Danielle Elliott
Appearances
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
I've never been all that good at listening to instructions. When flight attendants ask passengers to put their phones on airplane mode, I don't. I usually scroll Instagram until we lose service. That's what I was doing one morning in February 2024. I was scrolling Instagram when the little red icon appeared in the top left corner of the app. A new message. I opened it. It was a link to a video.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sheep shame. I get it. Sheep shame was a fun way of talking about the shame Sari felt in most areas of her life. She struggled with it for decades, without knowing why, or even knowing that other women felt it. That struggle led her to a profound understanding of ADHD and how much shame plays a part in it for women.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
When I read Sari's books, I started to get it. She described exactly what I've been feeling throughout my 30s. And when we spoke, she reminded me that when she was first making these connections about shame and the way societal expectations impact women with ADHD, these were brand new ideas. As a therapist treating all sorts of adults with ADHD, Sari could see beyond any individual experience.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
The first time we know of a doctor giving stimulants to kids is in 1937. About 20 years later, in 1955, the FDA approved Ritalin as a medication for adults battling depression and a handful of other conditions. Then, in 1962, the FDA approved it for use in children with attentional deficits and hyperactivity.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She could zoom out and see the bigger picture. She figured out that women and men experience ADHD differently. and that women work really hard to hide their ADHD traits or overcompensate for the ways they think they fall short of expectations. Perhaps most damaging, they thought of their shortcomings as personal failures.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
It seemed like Brooke had more to say, but Bianca jumped in. So
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
A year later, in 1963, a young pediatrician recognized this in 6-year-old Emily, and he prescribed Ritalin.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
They didn't know that their shame was sort of universal among women with ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
The American Psychiatric Association published the second edition of the DSM in 1968, when Emily was in fifth grade. This edition described a condition called hyperkinetic reaction of childhood. It's characterized by overactivity, restlessness, distractibility, and short attention span. The DSM said children outgrow this by the time they become teenagers.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari wanted to create something to help them understand. Of course, she has ADHD, and her ADHD very much came into play. Her dad was about to turn 80, and he'd written a novel. As a birthday gift, she wanted to get the novel typed up and printed into a book. She looked in the yellow pages and found the name of a typist. She called, and the woman said, come over.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
You know, all of us are distracted because of our phones, right? I can be reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page at night. I'm like, wait, let me check what my sister just sent me on Instagram. But where's the line between someone who feels distracted because of their phone and someone who actually has ADHD and gets a diagnosis like that?
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Emily was 11 years old, and she was starting to feel self-conscious about her silly pill.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I'll show you a proof of a book we're working on. My husband's a publisher. Sari went over, and the book was by a man named Tom Hartman. It was about adult ADHD. Sari couldn't believe it. She told the publisher what she wanted to write, a book about women with ADHD, and he suggested they work together. And we kept saying, okay, this is the time. We have to get this out right now.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Did you feel like you had grown out of it? Like, did you, as a fifth grader, did you remember then having a harder time sitting still or, you know, you're not in?
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She still didn't get moving. Then, her publisher told her there was going to be a conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first-ever conference for adults with ADHD. She felt too shy to go to a conference. But her publisher mentioned that Tom Hartman would be there. Hearing this, she said, made her brave enough to go.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
No one suspected that Emily's grades might somehow have been affected by this hyperkinetic energy because doctors thought kids outgrow the condition. She was in high school in 1971 when a Canadian psychologist named Virginia Douglas gave a speech that would change everyone's understanding of hyperactivity, hyperkinesis, and attentional disorders.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
This was at the annual meeting of the Association of Canadian Psychologists. Dr. Douglas explained research she'd conducted at Montreal Children's Hospital, where she determined that hyperkinesis is associated with attentional deficits and impulsivity. Hyperkinetic reaction of childhood became known as attention deficit disorder, ADD.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
In 1980, the third edition of the DSM updated the diagnostic criteria and officially changed the name. By then, Emily was a recent art school grad living in Toronto. She was married, building a life as a textile designer and weaver.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari saw that when women with ADHD are together, they can stop hiding. They take off their masks. Their shame seems to disappear. They move at their natural pace in their natural way. They don't feel ashamed of being disheveled or scattered or talking too fast. They don't need to code switch.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Emily started to gain a reputation in the art world. One of her pieces was exhibited at a museum in New York, but she and her husband were feeling the pull to move home to Michigan. They bought an old schoolhouse in Traverse City. It's a picturesque town, right on the water. It's dreamy, and in many ways, so is their life. Financially, though, it was tough.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari lived more than 40 years of life not knowing how to explain the way she felt. As she started to understand, she counseled dozens of women who didn't realize there were others like them. And at that conference, she saw what happens when women with ADHD connect with each other. If she was going to write about this, it was time. Back in California, she got to work.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She's written three books about it and helped women all over the world understand their ADHD and how attempting to meet societal expectations of what it means to be a woman often creates intense shame. Shame and overwhelm might even help explain the recent rise in ADHD diagnosis among women.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Emily waitressed and continued making art. But being an artist in Traverse City, Michigan, wasn't the same as being an artist in Toronto. Her husband had started a graphic design firm.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
I knew exactly why my friends were sending me this clip. Why are so many women being diagnosed with ADHD? Do they really have it? I started asking these questions sometime in the summer of 2022, a few months after I joined the ranks of the recently diagnosed. Listening to a news anchor question the rise in diagnosis, I realized I really do want to know why women, why now?
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
What a life. She met someone and fell in love, built a creative career, moved to this beautiful place. They had two little boys. Emily absolutely loved being a mom. But a few years into joining her husband at the design firm, Emily was struggling at work.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
It was really something to think about now. She pulled it off, somehow. And the book came out in 1995. The title is simple, Women and Attention Deficit Disorder. She keeps a copy on her desk. She reached for it.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Meaning, you have to hit deadlines. And to hit those deadlines, you have to be decisive. She would start with lots of ideas. She could whittle the ideas down to three frontrunners. And I might get stuck on the three and say, yeah, I just see the potential in everything.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
It's the first book about the emotions of adult ADHD, rather than neuroscience or brain structures or chemical imbalances in the brain. It's also the first, as far as I know, or at least one of the first, to describe the adult experience of inattentive ADHD. And since this is a type of ADHD more common among girls and women, it's really the first time this type of ADHD got much attention.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
It was a problem because the schedules only allowed her to run through one final choice. She was doing three times the work and it wasn't working. Emily was figuring this out as it was happening. The company was successful, and the work was demanding. She was in a high-stakes environment. She loved it, most days. But when deadlines approached... I suffered. So I was suffering at work.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
We met at her house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As I walked in, she joked that it isn't usually so clean. She pointed to a tray of cheese and crackers and grapes and said, this is all for show. She knows it's what you're supposed to do when someone is coming over. It's expected. We set up in her office.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari's book came out three years after Driven to Distraction changed the long-accepted notion that ADD is something kids outgrow. So scholars in the field were already adjusting to the idea that adults have ADD and then ADHD. Then a therapist in Northern California writes a book saying that not only do women experience ADD, they do so in a way that is different from the way men experience it.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Women praised Sari's book. They said they felt seen. But women weren't the only people reading Sari's book, and some of the others didn't like it. Sari was invited to speak at the annual conference for an organization called CHAD. Back then, CHAD stood for Children with ADD.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari accepted the invitation, and on the first night of the conference, she went to the keynote address. An expert in the field stood in front of a crowded ballroom. He used a projector during his keynote, and he projected the cover of her book onto a screen. He said, how dare she write this?
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari was completely shocked. And it only got worse.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Emily stopped to do the math. She counted on her fingers, and we laughed because this is something I do too. Emily thinks she talked to her doctor when she was 30, so that would be 1987 or 88. They talked about her medical history, including the diagnosis in kindergarten and her silly pill. By then, doctors were starting to recognize that adults often have symptoms of ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
And we might not know anything about it if not for Sari and a handful of others who have revealed the many ways ADHD impacts women. But Sari didn't set out to change global thinking. She was simply trying to figure out why her own life felt so hard and why she's always felt so much shame.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
But officially, it was still considered a condition of childhood. Emily was lucky to have a doctor who was up to date on the clinical findings.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
The men at the gate, the gatekeepers, are the same men who, throughout the 1970s and early 80s, perpetuated the belief that attentional issues and hyperactivity are unrelated, that children outgrow ADD, that the ratio of boys to girls with ADD is 10 to 1. The authors of Driven to Distraction were also ridiculed, but they worked within a gatekeeping institution, Harvard Medical School.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
A revised edition of the DSM combined ADD and hyperactivity in 1987. now officially calling it ADHD. It was a controversial update, and one that didn't quite reach Emily at the time. She still thought of her childhood condition and her ADD as separate things. It would be a few more years before she connected them. Still, she had her diagnosis, and it helped.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
They had a much easier time ignoring the criticism. Sari ran a clinic for adults with learning disabilities in Northern California. She wasn't from any of these institutions.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
And it worked. Emily is my idea of the best-case scenario. Each time she recognized a challenge, she sought help, and she was diagnosed according to the most advanced scientific understanding of the time. Most women didn't have this sort of luck or privilege. Emily is quick to acknowledge that she comes from a highly educated, open-minded family.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
She had access to great doctors, and they treated her appropriately. It helped that she had symptoms most commonly associated with boys. But still, her experience is rare. Ideally, the science would have moved faster. But it advanced quickly enough to meet most of her needs. There was still one complication of her ADHD that she couldn't quite figure out.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari became a godmother of women with ADD. Her first book sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
It wasn't about her ability to make deadlines. It had more to do with the way people treated her when she struggled with those deadlines. She grew up in a family where she was cherished and celebrated. She said she didn't really know criticism until she became an adult. Now, people, including her husband, expected her to do things in certain ways. And when she didn't, they were harsh.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
She struggled with this. For once, her doctors didn't have a new diagnosis. She read everything she could find on adult ADHD. She saw that someone was hosting a conference in Michigan to discuss adult ADHD, and she went.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
For the last year or so, I've tried to answer these questions. I've talked to scientists, doctors, and I've talked to many, many women who have ADHD. Some who were recently diagnosed, others who have known for decades. This is a story about science, social expectations, stress, and the way we live. It's about who we trust. Most importantly, it's a story about women. This is Climbing the Walls.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
The book's success launched her into a public speaking career, something that she never, ever could have imagined before she was diagnosed with ADHD. Back then, she hardly spoke at all. Since 1995, she's been speaking all over the world. This is Terry Matlin. She first heard Sari speak at a conference in the 90s. She's the author of a book called The Queen of Distraction.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
At one of these conferences, Emily picked up a book called Women with ADD.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She trained as a social worker in the 70s. In the late 80s, she was a mom trying to figure out what was going on with her rambunctious daughter. She started to learn about ADD and asked a doctor about it. It took some time, but he eventually diagnosed her daughter.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
The book was written by a woman named Sari Solden. It was published in 1995. Emily said it helped her understand the emotional side of ADHD. For her, it was the final piece of the puzzle. But wait, 1995? What about that common story I'd heard that women were only now being diagnosed because, up until recently, no one understood how ADHD impacts girls and women?
