My name is Veronica, and I was a working mom to a 5-year-old little guy on the autism spectrum. My days were busy… 6am wake-ups to get lunches made and clothes ready. Drop-offs at school, driving to work, working all day, picking up my son, heading to therapies, then finally home by 7pm. And all of this seemed reasonable. That was my life. I was burning the candle at both ends and didn’t even think it was abnormal. That was until we were all forced to stop and sit still during the pandemic.
Dylan had just started junior kindergarten in September. He was hyperactive and out of his normal routine — and working a full-time virtual job with a neurodivergent 5-year-old who refused to sit in front of an iPad for virtual school? Nearly impossible.
When I was home with him, I would set up my laptop on the kitchen table next to his iPad and say “Let’s do some work!” to try to get him to sit for even a few minutes to participate in the daily lessons. But nothing held his attention. So, I would leave the iPad on so that he could still hear the teacher and kids, as he played in the living room, lining up his toys or colouring.
Part of my job was to host virtual orientations for new employees on Mondays. This became the most challenging day to deal with Dylan. I would try to set him up in his room with the TV on, playing a movie he liked, his iPad charged and loaded with games, books, blocks and toys he loved, and try to convince him to ‘play’ for the 2.5 hours I needed to present. You can imagine, this didn’t work out as planned.
One time, he stripped down to nothing and walked into the background of my virtual orientation. I quickly saw his little butt reflected in my screen and turned off my camera… but forgot to mute myself. Thankfully, these orientations are a two-person team and my coworker quickly jumped on and covered the orientation while I tried to get Dylan out of the room, but because I forgot to mute myself, they could hear me yelling at him to go put on some clothes and go back to his room. Not my best moment. And this is where I think it all started to crack for me.
As the days went on, I became anxious and heightened. I would snap at anything, and I would get upset easily. I started avoiding doing household tasks because it all seemed like too much. I didn’t know how to sit still for too long. I often went on hour-long drives with Dylan, just to get us out of the house.
And during this time, I developed a BFRB (body-focused repetitive behaviour) where I picked at my face, legs, and bit my cuticles raw. I spoke to my doctor and she prescribed an antidepressant. But the skin-picking was truly bad, and I decided to start a 6-week therapy group for BFRBs.
One of the causes, the psychotherapist mentioned while explaining what might cause someone to skin-pick was, ADHD as a potential cause. She said that there was high comorbidity between the two, explained by the need for stimulation, poor impulse control, and that it could be driven by dopamine deficiency.
This piqued my curiosity.
When my son was diagnosed at 3.5 years old, I started doing a lot of research into autism and its causes. Genetics was one of the main drivers, and this made sense to me. My brother was diagnosed with ADD when he was just 5 years old and started medication, as he was a super hyperactive child. But I was not like that. I wasn’t hyperactive. I did, however, always talk too much in class and get in trouble for it. I would not sit still (always shaking my leg) and usually needed something to fidget with during lessons. I was forgetful and disorganised. And I was always “too sensitive” according to everyone around. I started projects and never finished them. But I could get hyper-fixated on a topic and learn everything about it. I hated being called on to read out loud or answer a question in class. All things I now know are ADHD traits in girls.
I asked my psychotherapist if I could book a separate appointment to discuss this with her.
At that appointment, we chatted about my past experiences, and she completed the DSM-5 questionnaire for ADHD, and guess what? She concluded that I did, in fact, qualify for a diagnosis of ADHD.
It did take a long time to get an official diagnosis. But eventually, I was weaned off the antidepressant and started taking Vyvanse. And this medication changed everything for me.
For the first time in my whole life, my mind was quiet. I cried the first time I took it.
For so many years, I would describe to people that my brain was like a computer with multiple tabs open, all running at the same time. And now, I would take my medication and I would be able to focus on just one task. And complete it. And had the motivation to do it.
It was insane to me how much of my life I realised I was struggling. Masking. Just getting by because I had to.
Getting diagnosed as an adult is something that seems to be happening to a lot of people recently, from what I can read and see on social media. People telling stories of years of struggles and the relief they felt once they knew exactly why they were the way they were.
It may have taken the craziness of the pandemic to throw me into a spiral to finally get this figured out, but my goodness, am I happy it did.
Life inside an ADHD brain can be…unpleasant at times.
When everything feels like too much, it’s natural to want to escape. For years, I felt guilty about the moments I needed to put my own consciousness on pause, largely because of how I did it: sugar binges, social media scrolls, Netflix marathons that went on far longer than I intended.
But the guilt ran deeper than that. As a regular therapy‑goer, I believed the negative thoughts themselves shouldn’t go unchallenged. I thought that as soon as they appeared, I should be doing something productive with them: pulling out cognitive distortion worksheets, journaling my way through, making meaning so I could argue back.
But more often than not, when I turned my attention toward the spiralling thoughts in the heat of the moment, trying to challenge them, reason with them, or make sense of them, I would get completely taken out by them.
Instead of feeling relief, I would sink further into despair.
It wasn’t until I started learning about the nervous system (particularly through the lens of Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory) that I began to understand why this instinct, while well-intentioned, can sometimes be the worst possible course of action.
So today, I'm arguing why learning to intentionally and safely step away from our minds in moments of dysregulation isn’t a failure of coping, but a mission‑critical skill for anyone living with an ADHD nervous system.
