled prescriptions and the list goes on.             We may also have stacks of papers lying around the house, that were once deemed important but haven’t been looked at or touched in years. These can often be found tucked into nooks and crannies around the house.  Some of us are known to have a dozen or so themed journals on the go but can never find the one we need when we need it and so have written random stuff in all of them! We may also be found spending a lot of time retracing our steps to find something we have misplaced (often because we put it away someplace “safe”) And often can be seen retracing our steps from the car back to the house to go and fetch something we forgot when leaving the house (usually car keys).
  2. A faulty filter – so this is one that I have found takes a lot of energy for me to mask… If you have heard that your “filter” is sometimes not working properly and suffer from being overly honest or forthright, and occasionally (and less than tactfully) blurt things out that you immediately want to delete delete delete… I can relate! While family and friends are usually patient with us it can be a constant battle in the workplace to keep this one in check which can get exhausting. 
  3. A magical sense of time – Gabor Mate (author of Scattered Minds) says people with ADHD have a “magical sense of time”. This means struggling with time blindness which is the difficulty or inability to sense the passing of time. Like me, you may be prone to distractions which cause you to run late, or you may lack an “internal clock” and so you feel like you can fit in “one more thing” and still be on time. You might have a hard time judging how long a task will take, or travel time will be so you don’t plan accordingly, maybe you easily lose track of time during transitions, and procrastinate until you have left things until the last minute (by the way, you probably still pull it off).
  4. Burying yourself in commitments – ADHD women are often multi-passionate and dive head first into projects, taking on too much, and trying to please everyone until you are drowning under the weight of your commitments. Many of us are high achievers and place very high expectations on ourselves to excel and succeed. This creates a lot of stress and pressure and can lead us into bouts of exhaustion and burnout especially when combined with focus difficulties and time management challenges. It is very important that we learn how to manage the expectations we place on ourselves and practice self-compassion.
  5. Forgetting things – ADHD is a disorder of the brain and it comes with factors like distractibility and working memory issues. Understanding this helped me to reframe some things that I used to see as character flaws within myself. Like me, you may struggle with remembering details like birthdays, anniversaries, or even names of people you know. (Ask me about the time I forgot someone’s name several times at a party and her name was SHELLEY) Forgetfulness can occur regularly with appointments, ceremonies, and work deadlines. Forgetting doesn’t mean you don’t care about something or someone, it happens because your brain disregards it. 
  6. Analysis Paralysis – ADHD is a paradox in many ways and decision making is one of those ways. While we may find it easy to make a decision about something big, because it is novel to us or something that we are excited about, we may struggle to make a decision over something mundane like where to go, or what to have for dinner because we feel overwhelmed by all of the options. We may scroll the tv guide, for what turns into hours, searching for the right show to watch, only to give up entirely, turn off the tv and go to bed without choosing anything.
  7. Boredom is the enemy –  This is the symptom that really brought my ADHD to light for me over the pandemic because people with ADHD crave novelty and being locked down in your house for two years definitely curbs our exposure to new and novel experiences. Hence, this is why I tried to convince Tim to move to Quebec, then Nova Scotia, then Mexico over the course of the pandemic. I was literally going crazy cooped up in our house without any novelty to stimulate me like seeing new places, and finding exciting activities to do. In addition to this, monotonous tasks and routines can feel almost painful to endure. People with ADHD often find chores like laundry and dishes difficult and will often avoid these tasks until the last minute. Waiting in line, or waiting anywhere or for anyone feels like the worst thing that could ever happen as does anything perceived as mundane.
  8. Struggles with self-esteem – This one makes me emotional because I have spent the last several years healing my relationship with myself through self compassion and self love and learning how to honour and assert my needs. Now I am even more passionate about showing other women how to do the same. Now I see that this work is even more critical for women with undiagnosed ADHD. And this is because we  have experienced a lifetime of feeling like we never fit in. We have experienced a lifetime of messages that point to our shortcomings, resulting in feeling like we are not good enough and are always falling short of meeting expectations. We are mislabelled as; unmotivated, lazy, spacy, flakey, too talkative, “too much” and the list goes on. These kinds of labels, often handed out by parents, teachers, employers and even healthcare workers can lead us to feel defeated and inadequate. These disempowering states can then lead us to developing unhealthy coping strategies such as escaping into TV marathons, substance misuse, and binge eating. Or as I like to call them “The Big 3 – Netflix, chocolate and wine”. A lifetime of criticism can also lead to perfectionism, people-pleasing, and overachieving. Discovering the root of these disempowering beliefs about ourselves and creating more positive self-talk can help heal our wounded sense of self and empower us to love and accept ourselves for our strengths and the unique gifts we bring to the world.
  9. Emotional roller-coasters – Those of us with ADHD often feel our emotions more intensely than others. Due to the way our brain is wired we often struggle with being able to regulate our emotions and what to do with them as well. This could look like having lots of emotional resilience in one situation to having a major meltdown over a minor setback in another situation. I learned very early on to suppress my emotions, particularly my anger, sadness, and fear. This led to all kinds of emotional, social and physical problems for me over time. Hypnosis and working with my subconscious mind have been invaluable tools for assisting me in getting in touch with my emotions, processing them and letting them go so that I am able to regulate them more effectively and experience a greater sense of happiness and well-being.
  10. Hyperfocus – This is when we become so absorbed in a task that we can’t step away or stop thinking about it. Like when I spent two full days researching properties for sale on the East Coast and found this lavender farm on the ocean and… (but I digress). People with ADHD are often experts on a ton of random subjects because chances are it has become subject to their hyperfocus at one time or another. Hyperfocus looks like researching a topic of interest until you are pretty much an expert on that topic, spending excessive time and money on a new hobby or interest, dropping important tasks to pursue the one you are fixated on, difficulty shifting tasks or stopping what you are doing to eat, bathe or breathe, and being “in the zone” for hours oblivious to interruptions and the passage of time.

And yes, being the “overachiever” that I am, I have all of these symptoms and more. 

While having a diagnosis has brought so much clarity to me about why I behave the way I do, it has also really highlighted for me what my strengths are, how resilient I am, and how much love and compassion I am capable of experiencing and sharing with myself and others.

In my experience the way towards healing is transforming our most challenging experiences into opportunities for growth and connection. And so I am so happy that I was finally able to write this blog, as part of my own healing journey. 

I am deeply honoured that you chose to spend some of your valuable time with me and as always I would love to connect further with you in the comments below, or through an email should you wish to reach out to me privately. 

With love and gratitude,

Shelley xo

Posted in: Blog
About the Author

Shelley

I am a strengths based, solution focused life coach who has been practicing in the counselling/coaching field for more than 20 years. I have created and pioneered the 3-Step “Renew Your Vitality” Coaching System of live workshops, online courses, individual coaching sessions, and accountability groups which has created breakthrough results in the lives of my clients. I am an expert at empowering heart-centered individuals to transform their stress into greater focus, energy and happiness!

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