Women, Girls & ADHD: talking to Sky News

Did you know that 1 in 4 women with ADHD have attempted suicide, or that it’s 5x more likely to be diagnosed in boys than girls? Many people automatically think of hyperactive boys when they hear about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - myself included, when I was diagnosed at age 25. 4 years on, now working an ADHD Coach & author, I talk to women and girls every day who share my story, after years of needlessly struggling in the dark by themselves.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition related to symptoms of inattention (poor concentration & memory), impulsivity (in emotion, thought & action), and hyperactivity - both physical and mental. I can easily go a month without exercising, but my brain can’t go a minute without exploding with thoughts.

As a child, I was literally always falling asleep in class. It was only from writing, ‘ADHD: an A to Z’, that I learned this can be a symptom of ADHD - where your nervous system disengages from boredom. This might just sound awkward in a classroom setting, but how about whilst driving a car? I’ve crashed every single car I’ve driven, fortunately deciding to stop by myself after writing off the third, before I ended up killing myself or somebody else.

This was before I was diagnosed with ADHD. Before then, I had also experienced severe depression, eating disorders, self-harm, anxiety, lived on chocolate, binge drunk alcohol to solve my problems, and couldn’t sit down long enough to apply for a job. I knew the way I was living was not normal, but it felt like someone else had a remote control to my brain - I couldn’t trust myself with being a functional adult.

From the outside, I had a law degree, straight A’s in my A Levels (without cheating, as my economics teacher had asked the entire class in surprise), and was living a picture-perfect life on Instagram. When I finally tried to get help myself, doctors told me I was fine, because I had a law degree. They said maybe I just had ‘emotional problems’ and should go to therapy. I’d leave therapy sessions after speaking non-stop for 55 minutes, cementing myself into another week of ruminating on the past.

By the time I’d decided to pay £400 to see a private psychiatrist, blaming myself for not being pushy enough, I’d Google-diagnosed myself with about 6 different mental illnesses. ADHD was not one of them. I didn’t even have a GP at the time, let alone a stable job, place to live, or support network of friends and family. I had given up on living and this was my last hope - but it shouldn’t have had to reach that point for me to get help.

Since being diagnosed and learning about ADHD, my life has changed beyond recognition - I have all of these things and more, in being able to understand and accept my neurodiverse brain. I was able to start living my life like everybody else I knew.

I think part of the reason it was missed in me and other women or girls for so long is due to:

a) ‘untraditional symptoms’ - like overthinking, wildly strong mood swings reacting to the situation (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria), an addiction to screens, hyper-focusing, suicidal ideation, indecisiveness, daydreaming, and so on. Medical professionals are more likely to associate these symptoms with other conditions, especially if a girl isn’t physically hyperactive.

b) ADHD being masked by co-existing conditions or poor lifestyle conditions - there’s a strong crossover with Autism, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, self-harm, and pre-menstrual syndrome (as it’s strongly affected by estrogen). ADHD brains seek dopamine, which can make them more susceptible to addictions and poor choices - an estimated 30% of prisoners have ADHD.

c) communication styles - whereas men tend to be more direct, women tend to be more prone to people pleasing and saying what they think people want to hear - especially ones with ADHD. If a doctor said I was fine, I’d end up agreeing with them, until I left their office. It can be very difficult to insist that you need help and to get that help - especially if you feel awkward asking for help in the first place, as many people with ADHD do.

d) situational-aspects of ADHD - due to symptoms showing up differently across a persons’ life, they may think they’re fine because they can get good grades, or because they’re super clean, for example. However, it often shows up in areas where we’d least expect it. For example, I could do a month’s worth of work in a day when I worked in law, but filling in an excel spreadsheet that should take a couple of minutes would take me an entire week, sending me into a spiral of anxiety.

I wrote ADHD: an A to Z after my GP told me about the 7 year waiting list for ADHD assessments on the NHS. I couldn’t believe that this was possible, just thinking that I’d be dead if I hadn’t been diagnosed - so what are other people meant to do that can’t afford to pay thousands of pounds? Even after then, what happens if their GP refuses their diagnosis?

Learning about ADHD and how your brain operates is all it takes. Frustrated by how useless much of the information online was, I wrote a book compiling the strategies I’d developed to handle things like concentrating, studying, and organisation, and the ones I’d learned from having ADHD coaching & learning everything I could about it.

I published it a year ago today, and to see it featured on Sky News is pretty surreal. You don’t necessarily need medication or a diagnosis to get help, but just information, understanding and self-compassion. If I’d read this book as a child, I would have been able to avoid a lot of the unhappiness and confusion I experienced in trying to navigate this world by myself. Don’t stop until you get the answers that feel right to you - you deserve them.