One of the first things I learned about the nervous system that changed everything for me was this: our nervous system isn’t just reacting to life; it’s actively shaping how we experience it. This idea sits at the foundation of Dr. Stephen Porges’ work, which posits that:
Unfortunately, for the ADHDer, we can spend a lot of time in this state.
Dysregulation is driven by overwhelm: when demands, stimuli, and internal pressure outpace the nervous system’s ability to regulate, recover, and return to safety. And this is frequently what is happening inside the ADHD brain. Our brains take in more and filter less, making overwhelm a common part of our daily experience.
One of the clearest signs you’ve crossed that threshold of overwhelm is the tone of your thoughts: the harsher, more absolute, and more hopeless they become, the more dysregulated your nervous system likely is.
So here is my argument: do not try to argue with a dysregulated brain. It just won't go well.
Do not try to rationalize your way out of the spiral. According to polyvagal theory, you quite literally don’t have access to the circuits required for insight, flexibility, or kindness toward yourself.
So the skill I’m inviting ADHDers to hone is something I’m calling a graceful exit.
A graceful exit is the intentional choice to step away from the mental spiral in moments of intense dysregulation.
Rather than engaging with those thoughts or trying to reason your way out, a graceful exit means giving your nervous system a safe, regulating way out of the spiral, and allowing capacity to return before you ask anything more of yourself.
I'm inviting you to challenge the idea you might have in your head that all escape is bad. Escape can be bad when it is unplanned, reactive and driven by dopamine. In those moments, we reach for whatever is most immediately numbing or stimulating, even if it ultimately leaves us more depleted. But when done with intention, escape can be adaptive, not pathological.
Below is a list of a few of my own favourite ways I like to exit gracefully from my mind in moments of dysregulation:
If there’s one permission I hope you take from this, it’s this: you are allowed to step away. You are allowed to stop engaging with your thoughts when they’ve turned harsh, absolute, and overwhelming. You are not giving up. You are changing the order of operations.
First, exit the spiral. Second, help your body regulate. And only then, come back to reflect, process, or make meaning of the painful thoughts.
You may just find that a surprising number of your meanest thoughts don’t survive a regulated nervous system!
Growing up, my late father told me that I was “born to move”. When I was born, the doctor who caught me almost dropped me because I was squirming so much. I am still fond of that story, because it is undoubtedly true. To me, it was normal to have an abundance of energy, as if everyone else in the world had that energy. It was my special super power where I felt confident and happy to move how I wanted to; I always felt a release and sense of calm after movement, exercise or stretching. It was a small moment in time in between life, where my brain shut off, and the chatter would cease to exist.
Skip forward to thirty-eight years later where I was given a late-stage diagnosis of combined ADHD. A light bulb went off in my brain; it all made sense; hyperactivity, hyper focus, the lack of impulse control, the inability to organize, simple tasks that I hated to do like cleaning and dishes, lack of focus while listening to podcasts or watching a movie and, lastly what most affects me is emotional regulation. It became an upwards battle, being stubborn and not wanting to think I was different or that something was “wrong with me,” it took a while to realize that something needed attention.
I was starting to have trouble with managing anxiety; crying at every stress, not focusing at work and not being able to manage daily life. It was also a period in my life where I was processing the trauma that I experienced at the age of thirteen when I saw my mother die due to cancer treatments. I have read several books about trauma and the nervous system, searching for answers to figure out why I reacted so strongly to life’s events, changes and social interactions (always with a nervous energy). It wasn’t until I started looking into ADHD that it all fell into place. Through my research about trauma, I discovered that neurodivergent brains already have a sensitive nervous system and find it harder to respond to stress. In my case, I got overstimulated and burnt out. Mixed with trauma, it is what I like to call a Neuro- F**** roller coaster.
Looking back, when I was a teenager, lacking one primary care giver and not knowing about ADHD, it was not surprising that I found an outlet to manage my symptoms. I loved running, weight training, dance and really any movement to help calm my system. Eventually, it lead to jobs and careers in the fitness industry and to my current job as a Registered Massage Therapist and Mobility Specialist.
The ADHD diagnosis has helped to clarify how my brain works and made me feel less ashamed. It created an in depth body awareness and deep learning about how the body-mind deals with stress and to find therapeutic ways to manage. I had always tried so hard to function and pushed myself to perform big accomplishments in order to seem normal, when really, I didn’t know what was going on.
It wasn’t until I was maybe thirty- five to thirty -eight, when my hormones started to change, that my ADHD symptoms skyrocketed. So here I am now in my fourth month of taking medications to help manage my symptoms, and life is quite different! I am more attentive, I have less burn out, I don’t need to run for hours to just get a dopamine hit, at work I am more present and I feel more motivated to do the hobbies that I love.
I think it’s important to understand that medication will not solve everything but it will give you the tools to function better and have better relationships, less burnt out and more focus in your career. The one area that I still struggle with a little bit is during my monthly cycle when hormones fluctuate. As estrogen rises and falls so does attention and focus - all the different chemical reactions and neurotransmitters sometimes becomes muddled. It has not been officially diagnosed but I am pretty sure that I display symptoms of PMDD; Pre- Menstral Dysphoria, basically a mood disorder and a sensitive system to changes in neurochemicals. Yikes!
