From a young age, we're told to be good girls,
to behave. So girls are very good at what we
call masking. So kind of like camouflaging, hiding
some of the hyperactivity. So quite early on,
girls realize that they can't be agitated and
running around. And in classroom, teachers recognize
the girls that sit quietly and do their worksheets
and are good girls. boys tend to have a little
bit more leniency when it comes to misbehavior.
Girls don't. So what we know is that early on
girls are recognizing that they need to restrain
their hyperactivity. And so what we find is it
goes inside. And so girls, and it varies through
what we're also seeing from the research in ADHD,
is that as we go through different stages in
life, it presents slightly differently. So you
see in girls, we start to have more hyperactive
thoughts. The agitation is internal, not external.
So you might not be as fidgety physically, but
you're more fidgety emotionally. So we see that
agitation emotionally. So you see the teenage
girls, you know, getting really, really angry
and upset, struggling socially because they're
not quite picking up the cues in the same way
they're not attending to the same things that
they need to so that's what you see with adhd
in girls is that they start to mask from about
the age of 12 13 14 and they develop ways of
coping with this internal agitation with some
of their forgetfulness when some of their difficulty
regulating their attention and they develop ways
of coping and so then we fast forward through
life and you can see some women with adhd sort
of become perfectionistic have lots of structure
we sometimes call it the adhd piles of to -do
lists um and they might create very rigid structure
that allows them to cope to handle some of what
we call that executive functioning deficits or
difficulties But then it gets to a point in life,
and that's why we're seeing an increase in diagnosis
around the age of 30 or 40, when the load just
gets too high. It's when we see that women are,
you know, getting higher up in their career,
having children, you know, multiple relationships.
They may have been through various marriages.
And life is just getting really, really complicated.
that's when they seek help. And it's often help
for anxiety and depression, not for ADHD. That's
what I'm seeing. So I'm seeing women who present
with really struggling with perfectionism, burnout,
just their mood is dropping. And that's often
because they've had a life of self -criticism.
What's wrong with me that I'm always late? um
what's wrong with me that i can't quite figure
this out and i'm finding myself working so hard
but never feeling like i'm enough and that criticism
accumulates and it gets to a point where we start
to feel depressed and so we see adult women with
adhd who present more with anxiety and depression
instead of adhd but when we start to dig in we
realize that these problems have been there forever
That as a young girl, they were peddling so fast
just to keep up. And as an adult woman, they're
now tired and burning out and have had enough.
Can I ask a really obvious question? So first
of all, I want to be clear that ADHD is attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder. And then I remember
back in the day, if you will, there was ADD,
attention deficit disorder. When you're referring
to ADHD, are you referring to ADD interchangeably
or is that part of the DSM update that there
is no more ADD? There is no more. Well, there's
two types. You can have the attention or hyperactivity
that there's basically, essentially now we know
that ADD, there's some people who present more
with attentional issues and I don't like to call
it a deficit. We're moving out of that. We're
now thinking more that it's an attention regulation
issue. Oh, interesting. I mean, somebody with
ADHD can hyper -focus incredibly well. So it's
not an attention problem. It's a problem of regulating
attention. We're attending to the wrong things.
We're attending to the thing that matters to
us most versus not being able to attend. So sort
of if we look at the diagnostic criteria, you
know. lack of focus, difficulty organizing, careless
mistakes. But often that can be attributed to
the fact that we're attending to certain cues
and not others, to certain interests and not
others. So we do have two subtypes, the attention
subtype and the hyperactivity subtype. And you
can get, obviously they can have both subtypes
or just leaning on one or the other. And with
women, we see that there's more of the attention
subtype. Only because hyperactivity is seen,
well, the diagnostic criteria looks at it more
externally. When you speak to women who have
ADHD and you say, does your mind feel like a
popcorn machine? Like thoughts are just popping
away? They'll go, yeah. And that's the hyperactivity
gone inside. Like there's the agitation that
they feel that often then results in emotional.
and frustration because they can't quite handle
their thinking. I think now I'm just like starting
to question myself like, oh shit, am I, am I
ADHD? Do I have ADHD? Just because my thought
process is sometimes all over the place. But
then I wonder, is it ADHD? Is it just because
there's so much going on? Then you've got your,
so many things calling for your attention. You
know, you've got social media, you've got your
kids, you've got your family, you've got work.
got the podcast, so much stuff going on. Could
it just be that we've changed the kind of world
that we live in has changed. Our bodies just
haven't, our mind just hasn't caught up to the
current lifestyle that we're living in. I do
think that we are all quite overwhelmed. Yeah.
Now the difference with somebody who presents
with ADHD is that this isn't just a contextual
issue. Like this isn't something that you're
just struggling with today. It's described as
a developmental condition in that you've always
had it. And I really love the movement that we're
having now in the world of psychology, this more
neuroaffirming, which we're looking at neurodivergence.
So as opposed to a disorder, we're thinking that
we're looking at brains being wired differently,
which is much more validating and compassionate.
So when we think about an ADHD brain, under this
umbrella of neurodivergence or the autistic brain,
or we have the epileptic brain is under that
umbrella as well. They're wired differently.
So they're driven by different things. So, and
I find that really helpful for my ADHD community
to recognize that the ADHD brain and the, to
a large extent, the autistic brain is driven
by interest, by novelty, by stress. and by challenge.
Now, that's different to the neurotypical brain
that is driven by doing the right thing or driven
by a sense of belonging or doing what's expected.
The ADHD brain likes to be stimulated, which
means that one of the problems we have when there's
a lot going on is that the ADHD -er will choose
to do what's novel, what's new, what's interesting,
what's challenging, what's stressful. versus
what has to be done just because. Like your chores
or your admin. So you have an ADHD who can, you
know, pull off a fantastic podcast, but they'll
really struggle to do their taxes or organize
the day -to -day pickups of the kids. So that's
quite different. So in terms of functioning,
we think of, you know, the overwhelm of the day
-to -day life that we have, of course. You know,
it's hard to juggle lots of things. Our brain,
we all have limits. But the ADHD brain is more
than just struggling to juggle. Like it will
impact functioning. And I think what's really
important is to recognize that the burnout piece,
because that's what usually brings clients to
see me, is when they feel this visceral burnout.
Like the lady who came on our podcast, Michaela
Thomas, she talks about having two states, meerkat
and sloth. So when you're in the meerkat, you're
all excited. You get easily distracted by the
squirrel. Everything is, you know, sparkly. Everything's
exciting and sort of, you know, you've got a
bit of a skip and a buzz, but then you burn out
and then you're like a sloth. And my clients
will describe the state where they just cannot
get up for anything, like nothing. It's worth
it. And it's emotional because often it comes
with lots of self -criticism. Like what's wrong
with me? Why can't I just do this small task?
Everything feels insurmountable. But it's also
deeply physical. Like they're exhausted. And
that's because they've just had probably a period
of hyperactivity and getting everything done.
And they're exhausted by that. So it's kind of
like a feast and a famine. And I think that's
different to the overwhelm of day -to -day. That
was the 40s formula in focus with Dr. Emma Waddington
talking about ADHD in women. If you would like
to catch more, click on the link in the show
notes.