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Terry was reading about childhood ADD, but she started to think that she might also have it.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
This is Climbing the Walls, a podcast where I try to figure out why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm Danielle Elliott. Sari wrote her first book in the early 1990s. It helped Emily Mitchell understand the ways she struggled with ADHD, ways that weren't explained in the scientific journals or at her doctor's office. Nearly three decades later, Sari's books did the same for me.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
I've seen versions of this story reported in the New York Times, The Guardian, the New York Post, and all over digital media. I've heard it in newscasts. Friends say it. A psychiatrist said it to me as she diagnosed me. It's a clean story. I bought it and repeated it.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Then I read Sari Solden's book, and I realized there's a problem with this version of events in which doctors just didn't know how women experience ADHD. The problem is, it's not true. Sari lives a few hours from Emily, so I went to see her. And that day, she helped me understand my questions. Why women? Why now? In new ways.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Terry read the same books Terry read, driven to distraction and you mean I'm not lazy, stupid, or crazy? These books helped confirm her sense that she might have ADHD. She'd tried and failed to find treatment for herself. As a social worker, she wanted to start treating other adults with ADHD. She saw an ad for a conference happening in Ann Arbor and decided to go.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Sari was deep in this fight. She never planned to be a pioneer. But she became one when she wrote about what it's like for women with ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
That's next time on Climbing the Walls. Climbing the Walls was written and reported by me, Danielle Elliott. It was edited by Neil Drumming. Sound design by Cody Nelson. Brianna Berry was our production director. Ash Beecher was our supervising producer. And Diana White was our associate producer. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Research by Karen Watanabe.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
Our music was composed by Kwame Brant Pierce, with additional music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our mixing was done by Justin D. Wright. This series was brought to you by Understood.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
From understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cochier, and Seth Melnick. A very special thanks to Ray Jacobson, Julie Zietz, Jordan Davidson, Sarah Greenberg, and Kathleen Nadeau. If you want to help Understood continue this work, consider making a donation at understood.org.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Terry reminds me of so many of the women who have been diagnosed in the last five years, and it doesn't make sense to me that they have the same stories 30 years apart. It seems like it could have been so simple. Doctors could have started addressing adult ADHD by 1992 in the wake of Driven to Distraction.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Then, three years later, when Sari wrote about the emotional toll that ADHD takes on women, scientists could have taken her findings seriously and started developing better treatments. Instead, diagnosis rates remained mostly stagnant for women for the next 30 years. Most of the people being referred for treatment in the 90s were boys. White boys. There's a long history of why this is true.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
In the simplest terms, teachers are often the first to suggest a parent look into ADHD. So a teacher's perceptions dictate who gets tested. When Black and Hispanic boys acted out in class, they often got disciplined. When white boys were hyperactive or argumentative, the teachers referred them for treatment. They got help.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
When women did get diagnosed, it was often because, like Terry, they went in search of more information about their kids' ADHD and, in the process, realized... Oh, I also have this. And because most of the kids being diagnosed were white boys, most of the parents recognizing their own ADHD were, yes, also white. Things started to improve in the early 2000s.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
From 2000 to 2010, diagnosis rates increased the most among Black girls. The rates among adults rose, but not nearly as much as they would rise starting in 2020. Seri said this is all about research. Doctors rely on scientific research and the diagnostic criteria in the DSM. Seri and other clinicians base their findings on their patients.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
I'm Danielle Elliott. I had a fairly unique pandemic experience. I started dating someone in the first week. I was 35, and this was honestly my first relationship. Unless, you know, you actually want to count the revolving door of four-month situations I've been in for the last 10 years. Anyway, everything was new, and it was distracting me from everything else happening in the world.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So, as accurate as their work might be, it's not considered scientific in the traditional sense. For that, it would need to be validated by scientific researchers. And it never was. So it never became accepted science. And if it's not science, it's not incorporated into science and medical curriculums.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So nobody recognizes it. And as a result, women have for decades been misdiagnosed. Terry agreed.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
When I was diagnosed, my doctor recommended a stimulant and behavioral approaches. She talked about making lists and calendars and suggested I might want to see an ADHD coach. These things helped, but they didn't exactly change my life. A year and a half after I was diagnosed, a friend recommended Sari's books.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So what changed in 2020? Why were so many women suddenly being diagnosed? Everything exploded from really the pandemic and TikTok. The pandemic and TikTok, she insisted. It's a simple answer. The way it unfolded is anything but. For many women, coming to terms with their ADHD during the pandemic was a complicated and emotional experience.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I wasn't on social media during the pandemic, so to help me understand that experience, I called a friend who was.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
That's next time on Climbing the Walls. Climbing the Walls was written and reported by me, Danielle Elliott. It was edited by Neil Drumming. Sound design by Cody Nelson. Brianna Berry was our production director. Ash Beecher was our supervising producer. And Diana White was our associate producer. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Research by Karen Watanabe.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Our music was composed by Kwame Brant Pierce, with additional music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our mixing was done by Justin D. Wright. This series was brought to you by Understood.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
From understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Koshier, and Seth Melnick. A very special thanks to Ray Jacobson, Julie Zietz, Jordan Davidson, Sarah Greenberg, and Kathleen Nadeau. If you want to help Understood continue this work, consider making a donation at understood.org.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Halfway through the first chapter, I felt like I'd joined a secret club of women who understand ADHD in a different way. Sari's the key to that understanding, and I wanted to know, how'd she figure it all out? Sari talks fast, cuts herself off, and switches directions often. Before I could ask a question, she dove into her story. She said she did well in elementary school.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
We moved in together. Things were good for a while. I remember waking up one morning and just staring at the wall, not really moving. I laid there long enough that my partner looked at me and said, are you okay? And still without moving, I said, we used to be able to get on planes and a few hours later land in a completely different part of the world. I just miss being able to be anywhere else.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She needed a tutor in third grade and developed social anxiety around sixth grade. But overall, she did well. She graduated from a fairly small, structured high school and enrolled at the University of Michigan.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
A few months later, we got vaccinated. A few months after that, we broke up. I stashed a few boxes at my parents' house, booked a flight, and left. I spent the next two months working remotely from Mexico and Belize, then went to California and Colorado for work. It was fun, but the whole time, I kept thinking about the night we broke up. We needed to break up. We both knew this was coming.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
My thumb was hovering over it as the wheels lifted off the runway. I saw the top half of the news anchor's head and the logo for Fox News. The screen froze like that. At the time, I was working on a film about affirmative action, so I assumed that the link had something to do with that. We were in the air for about six hours, and as we landed, I opened Instagram again. I saw four more messages.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She struggled, but she got through it and graduated on time. After school, she taught for a few years, then tried other things.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
He initiated a conversation, and I exploded. I had this visceral reaction. I said things that I knew would cut deep. I couldn't look at him. I started packing, taking frames off the walls. I felt out of control, and it felt really out of character. I don't yell at people. Ever. I thought I'd learned to control my emotions. But that night, I acted like a child.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
After getting divorced, Sari started taking piano lessons, and then she married her piano teacher. They lived in Marin County, near San Francisco. In 1982, they started a rock and roll music school, you know, as one does. And at some point, they had more than 200 kid bands. Sari developed programs about self-esteem and self-expression. And she realized she loved this type of work.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
So, three months later, I was still beating myself up over it. One night, I googled extreme reactions to rejection, and this article popped up about something called rejection-sensitive dysphoria, RSD. I'd never heard of it. One magazine article described it like this. It is always triggered by the perceived or real loss of approval, love, or respect.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She went back to school to get a master's in counseling. I jumped from job to job in my 20s. At some point, I started saying I had a curiosity-driven career. I think I saw that name on LinkedIn or something. Now I say I have ADHD. In the 1980s, Sari didn't have a name for it. She just kept following her interests.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She seemed a little nervous, and she held her resume in her hands as we started talking, in case she forgot about any major moments in her career.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
It looks like an impressive, instantaneous rage at the person or situation responsible for causing the pain. Some people use the pain of RSD to find adaptations and overachieve. They constantly work to be the best at what they do and strive for idealized perfection. The last section of the article started with this sentence. Rejection sensitivity is part of ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
She became a therapist with a counseling program for adults with learning disabilities. She loved it, but she struggled in the same way she had since college. I couldn't keep things organized my whole life. I couldn't keep things organized. I had no idea why. She'd treat patients, and after work, she'd look through the books in the office. She started looking for ways to explain herself.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
I remember reading that sentence and thinking, wait, do I have ADHD? I didn't really think I could because as far as I knew, ADHD meant you couldn't focus. When I'm interested in something or I have a deadline, I focus so well that I sort of forget the rest of the world exists. I found an article on ADHD. It explained that ADHD is a spectrum of attentional issues.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Did anything in these books say anything about adults who were disorganized? She didn't find much, but working at this clinic definitely confirmed that she was different.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
The next day, I talked to my therapist. She suggested I take a self-screener. So I took it, and it said that I have symptoms of ADHD. And I, for lack of a better word, I pouted. I didn't want to have ADHD. Everything I read said that women with ADHD struggle in relationships, careers, and as parents. I wanted to believe I'd figure these things out.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Sari was in her early 40s at that point. She'd always been introverted, but now it seemed even more intense. She couldn't figure out how to keep up. She'd watch her coworkers taking notes in the middle of conversations and wonder how they did it. She could either write notes or talk. She couldn't do both. At some point, her boss assigned her to a new project.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
And to hear I might have a condition that apparently makes it harder to do these things, it felt scary. I booked a telehealth appointment with a psychiatrist. On a cold morning in February 2022, I sat down in front of my computer, logged into a video platform.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
As part of the project, she'd be administering a test to clients at the clinic. Before starting, her boss asked her to take the test so that she'd know what it was like.
Climbing the Walls
I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1
There was a cop outside my window. I looked back at the screen and tried to focus on what the psychiatrist was saying. She seemed to be sitting on a bench at a kitchen table. I could see a green lawn behind her and wondered where she lived. I realized I was distracted and tried to tune back in. She was still explaining how teachers or doctors usually spot ADHD in kids.
Climbing the Walls
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She searched the books in the office again, now looking to see if anything explained her memory issues or difficulty organizing. She didn't find anything, but in the midst of her search, a client brought her a recording of a segment he'd heard on NPR. In the segment, two Harvard University doctors discussed a book they were writing.
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She explained that girls with ADHD are usually not as hyperactive or disruptive as boys with ADHD. And since they're not disturbing their classmates or their teachers, their symptoms go unnoticed. She asked me about my childhood. How did I do in school? Did I make friends? Do I have any specific memories? I told her stories from preschool, kindergarten, second grade, fifth grade, seventh grade.
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The book is called Driven to Distraction. This book explained that adults continue to have difficulties long after they outgrow their physical hyperactivity. It described dozens of ways ADHD shows up in adults. They're often impulsive. They struggle to stay organized, manage schedules, maintain relationships. For those without hyperactivity, ADHD can often look like laziness or inattentiveness.
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I asked her if ADHD is why I didn't talk or walk until a year after most kids my age. My mom says she had me tested for special education preschool, but I didn't get in. In grad school, my advisor always said, Danielle, I think you have shiny ball syndrome. None of us suspected an actual syndrome. I just like chasing new ideas, usually before finishing whatever I'm working on.
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Everyone was sending me the same link. As it loaded, I realized it had nothing to do with affirmative action.
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She walked over to the door and pointed to a cork board with photos on it.
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It has something to do with the way ADHD brains develop. The authors coined a new shorthand for explaining it. People with ADHD have a Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes.
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Ten minutes into the call, the doctor said she thinks I have ADHD. I wanted this to be much more complicated. I wanted her to do a whole series of tests, but there are no definitive biological markers for ADHD. No blood test that says, yep, you have it. Instead, the diagnosis is based on your experiences throughout your life and your family history.
