Symptoms of Inattentive ADHD or Just Your Quirky Personality: What does adult ADHD look like in women? - Best Of Series #196
“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.
This list is particularly helpful for women who don’t present the typical ADHD symptoms, so if you’re curious about inattentive ADHD or how successful, high-achieving women with graduate degrees have ADHD, this episode is for you!
This episode is part of our Best Of Series, and originally aired in September 2022 as episode 158.
Wish you could get a sneak peek before joining? You can!
You’re invited to Successful Mama Meetup’s very first Open House!
Join us on July 26, 2023 for either of our meetups, and meet the other moms, see who you’d hang out with at the retreat, so you know we’re the kinda people you wanna hang out with before you jump in. (hint, we’re pretty amazing IMHO.)
No charge, no pressure. Just come hang out at one or both of the events!
Let me know you wanna come right here and I’ll send you the zoom link.
And since it's on Zoom, everyone can come no matter what part of the world you live in. And for our mamas in Asia and Australia, the second meetup is on Thursday, July 27th for you.
If you’re listening to this episode after July and want to come to the next Open House, join the waitlist, and I’ll let you know next time I host one!
Patricia Sung 00:00
Have you ever been invited to a party and you realize, like you weren't going to know many people there. And so then you like dreaded all the way going up to the event or you talk yourself out of it, so you don't go? Because it's scary to put yourself out there in a situation that like, what if I don't like them? What if they don't like me, and it feels stressful? Well, I don't want you to feel that way about hanging out in this community, Mama. So I am hosting an open house and I want you to come and meet all the mamas. So that you know what kind of people we are, Ps are great, and that you feel comfortable joining in this community. Because if you are thinking about joining successful mama meetups, or thinking about joining the retreat, I want you to know that these are your people, and what better way to do that and actually meet the people. So come join us at our open house, we are hosting an open house in unsuccessful mama meetups on July 26, at both of the meeting, so we have two meetings, you can come either one and come meet the moms hang out see what it's like pretty much all the moms who are going on the retreat so far are also part of successful mama meetups. So you'll get the feel for like, Who are these people? What's the vibe? Do I want to hang out with them? Yes, you do. It's gonna be so fun. So come hang out with us. So it's totally no charge free 99 Come hang out at successful mama meetups on July 26, either meeting or come to both. That's really cool, too. Our meetings are twice on Wednesdays, if you're on this side of the Earth that I'm on there at 1230, Eastern and 9pm. Eastern. Or if you're on the other side of the world, then the second meeting actually is your Thursday morning. So if you're in Asia or Australia, it's actually going to be July 27. On Thursday morning, go over to my website at Patricia sung.com forward slash open house. It's all one word, o p e n h o u s e and sign up for the link so that you get the Zoom link for either of the meetings or muscle virtual. So anybody can come anywhere in the world to see what time it is on your timezone. And come join us for either one or both of the meetings. For the first 30 minutes, we hang out and get stuff done. So I have help there for like how to plan your week. Or if you just like I just need to get some stuff done in the body doubling helps do that. Like there's no wrong way to show up and do stuff at successful meetups. Did you get something done? Great. That's what we're here for. Okay, so that's the first 30 minutes. And then the second 30 minutes is social time where we hang out, we make it fun, you actually want to show up to the body doubling because you get to hang out with your friends, and meet people who understand how your brain works, and you feel at home. So come join us July 26. And either or both of the meetings, sign up at Patricia sung.com forward slash open house and I can't wait to see your face. And if you are listening to this after July 26. Still go over to that link and see what the next one is. I think I'm gonna do the second. I'll see you then. Okay, onto the episode.
Patricia Sung 03:07
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 worthy 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 04:12
Hey there successful mama. It's your friend Patricia Sung. Welcome to our summer best of series. Now over the summer, I'm going to be taking a break to slow down a little bit hanging out more with my kids. I'm also managing and like why am I seeing slowing down there is no slowing down. I just have to reshift priorities here, hanging out my kids dealing with all of the construction project that's been going on. It has been a lot this spring and I realized like I gotta let up this summer in order to be able to do all the things shifting some stuff around so it's like how do I still deliver great content but also like not just do the same old same old cars Hello ADHD. So here's what we're doing. I am going to be sharing some friends with you. So while I will sprinkle in a couple of episodes
Patricia Sung 05:00
From my own podcast, I chose some of the ones that were like the most popular downloads in the last few months. But I think that they are the most popular downloaded episodes because they cover a lot of the like basic things that we need to know about our ADHD. And we could use a little reminder, sometimes just the basic things. So welcome to the best of series. And let's dive into today's episode. Today's episode is a best of from my podcast, and it is a replay of Episode 158, which originally aired back in September of last year, all about our ADHD symptoms. I specifically wanted to dive into like, yes, we can read the DSM five and know what it says but like, what does it actually look like in real life? What did these symptoms look like in your actual day to day? So what does it look like to have a more inattentive type of ADHD as a mom, it a lot of the hyperactivity pieces are in here too. But I specifically wanted to dive into the inattentive details, because those are the things that go unseen. So this is one of your favorite episodes back again, in all its glory, Episode 158, from last year, and please go download the Symptoms Checklist that's included in here, fill it out, take it to your doctor and use it to feel confident in going in and asking for your diagnosis from your practitioner. So that you can say here is what I see here is what I'm dealing with. So that you feel confident in that discussion and really feeling heard by the person that you're meeting with. So let's dive in diagnosis by tick tock, 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 or 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. I frequently get messages from listeners or people on social media asking me like they tell me their whole life story. And they asked me like, Does this sound like ADHD? And I'm like, Oh, 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 can 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 is are telling me about their childhood. This person clearly has ADHD. I know many people. 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 with 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 am 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 in 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 up the desk doc. And at 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 tests. 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, that's 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. 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.