To book a free coaching introductory call, click here.

Is ADHD a disability?

As an ADHD Coach, I have a window into the lives of incredibly intelligent, passionate, and kind ADHD-ers – they can just often not usually be so kind to themselves! One of my favourite things about coaching is how speaking to someone who understands the unique wiring of your brain can shine a completely new light on the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

Despite around 80% of the UK’s disabled population having invisible disabilities, it’s still an area we don’t quite know how to handle as a society. Although we’re talking more openly about mental health, the shame involved in speaking up about a condition that impacts our ability to be ‘normal’, or to ask for help with this, can still often be incredibly scary and shameful. This can be because we’re relying on other people to believe us, after we’ve taken the difficult step of first believing ourselves.

Here are some of my favourite recent quotes from clients:

“When you say it’s not my fault, sometimes I let myself believe it, and it makes me feel so much better.”

“I was so shocked ADHD could be a disability, but when I think of how it took me 6 hours to do a task that took my friend 1 hour, I think that maybe it is, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

“When I was given the help I needed, I realised this wasn’t a ‘special’ adjustment or preferential treatment, as it did just literally level up the playing field between me and other people.”

“I thought I was lazy and stupid for 50 years, until I got the diagnosis.”

The Equality Act says a person is disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on their ability to do normal daily activities. There are very high standards for being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – usually at the level of having certain areas of your life seriously affected, over a long period of time.

So yes, ADHD can be a very serious, invisible disability. We can be disabled by our own brains, such as literally being unable to get out of bed, despite thinking a million hours an hour, suffering our own specialized version of internal torture. We can also be disabled by external barriers in our environments – such as by the stigma associated with ADHD in society, or having to fit into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ world that simply doesn’t make allowances for neurodivergence. or getting it wrong.

Before I was diagnosed, my life was seriously affected in all areas. I couldn’t keep an internship or job, didn’t even have a GP, had extremely bad relationships with my friends and family, binge drank alcohol 4-5 times per week in the aim of quietening down my brain, and was suicidal. When I was diagnosed, I said that ADHD wasn’t a ‘real’ problem. This ironically made me feel better at the time, as I was so scared of being sectioned to a mental health hospital in explaining how crazy I believed I was.  

Things were so bad that I went on a 2-week holiday the next day and didn’t come back for a year, holding my hands up in admittance that ADHD was most definitely real, and destroying my life. Accepting this was a disability for me allowed me to stop beating myself up, to ask for the help I deserved, and to start taking responsibility for the things I wanted to change. I accepted that maybe I wasn’t always the problem in every single situation – maybe I deserved to live like everybody else.

From that moment on, I was unstoppable. I published a best-selling book on the modelling industry which was featured on the cover of the Times & Lorraine. I worked in mental health, disability and immigration law for over 2 years during the pandemic, influencing Government on Coronavirus & Brexit legislation - the furthest thing I could have imagined doing when I graduated with the belief I’d never be able to get a job!

I developed healthy relationships with the people in my life and found hobbies I enjoy. I published a book on ADHD, ‘ADHD: an A to Z’ which led to presenting for companies such as Microsoft. I became a Coach for the ADHD Advocate, finding true fulfilment, purpose and meaning in my work every single day – something I never thought I’d have. This week, I presented on invisible disabilities to Lewis Silkin, a law firm I’d previously dreamed of working at. Life has transformed into a continuing and limitless series of opportunities now that I’ve started working with my ADHD, instead of trying to be ‘normal’.

I still need to have phone backgrounds reminding me to ‘SAY NO’, sleep in my gym clothes occasionally to be able to go to yoga, and the bed sheets would probably never get changed if it weren’t for the cleaner. But in comparison to a few years ago, where I locked myself into an 8-month contract in a too-expensive flat that was directly opposite to my new job, as an attempt to force myself not to quit in the first week, I’m doing pretty well.

So, on this International Day of People with Disabilities, please remember to have some compassion for yourself, and to reflect on how well you’re doing, and how far you’ve come. If nothing else, you’re surviving through a global pandemic! If you know someone with a disability, whether it’s visible or invisible, please be brave enough to have open, honest, and curious conversations with them, exposing yourself the vulnerability of truly listening to what they say.

Here are some facts that shocked me:

• Only 51.5% of disabled people are in work, compared with around 81.7% of non-disabled people.

• There are more clothing lines in the world for dogs than there are for disabled people.

• Disability affects 1 in 7 people worldwide.

ADHD can definitely be a disability, but accepting this also empowers us with limitless extraordinary abilities – book a free introductory call with me now to get started on yours.