At first I was angry that ADHD was not brought to my attention sooner, since it does run in my family and is genetic. It was comforting that my sister Anya, brought to my attention that our parents loved us children and they accepted that their daughter had high energy. I felt that had I known about the ADHD I could have navigated life better, but learning acceptance and compassion has been a big lesson and made me have a deeper understanding of myself and the world (its OK to rest!) - perhaps that’s why I am a good massage therapist.
ADHD, in my opinion, is a gift and can be harnessed to do so many wonderful pursuits. My favourite aspect about having hyper focus is that you can be engrossed in what you love to do; reading fantasy and history books for hours, hiking or running in the forest, deep conversations with friends and family. Even though it is hard to feel the stressors and difficult emotions you also feel the good emotions and it encompasses your whole body.
Luckily, there are foods, supplements and lifestyle changes that have been wonderful. Managing stress is a huge component, finding ways to ground oneself is crucial. Below I have complied a list of strategies that have been helpful to me. I like to pull out each one based on my needs. I understand that each person is unique and has different needs; my intention is to provide an example of the resources I have used in order help others.
Therapy
I have seen many therapists of the years, from counsellors to psychotherapists, and found that a therapist with training in Brain Spotting is very helpful to help process and heal traumatic events. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is also beneficial when it comes to using your brain from a top down process to logically state the reality of a scenario. However, I found that I needed something deeper that helped my brain to process trauma. Brain Spotting is a brain- body therapy that uses eye positions to help process trauma, stress and emotional blockages. With the idea that where you look affects how you feel and trauma gets stuck in the visual field. Brain spotting session’s create peace and changes the way you perceive that event and therefore creates healing.
Yoga Nidra
Yoga Nidra, or Yoga Sleep is the practice of introspection with a guide. There are several ways this yoga practice works; you can lye down or sit in chair, there is a guided voice talking to you. Using breathe, or sensing the breathe, gentle movement, sensory or somatic movements, visual meditation, and gaining introspection; body awareness. It is a state of mind between wakefulness and sleep, enabling one to be fully present.
Exercise and Yoga
I have always loved running, swimming or cardio based exercises. It allows me to rest my brain, and focus on what is happening in the moment. Repetitive movement has especially been helpful since it focuses on the task at hand. Especially if its outside in nature.
Yoga is very therapeutic since it’s a whole body movement that use the breathe and to move with intention and flow. Yin yoga, Vinyasa Flow and Restorative are some of my favourites.
Dancing
I have taken several forms of dance; from Belly Dancing to the basics of Break Dancing and Contemporary Dance. Dance opens up different ways of moving, it involves coordination, spacial awareness and the music make’s you feel free to “shake it off”.
Weight Training
My first full-time career was working as a Personal Trainer and Group Fitness Instructor. I really enjoy strength training. I think mixing cardio and strength training is the way to go for full-body health. Steady strength training with gradual increases in weight brings confidence and creates self-worth. The added bonus of strength training, especially lower-body strength, is important for cognitive health.
Hobbies
As for hobbies, I enjoy making art collages; using a variety of mediums from magazines to fabrics, paint, parts of jewellery etc. It allows me to escape for a while. Writing stories is fun and I enjoy the research part of creating a story; or you can just sit down and write about whatever comes to your mind! Colouring books creates mindfulness by focusing on the item you are working on. Most recently, I got back into collecting Lego sets (mostly Harry Potter) and building book nooks. These allow a steady focus and challenges the brain to follow instructions while you immerse yourself in creating other worlds.
Health Professional Support
Registered Massage Therapy; Indie Head Massage, Deep Tissue, Sports, Fascial Stretching
Osteopath; Visceral Manipulation
Pelvic Floor Physiotherapy
Books and Videos
Scattered Minds, Gabor Mate
The Woman’s Brain Book: Neuroscience of Health, Hormones and Happiness
Sarah Mckay
Krista Gansterer
RMT
CSEP PT®
Kinstretch®
Yoga Teacher
Many of us ADHDers have heard about the analogy that our brain is a Ferrari with bicycle breaks created by Dr. Hallowell. And while I respect him and understand that this is only an analogy and that ADHD is not easily defined, as a car enthusiast, I beg to differ.
If we are going to use a car to describe the ADHD brain it’s definitely not a refined Ferrari but more like an old muscle car, inefficient brakes, ridiculously overpowered, and essentially the suspension of a horse wagon.
As an ADHDer you are behind the wheel of a car that just doesn’t want to turn enough when you need to turn (understeer = decision paralysis) and that when you step on the gas a little harder its back slides out and spin more than you want (oversteer = impulsivity).
So you have to compensate for those errors all the time… ALL. THE. TIME.
Every millisecond you are trying to use it to navigate life, you are calculating, predicting, correcting, correcting the correction, screaming for dear life (rejection sensitivity), trying to remain behind the wheel, pulling yourself using said wheel as a handle rather than as a direction control instrument, all while experiencing a deep feeling of shame for being a worthless driver (self-discrepancy gap).
And it doesn’t stop there. The gas pedal sometimes gets stuck (hyperfocus), so good luck stopping, even if you had those Ferrari brakes. You have to learn the tricks that get it unstuck and pray that it works on time.
— Speaking of time, what time is it? — Said Inner Voice A
— Oops, we just blew through the red light on “I-should-go-to-sleep Street”! — Screamed Inner Voice B
— You truly are the worst driver! — Said yet another, Inner Voice C
— You are inept since we were kids and I feel unsafe, this is not going to end well — the voice continued.