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A few months later, two women published a book called You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy? The book's blurb promises to help readers distinguish between ADD symptoms and normal lapses in memory and lack of concentration.
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The official criteria is listed in a book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM. It's published by the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM says that symptoms of ADHD develop by the time a person turns 12. If the symptoms begin after that, it's not ADHD.
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Sari decided to talk to a doctor. She felt she might finally have found a way to explain what she'd been experiencing for more than 20 years. This was the early 90s. It was sort of the early stages of neuroscience. Congress declared the 1990s would be the decade of the brain.
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Adult women are being diagnosed with ADHD at a record pace. In just two years, diagnosis rate has nearly doubled.
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There was a huge push and lots of investment in attempting to understand how people develop mental health conditions, which is all to say treating the brain was still fairly new. Her doctor suggested a full neuropsychological exam.
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Then she prescribed a stimulant, which is a type of medication often used to treat ADHD. And with that, I joined the ranks of what seemed to be a rapidly emerging demographic. Women diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic. One $500 video appointment, and I was now one of those women Fox News was talking about. My insurance didn't even cover it. I wasn't sure I wanted to be on a stimulant.
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I wasn't sure I wanted to hear any of this, honestly. But I dug into it anyway, doing my research alongside self-discovery. That's what I do after all. I should mention, I'm a science journalist. I also produce documentaries and podcasts. The more I learned about ADHD, it was clear that I have it. and I learned that it was so much more than what I had thought it was.
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Sari scanned through scientific literature on learning disabilities for years and never found answers to explain the ways she was struggling. Two books published in the early 90s changed her understanding of her brain. And after a bunch of tests, a doctor confirmed her suspicion that she has ADHD. She was diagnosed when she was 43 years old. Her doctor prescribed Ritalin.
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I thought it was about focus and attention, but it turns out it's also about emotional regulation and scheduling and your ability to stay organized and sustain interests. I read things that said people with ADHD have a constant battle between structure and stimulation, and that we have strong internal voices that are often completely set on telling us that we're doing everything wrong.
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She felt an immediate shift. For years, she'd hesitated to raise her hand in class or speak up in meetings. She worried about being wrong or being laughed at. When she started taking Ritalin, those fears subsided. She started presenting in meetings and was surprised to realize she enjoyed it. Within a few years, she became director of the clinic, something she never could have imagined before.
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Ah, yes. ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
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On social media, there were a lot of women talking about ADHD. And honestly, they all seemed a lot like me. College-educated, mostly well-adjusted white women who apparently wanted to be more adjusted. And that started to give me doubts.
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I would scroll through Instagram and TikTok and think, you all seem to have partners and children and big enough careers to help you reach large audiences on social media. If you have ADHD, how do you stay organized enough to create all this content? Is there any chance you're just capitalizing on this moment when ADHD seems to be trending? I don't like to minimize anyone else's experience.
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Throughout, she treated many people with adult ADHD, and she noticed a pattern.
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I think I was just pushing back against the idea that I had ADHD by proposing that maybe none of us women had it. That maybe we just weren't good enough. As if that's somehow better. You can't spell Danielle without denial. My notion of who was talking about ADHD started to expand when I moved into a new apartment that summer. Great light, closet space, friendly building.
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Phones could be a root cause, but ironically, it's also what's raising awareness about it.
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I got to know three of the women on my floor. We were watching TV one night, and one of them mentioned her ADHD. Another one of the women jumped in and said, Oh, I was diagnosed last year. Over the next few months, I started hearing this everywhere. A bartender at my favorite spot, two friends talking on the train, friends telling me about their moms being diagnosed.
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It's a nirvana they'll never reach without understanding why. She understood this because she'd felt it herself. She thought if she could just get organized, she'd enjoy work more. And just like she came up with workarounds, her patients figured things out as best they could.
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Unlike what I saw on social media, they weren't all white women. Then, researchers published data that supported what I was seeing around me. Tons of women are being diagnosed with ADHD. From 2020 to 2022, the rate of diagnosis skyrocketed. Okay, let me get inside your head for a minute. You're probably thinking, what's the big deal? A lot of women were diagnosed with ADHD in the past few years.
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So what? Sounds like you made some new friends and got some helpful meds out of it. Why are you so mystified? Like, this subject needs a podcast mystified. Is this your latest shiny ball? It goes back to what the psychiatrist told me on the phone about why my own ADHD wasn't identified when I was a kid. Girls tend to have different symptoms, she'd said. Hyperactivity is much less common.
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Joining us now is Brooke Schnittman. She's an ADHD and executive function coach. It's great to have you here. So tell us why. Why women? Why now? Why are these diagnoses going up?
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Because if a woman couldn't do the things women were expected to do, like keep a house clean, there was something wrong with her. Even when they were diagnosed with ADHD, doctors acted like the goal of treatment was to meet these expectations.
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Our brains, though no less unique than that of any rambunctious boys, slipped under the radar. For many, many years, this was the accepted wisdom. doctors weren't diagnosing ADHD in girls because they simply didn't know they had it. One doctor told me that in the 1970s and early 80s, he was taught the ratio of boys to girls with ADHD was 10 to 1.
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This sounds completely absurd, but apparently at least one doctor in the 1990s saw an ADHD diagnosis as solely a way to get women back to cleaning houses. All of this relates back to underlying challenges with what's called executive functioning and what executive functioning looks like in relation to expectations on women.
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On top of that, the medical community also firmly believed that people outgrow ADHD in adulthood. Those two beliefs together meant that very little thought was ever given to women, grown-up, adult women, having ADHD. When I was in grad school in 2013, and my advisor joked that I had shiny ball syndrome, she didn't consider that I might have ADHD. I was studying science journalism.
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I read so many journals and articles that year and never came across anything that would suggest such an idea. Obviously, something had changed in the last few years. Women with ADHD were now being found everywhere, from my apartment building to Fox News. I talked to dozens of women who, like me, went undiagnosed until recently. Women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. One woman in her mid-70s.
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All the invisible labor, as we now call it. In the 90s, when Sari was initially making these observations, it apparently wasn't even a question that women would manage their households. They could pursue careers if they wanted to, as long as they wanted to do that in addition to all the things they were already expected to do
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And this was hard, especially for women whose brains did not handle executive function and organization all that well.
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So, yeah, that's my shiny ball. My podcast-worthy question. Why women? Why now? One day, I was at a friend's birthday party, and someone said something I've never heard before. He said his mom was diagnosed with ADHD early. back in 1963. I couldn't resist. A week later, I was in Michigan, meeting his mom.
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If I wanted to figure out how we missed this in an entire generation of women, I felt like talking to someone who hadn't missed it was a pretty good place to start.
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Women feeling bad that they can't keep up or make themselves understood or seen by other people. I get that. I bounced around a lot in my 20s. And by my 30s, it wasn't amounting to anything. I felt like everyone was moving forward in life, and I was just moving around. When I saw my friends start doing everything as couples, I started dating more intentionally.
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The word then was hyperactive. This is Emily Mitchell. She's a graphic designer in Traverse City, Michigan. We met at her house and sat in a basement office.
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And I thought I was doing things right. Then, on a second date, my date started telling me about his cats. He kept them when his ex moved out. He asked if I'd ever lived with a partner. No. Oh, he said. how long was your longest relationship? I answered honestly, it was about four months. He put down his martini glass and said, wait, how old are you?
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The look on his face told me there was something wrong with me, that I'd reached a point in life where it was not acceptable to have not been in a relationship. It didn't matter that I'd focused on work and grad school and friends, that I'd traveled, that I just never met anyone who made sense for me.
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The look on this man's face told me that a woman in her mid-30s who has not been in a serious relationship is a woman who might never be in a serious relationship. The next few years were weird. I was happy when I was alone or with people who truly knew me. I retreated a bit in a way I never would have expected. Other people didn't seem to understand me, and I didn't understand them.
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Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
My questions about ADHD and perimenopause fit into a bigger category, ADHD and hormones. And I'm not even slightly the only person asking about them. Women have posted all sorts of stories and questions about ADHD and hormones on Reddit. Allow me to read you one of those posts.
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Those research projects will address the questions I'm seeing women post online and hearing women ask in casual conversations and interviews. That Duke is turning to women to decide what to study is a sign of progress. It's exciting. But she reminded me to temper my excitement.
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Two decades is a long time. And many women are not interested in waiting. Some are already experimenting. On Reddit, they describe trying different types of birth control and hormone replacement therapies to treat their ADHD. Some say they skipped the placebo week of their monthly birth control supply to keep their symptoms under control.
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One said her doctor has her take an extra 10 milligrams of ADHD medication during the week leading up to her period. A woman in perimenopause reported that hormone replacement therapy is helping with her ADHD. Summing up the seemingly collective desperation, one woman wrote, She'd found that direction through others on Reddit.
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Women are helping each other find answers, often in the absence of more scientific answers. For every woman who skirts the regulations and finds ways to experiment with hormone-based medications, many others write about doctors brushing off their concerns about hormones or their request to try hormone-based treatments.
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So far, there just isn't enough scientific evidence to support prescribing a particular birth control for women with ADHD or adjusting medications as hormones fluctuate. When I spoke with Ashley, she stressed that scientific research could conclude that the risks outweigh the benefits. She also emphasized that it will not be a one-size-fits-all approach.
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We need more studies like Ashley's, perhaps even studies that consider actual adult women rather than extrapolating from research on adolescents and teens. Whether we'll ever have this evidence-based advice will depend on whether more studies are funded. I'm cautiously optimistic that more studies will be funded, thanks in large part to the rise in rates of ADHD among women.
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I'm also optimistic that the timeline might start to move more quickly with the help of artificial intelligence. In the UK, a team of engineering and medical researchers are developing a machine to use AI to diagnose ADHD. The machine has so far detected ADHD with about an 87% rate of success.
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Reading this brought me back to my earlier question. Is it possible to develop ADHD later in life? The women writing these posts are frustrated. The author of the first one captured the feeling well. She wrote, so at least I know why these issues are happening and that's kind of a relief. I'm not broken. I'm not not trying hard enough. I'm not a mutant. Why doctors didn't tell me this before now?
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Researchers are also using AI to study the effectiveness of different treatments for ADHD or elements of treatment, like exercise. Perhaps someone will soon ask AI to figure out how hormones impact ADHD symptoms and how to incorporate this into individual treatment. Perhaps. There's one more trend giving me hope.
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A book called The XX Brain describes female-specific approaches to Alzheimer's disease. It discusses scientific evidence that women and men experience Alzheimer's differently and react differently to treatments. In the future, we will likely start to see the same in other conditions, particularly conditions that affect the brain, like dementia and, perhaps, ADHD.
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Recently, I've been looking into research about pregnancy and ADHD. Is it safe to take stimulants while pregnant, while breastfeeding? So far, study results are conflicting. It's confusing. There are other questions, things I haven't even thought of or seen anyone asking on Reddit. Remember Emily Mitchell from the first episode?
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Emily was diagnosed with hyperkinetic syndrome of childhood in the 1960s and with ADD in the late 1980s. Throughout her life, she's always thought about how to keep her brain healthy. But she started asking this question with more urgency in 2022. That year, Emily was diagnosed with breast cancer and found out that she was eligible for a fairly new type of treatment.
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It includes taking estrogen blockers. She was 65 and had already gone through menopause, so she knew her body wasn't producing as much estrogen as it used to. But she also knew that estrogen is instrumental in cognitive function.
