Symptoms of Inattentive ADHD or Just Your Quirky Personality: What does Adult ADHD look like in women? #158
“Is this an ADHD thing?”
This question comes up a lot!
It’s hard to say because there is a wide spectrum on how ADHD symptoms present in your day to day activities. At the same time, there is so much value in knowing you aren’t the only one struggling with something.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing the themes that I see in the symptoms of ADHD in women that I work with so that you can feel comfortable in knowing how ADHD shows up in women in real life.
Included in this episode is a checklist of ADHD symptoms that you can fill out and take with you to your doctor appointment, so you can feel confident and prepared to ask about an ADHD diagnosis.
Links to resources mentioned in this episode:
It’s time to take care of a very important person in the family: Mom.
We’ll relax, rest, have fun, and build friendships with mamas who think like us. Plus learn how to take care of our impressive yet evermoving brains.
Join us in Houston, October 7-9, 2022 for the very first ADHD Moms retreat! Reserve your ticket here: patriciasung.com/adhd-mom-retreat
Patricia Sung 00:00
Diagnosis by TikTok, or by Instagram, it's happening more and more. Because the Instagram and Tiktok and Facebook algorithms all learn what we like what we don't like what we're attracted to what is interesting to us, and it gives us more of that. And lo and behold, if all of a sudden you keep getting more and more ADHD content popping up on your feed, perhaps it's because you're one of my people. Are you overwhelmed by motherhood, and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy, you can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family, I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest or the visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess, Mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 01:38
I frequently get messages from listeners or people on social media asking me like they told me their whole life story. And they asked me like, Does this sound like ADHD? And I'm like, Well, I mean, that trends. But yet, also, I don't know you. And I can't tell you that in seven sentences of an Instagram DM, because there's so much more to it. So I've shied away from doing an episode like this because it is so nuanced. However, I have spent time with 1000s of moms who have ADHD. And at this point, I couldn't pick an ADHD woman out of the crowd easily walk into the grocery store. Well, there's one of my people events at school, there's so many people, I listen to someone talk for like five minutes, and I'm like this person clearly has ADHD. These are telling me about their childhood. This person clearly has ADHD. I know many people.
Patricia Sung 02:29
However, I will preface this episode by saying this is not a diagnosis tool. I am not a licensed healthcare provider. Therefore I cannot diagnose you have ADHD. If you suspect that you might have ADHD, please talk to your doctor, talk to your GP find a specialist who knows ADHD well and go visit them. I am not giving you medical advice. I'm giving you information based on research that I've done for many years, the experience I have of working with 1000s of women, but please go talk to your doctor. So what does ADHD and women look like? Well, when we think of ADHD, as like a society, people think of hyperactivity of impulsiveness. You know, your typical five year old kid bouncing off the walls fidgeting in class, jumping off the desk talking out a turn, where they don't talk about is the little girl sitting at the back of the class who's daydreaming, the one that's restless and bored, but hides it well. So the teacher doesn't notice. She does all right on our test. Nobody has a complaint. And so therefore, she just flies on under the radar, or she gets it real quick. She picks up the concept, and then she's dozing off in class because it's Hello. not interesting anymore. And then she's labeled lazy and not applying herself or she's struggling in class. And they keep telling her like, Oh, if you just apply yourself because you're so smart, you'd be able to figure it out and she's struggling, struggling struggling because although she has ADHD and probably some other stuff that we're gonna talk about in a minute, this holding her back from understanding and being able to, quote unquote, apply herself in the way that would make sense. ADHD is under diagnosed in women. It's just a fact because our symptoms present differently, and they're not as obvious.
Patricia Sung 04:14
Now, there are plenty of women who have hyperactivity in a physical manifestation. But the majority of us tend to be hyperactive on the low key side, the symptoms that we tend to have like intention and forgetfulness, and disorganization are just not as obvious as the person who's talking a lot or the person who keeps interrupting or the person who basically is causing a problem and irritating other people. And because we tend to be less irritating or we're trying so hard masking so hard, covering up all the problems so hard working our little tails off to fit in and be what people are asking of us to be people pleasers, and make sure that we keep the peace and do are told this is how we fly under the radar and make it all the way into adulthood without getting a dagger. Gnosis there's also a gender bias involved.