— Anyway, that gas pedal is still stuck… — Voice A ignoring, as usual, Voice C
— What if we give a little skewed-to-the-right kick on the pedal to get it unstuck! — that was the always witty Inner Voice D, suddenly jumping in with a solution.
— Maybe — answered Voice A — but now that we are accelerating, “Very-important-deadline Avenue” is not that far so we might as well use the momentum to get there early… Can you guys imagine, everyone will love us.
— There!!! It worked, pedal unstuck!!! I save the day, again!!
— But what about “Very-Important-Deadline Avenue”? Well, I guess we can just keep going, and it would be heal… th… zzzzzzzzz —little did Voice A know that he was only human, the deadline wasn’t met. Alas, yes Hyperfocus is a superpower; but is an unreliable superpower really super?
Did I mention this muscle car is haunted? It is, a thousand voices inhabit the car. So it gets noisy.
The voices aren’t the only contributors to the noise, the radio turns itself on and sometimes it gets locked on, sometimes the tuner changes randomly.
Frankly it’s exhausting, so much that minivans look enviable in comparison: no surprises, comfortable, everything fits in there, not too fast or too slow, 360 camera view. The only problem is that, you know, it’s a minivan (I have nothing against minivans, in my old age I actually kind of like them).
I try to remind myself to keep driving and have fun doing it, embrace the challenge, embrace the muscle car, because I’m stuck with it but also because it can also be so, so FUN and interesting, charming, and cool.
If we just keep driving, exploring the tricks on how to tame it, taking care of it, servicing it properly; maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to glide through the highway with the full moon shining on that roof.
It will probably still scare the heck out of us, but we’ll laugh, put it back on gear and keep driving.
Turn it into a project car. Car lovers do not always like their cars but they are called car lovers for a reason. As much as they dislike walking up for a nice drive only to find a poodle of oil under their vehicle, they love to put in the time and effort to work on them, and then working some more on their dysfunctional, quirky, annoying project cars.
Get yourself a nice toolbox (like the CADDAC blog), read and get wrenching. You will never turn it into a fully self-driving minivan, but if you could, would you really want to?
May this help you when minivan people (god bless them, we know they mean well) complain about your “bad driving habits” and say things like: “If you really cared, you’d drive better!” or “Why didn’t you turn when you had to?!” May you remember this analogy then and may they understand that it is not a driving style, it’s a precision-driving act.
Keep wrenching, you are doing it fine!
Historically, the awareness of what life is like as a female with ADHD has been limited compared to males. Thankfully, however, there has been an increase in discussion around the topic. While there are similarities between the sexes, there are also some vast differences leading to women often not feeling heard or underrepresented when it comes to both their mental health and overall health. A call for research and awareness must be done to help prevent young women from falling through the cracks because they do not present as the stereotypical ADHD mold. Of course, some females meet the typical criteria of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-V-TR), but many do not. I, myself, am one of them. Although my parents and teachers suspected that I might have ADHD, I was doing good enough in school so there was no further intervention. It was not until I became a preteen that I started to struggle with mental health issues like depression and anxiety as well as academic issues. Thankfully, both my parents are pediatric mental health workers, so they wanted to revisit the ADHD concerns. Many young females do not have the same experience that I did and end up going through their teenage years and adulthood without a diagnosis of ADHD. The issue with this is that those females are then at greater risk for developing other mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, substance use issues, gambling, and eating disorders; and they are at greater risk of childhood and adulthood abuse, sexual abuse, suicidal ideation, and poverty. It is important to note that having a diagnosis of ADHD might not prevent these comorbidities or situations from occurring but when someone has more control over their thoughts and understands why they are the way they are then there is an increase in confidence and self-acceptance.
Currently, I work as a school counsellor. I work with many females who I suspect have undiagnosed ADHD and they struggle tremendously with their self-esteem, confidence, and self-acceptance. These students are often comparing themselves to their neurotypical peers and wondering why they are not like them. I am a witness to the consequences to misdiagnosis whether it is with the incorrect diagnosis (such as depression or anxiety) or no one has ever addressed the concerns with a professional with the reminder that ADHD looks different in females. The teachers of these girls often comment that so and so is a ‘space-cadet’ and they never get any work done. While they would never say this to the students the stigma and harm due to these biases are very much there. I feel for these students because it can feel very isolating and lonely when you are made to feel different. The damage from being teased for behaviours that are out of their control may be irreversible. While diagnosis does not result in a cure for ADHD it can provide clarity, treatment, and resources that can help females live happy and successful lives.
So, what can be done to change the way teachers, doctors, and families view ADHD in females. Well, first, we need to continue the discussion of the importance of being aware and understanding that not only does ADHD, but many physical and mental health disorders present differently in females compared to males. Thankfully, this topic has reached social media and while there is a lot of misinformation being spread there is at least discussions being had and females coming forward with their stories. If I could have had the same access to social media that is around today when I was in middle and high school, it might have helped me understand
that I am not the problem, I am not annoying, and it is okay to think and act differently. The next important step that needs to be taken is more research around this topic. As a current graduate student, I am focusing my thesis on improving the assessment process for females with ADHD and including the stories of young adult women who spent their youth suffering from the lack of knowing who they truly were. There is endless research that could be done. From improving the assessment and diagnostic process to revising the current interventions and treatment for ADHD and finding methods that suit females better. Finally, though these are not the only areas that need improvement, educators, families, and even physicians would benefit from knowing the gender differences of ADHD so that young girls do not fall through the cracks or end up with the incorrect diagnosis. Those who end up being treated for depression instead of ADHD may find temporary relief in depression symptoms, but the underlying cause of the depression symptoms may be from years of internalizing behaviours and masking to fit in with the norm.
