It was one of those Kohl’s Christmas Eve dresses with a black velvet bodice and red tool skirt that left glitter wherever I sat. The sleeves felt too tight, the tool was scratchy, and the light was too loud. So, when I could feel the seam of the stockings, my skin cells screamed. My mom couldn’t hear them, but she heard my screaming. All these years later we still laugh at the fact I could never wear tights.
The issue is that I’m 20 years old, and I still cry when I can feel the seam of my sock.
I was eighteen when I was diagnosed with ADHD. Like thousands of women, I went undiagnosed since the diagnostic criteria is almost completely based on young boys. Like many women I practically have to pull out my doctor’s diagnosis for people to believe me.
It is only in the last ten years or so that psychologists are beginning to recognize the existence of feminine presenting ADHD. Recent studies focusing on women have realized the influence that socialization plays on the manifestation of neurodivergent disorders. Women are socialized to be less obtrusive than men so feminine presenting ADHD tends to be more internalized. Women learn to mask far quicker.
Masking is a term used when talking about ADHD and ASD (autism spectrum disorder) where the neurodivergent person covers their symptoms and traits and unintentionally models their behavior after the neurotypical people around them. It is not an intentional choice, but something that people do without realizing. Masking leads to internalized symptoms that are not only difficult to live with, but very difficult to see from the outside.
I was a 4.0 student in high school. I was a National Merit Scholar, a varsity tennis player, an All-State Choir competitor, and I was in at least three theatre productions a year while maintaining multiple internships. I was the model student. My resumé looks great. What we don’t see on paper is that internally, I was a disaster.
I had to be “on” all day. So, I shoved down everything: my fatigue, my sensory overwhelm, my executive dysfunction, any of what I now know to be symptoms of ADHD. Then I would come home as an empty shell. I had no energy left to give. I was easily irritated and angered. I couldn’t complete any of the tasks I was asked to do around the house – even the most basic ones. I could hardly get myself to shower and brush my teeth (a common issue with people with ADHD).
This didn’t stop in college. It just got worse. Freshman year, I maintained my straight A’s, played a huge role in a campus production, all while attempting to navigate a social life with all these new and wonderful people. Just like in high school, I would be unable to do work for days at a time and then suddenly get a weeks’ worth of work done in a day. Yet I still got an A. I felt like a fraud. On those days where I couldn’t do anything I would sit and stare at the list I had made of everything I needed to do – physically unable to do any of it. I felt like this was the real me: I was secretly inherently lazy and I never earned anything I got. Beyond the negative self-talk I was physically unable to take care of myself.
I was running myself into the ground and I was doing it fast.
“I feel like I’m just bad at existing,” I told the woman sitting across from me. It was my first therapy appointment in a while, and I was desperate for some kind of answer to why I spent my life in a perpetual state of exhaustion. When I finished talking, the therapist laughed. “You might just be the most textbook presentation of feminine presenting ADHD I’ve ever seen.”
Diagnoses are not identities. This is true. But when you spend your whole life thinking that things are just naturally this hard and then you find out that they don’t have to be – everything changes. Late diagnoses can be crippling. I spent my entire life building these internal messages that I was just a weak person. I was lazy. It was my fault things were so hard and soon people would see I’m not the perfect student – I’m a disaster. I don’t deserve the good grades, I don’t deserve the great opportunities I have, and I don’t deserve these great friends.
If I had had the diagnosis and the tools that come with it, I could have avoided years of misinformed self-talk, of physical self-care, and exhaustion. Maybe the thousands of women could have.
Now I know that my inability to work is called executive dysfunction. It is a physiological issue where no matter how much a person might want to do a task they physically cannot. It is like a person telling themself to put their hand into boiling water. Their mind might tell them to do it, but physically they are unable to. That is what executive dysfunction is like. A person can need to do something or even want to, but physically the just can’t.
Those days where I do all my work in one sitting and somehow do it well – that’s called hyperfixation. ADHD brains sometimes have an incredible ability when they latch onto one thing to complete it incredibly fast and incredibly well.
I have been able to start medication which has been life changing. That is not an exaggeration. I am able to maintain my grades, extracurricular activities, and friendships, but I don’t feel like I am digging myself into the ground.
Now that I know where my sensory issues stem from, I’ve learned tricks to avoid them becoming too much of a problem. Whenever I can, I avoid bright lights if I’m overwhelmed. I wear noise cancelling headphones in loud areas. I have safety items of clothing to wear on bad sensory days.
I even learned to turn my socks inside out so that I can’t feel the seam.
