Adhd Women Quotes

The good part about having a mental disorder is having a valid reason for all the stupid things we do because of a damaged prefrontal cortex. However, the best part is seeing someone completely sane do the exact same things, without a valid excuse. This is the great equalizer of God and his little gift for all us crazy people to enjoy.

Some women are built by the fire. Yet, there are some that are the FIRE!

Many women latch onto language from popular psychology, such as "panic attack," when often they are instead experiencing sensory overwhelm.

You can't compare men or women with mental disorders to the normal expectations of men and women in without mental orders. Your dealing with symptoms and until you understand that you will always try to find sane explanations among insane behaviors. You will always have unreachable standards and disappointments. If you want to survive in a marriage to someone that has a disorder you have to judge their actions from a place of realistic expectations in regards to that person's upbringing and diagnosis.

Being overwhelmed can lead to procrastination, which often leads to being chronically late for deadlines and appointments. Being chronically late can take a toll on your self-esteem and damage your relationships. You’ve probably heard your whole life that you are uncaring, selfish, immature, or worse. Executive function impairment is tied directly to a distorted sense of time and a struggle to manage it.

She said at the national ADDA (Attention Deficit Disorder Association) conference that their AD/HD symptoms often only show up at home after an exhausting effort to “hold it together all day.

If you go to an event, give yourself permission to leave early when you’re worn down, knowing that you want to go and connect to people, but that you want to leave before you stop enjoying the situation. Set it up and think it through in advance so you don’t feel anxious. Plan for your AD/HD.

AD/HD is such a full-time job that some women have never had the opportunity to stop and figure out a way of doing things differently. They haven’t discovered how to change the rules, what it means to feel comfortable, or how to live without feeling overwhelmed. They just don’t have the concept.

One way some women mask their AD/HD symptoms is to anchor their lives with extensive systems and controls. They may seriously limit the amount of activities in their lives in order to keep things under control.

After a woman understands that she does have something called AD/HD and has had it for a long time, she begins to look back and see how deeply it has affected every area of her life. At this point she will often move into the next stage—anger. She often feels anger at lost opportunities, looking back at the paths that she didn’t take. She focuses on the point at which things started to go off course and begins to feel anger at a system that let her down as a child.

But like so many neurodivergent women and girls (and people of color and, really, anyone but cis white men), I internalized the criticisms and carried around a lot of shame while I exhausted myself trying to fit into a world that was not built for my brain.

The reason that common AD/HD strategies alone don’t always work is because they usually focus on merely controlling the negative and difficult part of the AD/HD. You want to focus on supporting the new growth, not just taking care of the difficulties. As you grow and become more and more successful, you’ll constantly think of new ways to form cushions of support and structure underneath you. The emphasis should be on nourishing your successes, not just managing your deficits.

The less you have, the less time there will be keeping it organized and clean.

Notice when you keep expecting a strategy to work, even though it consistently falls short. This isn’t your fault; it’s not the right approach for you.

Women with AD/HD often move away from relationships in the initial stages of forming friendships because of their difficulty in making small talk or difficulty with finding the words that they want to say when they want to say them. Sometimes it is as difficult to find the words in your messy mind as it is to find a paper on your messy desk. Kate Kelly and Peggy Ramundo (1995, pg. 66) call this a “reaction time irregularity” They go on to point out that a person with this difficulty might look rude or disinterested when they actually may be having “trouble retrieving things from memory in a demand situation”.

Many menopausal women are now being diagnosed with AD/HD for the first time because previously developed coping skills that hid the symptoms are compromised once the estrogen changes exacerbate the symptoms.

Writer Tara Mohr (2014) discusses ways in which women minimize their impact with the use of qualifiers in their communications. Similar to “I’m sorry,” one of these qualifiers is the word “just.” Mohr explains that using this modifier—as in “I just want to add…” or “I just think…”—diminishes a woman’s power. “Just” quickly disempowers what might otherwise be a stunning idea by connoting something more along the lines of “barely” or “I’m saying this with apology.

It feels like we’re living in a time where neurodivergence is more broadly understood, or even accepted – with people, learning about the ways conditions like Autism and ADHD have historically been underdiagnosed, or underreported, especially in women.