To wrap things up, if I could go back in time to when I was 13, I would give myself a hug and tell her that things would be okay. I would want her to know that being different is okay. I would warn her that the following years of high school and university might be difficult since we live in a world best suited for neurotypical people, but she will find people who love her for who she is. The importance of bringing more awareness to the mental health and the lives of females with ADHD will allow for more individuals who felt shameful for the person they were as teenagers to forgive themselves for years of wishing they were someone else. As parents, teachers, practitioners, siblings, and friends of girls and women with ADHD who may be reading this, I encourage you to take the time to read and learn more about the gender differences of ADHD and what you can do to help improve the quality of life for these young girls, teenagers, and adult women.
Friendship and community are important to everyone, but may be of crucial importance to those who have felt isolated or excluded, a common experience for people with ADHD. In research, ADHD in children and adolescents has been related to a host of social challenges, with higher bullying victimization rates, more peer rejection, and higher conflict relationships. In adulthood, many individuals with ADHD have difficulty maintaining friendships and experience challenges with romantic relationships. Taken together, this paints a grim picture, suggesting that if you have ADHD, you cannot have fulfilling relationships. As someone with ADHD and a researcher in this field, I rarely see literature on how ADHD can contribute to meaningful, uplifting friendships. However, I believe that although ADHD can present challenges to your social life sometimes, it can also make you a caring and empathetic friend and partner, especially when you find the right people.
My experiences
As a child, I definitely experienced these social challenges, always feeling out of sync with my peers. At that time, I had no idea why I felt different from a lot of my peers and struggled to connect with them. As I got older, I learned to mask who I was to try and fit in a bit more. Without really thinking, I studied how other people acted and mimicked that. Sometimes I would slip up by getting too excited about something, interrupting others, or being too loud. For me, each stage of education got a little better socially, however, everything really changed for the better when I got to university.
When I got to university, I had an opportunity to reinvent myself now that I was being exposed to new people. I no longer had to hide my love for learning like I did as a teen. I quickly became friends with people in my classes, with whom I shared many interests outside of school. In my first year, my uncle who I was very close with passed after a long battle with cancer and it was a defining moment in many of my friendships. My new friends were at my side, comforting me, giving me notes I missed, and helping me catch up on assignments. My high school friends were less than helpful, and I decided to start to put some distance between us. I had believed that I wouldn’t find better friends, but this experience helped me to believe that I deserved more.
My new friends were largely neurodivergent with some being diagnosed and undiagnosed, maybe not surprising for an undergrad neuroscience program. For the first time, I really feel like I fit in and had found my community. My “weird quirks” were just a part of me and not judged. My best friend in my program was my study buddy as we shared the same requirements before exams and often stuck together. Our routine for exams was to stop
studying at least 2 hours before, eat a good amount of food, and chat in a relaxed environment. Years later, I found out that he was diagnosed with autism when he was younger. Later in grad school, I bonded with friends over info-dumping and body doubling (work on a task next to someone to help with focus and accountability).
I reconnected with a friend from high school, and she remarked how much more confident and happier I seemed to be after undergrad. I was much more self-assured and worried a lot less about what people thought of me. I finally was able to be myself around people who cared about me.
Now in my late 20s, I see many of my closest friends are neurodivergent. We support each other through humor and shared understanding—joking about ADHD-related lateness or lost keys while also offering real support when needed. These friendships have been invaluable, not despite our differences, but often because of them.
Importance of a neurodivergent community
I have often been described as friendly and outgoing, so I have found making friends to be pretty easy, but maintaining friendships was another story. I had a hard time remembering to make plans, keeping up with constant communication, and disliked exchanging pleasantries when I just wanted to launch into a conversation. With my neurodivergent friends, I have found that our communication styles align, and even if we don’t see each other for a while, it is like no time has passed when we do reconnect. I don’t feel the same need to overexplain myself, because they just understand.
In an interview study I conducted, many people remarked how they believe that having ADHD has made them more empathetic and understanding of other people. When someone was having a bad day and took it out on them, they viewed it more as that person needing support than taking it personally. Others mentioned that they were curious and had a wide range of interests, which helped them have conversations with many different people. Unfortunately, everyone reported experiencing stigma.
Overall, having a neurodivergent community can be beneficial for people with ADHD, whether it is a group of in-person friends or an online community. Often the expectation is put on people with ADHD to change themselves to be better liked. Improving self- and emotional-regulation abilities can be beneficial, but the burden of adapting shouldn’t fall solely on neurodivergent people. Additionally, neurotypical people should be educated to be less judgmental and more accepting of neurodiverse individuals. There are countless things that neurotypical people do that can be irritating or rude to neurodivergent people, yet our society expects neurodivergent people to put up with it. One of the biggest beauties
of life is how everyone is a little bit different, and I think that understanding that and having an accepting community can do wonders for everyone.