Patricia Sung 05:02
So when you think about symptoms, like being shy, or daydreaming, being like a nervous fidgeter or you know, having anxious thoughts, chattiness quirkiness all of these things can be attributed towards personality traits. Instead of someone having ADHD symptoms, they also tend to be more like, quote unquote, like a feminine characteristic. So it's easy to shove them in the category of like, Oh, they're just shy, oh, they're just quirky. Oh, they're just chatty. And they're not taken seriously, because again, we're not irritating the crap out of anybody. So before we get into all of these symptoms, let's back up a smidge. And look at the basics. There's three types of ADHD inattentive, which means the inattentive symptoms aren't dominant, not to say that you don't have any of the hyperactivity portions, but they're dominant, you have hyperactive, so where you get more of the hyperactive and impulsive symptoms being more dominant. And then you have combined where you have kind of equal amounts of both categories.
Patricia Sung 06:03
So as a woman, how do you know that you have ADHD, all this information that I'm putting out here today, all these symptoms, all these examples I'm putting into a checklist for you. So you can print this out and make some notes of yourself, check off things, circle things, write in your own ideas of how you see your ADHD affecting you, then you can take this piece of paper with you to your doctor's appointment, so that when you want to discuss this with your provider, you have your evidence to explain why you think this is a valid cause of concern. I find over and over again, women messaging me telling me that like they didn't get taken seriously this person this doctor to said, No, you just have anxiety or depression, you don't have ADHD, because bla bla bla, bla, bla, Whatever their reasons are, you're too smart, would have been caught earlier, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. And a lot of this can be I'm gonna say competitive reasons. I'm like, not so much like having a fight about it. But you when you have your evidence there and you go and say like, here's the 43 reasons I think I have ADHD, it's a lot harder for somebody to tell you that you're imagining things, when you have 43 reasons listed out, it's a lot easier for them to sweep it under the rug, when you mentioned like, well, I just kind of feel, you know, a little bit of this. And sometimes I get distracted. And easily can be like, well, that's Mom Brain. And that's, you know, you're probably tired or not, it's easy to sweep all that under the rug, when you got a whole list of information. And you look like you did research. And you come in being competent and saying, This is the problem that I see. And here's why you're taking a lot more seriously. I wish that we didn't have to go through a rigmarole to get here. But here's where we are. So after you listen to this episode, you can go download this checklist, make your notes, you'll be prepared for your diagnosis appointment, whatever you see fit for that.
Patricia Sung 07:54
Now, in putting together this checklist, it's all based on research, you can go to literally just Google the DSM five, that is the diagnostic manual that doctors use in order to determine whether or not somebody has ADHD. The problem there is that the list explains the symptoms, but it doesn't tell you what that looks like in real life. And if you listened to a few episodes ago, we were listening to town hall. I think it was Linda Rugeley. It could have been Laurie depart, probably should have looked this up before I said it. But I think it was Linda that said, Romans, when women go into the doctor, they're not saying to the doctor, I'm impulsive, I'm forgetful, I have trouble organizing things. What they say is something like I can't seem to get my laundry done. My house is a disaster. I can't keep up with all these papers from school. And they're listing what they see in daily life. But the doctor doesn't translate in, you know, the 20 minutes that you're in your appointment, if you can get that much to, I can't seem to get my laundry done, too. I'm struggling with task initiation symptom of ADHD. So this is where the disconnect can come in. Especially if your clinician is not well experienced in EHD. You're not checking boxes, like if you're having a heart attack, do you have chest pains? Does your arm hurt? Those are very clear. Yes, no. Whereas struggling to do laundry is not a clear symptom, they can check on their box, right?
Patricia Sung 09:13
So this is my goal here is to take this very clinical list of the DSM five and translate it into what does that actually look like in your life? Now, disclaimer, number two, everyone is different. You might identify with a few of the things I say some of the things I say, you're definitely not going to identify with every single thing I say because some of these are contradictory. Once you think about this way, when you describe a child and you say oh my kids really creative, creative when we immediately when we hear that we think of someone who's really good at painting music are they're great writer, but someone who's creative could also be very creative in coding and making websites. They could be really creative in engineering and creating new inventions. They could be really creative as in like that kid's going to be able One day because they find every loophole to every rule, or they're really creative in architecture and can imagine how a building could be remodeled to be far more functional in the way that it needs to be used now, or they could be really creative problem solver. All of these people are creative, but they all look different. And they all still fall under the word creative. So know that as I'm describing these things, some of them you'll identify with some of them you won't, that doesn't mean you do or do not have ADHD.