In addition to beginning and maintaining relationships, many women have let established relationships slip away. Small occasions and important events with other people are missed: there are an increasing number of missed thank-you notes, missed birthdays, or invitations that are not reciprocated. The connections just aren’t kept up, and eventually they’re gone. They then anticipate scolding, rejection, or negative reactions when they think about trying to reconnect or rectify a situation, so they tend to avoid them altogether. While this may be true for everyone to some extent, women with AD/HD with particular histories or wounds are especially sensitive to and avoidant of this kind of potentially critical feedback further increasing the negative cycle.

ADHD and autism show up differently in women because we mask so well. We’ve been whipped so intensely by society to be nice and presentable, that our nature is muted at such a young age and we have no idea (to the tune of as many as 50% to 75% of girls with ADHD are missed).

Women with AD/HD want to connect but because of their difficulties with executive functioning, they often develop emotional barriers. The combination of cognitive struggles and emotional barriers or the intersection of these makes them avoid relationships even more which decreases the likelihood of starting or maintaining relationships or of reconnecting after a break in the connection. Many fears, negative expectations, and much pain surround these areas. They key for these women to take stock of their barriers and make a plan to slowly start getting back on the road to relationships.

I like that I have ten things on the go, all at once. I like that I'm always planning for the next thing. I like that I bring a high energy to my life, that I see it as a challenge. I like that my favourite thing to do on the flight home is to look at the airline route map to pick my next destination.

When the snow lifted and I was able to get my medication, I felt like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz in need of oil to begin moving again. Then as I began to write, my mind was much more fluid. I had the cognitive fuel to function. My brain was the same brain it was the day before, I had the same interest, motivation, ideas, and abilities, but without the medication, I just didn’t have the fuel to access those parts of me and use them. Even a luxury car like a Rolls Royce isn’t going anywhere without fuel. In the same way, medication for individuals with AD/HD is often the fuel that allows the brain to function smoothly and work to its potential.

You’ve probably heard comments such as these your entire life: “Why can’t she put her stuff away?” “Doesn’t she care how it affects the rest of us?” “Why is she so lazy?” “What a pig!” And you have most likely internalized these painful, derogatory, negative remarks over the years until they have slaughtered your self-esteem, making you wonder What is wrong with me?

Women with AD/HD also sometimes have difficulty with their relationships when invited to parties or family gatherings. Quite often they feel bombarded by too much stimulation, especially women without hyperactivity, and therefore withdraw, sometimes offending people without intending to as we discussed in earlier Chapter 9. They feel overloaded and exhausted, and they can’t keep up. They might have difficulty carrying on a good conversation, trying to think of what to say in the middle of so much activity. Many women with AD/HD mysteriously retreat to another room, become quiet, upset or withdrawn, or just don’t show up for these kinds of events. All these responses may give the message to others that you don’t care about them. They don’t know that you’re having a hard time or why.

Even today with most women working, even women without AD/HD have issues around money and taking care of their financial affairs. They aren’t as knowledgeable about financial matters as they’d like to be and often have control, power, and dependency issues. Combine this with AD/HD and feelings of being overwhelmed, and it creates an even greater tendency to shut down and tune out in this area.

So, I was thinkin’ of pickin’ up a job as a male stripper . It would be a way to meet women and earn money. Thoughts?” That should refocus his brother if no other way but him pausing to consider it. Quinn had undiagnosed ADHD, Chance was sure of it, and on occasion you had to refocus him. The same worked when Quinn went off on a tangent, you had to flash something bright to get him off the tangent, and in this case, the shiny was Chance becoming a stripper.

Research and clinical observation (not to mention people’s personal experiences) show that people with ADHD tend to have hypersensitivities in each of the five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight (Bailey and Haupt 2010, 182). I have no doubt that the tale of the princess and the pea is the portrait of a young woman with ADHD! I’m constantly yanking my shirt tail and skirts down and my socks and leotards up because any bunched fabric drives me nuts. Many women with ADHD (including me) would like to burn their bras, and it’s not (necessarily) because we’re feminists: it’s because of tactile hypersensitivity

Women with AD/HD often feel that despite years of trying to keep their heads above water that they are sinking deeper and deeper and are feeling more trapped and helpless. Many women with undiagnosed AD/HD are unable to explain or have anyone else help them understand their experience. It may be incomprehensible for others to believe that a seemingly successful woman, or a woman who has never been hyperactive, may have AD/HD. Instead, she may be written off as having typical “female emotional problems” or serious psychological disturbances. The greater her outward signs of success, the more baffling it is to those around her. And if she has been visibly struggling, it just reconfirms other people’s opinions that she is indeed weak, incompetent, or helpless.