For most of my life, ADHD was framed as a disorder—something to manage, hide, or overcome. It showed up in forgotten appointments, half-finished projects, lost keys, emotion, and the shame spiral that came after. But what no one told me is that buried inside those “symptoms” was a system of superpowers—waiting to be activated, not suppressed.
Now, I don’t see ADHD as a limitation. I see it as an operating system that runs differently than most—and when you learn how to navigate it, it becomes a powerful tool for creativity, innovation, and impact.
You can harness the power within your brain to help you Thrive Forward - roller coasters and all.
1. Hyperfocus is a Hidden Superpower
People with ADHD can enter a state of flow that’s unmatched—deep dives, intense creative bursts, laser-sharp attention to something we care about. While others are still ramping up, we’re already 40 tabs deep, building the next big thing. The trick? Align your life with your interests, and design your work around your sparks.
2. Divergent Thinking is Our Default
We don’t just think outside the box—we forget the box existed. Our brains are wired for connections, not categories. This means ideas, innovations, and problem-solving strategies that others may never consider come naturally to us. In a world that desperately needs new solutions, this kind of thinking isn’t just valuable—it’s essential.
3. We’re Energy-Based, Not Time-Based
The neurotypical world runs on clocks. We run on momentum, inspiration, urgency, and emotion. Once I stopped trying to force myself into 9-to-5 molds and instead structured my life around when I work best (and how I work best), everything changed. Time blindness became time alchemy.
4. Emotional Intensity = Empathic Supercharge
Many of us with ADHD feel everything deeply. That can feel overwhelming at times—but it also gives us incredible empathy, emotional intelligence, and intuition. We’re the ones who can sense a vibe shift in a room or rally others with our passion and presence. That intensity, when channeled, is magnetic.
5. Restless? Or Relentless?
ADHD often makes us feel “restless”—always seeking, dreaming, chasing the next thing. But that’s not a flaw. That’s relentless curiosity, and it drives us to grow, evolve, and explore possibilities others might not even see. The world doesn’t change because people follow routines. It changes because someone couldn’t sit still and decided to build something new.
Reframing is Everything
ADHD doesn’t need to be “fixed.” It needs to be understood, honored, and supported.
It’s not always easy. There are still hard days, distractions, setbacks, and system overloads. But I’ve learned to stop fighting how I’m wired and start working with my brain, not against it.
When you give someone with ADHD the freedom to be who they are, the structure to succeed, and the support to shine—you don’t just help them survive.
You unleash their superpower.
I call it NeuroMagnificence.
You may be wondering how I went from being an ADHD parent to also being an ADHD advocate.
The first two decades of my career taught me that I could not be an advocate for anyone, on any matter, if I did not first understand and fully appreciate the interconnectedness of trauma, shame and systemic failure.
Consider Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score, “…four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive (2015, 38).
With the above in mind, imagine the trauma inflicted on parents when professionals and institutions blame them for their child’s reactions. This blame denies the safety required for vulnerable communication. The parents will feel powerless and helpless as they are held solely responsible for what they cannot control and do not fully understand. They are denied the support they so desperately need. They fight, flee, or freeze.
I am one of these parents. I came to the school asking to be part of their community, seeking their help. They abandoned me.
Now, consider the trauma inflicted on a child when the adults in their life blame them for the dysregulation they cannot control. The child has no choice but to assume they are the problem. They fall victim to an environment they have no control over. They feel powerless and helpless. They fight, flee, or freeze.
So where to we go from here?
I have learned that advocacy is one of the tools that can help to dismantle discrimination, stigmatization, ignorance and the misuse of power and authority. Making my ADHD advocacy public denies the opportunity for our experience to be weaponized against us and instead allows us to focus on healing.
Before our personal details are revealed, I want to tell you more about the person behind these words.
I am 49 as I write this. I live in Peterborough, Ontario, but I was born and raised in Hamilton. We moved to Peterborough when our oldest was five years old and our twins were three and a half. I never thought I would live here, and I had never spent any time here. Funny how quickly everything can change. My husband was going to be transferred, and Peterborough was one of the options. We drove up one afternoon, spent the night, puttered about the city, and said, “Yeah, OK, we can make this work.” Within three months, we bought a new house, sold our old house, and moved to Peterborough. This was a huge transition. I did not know a single person living here. None of us did. It worked out.
Prior to moving to Peterborough, I had been working as a social worker for many years. At different points in time I worked within the Hamilton emergency shelter system, child welfare, and inpatient psychiatry.
Since living in Peterborough, I have gained additional experience. I worked in community mental health, hospital settings, home care, and hospice. I also returned to school and earned my MSW. It took me four years to accomplish this, taking one course at a time. I am very proud of this achievement. As soon as I earned my MSW, I opened up my private practice, which is what I do now.
Needless to say, I have more than two decades of experience working as a social worker. Most of this experience occurred within our government systems, as a case manager, advocate, program manager, and therapist. I love what I do and feel very honoured and committed to continuing. I also want to share that I chose to do my MSW at Dalhousie University for its focus on social justice.
Are you starting to understand why my personal life and professional life started to merge?
I did not seek or plan to be an ADHD advocate; it was inevitable.
I know how to be a social worker, an advocate, and an activist. It is wild to say, but I have more experience in years as a social worker than I do as a parent. Despite this, I was not prepared for the resistance I encountered from the school system. Nor did I expect it to get so personal.
