Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) often goes unnoticed in young girls because they sometimes lack the typical hyperactive or impulsive components of the disorder – which is also characterized by difficulty filtering out distractions.
Those undiagnosed girls grow up into adults who may have spent a lot of their life feeling like people viewed them as lazy, spacey or stupid, which may have resulted in low self-esteem.
Because ADHD is more typically diagnosed in rowdy, young boys, there are many adult women who have struggled into adulthood without a diagnosis. If you think you might be one of them, you may want to consider seeing a mental health professional that specializes in ADHD.
Often ADHD is missed in young girls because they can be high-achieving (which can also be true of many boys with ADHD) and they don’t appear to be falling behind in school. Instead of being hyperactive, some women and girls with ADHD are the opposite and prefer quiet, sedentary activities.
Women with ADHD are often forgetful, easily distracted, disorganized and chronically late. They get by in life, despite undiagnosed ADHD, until they hit a wall: which is often college, a job or becoming a parent, said psychotherapist and ADHD expert Sari Solden in an article in U.S. News & World Report.
In Solden’s book, “Women with Attention Deficit Disorder,” she offers a series of questions to consider if you are an adult woman and think you might have ADHD. Here are a few:
- Do you feel bombarded in department stores, grocery stores, at the office or at parties?
- Is time, money, paper or “stuff” dominating your life and impacting your ability to achieve your goals?
- Are you spending a majority of your time coping, looking for things, catching up or covering up?
- Have you stopped having people over to your house because of your shame at the mess?
- Is it impossible for you to shut out nearby sounds and distractions that don’t bother others?
- Do small requests for “one more thing” put you over the top emotionally?
- Do you feel that you have many more ideas than others, but you can’t stop them or synthesize, organize or act on them in an orderly way?
- Have you watched others of equal IQ and education pass you by?
- Are you starting to feel despair of ever fulfilling your potential and meeting your goals?
- Are you clueless as to how others lead a consistent, regular life?
- Have you been thought of as selfish because you don’t write thank-you notes or send birthday cards? Are you called a slob or spacey? Are you “passing for normal”?
- Is all your time and energy taken up with coping, staying organized, holding it together, with no time for fun or relaxation?
