ADHD isn’t always what you think.

A typical account of many women living with inattentive ADHD. Could it be you? Read Kristi’s story and let us know.

When I was a child, teachers and most parents were not equipped to understand. While at school, I was told off and spanked for making up stories. Singled out by teachers who decided that I was a problem child and treated me unfairly because of it, like being told I needed a note to go buy my lunch outside of school, and then when I got one, they still said no … So I swore at them and did it anyway. I became defiant. Teachers would call me stupid and humiliate me in front of the class when I couldn’t follow instructions. One pulled my hair to swing me around when I went the wrong direction. I was put into special classes. I couldn’t do math and was constantly humiliated for not knowing my times tables like everyone else. I wasn’t able to keep friends long. I struggled finding friend groups. I would stand next to a group and just hope they would play with me. Eventually they let me in because I kept making them laugh. My humour is what’s gotten me through life… Making people laugh to get them to like me. I was constantly attracting bullies who wanted to fight me. I failed math in the end. I refused to do work that didn’t engage me and wagged school, walking through the city streets, and sitting behind my house, waiting for the hour that I could walk through the door and pretend I had a good day at school. And of course… I got depressed.

School was fucking awful, then came adulthood.

Underachieving and falling into dead end jobs because I didn’t think I was good enough; couldn’t follow instructions; being overly sensitive to criticism and attracting more bullies; becoming overwhelmed and having breakdowns and the dreaded depression again. A cycle of repetitiveness over and over. One that I’m still not really out of, and has caused me trauma and fear to keep trying. Many therapists tried to help, but ended up giving me antidepressants and treated each depressive episode as they came. They didn’t understand what was really causing them, other than perhaps I’m too sensitive, or maybe I need to find a job I can cope with; take these and try and get better and talk to people if you need more help. I’m appreciative of the help they gave me, but I knew something else was going on with my brain. I knew I felt different and it wasn’t just depression and crippling anxiety from the fallout of life … There were other things that I couldn’t explain. Eventually everything came to a head with my health. Literally came to my head.

Lifelong endometriosis caused me to request a hysterectomy, which resulted in PTSD from a surgical accident and traumatizing aftercare. I went straight into menopause and after being treated for the PTSD, my brain … my poor brain, finally decided to show me what had really been the problem all these years. I started dropping the mask and thinking I was losing the plot. As is often the case, I had been missed as a girl, and trying to function as an adult on lower dopamine levels and frontal lobe cortex executive disfunction… In other words, ADHD. Not the bouncing hyperactive naughty boy ADHD that most people associate it with… But rather, the struggling, daydreaming inattentive little girl who couldn’t figure out the world. Many of these little girls grew up struggling all their lives, wondering what’s wrong with them, why can’t they adult like they’re supposed to? They often get treated for depression and anxiety, or misdiagnosed with bipolar or a borderline personality disorder. And actually, you can have more than one diagnosis.

ADHD can have many comorbidities. Yay! But there apparently is a problem with women getting misdiagnosed with other things before finally getting the thing that makes much more sense to them. However, many women get right through till menopause without getting a diagnosis of ADHD at all. It’s when the hormones drop, making the much needed dopamine even lower, that these women end up trying to understand what’s happening… Why are they regressing into their childhood troubles again? Why can they no longer hold the mask up? So when things went into overdrive in my head after surgical menopause, and after I’d come into contact with a woman who had ADHD, I ended up falling into a massive rabbithole that I’m still not out of, resulting in me paying for a psychiatric assessment.

I finally mentioned my school life, my trouble keeping friends, feeling rejection sensitivity dysphoria, learning disability (with math), lifetime insomnia even as a child due to my hyperactive mind, ruminating, catastrophizing, ordination issues, sensory issues, distraction, daydreaming… just everything I could think of that made sense to me when I looked into ADHD. I mentioned my menopause, my thyroid, my PTSD. I didn’t want those to be forgotten. But it was the little girl and her world that helped the psychiatrist give me the diagnosis I so desperately needed… ADHD on the inattentive side, diagnosed as an adult.

It all fell into place. It made sense why I was missed. I grew up at a time when little girls didn’t have it… Not much was known about inattentive ADHD in girls or in boys.… They only looked at the naughty hyperactive boys. I was crying in corridors in my school and wanting to die at age 14, and my teachers didn’t know what was wrong, they ignored me. They let me sit at the back of the class not engaging, refusing to do my work, trying to make my friends laugh, because they didn’t know what to do with me. It wasn’t a thing back in my day… ADHD in little girls. Now there’s so much more known about it. Girls can have it and they present differently to boys. There’s a whole bunch of research as to why, and there’s a whole lot more about how women end up going through adulthood struggling, and just a tiny bit about how hormones, menopause and yes even endometriosis, could be connected to some women with ADHD. This isn’t to diminish the boys and men who struggle to get diagnosed too. There’s a lot of adult men who also haven’t been diagnosed because of the old fashioned “hyperactive little boy” stereotype. They will have their own presentations in society that runs on concepts not designed for their brains. Women have their presentations and there is so much more being studied to help combat the issue of late diagnosis of ADHD.

For now, there’s medications that may help me. I’m waiting to find out if I’m one of the lucky ones where it does. If not, then at least I know now why my brain does the things it does. Now, I can forgive the teachers. I can forgive the adult woman who’s writing this, and I can finally forgive the little girl who couldn’t figure out her world..

Kristi Bennett and on Facebook

From the editor:

This inattentive side of ADHD Seems to fall more familiarly under ADD them ADHD as the lack of hyperactivity means there are many men and women living undiagnosed. Is this an ironic case where the mental health system get up to recognise and treat children has ADD itself? With the rise in research and awareness more and more New Zealand adults are undergoing assessment for adult ADHD. Radio NZ have recently released this article, let’s hope the stigma around this can be dispelled and with more awareness and knowledge people can be encouraged on a path of life changing self discovery. – Dan – ADHDLounge.