Patricia Sung 10:28
Make your list, fill out the checklist, take it to your doctor, and then you'll be able to explain why you think this is a valid concern that you want to discuss. Let's dig in. Number one, difficulty paying attention. This is one of the banner symptoms of ADHD, all three types, and sometimes it looks like struggling to pay attention during a certain task or a conversation that just isn't very interesting. Being inattentive can get worse when you're in a stressful situation when you feel overstimulated when your hormones are fluctuating like puberty, PMS, time, pregnancy, postpartum menopause, all those times, you'll see your symptoms fluctuating. So what does that look like in daily life, having trouble keeping up with a conversation, especially when there's a lot of people around or a lot of background noise that your brain keeps getting sucked into? Like, for me, if I'm in a restaurant that has a lot of loud people, it's hard for me to tune out the other conversations around and focus on the one with the person in front of me paying attention to really boring work trainings, basically, anything that isn't interesting, it's hard to stick with it, missing chunks of what a friend or a co worker saying to you because you accidentally stopped listening halfway through their Schpeel having trouble sticking with tasks that are repetitive, that require focus for a really long time and again, are prevalent, interesting, someone asking you a question, and you say what, and then your brain like just needed some time to catch up? And then you answer the question before they finish restating their question. And then they look at you like, why did you say what? Because you already knew the answer. Look, my brain needed a little extra time, just not that much time.
Patricia Sung 11:58
Okay. For me, it's really difficult to pay attention on phone conversations. Because I don't have the visual input as well. I'm only listening to the auditory heart. We also see this difficulty in paying attention in getting a lot of like minor bumps and bruises, like, Oh, I didn't realize the door was there. Like what? constantly bumping into things or like catching your purse straps on doors as you go by, it's like, our brain was just already moving to the next thing. And it didn't realize that like, we hadn't quite made it past the door all the way. And, and there's more to that in body awareness. But you know, I gotta keep this episode. Not too long. I cannot go on every tangent that my brain wants to go on today. Right? It's symptom number two, forgetfulness, our frontal lobe is in charge of working memory. It's not quite as developed and functional as some folks on this earth. And a lot of times, our brain is just constantly going, our thoughts are zipping through. And that means that it's hard to hold on to whatever we're talking about, because something else has already slipped in and take it over. How do we see this in real life? Forgive me for getting like, what do you wanted to tell somebody or what you wanted to get done that day, feeling your thought, like fly away, just as you were about to say it, walk into a room and be like, Ooh, what I come in here for misplacing things that you use a lot like your purse, your phone, your keys, your wallet, it like feels like they just disappear, because you're holding them then you aren't around, you set them down at some point, but you don't remember where you put it down. We often get started on a task and get partway through and then we see another task that we start on that one that we see another task and like, you end up on this like six task tangent thing that like you started all of them along the way. I went in the bathroom to wash my hands and realize there was no more toilet paper. So I went to get some more toilet paper was in the laundry room, I noticed that I forgot to put the stuff in the washer into the dryer. So I did that. But then I forgot to push the button because I realized there was something else I needed to put in the washer. So I went to them get the clothes from the washer to put them in. And when I was in the closet, I realized you see where we're going here. Like instead of remembering what we were working on, our brain gets caught on to the next thing and we never circle back to that thing that we were doing earlier. But listening forgetting things is very long forgetting to eat lunch forgetting to order the sweet and sour sauce with your nuggets forgetting to text people back forgetting an important appointment even though you literally just talked about it, you got the reminder, and somehow you still forgot it. syndrome.
Patricia Sung 14:24
Number three time blindness. Your part of executive functioning is the accurate perception of time. Generally speaking, people with ADHD do not have a firm grasp on how long time has passed. Like if someone was like, Hey, will you just count and tell me what a minute has passed? Generally speaking, people with ADHD will actually be closer to like 75 seconds instead of 60 seconds. So we don't realize how much time has passed. We tend to live in a time period of either now or not now. So future tasks are just all lumped in the like not now category. We don't necessarily know like what time date is we don't realize how long it takes to do things. Overall, just, this is hard. So what does this look like in real life, constantly running late to work, school events, appointments, no matter how much you try to be on time, you still aren't on time. It's for a whole host of reasons. But a good portion of it is for time blindness. Inside note, like, this is why I made my morning routine course it's really short, you can put together your morning routine, the super ADHD friendly way. So like, go grab that if you need help with getting out the door on time, it's really good. Clearly, I am going very hard to party on that right now getting lost in a task and then like not realizing that you've been working on this thing for like two hours and be like, Oh, crap I was supposed to be doing today, getting ready to leave when you should have already left not considering transition time. Like when we go somewhere, we think we just kind of like magically appear in the building we forget to calculate like, we have to park the car. And we have to stop for gas on the way we got to walk in the building, find the elevator that goes to the right spot, driving in traffic, oh, I should probably stop and go to the bathroom before that meeting. All these like transition times don't exist in our brain, when we're calculating how long it's going to take us to get somewhere cramming too many tasks, events, meetings or whatever into your schedule, and truly not realizing that you don't have time to do them all. Like even if you are a magical unicorn, you could not get as many things done in the amount of time that you plan for it.