The 2D:4D ratio is so variable, and the sex difference so small, that you can’t determine someone’s sex by knowing it. But it does tell you something about the extent of fetal testosterone exposure. So what does the extent of exposure (as assessed by the ratio) predict about adult behavior? Men with more “masculine” 2D:4D ratios tend toward higher levels of aggression and math scores; more assertive personalities; higher rates of ADHD and autism (diseases with strong male biases); and decreased risk of depression and anxiety (disorders with a female skew). The faces and handwriting of such men are judged to be more “masculine.” Furthermore, some reports show a decreased likelihood of being gay. Women having a more “feminine” ratio have less chance of autism and more of anorexia (a female-biased disease). They’re less likely to be left-handed (a male-skewed trait). Moreover, they exhibit less athletic ability and more attraction to highly masculine faces. And they’re more likely to be straight or, if lesbian, more likely to take stereotypical female sexual roles.72

In addition to work, ADHD can significantly impact family life and relationships. The effects of ADHD on relationships are not necessarily negative; in fact, they can bring out many positive attributes. Loved ones may feel energized around you and recognize that your sense of spontaneity and creative expression brings a lot of joy into their lives. On the flip side, friends and family may complain about imbalanced relationships, issues with intimacy, and/or fraught dynamics. If you get easily sidetracked, you may be late to dates with friends and family (or completely forget to meet). You may forget to respond to emails, calls, and test. Family and friends may take these behaviors personally. This can feel hurtful to you when you are trying your best with a brain that works differently than theirs. Of course, this does not have anything to do with how much you care for your loved ones, so communicating what you're going through and strengthening your organizational skills to respect important commitments can keep your treasured relationships humming along smoothly.

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Women should know the truth. They can take it; they are adults, not children. If a mother opts for formula rather than breastfeeding, there is good evidence that her baby will score lower on IQ tests and will have a higher risk of many illnesses including some cancers, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, diarrhea and ear infections. She should know that her own risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancer will be higher, as well as her daughter’s risk of breast cancer. The mother increases her own risk of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and becoming overweight by “choosing” formula feeding. There is accumulating evidence that the risk of mental illness (alcoholism, ADHD, schizophrenia) is increased by not breastfeeding. A recent study suggested that even behaviour problems in adolescents are more likely if the child was formula fed. The longer the child is breastfed, the lower the risk both for the child and the mother.

Schedule a comprehensive evaluation to not only provide a formal diagnosis, but to also delineate a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses. You will then be ready to participate in designing a total treatment plan that meets your unique needs. Get Treatment An effective, total treatment program is essential to future success. Such programs usually include a combination of medication, psychotherapy, coaching, alternative treatments, and necessary related services (support groups, counseling, family therapy, etc.). ADHD can have serious consequences, but it is treatable with safe and effective medications that can change people’s lives. (See Question 35 for a more in-depth discussion of medications used to treat ADHD.)

People with ADHD may have a quick temper (actually, Kelly says it is pretty common). “Their temper is activated quickly and easily. Their partner is often bewildered as the angry outburst comes from nowhere[70].

Depression shifts your mood downward with low energy and a lack of desire to talk to people (sometimes even leaving the house or getting out of bed is difficult as well).

The lack of attention to your friends may leave them a little insulted that your phone seems more interesting than what they have to say. This feeling can be a slippery slope if they don't understand how your brain works.

Women with ADHD can be sensitive to things around them, such as touching, which can feel annoying, lights that are too bright, or sounds that are too loud.

Just because my brain works differently from other people’s does not mean there is something “wrong” with me. My brain is beautiful and works in a way that is unique to me. Sometimes the way my brain works creates challenges for me. That’s okay—I am up for the challenge! I know that identifying these challenges and learning how to manage them more effectively can allow me to enjoy a richer, more fulfilling life.

Permission to Proceed:

The Journal of Attention Disorders published a study that discovered those with ADHD had more real-world creative achievements than those without[85]

The lack of motivation may have you believe that you're a "bad" employee, which can't be further from the truth.

