As a therapist who specializes in working with adult women with ADHD, I can attest that in most cases, it is a late diagnosis. That means that inherently, in each case, there was not just a missed diagnosis but also one or even several misdiagnoses along the way.
Today I want to share why I was 38 years old before I learned that what I thought were my character flaws were ADHD and how I learned to accept and embrace that……….and why it is such a damn long process of undoing.
Click here if you want to skip to the how-to and download my free workbook🗝️
The door to this revelation was opened to me when our middle child started second grade. My husband and I were informed during parent-teacher conferences that our son has ADHD.
We quickly voiced our skepticism since the previous year, based on his first-grade teacher’s strong concerns about his frequent trips to the bathroom and the drinking fountain, we had had him tested for diabetes.
His teacher seemed to appreciate our hesitancy about receiving another medical diagnosis via parent-teacher conferences. “Of course your son does not have diabetes,” she assured us, “he is a rule-follower with ADHD and those bathroom breaks are his way of compensating without being disruptive.”
Mind blown. I started to have a completely new lens on ADHD symptoms
Afterall, he was a little boy and even he did not fit the “bouncing off the walls” stereotype that is so persistent even today. So we moved forward with testing for our son.
While we were doing the testing for our son, I noticed that many of the questions seemed very……. familiar.
I asked my husband a few of the questions related to myself. To my shock and humiliation, he told me that I did, in fact, engage in some socially objectionable behaviors of which I was completely unaware.
It’s also important to share that around this same time frame, our daughter, whose symptoms looked nothing at all like our son’s, was diagnosed with ADHD (primarily inattentive). She was diagnosed by her own therapist, separate from our son, however, had our son not been diagnosed first, it is more likely that she would have been misdiagnosed with anxiety or bipolar disorder, which are both common misdiagnoses for girls and women who do not have the “typical” presentation of ADHD.
I cover symptoms & gender more in-depth in my free ADHD workbook click here to download!🗝️
At this point I was in my late 30’s and had just started graduate school
Since I was 14 years old, I was told I was depressed or anxious, or I was reduced to character flaws like lazy, disorganized, messy, impulsive. I had so much unraveling to do. The internalized shame of ADHD, the impact of having doctors and therapists tell me who I was.
I also needed to untie from years of trying to reconcile “me” with the labels that the “experts” used, desperately wanting to feel belonging.
When you have ADHD that is undiagnosed, it feels like you do not quite fit anywhere
A series of life experiences that seems like showing up just a bit late to the party. Or not quite getting the joke. I once had a client explain her neurodivergence as “being cast in the same play as everyone else but getting handed a different script.”
We seek to find meaning and validation. Earlier in life, getting a diagnosis (albeit misdiagnosis) held the promise of feeling seen and belonging.
But trying to reconcile my internal experience with the external labels caused core conflict that just made me wonder…
Am I really depressed…..what would a depressed person do? What would an anxious person do? I tried to be the “good” patient and just agree but I still did not FEEL like it fit……like I didn’t fit. The validation never came. The medications never helped, and I just felt unhealed, like an anomaly.
Some doctors seem to think that we will feel better if they say that to us – that we are just a puzzle. But it does not feel novel or unique. It feels dismissive and placative.
When I was finally diagnosed with ADHD, I could look back not just at pieces of my life to try to make them make sense – I could look back at my entire life, and it DID make sense.
Finally. All of it.
With the previous diagnoses that doctors and therapists tried to apply to me, it felt like they were pulling out targeted parts of my life to make that particular diagnosis work, but as a whole person, those diagnoses just didn’t make sense. ADHD made sense. As a whole person.
It took me a long time before I would truly address my ADHD symptoms. I continued to just try to fit in, hiding parts of myself. I needed to unravel all the myths that I believed.
My free workbook gets you started unraveling your myths, click here to download!🗝️
Here’s a few things that it took me years to understand:
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This work includes grief. It requires that we allow for anger – rage even!
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It requires us to feel all our human emotions, and not try to extinguish them. Just as we accept our brains – not try to change them to attempt to “fit in.”
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It requires us to accept not only our diagnosis, but also other peoples’ responses to our new diagnoses. And to refrain from trying to convince people who are hell-bent on misunderstanding us.
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It requires us to seek out community, to ask for help.
Through resources, community, education, and support, I found my way
As I began to experience how life was changing for me in so many positive ways, I got clarity on the work I wanted to do with my clients. I realized that I wasn’t interested in helping women with ADHD to be “more” organized, on time, productive, “better”.……
I was no longer interested in helping women to mask.
Instead, I work with women to help to un-mask.
From the work I do with women just like you every day, I created a workbook that provides 5 actionable steps you can take to begin to embrace your ADHD
What took me years to understand, implement, and refine, you can begin today.
This workbook contains exercises to reflect on symptoms, gain awareness to your stories, explore your strengths and consider new possibilities.
Plus, some grounding exercises to help along the way!
Download your free workbook 📖🗝️
I hope this helps you begin to shift how you think about your ADHD.
I have been there, hiding, masking, censoring. And I have overcome it, redefining for myself what “ADHD” means beyond a label. I know that you can too.
With that said, download the workbook and learn the 5 actionable steps you can take to embrace your ADHD🧠
And if you need a little help, resources, someone to listen to you. I’m here if you need me.
STAY awkward. GET bold. BE you.
Angela Langer, MSW, LICSW, ADHD-CCSP
Psychotherapist and ADHD Specialist for Women