Patricia Sung 16:31
Symptom number four trouble staying organized. It is really hard for us to organize tasks in order prioritizing what matters in this moment, getting things done efficiently developing routines. We struggle with organizing stuff, our physical space, our house, our schedule, our calendars, multi step projects. What does that look like in daily life, your house may be a total disaster, there's stuff everywhere, you also might know exactly where that thing is. Even though it looks like a total disaster. You also could be the opposite of this where your house looks like it came out of a magazine. Because for your anxiety, if you don't put everything exactly where it goes, your brain cannot organize it. And it freaks out because it can't find the thing. You may have piles and piles and piles of paper clutter bills, old meal fires, homework, all the stuff you're like, Well, I don't want to throw it away because I'm I need it. But I also don't know where it goes. So it just sits there. Clutter is usually on me decisions. And this is why we have trouble organizing, we also struggle with routines and structure. They feel oppressive, they feel overwhelming. But yet we know that we do so much better when we have that framework to lean on. That's why I teach my courses on like time management. And daily planning is like creating a flexible structure that makes sense for you. We need structure, we also need to be flexible. This might also look like having trouble prioritizing what truly matters. Like if you play Whack a Mole with your day and you're just like, oh, this popped up, I'll do it. This popped up. I'll do it and not focusing on what you knew really had to get done that day, or what you had planned to do that day, this can come into that organizing and planning section which leads me into another part of planning and organizing, which is having trouble managing a multi step tasks. People would always say like, I don't know, if when you're growing up, I feel like they said this whole time, break big projects down into like smaller steps and then work on the small sections and it doesn't feel as overwhelming. Well, you know, we're not good at breaking things down into smaller steps. A lot of times our version of quote unquote smaller steps is like still not small enough. Like we write this giant chunk on our calendar of like, I'm going to work on this thing today. And we don't realize that what we wrote down is actually like 43 steps.
Patricia Sung 16:31
We also have trouble managing multi step tasks, when we don't understand what the end project looks like, what are we going for here? What's the goal, if we can't accurately picture what that looks like, we have a lot of trouble coming up with the steps of what we need to get there. Because we can't picture the end result. A lot of times we'll get stuck on like step three, our 12 step process and then we freeze because I don't know what to do here and we get stuck. It's like this paralysis moment that ADHD paralysis and be like, I don't know what to do now. And we just freeze because we're not sure how to proceed. A lot of times we feel very frustrated by the fact that really simple tasks feel so difficult. And these simple tasks can feel really difficult especially when they are new or unfamiliar. For example if it seems easy to just send in this form, but if we have to print it out and then fill out the form and then they want us to upload it to this new app for school we got to download the app we got to create a login now we got to skin it in the text not cooperating it sounds really simple to just quote unquote send in a form and yet here it is all these steps so we have to take to actually send in the form. This is one of my favorites. is are you a cabinet lever opener like when you're cooking at the end? Do you look around and like half the cabinets in your kitchen are open We don't finish the second part of the step, which is always third, you open the door, you take the thing out, then you close the door behind you. And when I cook, it's like every door is open.
Patricia Sung 16:31
Another way that planning and organizing can be really difficult is meal planning. This is really hard for moms. Because when you think about meal planning, it's like, oh, this will be so helpful. But when you back up and look at what are the steps to meal plan, okay, so to choose the meals, but we we got to look at our calendar. What's going on? Do I have an activity that night? Do I have time to cook? What's going on? Okay, I have time to cook. Figure that out. Choose the meal. Make the list? What's in the pantry? Oh, I gotta go to the store. I need to make a list. Oh, I forgot the list. I went from memory. I bought extra stuff. I didn't buy the stuff that I needed. I brought the food home. I gotta put it away. I gotta remember. Oh, I was supposed to be making this tonight. Not spaghetti. We were supposed to be making tacos. And then you get there. You're like, well, I don't really want to eat Taco Tuesday on Tuesday. I really would want to have some soup today. Now you got to start with a new plan. You got to cook it you got to clean it. You gotta probably the leftovers. Yeah. Why is feeding are humans so hard? Being ourselves is hard.