When I look at the world today, from the physician's point of view, from the health point of view, what do we see? We see a society, not just in North America, but as globalization extends its reach around the world, we see increasing levels of certain illnesses, certain mental illnesses like ADHD, which didn't use to exist in certain countries and now, all of a sudden, they have a problem with it. Auto-immune diseases like inflammatory bowel disease that didn't use to exist in certain societies, now exist in these societies. If you look at North America, if you look at multiple sclerosis in the 1930s or 40s, the gender ratio was about 1 woman to every man. Now that ratio is about 3 and a half women for every man. If you look at something like asthma which is rising amongst kids... a study in the United States last year showed that the more episodes of racism a black American woman experiences, the greater the risk for asthma. We've known for a long time that the more stress the parents have, the greater the risk of the child having asthma. In North America millions of kids are on medication now, for depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more and more kids are being medicated all the time. If you look at something like autism spectrum disorder, it is now being diagnosed 40 times as often as it was 30 or 40 years ago. Anxiety is the fastest growing diagnose in North America amongst young people. The usual medical explanations for any of these phenomena just doesn't hold. Because medicine, for the most part, sees all of these problems as simply biological issues. Multiple sclerosis being a disease of the nervous system. Inflammatory bowel disease being a malaise of the gut. ADHD, depression, anxiety, addiction.. these are problems of the brain. And, for the most part, we like to rely on genetic explanations, that it is genes that are causing these things, or, if it is not genes, we don't know what is causing it. Of course, if you just look at that one little fact that I told you about the ratio of women and men in multiple sclerosis.. you know right away it can't be genetic. Because genes don't change in a population over 7 years and if they did, why would they change more for one gender than the other? Nor it can be the climate nor the diet because that also hasn't changed more for one gender than the other. Something else is going on. For ADHD and the fact that many more kids are being diagnosed.. that can't be genetic, cause genes don't change in a population over 10 years or 5 years or 15 years.

You have to take a leap of faith and believe that living an authentic life of personal power and pride is more important than the fear and pain that have been holding you back.

Women are expected to be nurturing, to be emotionally available at any time, and to provide the appropriate level of discipline for each child’s developmental needs, all while doing much of the shopping, cooking, cleaning and childcare.

Eating disorders were not shaped by selection, but mechanisms that regulate eating during famines were. ADHD was not shaped by selection, but mechanisms that regulate attention were. Serious depression was not shaped by natural selection, but capacities for normal low and high mood were.

Medications for ADHD like guanfacine and clonidine (FDA-approved medications

An adulthood diagnosis of ADHD can be, among other things, physically dizzying, and that I once feared 'never beginning to live’ now feels completely legitimate. However, I am learning that my fear was borne of the assumption that ‘truly living’ is something ‘other’ than what I experience, and it isn’t.’ - Katy Fraser, Talking in Diamonds

You see, we’re not hyperactive, just otherworldly energetic. We’re not distractible, just incessantly curious. And yes, we can be impulsive, but some experts believe that creativity is simply impulsivity gone right (and one reason why many believe that Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso all had ADHD).

strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

For many women with ADHD, we may be able to sit still but we can’t stop moving through our never-ending thoughts.

Embrace the unique strengths that ADHD brings into your life, and let them be the foundation upon which you build a balanced and fulfilling future.

People with ADHD tend to act much more impulsively, with behavior racing ahead of rational thought. Our executive supervisor takes longer to put on the brakes. We end up interrupting people without meaning to,

People with ADHD have impairment in this selective, sustained attention process. Our focus involuntarily shifts based on whatever most recently grabbed our interest. Like a pinball in an arcade machine, our concentration bounces quickly from blinking light to flashing sound without consciously meaning to switch gears. This makes tasks like studying, paperwork, or listening to others extraordinarily difficult. We end up taking in fragments rather than an integrated whole. From the outside, it appears like we are ignoring the person, subject, or task at hand. In reality, our attention gets derailed unintentionally. Common attention regulation challenges include: ● inability to pay close attention to details ● difficulty staying focused on one task ● appearing not to listen in conversations ● losing track of instructions easily ● failure to follow through on responsibilities ● impulse control difficulties

Modern brain imaging has revealed that individuals with ADHD have unique structural and chemical nuances in their brains that influence everything from their emotional responses to impulse control.