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Emily ultimately decided to take an estrogen blocker. With her doctors, she kept a close eye on brain function. Pretty quickly, she noticed a difference.
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She switched medications and felt an improvement on the second medication.
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It's great that Emily's new treatment worked, but fascinating and also frustrating that no one can explain exactly how or why. Emily knew to ask these questions because she's always known how her brain works. With the recent rise in diagnosis, I have to imagine many more women will be asking this question in the course of cancer treatments.
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So far, there just aren't enough scientific studies recommending the best courses of treatment for women with ADHD. As I said in the first episode, Emily's experience is remarkable in that, for the most part, science kept pace with her life. To have had an appropriate diagnosis and treatment as a child in the 1960s, and again as a young working mom in the 1980s, this is so rare.
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Doctors provided answers every time she started asking questions. Will anyone rise to that challenge now? During the pandemic, the topic of ADHD suddenly seemed to be everywhere, particularly the topic of ADHD and women. And it wasn't just something I was overhearing in bars and on the subway. Major media outlets were questioning why so many women were being diagnosed.
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Lately, though, the media explosion seems to have subsided a little, and that worries me a little. Recently, I've read or heard a couple of stories, all told by men so far, that seem to downplay ADHD as a disorder. This also worries me. You know what really worries me? In reporting this story, I spoke with a psychiatrist who told me that we're getting ADHD all wrong.
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No effing clue. The questions and frustrations are not exactly new. Sari Solden told me women have been asking them for decades. But the rise in diagnosis means many more women are asking about hormones and ADHD. Most of them want to know how to adjust treatment to account for these hormonal swings. Doctors and scientists don't have solid answers. At least, not yet.
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He's one of the authors of a 2006 paper on the evolutionary benefits of ADHD. He told me that when we talk about ADHD, we're probably grouping many different types of brains into one category. He said that there are probably thousands of types of brains within the global population, and we can't begin to comprehend the level of neurodiversity in the world.
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And so he doesn't think it's responsible to group many neurodivergences into a single disorder. I know it's important to question if the medical field is right about diagnoses. It's important to revise definitions when definitions are no longer serving people.
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But to stop acknowledging one of the most treatable forms of neurodivergence just because it might be too broad, and to do so right as we understand and accept that tons of women have this neurodivergence, that doesn't seem responsible to me either. I trust his research, showing that having ADHD was beneficial in the past. But we live in the present. The modern world is different.
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It's hard on all brains and seems to make ADHD more challenging to manage. Having a diagnosis for ADHD opens the door to treatments. Maybe, as we consider new forms of treatment, we should be looking beyond individual or personalized approaches.
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If women were not expected to handle the majority of executive functioning tasks at home or at work, if the world didn't rely on addictive technology, if we all moved and connected more, ADHD might be a little bit easier to manage. But the need for societal solutions doesn't replace the need for individual treatment. And it's time for that individual treatment to consider the experiences of women.
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I started this podcast asking why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD. People told me we just didn't understand ADHD in girls and women. They were wrong. Sari Solden told me there's a simple answer. The pandemic and TikTok. Ned Hollowell told me there's environmentally induced ADHD and that modern life is making ADHD symptoms worse.
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On Reddit, women are certain that decreasing estrogen during perimenopause and menopause brings on ADHD. I think it's more complicated than all of this. But I also have my own simple answer. Why women? Why now? Because throughout history, we did not prioritize women's health. And now women are demanding that we do. Climbing the Walls was written and reported by me, Danielle Elliott.
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It was edited by Neil Drumming. Sound design by Cody Nelson. Brianna Berry was our production director. Ash Beecher was our supervising producer. And Diana White was our associate producer. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Research by Karen Watanabe. Our music was composed by Kwame Brant Pierce, with additional music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our mixing was done by Justin D. Wright.
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This series was brought to you by Understood.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. From understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cochier, and Seth Melnick. A very special thanks to Ray Jacobson, Julie Zietz, Jordan Davidson, Sarah Greenberg, and Kathleen Nadeau.
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If you want to help Understood continue this work, consider making a donation at understood.org slash give.
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Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
On this final episode, I'm going to let you hear from a few researchers. We're going to talk a lot about hormones and why we don't yet understand, scientifically, how those hormones affect women with ADHD. or whether it's possible to develop ADHD after the age of 12.
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We're going to hear what treatment might look like in the future, if, and that's a big if, if scientists and the agencies that fund scientific research choose to prioritize the needs of adult women with ADHD. This is Climbing the Walls, a podcast where I try to figure out why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm Danielle Elliott. Let's go back in time just a little bit.
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Hey y'all, I just got back from a session with my psychiatrist, and she shared with me something that's kind of blown my mind. Apparently, that's in all caps, girl hormones throw all sorts of wrenches into ADHD and ADHD medication. After that conversation with her psychiatrist, the woman started tracking her symptoms alongside her menstrual cycles. She noticed, It's like clockwork.
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For most of medical history, clinical research operated under the false assumption that if you study men, the findings will pertain to women. In 1986, the NIH issued a new policy encouraging scientists to include women in research studies. Things started to change in 1991, when a woman named Bernadine Healy became the first female NIH director.
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Two weeks into her tenure, Dr. Healy launched the Women's Health Initiative. Over the next 15 years, the initiative enrolled more than 150,000 postmenopausal women in clinical trials. The initiative is the reason we know about long-term risks associated with hormone replacement therapies, especially when used by postmenopausal women.
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Still, the NIH policy recommendation didn't spread far and wide. Women, with all our pesky hormones, were just too difficult to study. Widespread change only started in 1993, when Congress passed a federal law requiring that women be included in clinical research. 1993. 30 years later, I struggled to find researchers who are focusing on ADHD and hormones.
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I found studies showing that estrogen helps distribute important neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin throughout the brain so that they can help with things like cognition and mood. When estrogen decreases and progesterone rises, it impacts brain function. The studies on estrogen and progesterone are helpful, but none of these studies are specifically about ADHD brains.
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And if we have any hope of developing better treatments for ADHD, we need to know how this science specifically applies to ADHD brains, which, by the way, already have a hard time circulating these neurotransmitters, even on a good day. So how do these hormonal fluctuations impact ADHD brains? I looked for experts in this.
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There are several ADHD coaches and clinicians who specialize in supporting women during different life stages. But scientists who study ADHD at these stages? I struggled to find any. I wondered if I just wasn't looking hard enough. Then, in February 2024, a new study led me to potential answers.
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This is Ashley Ang, the lead researcher on the February 2024 paper.
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Ashley learned that this was not a unique situation. It seemed to occur with other kids around the same age.
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Ashley chose the RISC lab at the University of Kentucky under the guidance of Dr. Michelle Martel. Dr. Martel was in the midst of an NIH-funded study examining ADHD symptoms across the menstrual cycles of young women with ADHD.
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Ashley's research ultimately confirmed what women have been reporting for decades.
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Several other factors impacted symptoms, including perceived stress. But the role of hormones was undeniable. Now, if you're thinking, yes, we know that hormones change symptoms. Why do we need a scientist to confirm what thousands of women have already experienced? I get it. But that's how science and medical treatments work.
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To develop treatments that help with hormones and ADHD, we need to understand the underlying science. For decades, it wasn't studied. Scientists focused on kids and teens with ADHD, primarily boys with ADHD. Technically, Ashley focused on adolescents, but because she studied hormones, her results can tell us about ADHD at different life stages.
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Her results show that, quote, She determined that in the two points in the menstrual cycle when estrogen decreases, that's where ADHD symptoms are worse. These results line up with those of other studies at the Risk Lab, including the long-term study that Ashley's mentor, Dr. Martel, is working on.
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The post is from four years ago. Back then, it was filed under the hashtag Tips and Techniques. Today, there's an entire category on Reddit called ADHD and hormone-related issues.
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This aligns with what women and clinicians have long reported. But as far as scientific research, it's groundbreaking. Ashley told me the overall goal of her research is threefold. First, to understand hormones and ADHD. Next, to personalize treatments.
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She said that in the future, this could mean psychiatrists or doctors titrate ADHD medications throughout a woman's menstrual cycle so that on days when symptoms are worse, they take a higher dose of medication. Another possibility is prescribing hormone-based medication, like birth control, to treat ADHD.
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She emphasized that this is theoretical, and these approaches have not yet been studied or tested. If treatments are developed, they won't be a one-size-fits-all solution.
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will also need research into different types of birth control. She mentioned a recent study completed at Uppsala University in Sweden, which found that women with ADHD who are taking hormone-based birth control pills are five times more likely to experience depression than women who do not have ADHD or than women with ADHD who use other forms of birth control.
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Women write about having increased cognitive difficulties, irritability, depression, rejection sensitivity, and other symptoms, usually during the second half of their menstrual cycles, during postpartum, perimenopause, and menopause. One woman said her ADHD eased when she became pregnant and then became unmanageable when she stopped breastfeeding.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
It seems like everything makes the case for we need more research.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
And even when research is done, it takes a long time to develop new treatments. The process of getting research from the lab to the people it impacts, known as bench-to-bedside, takes an average of 17 years. I asked her what we can hope for. What would progress look like 15 years from now?
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
It's possible that this will move faster because we don't need to discover and test new medications. Rather, we need to figure out how to better use the existing ones. An increase in attention on this subject might also help. Ashley told me she gets a lot of emails from young researchers who are interested in studying hormones and ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
And that gives her hope that research will push forward, so long as it gets funded. The third goal of Ashley's work is to improve the assessment process. And as we started talking about that goal, I realized her work sheds light on one of my main questions. Is it possible to develop ADHD later in life?
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Her study indicates that hormonal changes can create different levels of impairment in different women. This stuff is complicated, but to me, at least, this suggests that some women only begin to really struggle with ADHD as they get older. The DSM currently says that symptoms must develop by the age of 12.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
That's an improvement from the original guideline, which called for symptoms to develop by the age of 7. Still, 12 might not be a big enough change. Ashley's study indicates that it's possible that, like so much with ADHD, this diagnostic criteria is based too heavily on observations of boys.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Ashley's study was published in the journal Hormones and Behavior in February 2024. Experts in the field celebrated her work. A prominent ADHD expert, Dr. Russell Barkley, praised it. On his YouTube page, he posted a video explaining the importance of Ashley's study.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
He explained that the ratio of boys to girls with ADHD is about three to one in childhood. By adulthood, it's now about one and a half men to every woman. Ashley's paper finally offered an explanation for this shrinking gender gap as people age. The answer? It's what women have been saying all along. Hormones. And Dr. Barclay thinks Ashley's right about this.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Dr. Barclay called for more research in the area. We'll have more soon, when Dr. Martell publishes the results of her long-term study of ADHD symptoms in young women. a researcher I spoke with in London, will release the results of a study examining ADHD symptoms during menopause. A fairly new research center at Duke University will likely add more research in the future.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Another said she thought she had her ADHD handled until she hit perimenopause. She wrote, In yet another post, a woman said she is fairly certain she has ADHD, but her doctor can't diagnose her. Her symptoms came on during menopause, and according to the DSM, symptoms must start by the time a person turns 12. Her doctor is following that guideline.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
The Duke Center for Girls and Women with ADHD, the first of its kind at an academic institution, is currently focusing on educational tools as well as partnerships to support women with ADHD through pregnancy and perimenopause. Eventually, the center will conduct original research. And in another first, the center is taking a unique approach.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
This is Dr. Julia Schechter. She's a clinical psychologist and the co-director of the Duke Center for Girls and Women with ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
The groups came up with 46 research topics. The center turned the topics into a survey, distributed to more than 1,100 women with ADHD. The survey asked respondents to rank the 46 topics in order of priority.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Here's a not-at-all fun fact. The average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in the last 25 years or so. We are all increasingly struggling to focus. The writer Johan Hari attempts to reckon with this phenomenon in his 2022 book, Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. I read it in 2023 after a guy I was seeing recommended it.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She learned that people with ADHD have a 60 percent higher rate of developing addiction. She was about four years sober at that point and part of a support group called Healthcare Providers with Addiction. The group met weekly. They knew her well.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
But the book hones in on what Ned calls our ADDogenic culture and why more people might be developing what he called environmentally induced ADHD. That is to say, the way we live these days is manifesting ADHD-like symptoms, even for people who do not have ADHD. Does accepting this fact open the door for greater numbers of misdiagnosis? Yes.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Her group was wrong. Research shows that the medications most commonly used to treat ADHD are not addictive when used properly. The drugs have also been shown to have significant benefits in reducing substance abuse and in helping people with ADHD who are in recovery to maintain sobriety. Unfortunately, her group's response is not uncommon in recovery groups.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Michelle was wise to continue the conversation, and her friend was right. ADHD is highly genetic. Many parents pass it on to their children. She and her friend talked through it, and Michelle took an online self-assessment. It came back as hyperactive with some inattention and impulsivity.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Hearing that the support group, a group of healthcare workers, rejected the idea of ADHD makes me wonder how many people remain undiagnosed. We ask so many questions about overdiagnosis. What about underdiagnosis, particularly among groups who stand to benefit from understanding correlations between things like addiction and ADHD?