Patricia Sung 21:00
Okay. Number six. hyperactivity. This is another hallmark symptom for people with ADHD. But usually we think of it like they can't sit still. They're always walking around. They can't stay in their chair having a really high level of energy. And there are a lot of people who are super high energy ADHD errs. And there are also many of us, me included, that are not high energy. People with ADHD. I have days that I am high energy, but they're definitely fewer than more. What does this look like in women? There's the very like, stereotypical talking lot talking too fast. I do do that. Your thoughts just come and go so fast that you'd like they're always spilling out like word vomit? Maybe you're the one who's you know, their friends. Or it's like, how are you always so so energetic? Like do you ever sleep, some of us only have those specific days and we just rage clean our entire house. And then the next day, we have no energy left in the tank, and then we just crash. Sometimes this looks like the inability to sit still, like maybe we can stay in the chair. But we're struggling with fidgeting and tapping her foot or like this is where a lot of us are doing things like leg bouncing, biting fingernails, hair twirling pulling out your hair, which is called trichotillomania. For me I always say that my hyperactivity is on the inside. It's in my mind, my thoughts are always moving. There's always one after another, it makes it really hard to explain myself sometimes a lot of ADHD women have trouble falling asleep at night because their thoughts are racing. And for some people this hyper activity looks like they're just always on the go, you know, attacking the day with ferocity doing tasks or tasks or tasks. You know, people who can't sit down and watch a movie, they start like wiping off the coffee table and straightening this stuff over here. But also a lot of those people will either stay away past our bedtime because they can't slow down or they just crash at night. They're the ones falling asleep on the couch because they can't get themselves off the couch and like get moving forward, which is part of task initiation. But let me stay on track here.
Patricia Sung 22:58
Number seven, impulsivity. Usually we think of impulsivity as just jumping in out of turn interrupting people, which is true, but it also can be impulsivity, like having impulsive spending, which we just talked about in our last episode. But like those impulse buys, even though you know you have a budget, you're saving for whatever you still end up spending it on things that you weren't planning on. A lot of ADHD women will quit their job without a backup plan. A lot of us are hobby hoppers and we jump into a hobby we buy all the supplies were super into it for like a month and then we've moved on new copy all those supplies are just collecting dust.
Patricia Sung 22:58
Another way that impulsivity will show up is that a lot of people with ADHD tend to do a lot of white lies covering up when they have screwed up or don't want to get in trouble for something or don't or the answer to the question. Also picking fights or like creating drama because that's more interesting than boring life. Things like binge eating junk food late at night texting your ex even though you thought you'd never speak to them again. These are always impulsive behavior shows up in ADHD women who Okay, let's keep going memory feeling easily over bound people with ADHD feel easily overwhelmed because of everything we just talked about. We can get really overloaded with all the tasks that we need to do we freeze or shut down because we're so overwhelmed. We don't know where to start, we're worried we might fail. What does this look like in daily life? So when people give us too much information at one time or too many instructions at one time, our brain just like shuts down it was like nope, too much can hold all that it's also overwhelming when they're giving you these instructions in a very like noisy or distracted environment. We easily get overwhelmed when it comes time to make a decision. There's too many choices like when you're looking at the menu at a restaurant and it's just like oh my goodness, where do I even start feeling like you have to like read all the every last choice and decide like what's the best thing and then you're worried you're gonna forget something so you're repeating your order in your head like 15 times you don't forget something and then you still end up forgetting something and some people will feel very overwhelmed when they're in like a high intensity work mode of like plowing through things. Some people will dive into hyper focus there and just you know, could do it for hours and then other people are like whew, I need a break. This is too much. And another time that we often feel overwhelmed as moms with ADHD is at bedtime Medusa mom comes out because we are out of patience or out of energy. We are tired of making decisions and we just lose our ever loving you know what on our kids because we we don't have anything left. We are overwhelmed out of all resources to stay calm.
