Written anonymously by someone living with ADHD who has experienced bereavement.
October is ADHD Awareness Month, we all have a relationship to those four letters. They may evoke different reactions, carry different meanings for us, and reflect our varying levels of understanding.
Those letters represent people, living in a society where their puzzle pieces don’t quite fit; their brains are wired differently. They are not living with a superpower; they don’t simply struggle to concentrate or fidget. Instead, they live with daily challenges that affect all aspects of their lives. For women and girls much of this has been misunderstood, misdiagnosed and overlooked because ADHD can present differently.
I am no expert, but I can speak from a place of lived experience as a late-diagnosed ADHD woman. Someone who has skimmed through life, white knuckling, finding ways through until my mid 40s when hormonal changes turned the volume right up. This month feels like an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the lived experience of being female with a neurodivergent, ADHD brain. ADHD is not a mental health issue; it is present from birth and you don’t grow out of it. We all get distracted sometimes; ADHD is different because it's a lifelong way of experiencing and responding to the world. If I look back the signs were there from my childhood, but as a child of the 70s and 80s this was a time when it was still acceptable to hit children in schools, and ADHD research had focused on boys.
What it is not is a deficit in attention. Attention is there, it is not deficient, there can be too much of it. Our attention gets drawn to other things, whether that’s something outside the window, a clock ticking, or starting five tasks at the same time.
I was, as my brother calls me, ‘the golden child’. ADHD was there; it was quiet, internalised and unseen. I did not stop talking from when I learnt to and I was (apparently) the reason my brother did not learn to speak until I went to school. I remember myself at age four, hanging out the classroom window, bereft that I had been left there. Crying, inconsolable and you might say a disproportionate response to the situation. I was oversensitive, had an intense fear of getting into trouble, was incredibly sensitive to criticism, or even perceived criticism, something I later came to understand as rejection sensitivity. I found the best antidote to all this was to be very compliant and a people pleaser.
I broke things all the time (probably some proprioceptive issue going on there). I did everything at once and at 100mph. Internally I was a ball of anxiety, rehearsing conversations before they happened, replaying them afterwards for days on end, hyperaware of the slightest changes in others. I was nicknamed the door mat; anyone could walk all over me. I always felt like I just didn’t fit.
At 20, I became bereaved. Nobody in my life had died and so my introduction to grief was the death of my dad, who was the centre of my world. He’d had cancer since I was a child, we were used to treatment and remission; I never imagined treatment and a funeral.
My grief was so emotionally painful and yet I could not express it. I felt unable to seek help from family and friends because I could not find the words to get them to understand.
It felt enormous, I carried it with me everywhere; I was stuck in it - instead of being able to grow around it. Although I was 20, I felt much younger; too young to emotionally deal with this. I knew nobody else whose parent had died and this exacerbated the sense of not fitting in. I was anxious in the lead up to any important death date, overwhelmed every Christmas (he had died the 20 December) and had emotions that were too much to feel. It was incredibly lonely and isolating. I now understand how undiagnosed ADHD influenced my grief and whilst incredibly difficult, the experience has led me to a job that holds meaning.
Read more about supporting a neurodivergent child or young person who is grieving and view all our resources for supporting bereaved children with SEND.
I have had a successful life, I have worked, been to university, trained as a counsellor and I have meaningful relationships. From the outside, all looked well. What wasn’t visible was the additional effort it took: masking to fit in, using endless lists, timers and strategies, managing boom and bust energy levels and despite all this, feeling like I fell short. It impacted all parts of my life.
I thought that everyone had a brain with numerous tabs open all the time, running on a different operating system that never shuts off.
After surveying my partner and some friends, it turns out that this is not their experience. They don’t have 10 caffeinated squirrels living in their brains. They aren’t lying awake at 3am wondering whether birds still sing when they’re sad, or how you would even know if a bird was sad. This is something I have genuinely debated. I now understand that hyperactivity can be internal too. It isn’t always bouncing off the walls or squirming in a chair.
Time blindness was a huge factor in realising I might have ADHD. I have no concept of time. I cannot judge how long things will take, time disappears and slips away without me realising. I struggle to get to things on time and will either be rushing or late. I have always been like this. Training as a counsellor was not particularly conducive to this trait. Fifty-minute sessions, who on earth thought of that! I struggle to start tasks until the last moment but can then hyperfocus and get them done. A solo work trip to Sydney came with repeated reminders from those who know me well, ‘Please don’t miss the connecting flight!’
I had no idea that time blindness was an ADHD trait, I just knew that I always struggled with the concept of time. As understanding of ADHD has changed (especially in women) I became more curious and, true to form, hyperfocus kicked in and a deep dive followed. It felt like I had found the puzzle piece I had been missing. Suddenly so many aspects of my life made sense. I sought a diagnosis. It doesn’t change who I am, but knowledge is power. Understanding the ‘why’ gives me more choice in how I manage things and helps me lessen the impact when things are difficult. I can live better with it and I can shift expectations of myself.
I could go on and on describing more traits. On their own, they may sound manageable, and we will all experience some of them from time to time. For me, the difference is the cumulative effect of them, day after day, and the additional effort and energy it can take to manage them. Systems and processes are often not designed for neurodivergent brains. At times, it can feel like doing life in hard mode, while everyone else seems to be doing it with ease. It pervades all aspects of my life.
ADHD gives me a sense of fun, joy, mischievousness and enthusiasm which I wouldn’t trade. It enriches my life in many ways, and it makes me who I am. My relationship with my brain isn’t straightforward. There are times I struggle with it deeply, and times I appreciate it for exactly what it is.
Workplaces matter. Especially when your brain works differently. It is important that we value people for what they bring, enabling them to work with their brains rather than expecting them to fit. Offering support and showing, understanding, whether that is acknowledging that capacity can fluctuate or recognising that what is seen on the surface may not reflect the effort going on underneath. ADHD is a part of me and a late diagnosis has led me to understanding and that has brought a sense of acceptance.
Imagine if ADHD really was simply being distracted and struggling to sit still. Curiosity enables us all to look beyond what we can see and to understand what is less visible.
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