Bad at existing: late ADHD diagnoses
It was one of those Kohl’s Christmas Eve dresses with a black velvet bodice and red tool skirt that left glitter wherever I sat. The sleeves felt too tight, the tool was scratchy, and the light was too loud. So, when I could feel the seam of the stockings, my skin cells screamed. My mom couldn’t hear them, but she heard my screaming. All these years later we still laugh at the fact I could never wear tights.
The issue is that I’m 20 years old, and I still cry when I can feel the seam of my sock.
I was eighteen when I was diagnosed with ADHD. Like thousands of women, I went undiagnosed since the diagnostic criteria is almost completely based on young boys. Like many women I practically have to pull out my doctor’s diagnosis for people to believe me.
It is only in the last ten years or so that psychologists are beginning to recognize the existence of feminine presenting ADHD. Recent studies focusing on women have realized the influence that socialization plays on the manifestation of neurodivergent disorders. Women are socialized to be less obtrusive than men so feminine presenting ADHD tends to be more internalized. Women learn to mask far quicker.
Masking is a term used when talking about ADHD and ASD (autism spectrum disorder) where the neurodivergent person covers their symptoms and traits and unintentionally models their behavior after the neurotypical people around them. It is not an intentional choice, but something that people do without realizing. Masking leads to internalized symptoms that are not only difficult to live with, but very difficult to see from the outside.
I was a 4.0 student in high school. I was a National Merit Scholar, a varsity tennis player, an All-State Choir competitor, and I was in at least three theatre productions a year while maintaining multiple internships. I was the model student. My resumé looks great. What we don’t see on paper is that internally, I was a disaster.
I had to be “on” all day. So, I shoved down everything: my fatigue, my sensory overwhelm, my executive dysfunction, any of what I now know to be symptoms of ADHD. Then I would come home as an empty shell. I had no energy left to give. I was easily irritated and angered. I couldn’t complete any of the tasks I was asked to do around the house – even the most basic ones. I could hardly get myself to shower and brush my teeth (a common issue with people with ADHD).
This didn’t stop in college. It just got worse. Freshman year, I maintained my straight A’s, played a huge role in a campus production, all while attempting to navigate a social life with all these new and wonderful people. Just like in high school, I would be unable to do work for days at a time and then suddenly get a weeks’ worth of work done in a day. Yet I still got an A. I felt like a fraud. On those days where I couldn’t do anything I would sit and stare at the list I had made of everything I needed to do – physically unable to do any of it. I felt like this was the real me: I was secretly inherently lazy and I never earned anything I got. Beyond the negative self-talk I was physically unable to take care of myself.
I was running myself into the ground and I was doing it fast.
“I feel like I’m just bad at existing,” I told the woman sitting across from me. It was my first therapy appointment in a while, and I was desperate for some kind of answer to why I spent my life in a perpetual state of exhaustion. When I finished talking, the therapist laughed. “You might just be the most textbook presentation of feminine presenting ADHD I’ve ever seen.”
Diagnoses are not identities. This is true. But when you spend your whole life thinking that things are just naturally this hard and then you find out that they don’t have to be – everything changes. Late diagnoses can be crippling. I spent my entire life building these internal messages that I was just a weak person. I was lazy. It was my fault things were so hard and soon people would see I’m not the perfect student – I’m a disaster. I don’t deserve the good grades, I don’t deserve the great opportunities I have, and I don’t deserve these great friends.
If I had had the diagnosis and the tools that come with it, I could have avoided years of misinformed self-talk, of physical self-care, and exhaustion. Maybe the thousands of women could have.
Now I know that my inability to work is called executive dysfunction. It is a physiological issue where no matter how much a person might want to do a task they physically cannot. It is like a person telling themself to put their hand into boiling water. Their mind might tell them to do it, but physically they are unable to. That is what executive dysfunction is like. A person can need to do something or even want to, but physically the just can’t.
Those days where I do all my work in one sitting and somehow do it well – that’s called hyperfixation. ADHD brains sometimes have an incredible ability when they latch onto one thing to complete it incredibly fast and incredibly well.
I have been able to start medication which has been life changing. That is not an exaggeration. I am able to maintain my grades, extracurricular activities, and friendships, but I don’t feel like I am digging myself into the ground.
Now that I know where my sensory issues stem from, I’ve learned tricks to avoid them becoming too much of a problem. Whenever I can, I avoid bright lights if I’m overwhelmed. I wear noise cancelling headphones in loud areas. I have safety items of clothing to wear on bad sensory days.
I even learned to turn my socks inside out so that I can’t feel the seam.