Patricia Sung 22:58
Number nine hypersensitivity. People with ADHD are often highly sensitive. It can be to outside stimuli, smells, sights, light, our own emotions, emotions of others, we tend to be very perceptive people. We also can have something called rejection sensitivity, dysphoria, which there's a lot of arguments about is this just a trauma response? Or is this a separate thing that people with ADHD have? jury's still out, they're still working on that research. But either way, it is a disorder that's commonly associated with ADHD where you have like an actual physical response of pain when you are criticized when you are feeling hurt or judge is an actual like a physical reaction to the words. So how does hypersensitivity show up in regular life, this links back to the being overwhelmed so being overstimulated by the end of the day. Feeling touched out by your kids or your spouse, like needing extra physical space, feeling overwhelmed or bothered by loud noises, strong smells, bright lights, itchy, uncomfortable clothing, a lot of us were or still are picky eaters. So being bothered by textures, the way things taste or smell, having a heightened pain sensitivity, and also getting really overwhelmed in places like concert sports arenas, loud kids, for me, Kasko very overwhelming. And if you don't have any loop, earbuds, I recommend those they're noise dampening, not noise cancelling, which makes me feel better about having small kids in the house. Okay, number 10. This one often seems like an oxymoron to say that people with ADHD can hyper focus on tasks when we're known to have attention deficit disorder. But when we're interested in something, we can stick with it sometimes to the point of obsession, and neglecting other things that aren't important. So what does this look like in daily life? Getting lost in a fun project or a new hobby and not realizing how many hours have passed, obsessing over a new hobby and neglecting your responsibilities and what needs to get done going down Google rabbit holes and learning everything there is about a topic when you should have been making dinner over thinking or analyzing, like the whole analysis paralysis when you research something and it's time to like actually make a decision. It's like, well, maybe I should just do a little more research. Do I know enough about this? There's often ruminating, where that's a fancy word for just like mentally obsessing over something for hours or days. Especially when it comes to like a mistake you've made or a rude comment from someone else. And those thoughts just spinning and spinning and spinning and not going away into an even stronger level are intrusive thoughts that have you rocketing down this what if trail and you just can't let it go? And you feel like an awful person because you're imagining the worst when that is a very common symptom with people with ADHD. And there's also things you can do about that. So you don't have to suffer in silence. I'm like, oh, like you want to hold on the tangent? Like stay on the episode. Patricia.
Patricia Sung 22:58
Okay, number 11. easily distracted. Yes, we are easily distracted by our own thoughts outside things going on. This contributes to having trouble paying attention to stuff and forgetting things. What does this look like in real life? For a woman with ADHD? Again, these insatiable curiosity is where we go down the Google rabbit hole. And each new piece of information leads us to a new thing and a new thing. And all of a sudden, your dinners burning because you dove so far down how black holes are formed. Here we are. Having the urge to check your notifications on your phone every time it makes a noise. And then when you total your phone, you get distracted and you ever actually looked at the thing that was the notification for all sudden you're scrolling Instagram, you forgot what you're supposed to be doing in the first place, unintentionally, not listening to the conversation because you got distracted by your own more interesting or possibly more urgent thoughts. If something is really eating out you that needs to get done, that will continue to distract you over and over again until you do something about it. And another way that distractibility really, really is hard is in relationships. So trying to stay mentally present with friends or during conversations when your kids are telling you the longest story ever feeling like you're are not a good person because you're not staying with them and really giving them the attention that you want to give them or that they deserve. And even with the best intentions, it's hard to stay present in those moments. This can show up also during being intimate with your partner and not being able to stay present. In that moment. It can look like getting distracted by whatever's going on in life and not giving your relationships the priority that you want. So like, you know, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Oh, it's like absence makes me forget.
Patricia Sung 30:35
So like, you know, when my husband was traveling, I wasn't missing him the way I would see other people talk about how they miss their partners. Like he wasn't here. I made my life work while he wasn't here. And then he came back. And then our life was together again. And a lot of times people will hear like, Oh, why don't you text me? Why don't you check on me more? Why don't you call me more? It's like, well, I'm paying attention to like, what's going on here in front of me not worried about what's not here. And this can take a toll on our relationships.