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Michelle's support group twice rejected the possibility that she has ADHD, and then she rejected them. She dropped out of the group. She took the assessment results to a psychiatrist.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
The psychiatrist diagnosed Michelle, and things started to change. For years, she said, she'd been trying to stay above water, running from fire to fire. She joked that she had been diagnosed with BAD, bad, in elementary school. And things progressed accordingly.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Michelle did enough work to finish college and nursing school. She got married. She got divorced. She got sober at 45 and was diagnosed with ADHD at 50. Two years later, she can see the difference the diagnosis and treatment have made in her life.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Michelle still occasionally grieves for what she called lost potential. For what could have been, had she or her parents or teachers or others known of her ADHD earlier. But she said she generally feels good about where she's at. It strikes me that the impact of Michelle's understanding extends beyond her personal growth. Michelle now works in community health care.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She said she sees many patients who have been incarcerated or have been struggling with substances for years, and many of them exhibit signs of undiagnosed ADHD. She talks to them about it, and many say they've never known certain behaviors are at all linked to ADHD. She told me she has these conversations many times each week and that it's helpful for them to know they are not alone.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
But for those who truly have ADHD, it reveals how severely modern life might be intensifying ADHD symptoms. About two weeks after I shared dinner with the Hallowells and talked myself into an unexpected invitation, I showed up at their camp. The ADHD family camp was being held at a boarding school in northern Michigan.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Michelle is treating people in communities where access to ADHD treatment is often lacking. I've tried to find community organizations or public health officials who are focusing on ADHD in underserved populations, particularly women, but have so far failed to find any. Michelle is the closest I've found to someone who is working with at-risk populations who stand to benefit from ADHD treatment.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I wonder how much the diagnosis rates would rise if more people in underserved communities could access mental health care. Thank you for having me. Throughout the week, I met women coming to terms with their needs and demanding better care. And I think this collective demand is the biggest reason diagnosis is on the rise. Women are demanding more from our health care system.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
And even when the system provides, they're seeking out knowledge and information and help from each other. Even then, it's not like everything is suddenly okay. On my last day at camp, I sat in on the parents' morning session. I noticed Tamsen standing at the back of the room with her shoes off, pressing her feet into the ground. She looked exhausted. Afterwards, I asked her how she was feeling.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She said listening to people talk about how they've turned their lives around. How they're now eating well and exercising and sleeping. It was all getting a bit overwhelming.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Yeah. Is that where you are as well? That's the way I felt for at least the first few months of knowing I have ADHD. People say a problem with ADHD is perfectionism. Well, when you start to hear that there are ways to tame your ADHD, it's very easy to try to perfectly tame your ADHD. And then that, in turn, adds to the overwhelm. Tamsen seemed to be coming to this realization at the camp.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
As I pulled onto the school grounds, I realized the decision to go there was pretty impulsive. And now that I was there, I didn't have much of a plan. I had hoped, at the very least, to spend the week connecting with women with ADHD. Maybe a few who were recently diagnosed. But beyond that, I didn't really know what to expect.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She seemed excited to be piecing this all together. Excited and not entirely sure what to do with these thoughts.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Tamsin was just two weeks into knowing about her ADHD when we spoke. Already, she was feeling things Sari Solden felt 30 years ago.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Tamsen, Elaine, Michelle, and about a dozen other women helped me understand the impact of the rise in diagnosis and the importance of treatment. They were all at the camp for their children, but left with a significant level of self-understanding. Even with this opportunity, this ADHD retreat of sorts, they're struggling with care. What does that mean for everybody else?
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Thinking about the ongoing deficiencies in care and how many women may never have the opportunity to connect with others the way I witnessed women connecting at the camp, it's a bit depressing. There's one more conversation I want to share. It left me thinking less about care and more about the overall impact of the rise in diagnosis, specifically the multigenerational impact.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I met Nancy's daughter one morning, and she told me her mom was back at the hotel. Then she said her mom also has ADHD, and, of course, I asked if I could talk to her. We sat on a bench next to a creek. Nancy is 74 years old. She described several classic elements of a life with undiagnosed ADHD. She did well in school. She became a people pleaser. She went into nursing.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She started drinking too much. She's 17 years sober now. Overall, she said, she has had a wonderful life.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
In her 50s, a doctor suggested she might have ADHD, but said he couldn't tell because she also had anxiety. When she retired and the feelings persisted, she was diagnosed. She tried several treatments. Nothing seemed to help. Then, a few years ago, her granddaughter was diagnosed. Then her other granddaughters. Then her daughter, Colleen. Nancy had never told Colleen about her ADHD diagnosis.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I got there towards the end of check-in and walked up at the same time as a family. Hello.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Now, she did. And as Colleen started working through appropriate treatments for herself and her girls, Nancy got curious.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Throughout our conversation, she vacillated between regret and a certain wisdom that comes with age.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
There's been progress made. Speaking to Nancy helped me see, more clearly, the importance of that progress. When women are diagnosed and treated appropriately, entire families benefit. This might be the greatest impact of the rise in diagnosis, breaking generational cycles, or it has the potential to be.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
That'll depend on whether an effort is made to correct deficiencies in care and to expand access to appropriate treatment. After speaking with Nancy, it was time to leave this idyllic setting, to pack up my rental car and head back to New York and all the pressures of modern life. I walked out to the beach and watched the sunset over Lake Michigan.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
We don't expect everybody on time. The Hallowells Camp is, for the most part, outside of the pace of modern life, outside of our ADD-ogenic culture. It's Ned's Vermont, or the author's seaside town from Stolen Focus. It's a week in the woods in a beautiful place, where kids can run around and parents can connect with each other.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I thought, for a moment, about what it would be like to live in a world more friendly to ADHD. It was only later, months later, that I realized one more thing I learned at the camp. Every woman I spoke to was diagnosed in her 40s or 50s I attributed this to deficiencies in care and a long history of gatekeepers rejecting the differences between the ways women and men experience ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Then, as I started to listen to the recordings from camp, I came across a story Sue Hollowell told on the first day, and something clicked. Sue shared it as the parents were gathering in a big conference room for the first time. Here's the story.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She told the parents how she arrived at her late diagnosis of ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Sure enough, she has ADHD. And she never knew it, despite being married to one of the world's leading experts on ADHD, raising children who have it, and counseling couples who are dealing with it. Of the recently diagnosed women I talked to at the camp, most didn't have access to information about ADHD or awareness of it. Some were misdiagnosed.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I thought these were the reasons why they weren't diagnosed with ADHD until their 40s or 50s. Sue had access all along. Her symptoms were there, all along. But they didn't impair her. So she didn't consider it. Then she hit perimenopause, and her symptoms became impairing.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Like Sue, thousands of women report developing, or at least noticing, symptoms of ADHD when they hit perimenopause and menopause. Did they have ADHD all along? Or is it possible that perimenopause and menopause can tip women from the ADHD trait end of the spectrum to the disordered end of the spectrum?
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
If so, is it possible that this, along with increased acceptance and awareness of how ADHD presents in women, could account for some of the rapid rise in diagnosis we've seen over the last few years? That's next time on Climbing the Walls. Climbing the Walls was written and reported by me, Danielle Elliott. It was edited by Neil Drumming. Sound design by Cody Nelson.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Brianna Berry was our production director. Ash Beecher was our supervising producer. And Diana White was our associate producer. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Research by Karen Watanabe. Our music was composed by Kwame Brant Pierce, with additional music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our mixing was done by Justin D. Wright.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
In other words, it's a pretty ideal setting for people with ADHD and their families. But even here, as I talked to these women, women from all over the world who had decided this was a safe enough space to speak candidly about their experiences, the stories of their struggles felt real and immediate.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
This series was brought to you by Understood.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. From understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cochier, and Seth Melnick. A very special thanks to Ray Jacobson, Julie Zietz, Jordan Davidson, Sarah Greenberg, and Kathleen Nadeau.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
If you want to help Understood continue this work, consider making a donation at understood.org.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
No matter their background or experience, they were all voicing a desire for more awareness and better treatment. Through my conversations at the camp, I started to see how much more needs to be done if there's to be any hope of reaching all the women who stand to benefit from knowing a name for the way their brain works. In this episode, I'm going to share four of those conversations.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
This is Climbing the Walls, a podcast where I try to figure out why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm Danielle Elliott. The first morning of camp, the kids went off on some sort of outdoor adventure, and the parents met for a group session with Sue Halliwell.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
They gathered in a large conference room and pushed the tables into a big U. Sue stood at the front and asked the parents to introduce themselves. The first woman said her wife was recently diagnosed with ADHD. A few more moms said they were diagnosed in the last few years. Some discovered their ADHD after their kids were diagnosed or through TikTok videos.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
He was in the middle of wrestling with his own ADHD symptoms. Anyway, the author of the book moved to a seaside town as an experiment. He cooked for himself. He walked everywhere. He read a daily newspaper and read books. He left his smartphone at home and called his family from a landline. Essentially, he lived in his immediate surroundings. Within weeks, he felt like his old self.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
One of the women shared something I've never heard before. Her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and she went in for a screening. In the course of that screening, the doctor diagnosed ADHD. Her daughters were later diagnosed. About two-thirds of the way through the introductions, a woman looked a bit nervous. As soon as she spoke, I understood why.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I caught up with her a few hours later to see how she was feeling.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Her name is Tamsin. She's from the UK and lives in California with her husband and their two children, who both have ADHD. They'd booked the trip months earlier in hopes of finding ways to support their kids and create more harmony in their family.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
By chance. For several months, a doctor had been treating Tamsen for depression. She was taking antidepressants, but was having trouble with them.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
I just was completely blindsided by it. Tamsen had been seeing a therapist before seeing the psychiatrist. When she got the diagnosis, she talked to her therapist about how they missed it.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
These questions come up so often in adult diagnosis. Is it perimenopause? Is it a result of years of trauma? Is it just the way we are in the world? Or is it ADHD? For decades, doctors erred on the side of it being everything else. Depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, menopause, life.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Hearing that Tamsen's psychiatrist instead recognized the symptoms of ADHD and knew how to properly assess her experience seems like a sign of progress. She didn't bring the information to her doctor. Her doctor suggested it and treated her appropriately. Progress. I should add, this is one woman's experience.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Another woman at camp told me her doctor refused to consider ADHD and kept insisting she actually had anxiety. She had to switch doctors. So receiving appropriate care still happens on a case-by-case basis. But for Tamsen, someone finally connected the dots. And that brought her a lot of relief.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
He could think clearly and write for sustained periods of time. He enjoyed conversations with strangers. Outside of the pace of modern life, his symptoms ebbed. After three months, he left this little paradise and set out to find reasons why it's so hard to achieve this feeling in regular life. He found that many forces beyond our control are sort of short-circuiting our brains.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
She's beginning to understand that inner negativity. And she told me she hoped to learn more during her week at this camp.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
During another parent session, Sue Halliwell paused the discussion to introduce a woman named Elaine. Elaine is a volunteer who runs an arts room at the camp. She wanted to tell the group about the arts project they could try that week and why art is a great outlet for people with ADHD. But first, she needed something from the group.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Elaine went on to share her story with the group. She said she'd learned a lot about herself since being diagnosed with ADHD. Well, not at first. At first, she ignored her diagnosis. She was busy taking care of her four kids and her husband and with work. She's a school nurse in a rural part of Michigan.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Then, a few years ago, within a span of two months, all of her kids moved out of their house and her husband started working a night shift.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Elaine stumbled into art, but the story I'm really hearing is how she started to grapple with her ADHD. Later, I caught up with her to ask more. She told me that she started to recognize her ADHD after her son was diagnosed. It took a while for a doctor to diagnose him.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
It took a while to get her son's diagnosis, and even longer to get her own. And when she did, she felt like she didn't have time to deal with it.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Things like pollution in the air, chemicals in our food, tech companies creating addictive products. In essence, the conditions of modern life are not good for our brains, neurotypical and neurodivergent brains alike. And many of the habits of modern life aren't good either. To be clear, Stolen Focus is not about ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Eventually, she found Ned Hollowell's podcast and reached out to him.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
This is her fourth year at the camp. She keeps coming back because it gives her a chance to connect and to overcome the lack of access to appropriate care in the area where she lives. She wouldn't be able to afford to be here if she weren't volunteering. It's not an opportunity most women in her situation can replicate.