I have never confronted a system so desperate to remain the same despite advances in research, knowledge, and best practices. I have never faced an essential service that impacted the lives of so many people, that held so much power, with little to no accountability. I don’t know about you, but I know of no examples of positive outcomes born from those who hold incredible power and influence without accountability. I know of many instances where these factors have been causal to atrocities.
We need to worry about this.
It is no wonder that students, their families, and the professionals working within this system are not well. Moral injury and trauma are being inflicted without consequence, question, or a genuine effort or desire for it to be different. Narratives are being manipulated and dominated by the same well-funded voices. The government blames the boards, the teachers, and the unions. The teachers blame the government, boards, and parents. The unions blame the government and promote the victimhood of teachers. Research and news articles mostly focus on poor student behaviour. Few articles are printed or trend when they talk about the experience of students and families. We would much rather view teachers as the Mary Poppins-like figures of our communities, the governments as never doing enough, and the students through the lens of “there’s something wrong with kids today.”
Too many adults blame children and youth with little to no critical thought of their role in shaping these kids. While attempting to collaborate with the adult professionals working within the schools, I noticed that most of them did not have the regulatory skills they expected the kids to have.
Witnessing the trauma inflicted on our ADHD youth strengthened the ADHD advocate in me.
“You’re lazy,” “try harder,” “focus,” “sit still,” “you need to see a doctor,” “you will amount to nothing,” “let’s see who gets further in life,” “you have no friends,” “no one likes you,” “you’re going to live in your parents’ basement,” “live off your dad’s money.”
That is but a small sample of what my kids, primarily my daughter, heard day in and day out from the adult professionals who were supposed to be teaching them, mentoring them, and modelling the skills they were expected to develop.
I can prove it, too. I have receipts.
Your ADHD Advocate,
Lynn
Last week, my son attended his regular swimming lesson. His new instructor has seemed annoyed with him from the first lesson. I teach my child to begin from the assumption of positive intent for all people. However, as the weeks passed, my son’s thoughts went from “maybe the instructor was having a bad day”, to “if it was a bad day, why does he seem only irritated at me?” to “I’m trying my best, but it doesn’t seem to matter.” This descent into hopelessness isn’t uncommon for neurodivergent kids (or adults!) and it reflects the reality of how one is treated. I spoke to the swim school when my child told me the instructor was holding him/letting him go roughly, and that his neck got hurt when the instructor moved it to correct positioning. Things got better - for one week.
Two weeks later, my son was characteristically bouncing up and down, waiting on the submerged platform for his turn. Though all children find it difficult to wait and have various strategies to do so (I constantly observe children in the pool submerging themselves repeatedly, turning around, hanging off the edge, splashing and pushing each other etc.), my son’s hopping seemed tame. This day, his toe had been pinched accidentally by another child, so he was holding it while hopping.
Though my son had not delayed or disrupted the progress of the lesson, and had not engaged in any unsafe behavior, the instructor, visibly annoyed, came over and said “Why can’t you just be a normal human being and stop moving around?!” (My son, to his credit, and despite his shock, defended himself (and others), saying “being a human being and not moving around aren’t the same thing.”)
I won’t lie. When I heard about this, I was livid.
Not only did this instructor, from a position of power, dehumanize my child publicly, but he also missed an opportunity to praise a child who had found a good self-regulation strategy to patiently wait his turn in a loud and over stimulating environment.
The instructor denied that he said this, of course, but I believe my child. When I spoke to the school about the ableism and a lack of professionalism demonstrated over weeks, they pointed out that he was one of the most senior instructors. I asked how much experience and training he had with neurodivergent children, and there was no response.
Because neurodivergent children have traditionally been grouped together in segregated classes historically within schools, there is a long history of particularly well-trained instructors who specialize in teaching those classes. This allows others to spend years gaining experience but never with a wide spectrum of children. With more inclusive forms of education, it becomes imperative that all those teaching children understand the wide natural variability in child development and learn instructional and pedagogical strategies to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to learn. In the case where one neurodivergent child is a small group of children (in a family, a school classroom or swimming lesson), their differences are more obvious, and, to an untrained instructor (or uneducated parent), those traits might be interpreted as laziness because of a moral failing, getting distracted due to a lack of self-control, not following instructions due to defiance. The adult, who doesn’t understand the neurodevelopmental differences interprets this as lack of will-power, and a moral failing or character flaw, and gets annoyed at having to repeat instructions, or find different ways of capturing attention.
During the weeks leading up this event, the instructor’s body language and facial expressions, his abrupt, flat tone and curt speech were subtle signs of which my child was acutely aware. He became hypervigilant, monitoring the instructor’s face and hoping for one small smile, but even when he did well in class, it didn’t come. He could sense his instructor’s low-level continual irritation under the surface from the moment he walked into class and had to endure being both metaphorically and physically shoved away.
This treatment is unfortunately also common in experiences at school, in the community, and at home, and one of the reasons that neurodivergent children internalize negative social messaging and develop less self-efficacy very early in life. From this point of view, it makes sense to stop trying, because you’ll never be given a fair shot - it was too late from the very beginning. And then of course the resultant messaging of “not working up to their potential”, “needs to put it more effort” punish children and simultaneously obscure the root causes of this behavior, the systemic negation of their personhood as worthy and equal. I spend time every day counteracting these messages with my child and modeling how we treat people and talk about people.