Patricia Sung 31:05
Number 12 impatience because we are always on the go. And we often have a lot of energy. We struggle with impulsivity. All these pieces come together in impatience. What does this look like in real life? Well, getting really irritated that somebody is taking a long time to tell you a story with a just please get to the point, I cannot listen to the story anymore. It can be frequently interrupting during conversations, perhaps you are like me and constantly jumping in the shorter line at the grocery store. Even though since I'm still taking longer, we can get impatient and frustrated when other people can't read our minds and know exactly what we mean. And they can't give us exactly what we want or what we're asking for. Sometimes we get impatient when we've been working on something for a while. And we haven't achieved the goal as quickly as we wanted to. And we want to move on struggling to not be good at everything right away and having to really or get something long term and getting through that struggle portion, not wanting to wait for the gratification just wanting that immediate gratification.
Patricia Sung 32:02
Now these last two are kickers because these are things that are not listed in the DSM five and it's so frustrating because these are two of the biggest pieces of ADHD to me are emotional regulation and energy regulation. Let me dive in first to emotional regulation, or perhaps we should say emotional dysregulation. When you have ADHD, you also tend to be a highly sensitive person, we are easily overcome by your strong emotions. So you take the fact that we're very sensitive, we are impatient or impulsive. And very quickly, we can end up in meltdown mode, which may look like a grown up temper tantrum or being very angry very quickly. So what does this look like in real life in that getting angry very quickly, like lashing out in the moment and regretting it later? Not taking that pause? You know, we've been talking a lot about the pause the last few weeks not taking the pause to consider how we want to react to the person who is irritating us at the moment. We also have a lot of trouble regulating our emotions when we are overtired. So being snippy snappy at people when we really need to go to bed. This is an area where my husband I get in big discussions because when I'm tired, I'm like, this is another time to talk to me about anything important. And he's like we talk about this before we go to bed, oh, those never ends. Well, we often have exaggerated mood swings during your menstrual cycle. So having really strong PMS or even PMDD I have an episode on that. I'll link in the show notes. If you want to read more on that, I think was 127 If I remember correctly, when we get overwhelmed with emotion like crying right away or shutting down or melting down having like, visibly like what other people perceive as a way bigger reaction than whatever the situation warrants. So then other people are thinking like this is a level five concern, but your reaction is like a level eight. And a lot of people not understanding like why are you so emotional about this, it could be losing your temper at the drop of a hat. A lot of women with ADHD will have a bipolar diagnosis or an anxiety diagnosis. Some of them go hand in hand you have both and sometimes it's a misdiagnosis. This is why it matters that you see a professional who truly understands and has a lot of experience with ADHD. So they can suss out, is this an issue where you have both things or is it that one is covering up the other which leads us into
Patricia Sung 34:21
number 14 Energy regulation, our energy does not flow at a constant rate. It fluctuates randomly fluctuates the time of day fluctuates with our cycle. All of these can lead to having a diagnosis of chronic fatigue. A lot of us have autoimmune issues like I mentioned earlier that like rage cleaning the house on Monday and then Tuesday having absolutely no energy at all to do anything. Perhaps even Wednesday we often have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Doesn't matter how much we slept, we still have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. We don't feel rested, we still feel tired. We still feel fatigue no matter what quantity of sleep we have accumulated. We're always tired yard, we often hit that mid afternoon slump where you just can't get off the couch. Or perhaps your slump is in the morning or it's really hard to get going until later in the day, maybe your most productive time is at night when everyone else is winding down. That's when you're finally hitting your stride. We often see issues with energy regulation in that we overcommit and we push ourselves really hard. And then we burn out ADHD burnout is a very real thing. And the other way that we see energy regulation issues is in the diagnosis of depression.
Patricia Sung 35:33
Obviously, you will feel depressed, if you can't get things done. If you're struggling to follow through on things, all these things are going to weigh on you. They all take energy, they all take resources from you, and then where you end up depressed. Now this is something I want to dive into a little bit more before we wrap up is that there are so many comorbidities that go along with ADHD, it's a very terrible word that basically just means things that tend to go along with ADHD. Sometimes people have both. And sometimes the other issue is covering up the ADHD and the ADHD is actually the root of the problem. So things like anxiety and depression, of course, you're anxious because your thoughts never stop, of course, you're depressed, you can't seem to get anything done. Of course, you're tired, you're devoting all your energy to all this extra mental work that other people don't have to do. You'll see the bipolar, where women will get a bipolar diagnosis. And then if you actually track when the Mood swings are happening, oh look, it matches up with your hormone cycles. We talked about PMDD earlier, and you can listen to that episode 127, where you have extreme PMS, where it even borders on like self harm, and really serious mental health issues only in that few days or a week before your cycle, and maybe the few days into your cycle. And then the other two weeks are like night and day comparing. We also have things like learning issues like dyslexia. dyscalculia, we have processing disorders like sensory processing disorders, or lung syndrome. A lot of people with ADHD also have OCD and intrusive thoughts. Many of us have eating disorders, because your food is something you can control. In a very out of control world, many of us have a lot of autoimmune issues. Often autism overlaps with ADHD and people will have both also gifted and talented children often have ADHD.