Climbing the Walls
Stories from ADHD camp | 5
As part of her role at the camp, Elaine helps the other parents connect with each other. When she spoke to the group, she mentioned one of the ways she's doing so. She'd created a makeshift mail center at the back of the room, where parents could leave each other notes throughout the week. It was simple, little envelopes pinned to a board, each with a parent's name on it.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
On my way out of one of the sessions, I noticed a woman dropping a note into each mailbox.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
This is Michelle. She has long, curly gray hair and wears T-shirts. She's 52, which makes her one of the older moms at the camp. And I don't know if it's age or life experience or just her, but she has a very calm vibe.
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Stories from ADHD camp | 5
Michelle's a nurse practitioner. Her son was diagnosed with ADHD about six years ago. But at the time, she didn't suspect she had it. In 2019, she started a post-grad course in psychiatric mental health. The coursework included the DSM. When they got to the pages on ADHD, the descriptions felt familiar.
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She sent a photo to her mom, her ex-husband, and a few close friends who have known her at different points in her life. Did any of them think Michelle fit the criteria?
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Hey, it's Danielle. When I was reporting and writing Climbing the Walls, there was a lot happening. ADHD was constantly in the news, for better or worse. I was navigating my own diagnosis, and I was digging into the long, complicated history of ADHD in women. With so much to unpack, I joined another podcast called Hyperfocus with Rae Jacobson.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
But for me, it's like financial insecurity will always be the thing that stresses me out more than thinking I'm living with untreated ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Yeah. So anyway, I think it was just like the acceptance kind of came when I saw other framings of ADHD traits.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Yeah. I mean, my takeaway from my initial stuff was like, oh, my relationships haven't worked out because they don't work out for people with ADHD. And like things that I've wanted to fix about myself, quote unquote, like you can read every book you want on relationship theory.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I'm not going to like I kind of had this like my read on it was like I think the three things I remember the most were like ADHD is really hard on careers.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
relationships and parenting and I was like I can completely see the ways it negatively impacted my career as much as I love where I am now it would have been interesting I think to have a brain that likes a straight path like I just don't know what that's like and like to not I have never stayed happy in anything whether it's a relationship like I don't know how to sustain interest
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
in anything beyond when I really do the math it's like for four months I'm really interested I can last a year anything beyond a year the second year I'm miserable and it's a really sad way to like do that math and I don't think that's true of everyone with ADHD but when I first got that diagnosis it was like oh yeah no I can see how it affected my career it's tough to change anything now it's like you're almost 40 you're not going to restart your career but
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Um, I can see how it affected relationships. I was diagnosed right before my 37th birthday. So I was sort of like, it's pretty late. Like it, like it would have been nice to know this at 30 is how I felt. Cause it's like, if there are ways to approach dating with ADHD that are slightly, or just things to be aware of, it would have been nice to know them when you're in like the heart of your life.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
dating, like period, I guess you could say. Yeah. And then with parenting, it was still a thing that I wanted to do. And it was like, oh, great. Now you're telling me that's going to be really hard too. Like, I just don't want to hear any of it.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Could have done. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Or taking your shoes off in the middle of a room or whatever.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I felt sort of invasive, to be honest, at first, because I was like, everyone is here. Because it's a camp for families, and it's really designed. It's like the kids have ADHD and the parents are there to learn about ADHD. But it turns out that in the last few years, all of the parents who are coming to the camp for the first time have recently found out that they have ADHD also.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And for a lot of them, I think it was just really... I don't think they would describe their typical lives, like day-to-day lives, as unsafe. But I think that I kept hearing over and over from women, I've never felt so safe and so free to be myself as I do knowing that I'm in a room full of people who understand what's going on.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And it's funny, Sari actually describes the same thing from a conference in the 90s. that it was the first time she was in a room full of adults who all knew that the others had ADHD. And so they could fully be themselves. They didn't have to try to pretend to be quote unquote normal.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And for me at the camp, there were like the first two days, my interviews with women were sort of hesitant because I didn't want to be interrupting this experience that they were having. But then as we talked more and more and they started to realize I also had it, it just became this like, It was like I was one of them, but also not. But it just, the camp was really amazing.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And I think most of the credit for that is just the, it's just a product of being in the same room as other people, like being surrounded by people who you know get it.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I'd say most of the women I spoke to at camp, but especially there's one woman who I speak to who'd only been diagnosed a couple of weeks before she came to camp.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And she was meant to be at camp with her husband and two children to learn ways. She spoke very eloquently, and she said that they wanted to learn how to have more harmony in their home with two children with ADHD. And then... A couple of weeks before camp, she was diagnosed. And I related to truly every word that came out of her mouth. It was just like, oh. And she was talking about how she...
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
felt like she was already a better mother. Cause she could now look at her kids and be like, she's like, I've always looked at my kids and thought, Oh no, you do things the way I do them. Like, I don't know what to do, but she never, that it was only once she was diagnosed that she's like, Oh, that's why I see that in my kids.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Like there's like an understanding, but I relate it to almost everything she said. And also just like her anger at the expectations that are placed on women in the world. Um, we talked a lot about that cause she don't, she was only just starting to piece it all together.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I had started working on a book proposal about ADHD, but it was interesting because the response from a lot of editors was, we've already had so many proposals about ADHD in women, but the process of publishing a book takes a year to two years. So it's going to be behind the news cycle.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Maybe that I haven't tamed some of the ADHD pieces that I like to think I have. I don't know if that's true in the context of reporting this show. That's a good question. Is there anything I learned? I think it's just that over the last year, I've realized that ADHD continues to have more of a role in my life than I realize. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I think I also learned that this, like this wasn't necessarily a learning from the course of reporting, but it happened in the course of reporting was just like some of the bigger things, like I might never actually And I think this is an ADHD thing. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I think decisiveness is really not one of our... It's not a thing that we're good at.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And I don't think we're particularly decisive people. And I think I started to realize that I just have to make... You just have to make a decision and go with it. You can't always consider all options. And you can't keep all doors open. So you ultimately have to just pick one. And I think that's just something that...