These symptoms exemplify how impairing ADHD can be to a woman because they encompass just about all the facets of her life. Though “executive functioning” and “self-regulation” sound like terminology straight out of a college textbook, suffice it to say that these seemingly “absentminded” behaviors are, in fact, brain based, and there is a perfectly rational explanation for why you “do the things you do.

there isn’t a deficit of attention but rather an inability to control it.

Too many adults, especially women, are misdiagnosed as having depression because many of those symptoms overlap with ADHD—or you might have depression in addition to your ADHD because your life has been filled with chaos, underperformance, and low self-esteem from repeated failures in certain areas of your life. Since ADHD rarely travels alone, there is a good chance you may have a coexisting condition, such as depression, anxiety, or addictive behaviors, that also needs to be addressed.

Clutter and chronic disorganization combine to create a virtual hellhole for women with ADHD, a seemingly endless abyss that threatens to suck them down on a daily basis. The compromised executive functioning of the ADHD brain makes all things weigh in as equally important, thereby making sorting, selecting, and tossing a real challenge.

So, I was thinkin’ of pickin’ up a job as a male stripper . It would be a way to meet women and earn money. Thoughts?” That should refocus his brother if no other way but him pausing to consider it. Quinn had undiagnosed ADHD, Chance was sure of it, and on occasion you had to refocus him. The same worked when Quinn went off on a tangent, you had to flash something bright to get him off the tangent, and in this case, the shiny was Chance becoming a stripper

Women need to know that their baby's health depends on them even before conception.

patients, inasmuch as it is easily excited by every impression. The barking of dogs, an ill-tuned organ, or the scolding of women, are sufficient to distract patients of this description to such a degree, as almost approaches to the nature of delirium. It gives them vertigo, and headache, and often excites such a degree of anger as borders on insanity. When people are affected in this manner, which they very frequently are, they have a particular name for the state of their nerves, which is expressive enough of their feelings. They say they have the fidgets.

We often leave out experiences or information that doesn’t fit with the incomplete picture or story we have been telling ourselves. If we only see the challenges, we won’t have anywhere to add new positive experiences—and they will disappear before they have room to take root and grow.

It turned out that many women dropped out of Dr. Felitti’s weight loss program because losing weight made them feel unbearably anxious and vulnerable. Their girth helped them to feel safe, beyond a man’s desire to assault them. So, even though they knew that their obesity put them at risk for disease, they did not want to give up the protection they felt it afforded them.

For females, symptoms may not affect functioning for years if a girl receives a lot of support at home or at school, has a high IQ, or works hard and utilizes coping strategies. Chief complaints for women with ADHD mainly center on the degree of difficulty they have completing tasks that other women seem to be able to accomplish with little effort and the related sense of being overwhelmed by everyday activities.

Many women with ADHD are already prone to perfectionist tendencies, so it’s important to heed Cameron’s warning not to get fixated on creating the perfect poem, painting, pie, or whatever. The self-esteem issues that so often accompany ADHD, thanks to past criticism, failures, and emotional scars, can result in a tendency to believe that we’ll never be good enough. According to Cameron, that too is a trap of perfectionism.

Many women with AD/HD have fears of loneliness or abandonment that turn into dependency. They may then push away feelings of anger or avoid setting healthy limits needed to get appropriate help and support. I’ve seen women with AD/HD stay in emotionally abusive relationships because they feel they can’t be completely independent and take care of things on a daily level.

The added stress of dealing with these coexisting conditions can contribute to feeling overwhelmed. Many women with ADHD also have coexisting medical conditions, such as allergies. Finally, some people with ADHD also have the genetic trait of being a highly sensitive person. Experiencing multiple problems or disorders can understandably lead to feeling overwhelmed.

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) gives some suggestions to help build stronger executive function skills. ●     Break down any tasks into something smaller with a step-by-step approach. ●     Use organizing tools like planners, computer calendars, watches, timers, and apps. ●     Use visual aids like flow charts to review project milestones. Review these every day (or many times a day). ●     Ask for verbal and written directions so you can catch all the details.

Rejection-sensitive Dysphoria can be triggered by the rejection of approval, love, respect, teasing, criticism (even if constructive), and ruminating self-criticism or negative self-talk prompted by possible or real failure. This dysphoria will quickly flip a woman’s mood and match the perspective of failure. Because of the instant emotional switch when triggered, RSD can be mistaken for a full major mood disorder, including suicidal thoughts, especially with continued internalization.

Everything is connected: your mind, body, environment, emotions, and soul.