Patricia Sung 37:33
Now, this is only a partial list, I can probably list 14 More things that often go along with ADHD. These are the ones I see the most often. I'm sure I forgot some because I have ADHD. This is why I always support speaking with a professional and getting a diagnosis. Mostly because ADHD rarely travels alone, there's usually something else going on. And you want to treat that as well. Often treating your ADHD will as like the root like, here's I love this analogy of ADHD being the tree. And the roots are all the ADHD and all the problems and all the struggles. So when you treat your tree well and you give it the right food and water and minerals and sunlight, nom, it will grow well. And then at the top, here comes all the leaves and the branches are all these other problems, the depression, the anxiety, they're all these different branches. And a lot of times we're just treating all the branches are pruning the branches. And we're like, Well, why are these leaves on this branch getting yellow, and we're so focused on all the branches, we don't realize that the issue is actually that the tree, the root, the ADHD is the one causing all these problems. And so if we focus on the actual tree in the roots and treat the ADHD, a lot of the issues going on the branches will get better. Is it going to resolve them all? Solve them all, cure them all? No, but they will get a lot easier to manage. And then you can go in and start addressing all these other ones. Unless there's something like on fire. Obviously, if you have a branch on fire gotta address that first. So like if you're having suicidal thoughts, please, let's deal with that. First, reach out for help talk to somebody deal with what's on fire first, and then dig into the root. Because pruning all the branches, you can do that as much as you want, and it's not going to save your tree. Now, this was a lot of information. This episode is way longer than my episodes normally are. Yet I felt it was really important for you to have real concrete examples of how to relate back so that when you explain it to your doctor, or you're trying to explain it to somebody important in your life, why you believe that this is not that you have to justify anybody but just in case you want to do you have concrete evidence that shows and relates back to the symptoms that they're going to look for to say yes, you have this issue.
Patricia Sung 39:45
Now when you're ready to go talk to your doctor recommend go back and listen to episode 120. That's literally called like how to prepare for your diagnosis appointment. So giving you a pep talk and prep all in one and how to go into that appointment and also go back and listen to episode 140 with Dr. Sasha, where she talks about ADHD diagnosis and women, these are two great resources for you. Now should you go to see someone and you don't feel heard and you don't feel like they're listening to you, you don't feel like they validated you please go see another person go get a second opinion, when you know in your gut that something's not sitting right, I want you to listen to that, because that is another symptom of women with ADHD. Most of the women that I work with do not trust themselves, they do not trust what they feel because they've spent their whole lives being told that their perception was slightly off and ignoring that. So when we consistently ignore what we're being, like what we feel in our bodies, it becomes easier and easier to ignore what we know to be true in our gut, in our heart in our mind, so I'm giving you permission to fully listen to what your body is telling you. And when you go see someone and you don't feel like they're listening to you. It is okay to get a second opinion. And know that given all this information, I know what I went through here was really a lot of the struggles we didn't talk a lot about the strengths that come with having ADHD, because I believe it is a balance is that as much as we have the capacity for struggle, and things are hard, we also have the capacity for success. And when we set up our lives to fit us, we can fully be successful, we can set up our lives to make sense for us. That's why we have the options for therapy, we have the options for coaching, we have the options for learning from other people who have ADHD and have walked before us. I have tons of resources on my website for you lots of free stuff. I also have courses, I have coaching, like these are all resources that I want you to have available to you to know that you don't have to struggle by yourself.
Patricia Sung 41:48
There's so much help available now compared to where we were even 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago that we're talking about ADHD. It's been well documented since the 1700s. Nothing new,we know more every day. And it is possible to figure out how to work your life around the way that your brain functions and make it make sense for you. So head over to my website, grab the checklist, prepare yourself for your diagnosis appointment, or prepare yourself to decide is this something I want to pursue? And regardless if you end up with an official diagnosis or not know that you have the resources available to you to get support. So head on over to patriciasung.com/adhd-symptoms. That's patriciasung.com/adhd-symptoms. I'll talk to you soon successful mama. For more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com