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
in the course of speaking to all the experts and everyone, it's like, yes, you can let life like keep. not in the sense of going poorly, but I just mean like let it go in whatever direction it's going to go in or you can direct it. And I think I've gotten better at trying to actually direct it and like make intentional decisions.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Not just like assuming things will fall into place because they rarely do for anyone, but I think they especially don't with ADHD. And like as much as we can make the most of what doesn't fall into place, I do still think that there are certain things that you're like, no, I want this to happen. So I'm going to have to make it happen.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I hope it minimizes their doubt about the diagnosis of women in their lives. And I hope it helps them understand that we don't fully understand ADHD yet. And that the next time diagnosis rates rise, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's just because people want to get their hands on medications. That there's a very real chance that it's because there's an increased understanding of this disorder.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I guess that's really, cause I think, yeah, ultimately I wanted to understand. And I hope that on the most basic level, I hope that after listening to this podcast, they understand why so many women are being diagnosed and that it's not as simple as any of the individual answers that a lot of people often give. It's not as simple as we didn't understand how it affected girls and women.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
It's not as simple as TikTok told a lot of people they have ADHD and they believed it. There's a lot of layers to why. And I think I often see it simplified into one or two sentences that don't even slightly capture the full picture.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Yeah, this was fun.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
In everything always. Like it was almost like when I got diagnosed, I was like, oh, that's – like that makes sense.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I think I feel like three years behind still in a lot of things. Oh, my gosh.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
In little and very, very big ways. Yeah. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
It's a show that dives into the most fascinating parts of ADHD—mental health and learning—and In the episode you're about to hear, I talk about how climbing the walls came to be, what surprised me most during the reporting process, and more. If you enjoy it, be sure to follow Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson wherever you get your podcasts, or just click the link in the show notes.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Well, it's been interesting because I think that what seemed different to me about the moment with women was like when I first started hearing ADHD, I was on the rise. It's like, yeah, we go through this every five years. Like I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, right? Like I have seen the news cycle cover ADHD, but this one just felt different because of the sheer amount.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Like it just seemed like truly every woman in my age range was saying it. And so I wanted to understand if there was something different happening in now, like if there are other elements of our culture that were contributing to this, or is it exclusively ADHD? And I think reporting on it was a really interesting process because there were moments where I started to doubt the rates of diagnosis.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And then there were moments where I thought, oh, we haven't even slightly begun to diagnose the true number of people who have this. And then Others where you're like, oh, if we continue to live the way we live in 2024, 2025, 100% of the population will have ADHD 100 years from now. Which is not a scientifically backed statement at all. That is completely just me saying things. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Your brain is never at a state of rest. Like our brains are just never in a state of rest anymore, except maybe when you're actually sleeping. And a lot of people are not sleeping enough.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
No. Well, they are like one of the experts I speak to in the podcast talks about what he calls environmentally induced ADHD. And I think as the environment people live in becomes less and less conducive with brain function, a lot of people are exhibiting symptoms that look very similar to ADHD. Like their brains are functioning in a way that an ADHD brain functions differently.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
But for many of them, if the environment can be shifted and changed, their brain will go back to functioning in a typical way. Whereas the neurotypical brain is functioning how it functions.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Right. But it's sort of become, right. It's not a response, but it's like the question that kept coming up for me in the reporting was sort of like, it's pretty tough to escape the environment that produces the symptoms of ADHD now.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Yeah, I think it really can. And I think it's sort of like a... I've wondered if the relatability of ADHD descriptions now has made some people start to think, well, if everyone has it, I don't really need to be treated for it. You know, so it makes me question over-diagnosis and under-diagnosis.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And I'm guilty of that myself.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I think the most surprising conversation I had was with someone who studies the evolutionary benefits. And he said that, um, where we're getting things wrong. This is his opinion, right? So this is one researcher's opinion. But he said... When we talk about these evolutionary benefits, we tend to look for the ways they're beneficial to individuals.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And the thing that people are missing about ADHD is that it's beneficial on a communal level. And that might not be great for the individual. Like it's so, and when he first said it to me, I was like, are you telling me my brain took one for the team? And he's like, yeah, kind of. Cause the entire group that like, he's like humans evolved in groups, groups need risk takers.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
They need people who are willing to do things differently. just like regardless of the consequences who are just motivated to do that for whatever reason. And that's the only way cultures advance. So it was just really interesting to me to hear him say, like the whole group learns when someone does something risky and they either learn you shouldn't do that or you should do that.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And it's like, whether you're talking about like, I mean, when we're talking about hunter-gatherer times thousands of, tens of thousands of years ago, you're talking about, like, somebody ate that berry, and that's how we know we can eat strawberries. Like, somebody did this, but it's probably a person with ADHD who did that.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And then in plenty of those cases, they probably ate a poisonous berry that didn't, like, their risk-taking didn't personally benefit them, but it benefited the rest of the group because then the group knew, don't eat that berry, you could die. And it's, like, such a simplistic, it's, like, my favorite conversation that I had in the whole thing.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
the community canaries yeah kind of like we're just like like I'll go down this hole to see if there's gas down here just because I want to see I'm just it looks interesting because I want to see I'm curious there's a hole let me see what's down it like somebody's brain had to work that way to learn things I kind of love that oh I love it it's true it doesn't really benefit you as an individual at all yeah so he's like now that it's been like like rebranded as a superpower he's like
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
it's missing the point. He's like, communities need people with ADHD. At least they used to. He's like, I don't, he was like, I'm not saying there's benefits now. I don't know that it confers benefits now.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I mean, I can see ways that ADHD has really benefited me personally, but only because I was able to – I was privileged enough to not be – like, I didn't have a ton of student debt coming out of college. I didn't have financial reasons why taking risks was potentially going to really – like I had a safety net is ultimately what I'm trying to say.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And, um, so I was able to quit my first three jobs within six months of taking them. It's not a good move. That's really not a good thing, but I'm kind of like my ADHD is the only reason I was able to keep pursuing different things until I found a way that works that I really like. And like right now I, I,
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I don't think that my career would exist as it does without ADHD, but there was a lot of like depression and worrying and fear that I would never have another job in the midst of the last 20 years. It's easy to look back and be like, now, yeah, my career seems to be working out. Also, it's working out right now because I have projects I'm working on.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Six months from now, you might like I might say, I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever work again.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
I think right immediately following the diagnosis, I did dig in pretty deep, but I didn't like the stuff that I found. What do you mean? I found a lot of the negative descriptions and the negative outcomes, and it sort of started to feel like, Oh, ADHD does explain a lot of the ways in which I have not lived up to what I would have liked to have done.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And it's really, really frustrating to think that I went to therapy for years, that I tried every approach to date it. I'm like, when I think of all the things I tried without knowing that there was this Fairly simple answer that is treatable. I was almost so mad that I wanted to reject it and believe that actually, no, I just had to keep trying harder.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
So there was a rejection period, I would say, of the diagnosis. And I should say that you can probably see the roots of it in... conversations with my mom, like when I tell her anything about it, she's like, there's nothing wrong with you. Like you're not broken. Like she's very much like, no, I don't believe like you did well in school.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Like she says a lot of the almost cliche things at this point that are said about girls, but it's more so her coming from this point of like, I don't want you to think you're broken. Cause if you think you're broken, you might think you can't overcome things. So I hear in that initial reaction, I can kind of see like, you know, the environment I grew up in, right?
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Like how neurodivergence was talked about or just the stigma that was around it and not wanting a stigma to be associated with us.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
Well, it was when I read ADHD 2.0, Ned Hallowell and John Rady's most recent book, where they talk about, they don't say everything's a superpower, but they talk about pairs of opposites.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And kind of like, I think a good example, one that really helped me was that creative people, you can understand that they ruminate a lot and that rumination is potentially described as creativity applied to the past. And I ruminate kind of horrendously. And I think since reading that, I've been able to recognize when I'm doing it.
Climbing the Walls
Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
And they give you some tools in that book for essentially changing the channel in your brain so that you're not ruminating anymore. And some of the tools are so simple. But as I was reading that book, it was like, oh, I can do things about this. And I don't have to spend... money every week to see an ADHD coach, which I think ADHD coaches are incredibly beneficial for a lot of people.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
A new book written by, you guessed it, Ned and John. It's called ADHD 2.0. I read ADHD 2.0 shortly after my sister's wedding. My copy is full of notes, entire pages underlined, especially the part about a recent scientific advance in the understanding of negative self-talk. the type of self-talk that I was feeling before seeing extended family at the wedding.
Climbing the Walls
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I dreaded the questions about what I'm doing with my life. I figured I'd get ahead of it by standing up in front of a room full of people and starting the toast with the self-deprecating joke I'd written. I asked my cousins to laugh on cue, just in case the joke didn't land. I scribbled notes and rewrites up until the moment the DJ called me to the front of the room.
Climbing the Walls
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The authors described this type of rumination as creativity applied to the past. Of course creative people also ruminate, pairs of opposites and all that. Thinking about this helped me tame my inner critic in ways that I never thought possible. So the book's great. At least it was for me. But I'm not sure it shifted public perception. The positive reframing of ADHD still needed a boost.
Climbing the Walls
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And then it got one. A big one. One of Ned's patients wrote a memoir, Paris Hilton. On the cover, she called ADHD her superpower. On the first page, she quoted Ned. Around the same time, she and a few other celebrities appeared in a documentary called The Disruptors. In the film, they talked about ADHD as the thing driving their success.
Climbing the Walls
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Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles talked about her ADHD in media tours. Comedian Nicole Byer talked about it on her popular podcast. Filmmaker Greta Gerwig mentioned it as she was doing press for her blockbuster hit, Barbie. As celebrities opened up about their ADHD, and did so without shame, the shift in public perception was rapid and obvious.
Climbing the Walls
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All this positive talk around ADHD had started to lift some of the stigma, which likely led to more people getting a diagnosis who needed it. And that's great, but I had concerns. This rosy reframing in the last few years, it seemed like it appealed to everyone I know. That's what worried me.
Climbing the Walls
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Is there any chance some people are hearing that creative people have ADHD and they want to be considered creative? That they hear career women have ADHD and they identify with that? Where is the line between having ADHD... attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and being a person who struggles to focus, or being a person who is extremely creative.
Climbing the Walls
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Ned told me I'm getting caught up in the diagnostic criteria. He doesn't want to throw out the accepted diagnostic criteria for ADHD. He just thinks it's flawed. He prefers what he calls a descriptive model, in which you describe the experience of ADHD and ask someone if this description feels familiar.
Climbing the Walls
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And as he handed me the microphone and I looked at everyone staring back at me, something unexpected happened. For the first time since being diagnosed, I felt grateful for the way my brain works.
Climbing the Walls
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I have a hard time with this because the description seems all-encompassing. I don't know many people who wouldn't relate to at least some of this description. Everyone gets distracted sometimes. Everyone feels low sometimes. And if anyone who relates to it should consider ADHD, would that not lead to overdiagnosis? Reporters and experts debate over diagnosis whenever diagnosis rates rise.
Climbing the Walls
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In the past, they focused on pharmaceutical marketing. They said it presented stimulants as a cure-all for basic human behaviors, that it stretched the definition of a mental health condition in pursuit of profits. Now, I wonder if some ADHD coaches, authors, speakers, and doctors have expanded the definition to the point that descriptions feel relatable to everyone. Ned has books to sell.
Climbing the Walls
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I thought, if ADHD is the reason I don't have this kind of classic life, it's probably also the reason I still love last-minute travel and like challenging the ways we're supposed to do things, and why I have a career in three fields, not one. Insatiable curiosity makes my life possible. All of this raced through my head, and then I started my speech.
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ADHD coaches need clients. Is it possible that, in an effort to sell these books and services, some experts are triggering overdiagnosis? And on the flip side of that, that they have painted such a rosy picture of ADHD that some people are led to believe it's not all that bad, or maybe not worth pursuing treatment. Ned told me he's not worried about overdiagnosis.
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He maintains that, if anything, ADHD is still wildly underdiagnosed.
Climbing the Walls
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I asked Ned to clarify his suggestion that 30 to 40 percent of the population has ADHD. And he reiterated that he does not think 30 to 40 percent meet the diagnostic criteria. Rather, he was talking about two distinct things. He was talking about ADHD, a serious disorder. And ADHD, a trait.
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As in, there are people whose lives are truly disordered by ADHD who fit into the statistics on increased rates of incarceration, divorce, substance abuse, credit card debt, premature death, and the many other negative consequences associated with ADHD. And then there are people who have some of the elements of ADHD, even if not the full disorder.
Climbing the Walls
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Regardless of whether they have severe ADHD or mild symptoms that might not qualify as a disorder, Ned believes they would benefit from ADHD coaching or reading his books. What Ned was doing here, insisting on a distinction between the disorder and a trait, it helped me understand why so many people tell me they have a little bit of ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
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It seems to line up with the idea that ADHD symptoms occur along a spectrum. But it also left me with more skepticism. Because if everyone with, quote, a little ADHD is now being diagnosed with ADHD the disorder, doesn't that indicate overdiagnosis? I'm not sure.
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It's a big question, and an important question, because the current rates of diagnosis have helped contribute to an unprecedented drug shortage. If people are being misdiagnosed, and that's limiting people with the disorder from accessing medications and treatment that they need in order to function, that's a huge problem. Overdiagnosis is a riddle we'll never solve.
Climbing the Walls
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This is a subjective diagnosis. People can lie. Other people can feel too much shame to ever seek help. Still more might relate to descriptions, even if the symptoms don't impair their lives. There are likely tons of people with undiagnosed ADHD and tons with misdiagnosed ADHD. We could circle it all day.
Climbing the Walls
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But while I had the ear of one of the leading experts on ADHD, I wanted to ask Ned a harder question, one that is less about his book sales and more about how he differentiates between the trait of ADHD and the disorder. What if the reason more people are seeking a diagnosis is actually because more people have moved from the trait part of the spectrum to the disordered part of the spectrum?
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Meaning, what if ADHD is actually becoming more prevalent? Part of the search that I'm on is sort of why the rise, not just the rise in diagnosis, but is there a rise in actual prevalence? And I'm curious if there's... I don't think so.
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as in a culture that creates ADD-like symptoms in people. Does this make your head spin? It made mine spin. I felt like he was saying, no, ADHD is not more prevalent. But yes, you're right, it is, because we've expanded the definition of ADHD to a point that it encompasses more than ADHD. Ned continued.
