The 8 Most Common Things We Hear from moms with ADHD
So many women who have been diagnosed with ADHD or suspect they have ADHD find themselves wondering what could be a symptom and what is “normal”. Often this leads to a bit of imposter syndrome, and questioning the diagnosis and themselves. These folks are often seeking a better understanding of the ways ADHD presents in women – and maybe some validation of their experiences.
It is so easy to feel paralyzed (and our ADHD brains don’t help here) when there seem to be a lot of different directions to go to start helping ourselves feel better and cope differently. The overwhelm creates a frozen stance for many folks with ADHD. Having concrete guidance goes a long way!
Emotion regulation is a new concept for parents of our generation – not only are we often just learning about it ourselves, but we’re expected to teach our children about it – and most of us weren’t really taught how to cope with intense feelings when we were growing up. To top it off, ADHD intensifies emotional experiences for many neurodiverse folks. The good news is that emotion regulation is a skill we can learn, practice and get better at.
Ooof, this one really hits home for many of us – there is so much pain wrapped up in being misunderstood, and this creates a painful distance between us and our loved ones. We also might start to see ourselves negatively with the outside perspective that it shouldn’t be so hard.
It feels pretty awful to be told your experience of the world, or who you are in the world is “too much”. Especially when these comments have come from a young age – because we internalize those beliefs – so at our core, we might actually think we are too much too. This is part of why so many women with ADHD start to “mask” – to find ways to blend in more – to “be less”. And it is EXHAUSTING.
Despite our good senses and logical brains telling us we only see highlight reels online, so many of us still find ourselves feeling inadequate because it’s just so easy to compare. And for ADHD moms, that pressure to keep up can eat away at us, leading us to do more than we have capacity for. This almost always leads to overstimulation and feeling shut down, burnt out, or experiencing rage.
So many parents find themselves in this place, and for the ADHD mom, the intense feelings of failure around not feeling they are juggling all the roles well can be debilitating. Women in our culture are told they need to sacrifice all for their families – the intensive mothering narrative is deeply embedded – and sometimes it’s actually less about finding ADHD hacks or strategies to get sh*t done, and more about shifting this narrative – of redistributing the load and working toward more equity in our relationships, and finding ways to let go of doing it all ourselves – learning to rely on others through healthy interdependence over hyper-individualism.
We can see how our ADHD impacts those around us – even if we have loving, supportive, and understanding people in our circle, we hear this fear creep in for so many moms with ADHD. It can feel like we are a burden – it comes back to feeling like we are too much, we aren’t good enough. This is internalized shame – and it is so painful. And it is true, our symptoms can and do impact our loved ones. With the right support you can develop your voice of self-compassion, and begin to question the belief that you are a burden.