Patricia Sung 10:00
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 diagnosis. There's also a gender bias involved. 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 feminine characteristics. 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 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. 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 will 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 just stopped her 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, bla bla bla, whatever it is. And a lot of this can be I'm gonna say competitive races. 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 why just kind of feel, you know, a little bit of this. And sometimes they 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 of it under the rug, when you got a whole list of information. And you look like you did your research. And you come in being confident 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, whenever you see fit for that. 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 Robley. It could have been Laurie depart. Probably she looked us up before I said it. But I think it was Linda that said ROM is 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 ADHD. 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? So this is my goal here is to take this very clinical list of the DSM five and translated into what does that actually look like in your life? Now disclaimer number two, everyone is different. You might identify with
Patricia Sung 15:00
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 a 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 a lawyer one day because they find every loophole to every rule, or they're really creative in architecture. And you 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. 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 is saying to you because you accidentally stop listening halfway through there, she'll having trouble sticking with tasks that are repetitive, that require focus for a really long time. And again, are prominent, 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. 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 look hard. 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 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 and not too long. Um, I cannot go on every tangent that my brain wants to go on tonight, 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 frequently forgetting 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, walking into a room and being like, oh, 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 and 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 when 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 when to 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. The list of 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 number three time blindness your
Patricia Sung 19:59
part
Patricia Sung 20:00
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 of day it 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, it's really 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 the scene 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 a 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. 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 flyers, homework, all the stuff you're like, Well, I don't want to throw it away, because I might need it. But I also don't know where it goes. So it just sits there, clutter is usually unmeasured 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 will 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. 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 out of 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 the 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 I'm familiar, 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 gotta download the app, we gotta create a login. Now we're going to scan it in the text not cooperating, it sounds really simple to just quote unquote, send in a form. And yet here it is, all the steps that 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, 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 gets like, every door is open. 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, she had to choose the meals. But wait, we got to look at her 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 the store. I need to make a list. Oh, I forgot the list. I went from memory about 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 got to be the leftovers. Yeah. Why is feeding our humans so hard? Being ourselves is hard. What if there was a way to put together your planning for the week so that you actually wanted to do the planning. You wanted to show up and figure it out? Because now your day is smoother, easier, calmer, it flows. You're not surprised by that field trip or that dentist's appointment, you know that that's coming? What have you had support to make the plan so you can actually follow through on it and feel good about yourself. This is the place to be to get your ish together, you are invited to successful mama meetups. It's a twist on productivity and community. It's time set aside to make your weekly plan followed by hanging out with other moms with ADHD who get you so you don't need to earn the fun. You're intertwining them in the same event. So you want to show up every week for just a few dollars a week, you'll have your plan set so that you can accomplish the tasks you need to get done. You know, you're trying to work on your next business idea. Do that fun craft with your kids has been sitting on the counter for months, you know the answer to the dreaded what's for dinner, you are present in the conversation with your kids after school or at dinner. Because you aren't a ball of stress. You can take care of you when you have a plan. When you have this you feel competent, capable, energetic, hopeful, relieved, like you can breathe. So sign up now at Patricia sung.com. Forward slash meetup. And welcome to the successful mama community. We meet twice a week. So check the times and see which one works best for you. We also have a Facebook group where you can connect with other moms because this isn't just about the time that we're together. This is about building your support system. So join us every week Sign up now at Patricia sung.com. Forward slash meetup.
Patricia Sung 28:20
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 ears. 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. Do you 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 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 our 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 hyperactivity 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. 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 we're super into it for like a month and then we've moved on new copy all those supplies are just collecting dust. Another way to 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. 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 hyperfocus there and just you know could do it for hours and then other people are like cool, 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. 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 from Casco 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. Now, 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 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 like, 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, I want to hold on the tension. I'm like, stay on the episode. Patricia. 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 dinner is 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 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 roads like absence makes me forget.
Patricia Sung 37:55
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. Number 12 impatience because we are always on the go. And we often have a lot of energy. We struggle with impulsivity. All of 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 it always ends up 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. 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 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 time. Bert 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 that render Well, we often have exaggerated mood swings during our 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, basically like what other people perceive as a way bigger reaction than whatever the situation warrants. So there 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 number 14 Energy regulation, our energy does not flow at a constant rate. It fluctuates, randomly fluctuates at the time a 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, 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 overcome it 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. Obviously, you will feel depressed if you can't get things done. If you're struggling to follow through one 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 in 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. 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 route, 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 route. 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 that 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. 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 a lot of 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 or 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. 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 makes 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 https://www.patriciasung.com/adhd-symptoms
Patricia Sung 49:56
That's https://www.patriciasung.com/adhd-symptoms I'll talk to you soon successful for more resources classes and community head over to my website motherhood in adhd.com