Though I have emphasized the need for this school to provide training for their instructors, the fact is that most training on the matter still approaches neurodivergence from a deficit position, based on a medical model. In this model, a child who doesn’t develop in a linear fashion, or whose test scores fall outside “the norm” marks them for life based on a very narrow understanding of ability. (The history of these models and tests merits scrutiny, if that interests you.)
Neurodiversity-affirming education (and therapy, and workplaces!), ideally created by neurodivergent individuals would be a much better option. The neurodiversity paradigm views the differences in how human minds develop as natural and necessary to have a rich and thriving society. We owe many human advances to neurodivergent individuals because of their unique perception, ability to connect seemingly disparate things, ability to generate novel ideas quickly and frequently, creativity, hyperfocus and innovation.
However, one’s “productivity” in society should not be the criterion by which we value someone’s humanity. Different ways of perceiving, behaving, communicating and “being” in this world are natural reflections of the beautiful multiplicities of the human experience. Disabled or not, neurodivergent or not, we are all “normal human beings”, and should be treated as such.
I have always been a happy go lucky, caring, hardworking woman with high expectations for myself. However, on the other hand I struggled with frequent anxiety, worries, self-doubt and scatter-brained-ness. It wasn't really until I became a mother in 2019 that the weight of my anxiety truly began to feel like far more than I could handle. At six months postpartum, the world around me flipped upside down—the COVID-19 pandemic hit. All the comforts I had once relied on, like having my parents just 10 minutes away, were suddenly stripped from me. Like so many others, I found myself navigating this new reality away from those who are most important to me without a predetermined end date.
My return to work as a teacher following motherhood and living with our ‘new normal’ only amplified my struggles. My anxiety skyrocketed, and with it, bouts of depression and physical changes, such as a significant weight gain. I could feel myself floundering at home, in my marriage, and at work. I hardly recognized myself both mentally and physically. I had a constant sense of being behind, unable to catch up with the simple tasks I had forgotten or done poorly. My to-do list grew and grew, and I couldn’t seem to check anything off.
It was during this time that I sought help. After a tearful phone call with my family physician, she recommended I start with bloodwork to check my thyroid, and to seek the support of a psychologist. I was soon diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I started taking medication, and it did help ease some of the immediate symptoms of anxiety. But something didn’t quite feel right. I wasn’t thriving—I was just surviving. The feeling that I was failing at the simplest things remained and I continued to question what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I keep track of things? Why couldn’t I follow through what I needed to do? I couldn’t help but feel like I was drowning in a sea of responsibilities that I just couldn’t manage.
Then, one day, my psychologist asked “Have you considered that ADHD might be a possibility?” At first, I brushed it off. ADHD? Me? I didn’t fit the stereotypical image of what ADHD looked like—especially not as an adult woman. But my psychologist wasn’t giving up. He was persistent, and eventually, he said, “I’d bet my license on you having ADHD.”
I finally took his advice seriously. I started reading everything I could about ADHD—particularly the inattentive type, which didn’t align with the stereotypical hyperactive image I had of ADHD. As I read about inattentive type ADHD presentations in women, it hit me: this is me. Every article, every symptom list—there it was. I checked every box. I had spent years struggling with these symptoms, not understanding that they weren’t a sign of failure, but of a condition that many live with. Moreover, because of the more silent symptoms of girls and women, ADHD was often missed or misdiagnosed.
I returned to my family physician with the theory of my psychologist. She requested that he forward her his notes, and that I fill out a screener. We booked a follow up appointment within 2 weeks and armed with all of this information the process of getting diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD was a surprisingly smooth one. With the right medication, therapy, and a shift in focus to managing my ADHD tendencies became the turning point I had been desperately seeking.
The transformation that followed was nothing short of life-changing. For the first time in years, I started to thrive. I could focus. I could get things done. At work, I became more involved and engaged in every facet of the job. I started taking on leadership roles that I had previously avoided. At home, I was a better communicator with my partner (emphasis on better, not perfect!). I found exercise that I actually enjoyed. I stopped binge eating due to stress and began losing the weight I had gained in those years of emotional turmoil. I even started a side hustle, diving into my passion for art.
I am still far from perfect, but I’m learning to embrace the fact that struggling with ADHD doesn’t mean I’m lazy, incompetent, or incapable. In fact, it means I have strengths that others might not even realize are possible. ADHD has gifted me with a unique perspective and creativity, and it’s given me the tools to succeed in ways I never thought possible. It’s a part of who I am, and I’m learning how to navigate it, not let it define me.
While all of these exciting changes took place, not every moment was celebratory. I mourned the years I spent not understanding why I struggled the way I did. I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me, when in reality, I was just struggling with a disorder that wasn’t widely recognized in women like me. It’s a hard thing to realize that I could have been living differently, but I also find peace in knowing that I’m here now. I’m thriving, learning, and growing. And that’s all I can ask for.
The journey isn’t easy, and I know there will be days when I feel overwhelmed, but I no longer feel alone in it. ADHD, while a challenge, has opened doors to strengths and possibilities I never thought I could unlock. It has shown me that I am capable, that I am worthy, and that I can take on life—not in the way I thought I would, but in the way that’s true to me.
If you're struggling, I want you to know that you are not alone. There may be a reason for the struggles you face that you haven’t yet discovered. Keep searching, keep learning, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. You might just find the answers you’ve been seeking—and it might change everything.