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He told me how to tell them apart. He suggested something he calls the Vermont test. Leave them on a farm in Vermont for a few weeks.
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He was only half serious, but his reasoning was completely serious. He said that a person with environmentally influenced ADHD will feel their symptoms ease now that they're in a quieter, less stimulating environment. They'll be able to relax. A person with true ADHD will continue to exhibit ADHD, regardless of their environment.
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If their symptom is hyperactivity, for example, they'll spend their weeks in Vermont turning a farm into an amusement park. They won't be able to sit still. Maybe they'll hyperfocus on a book for a little while, but not the entire time.
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I agree. It's important to make that distinction. The current rates of ADHD diagnosis are not making that distinction. What do we do about this? Before I could ask this question, the sliding door opened behind me. Hello!
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Ned's wife, Sue Hollowell, was home from work.
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She shook out her umbrella and wiped her feet on the mat, then walked to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine.
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I was about to stop the recorder when Ned turned and said, She knows more about couples than anyone in the world. Sue is a therapist. When Ned's first book came out, couples started contacting her about ADHD. She moved around the kitchen as she explained this, then stopped to pour me a glass of wine.
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She said that back then, she had no idea how to offer couples therapy focused on ADHD.
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Over dinner, we talked about ADHD and relationships and trends Sue is seeing in her practice.
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She said she's definitely seeing a rise in diagnosis in the last few years and that so many people really don't understand how much ADHD impacts relationships. Eventually, Ned stood up. He carried our plates to the sink and started washing the dishes. Sue asked if I had plans for July 4th. I told her I'd be in Michigan visiting friends. She said she'd be there, too.
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This was news to me. My brain started firing off in a million directions. When people say I have shiny ball syndrome, well, this is why. Sue and Ned started telling me about their camp, and I was already lost in my head, figuring out how I could go. How long have you had it? It's going to be our 19th year. When is it? It's July... It would start while I was in Michigan.
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I don't think I could have handled that laughter an hour earlier. I was in such a dark place. And then I wasn't. The speech became a turning point. I stopped resenting my ADHD and started appreciating it. I think it's made my life a lot more interesting. I'd love to claim this is an original thought, but it turns out a lot of people were starting to feel the same way.
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I was thinking that a camp for families with ADHD must be full of women with ADHD. Maybe women who were recently diagnosed. Maybe women who don't even know yet that they have ADHD. And I could be there the moment they figured it out.
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I finally just came out with it. I asked if I could go to their camp.
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That night, I extended my trip to Michigan. After seeing friends for the Fourth of July, I'd drive north to their camp to see how much can happen in a week and how the women at the Hallowell camp might help me understand what's happened in the last four years. That's next time on Climbing the Walls. Climbing the Walls was written and reported by me, Danielle Elliott.
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It was edited by Neil Drumming. Sound design by Cody Nelson. Brianna Berry was our production director. Ash Beecher was our supervising producer. And Diana White was our associate producer. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Research by Karen Watanabe. Our music was composed by Kwame Brant Pierce, with additional music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our mixing was done by Justin D. Wright.
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This series was brought to you by Understood.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. From understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cochier, and Seth Melnick. A very special thanks to Ray Jacobson, Julie Zietz, Jordan Davidson, Sarah Greenberg, and Kathleen Nadeau.
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If you want to help Understood continue this work, consider making a donation at understood.org.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Over the next year or so, the idea of ADHD as a strength seemed to take over the public conversation about this disorder. By 2023, it almost seemed cool, or at least trendy, to have ADHD. I watched this happen on social media and heard it in conversations with friends. Friends who'd never mentioned mental health issues were starting to call to tell me they had ADHD.
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And in those calls, they used a specific word, superpower. It's like ADHD was somehow rebranded in less than two years. I was confused. I still think of the stigma, and I've wondered two things. First, how'd this happen? I'd read that 84% of ADHD content on TikTok is misleading. Is all of this positivity and talk of superpowers driven by that 84%? My second question is about the impact.
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Is the rebranding of ADHD one of the reasons so many women are being diagnosed? If so, what's the connection? And what does it mean to rebrand a mental health condition? Who does that benefit? As I started trying to answer these questions, I realized social media influencers didn't create this new way of thinking about ADHD.
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That, as far as I can tell, started at least 30 years ago and has been largely driven by a man determined to get the world to see ADHD through his eyes. For better or worse, I think he can now say, mission accomplished. This is Climbing the Walls, a podcast where I try to figure out why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm Danielle Elliott.
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Dr. Ned Hallowell opened the door with a giant smile on his face.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
It all got overwhelming at a time when I was already overwhelmed. I didn't have an apartment, a partner, or a job. There was nothing grounding me in New York. So I left. I went to South America, told myself I could do whatever I wanted until the wedding, and after that, I'd fly back to New York and figure things out.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
The doormat says, home to Ned, Sue, the names of their kids, and the names of their pets. It ends with a question mark, as though they're not sure if they'll have more kids or get more pets. Ned ushered me into the living room. Inside, the walls are covered with photos, massive frames with 20 or 30 photos each, maybe more. The kids all look grown, so I guess that question mark is about pets.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
He walked into another room and stood in front of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Writing is one of the ways he manages his ADHD. He stopped in the kitchen, and we sat down at a big table. I asked how ADHD became his specialty.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Early in Ned's child psychiatry fellowship, a professor gave a lecture about attention deficit disorder, as it was known at the time, and what Ned still calls it. As he listened to the professor describe kids who struggle with boredom, he understood. At the time, the medical model didn't mention adults. But that didn't sit right with Ned.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Over the next decade, Ned finished his training and started working at a hospital. He treated patients with severe cases of obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and other mental health conditions. He also treated many adults describing what he recognized as ADD.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
In his conversations with these patients, he became increasingly suspicious of the way the official diagnostic manual, the DSM, described ADD.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
He shared his suspicions with a colleague, Dr. John Rady, and they realized they were reaching the same conclusions.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Three weeks before the wedding, I flew into Dallas and spent the weekend with my sister. I bought a dress off a department store sale rack. Then I flew to Nicaragua to learn to surf. I know it sounds erratic, maybe like a 37-year-old refusing to grow up, but my choices made sense to me, kind of. I mean, if you need dopamine, learn to surf. Then came the wedding.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Ned and John were the first to put all of this into a book. Published in 1994, it's called Driven to Distraction.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Driven to Distraction helped Sari Solden recognize her ADHD. It helped Emily Mitchell understand herself. It sold more than 2 million copies. And it's still selling strong. It changes everything for people who read it, which for a long time meant it changed everything within ADHD circles or for people who were already diagnosed with ADHD and looking for more information.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
I'm not convinced it changed the public perception of ADHD, at least not at first. And it definitely did not change the minds of the ADHD gatekeepers. One prominent expert, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center named Dr. Russ Barkley, did not hide his dismay.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
I reached out to Dr. Barkley. He told me he remembers this slightly differently. He said that, quote, championing ADHD as a gift risks losing the hard-won protections and entitlements that exist with the diagnosis because it is a disorder. Over the next two decades, research started to support the idea that there are benefits to having ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Granted, most of this research was conducted in other fields. Geneticists identified genetic mutations that were strongly correlated with ADHD. Evolutionary scientists hypothesized that in the past, there could have been evolutionary advantages to having this type of brain. One psychiatrist told me that the benefits may not have always been experienced individually.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
He said ADHD exists because humans evolved in groups, and groups need risk-takers in order to learn anything new. Someone had to light the first fire. Someone had to be the first to swim. Someone had to try eating different foods. And when they did, it didn't always go well. People lit themselves on fire. People drowned or got eaten by sharks. People ate poisonous berries.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
That's me, giving the maid of honor toast at my sister's wedding. And my mom, laughing as she records on her phone. It's May 2022, about four months after I was diagnosed with ADHD. I'd love to say the diagnosis helped me get my life in order, but that would be a lie. Instead, it sent me down the rabbit hole of ADHD social media, learning all the ways the disorder has likely impacted my life.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
But someone else cooked food, someone else caught a fish, and someone else discovered that we can eat strawberries. Whether they lived or died, the risk-takers taught everyone something. Not all scientists agreed with the research on potential evolutionary benefits. At a 1999 CHAD conference, Dr. Barclay gave the keynote address.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
He told attendees he strongly believed that there is no evidence to support the idea of evolutionary advantages and that talking about them trivializes the disorder. He said that you cannot claim to benefit from ADHD and then want to call it a disorder. Ned agrees. Sort of.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
I had to leave the welcome party early to pick up the dress from the tailors. I almost forgot, then got lost and missed most of the dinner. A little voice in my head kept telling me I'm an idiot, that I can never get anything right, and I never will because I have ADHD. The wedding would be my first time seeing extended family in more than two years because of the pandemic.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
For years, this liberation came to those who happened to read Ned and John's books, or Sari Solden's, or a slew of others written by people who treat adult ADHD. The strengths did not enter the medical conversation. But the evidence of potential advantages only grew.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
In 2008, a pair of anthropology students traveled to northern Kenya to spend time with one of the few groups that still lives in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Many in the group carry a genetic mutation that is strongly associated with ADHD. The researchers determined that, when living nomadically, those with the genetic mutation exhibit better health than those who live a settled life.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
And when living in a more settled life in a village, those with the genetic mutation show greater malnourishment. Conversely, people without the mutation are more healthy in a settled lifestyle and more malnourished when living nomadically.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Summarizing their findings, the authors of the study wrote, There is good reason to believe that in our evolutionary past, ADHD was often not much of a problem and was perhaps even an asset. Several studies have since supported their findings. Still, the medical model continues to describe ADHD as a deficit, and it continued to carry a stigma. Ned sees this as a great tragedy.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
Ned spent more than 40 years attempting to rebrand ADHD. The idea never seemed to reach the general public. Then, sometime during the pandemic, ADHD transformed from a stigmatized disorder into something people casually refer to as a superpower. I've tried to dissect this transformation. ADHD content on social media definitely helped destigmatize the disorder.
Climbing the Walls
ADHD: From stigma to superpower | 4
So did a general cultural shift towards accepting and understanding mental health differences. But when I look at ADHD content that was posted to social media in 2020, I don't see much, if anything, about superpowers. I talked to a popular ADHD coach. She can't remember people talking about superpowers until about 2021. She suggested it might have been linked to media coverage of a new book.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Hey everyone, Danielle here. As you know, I shared a lot about my personal journey with ADHD throughout climbing the walls, but there was so much I didn't get to include. So I recently joined another podcast called ADHD Aha. It's all about people's ADHD stories and the moment they realized, oh, this is ADHD. I shared my own aha moment and talked a bit about the making of climbing the walls too.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
When this goes up, it will have gone out. Okay, sorry.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Climbing the Walls is my attempt to understand the rise in diagnosis among women, primarily during the pandemic, but it's been ongoing since the pandemic. I guess you could say it's my attempt to go beyond the headlines and the quick summaries of why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD now. And the quick summary being... Oh, we just didn't know how it affects women.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Can I offer you a fidget? I'm like, oh, you're looking at them like, can I grab one?
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And that's just, you know, in episodes one and two, we debunk that right away. I think we've known for a long time. We just weren't necessarily willing to listen.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
than that it's really really stunning work and I'm so excited for for everybody to listen to it what made you want to do this I really I think like whenever I do something that's sort of this deeper dive it's this question that I'm asking and I think one of the things I love about having this job is that I would just ask that question for another 10 years without actually digging into it yeah by having this as a job there's a reason it comes back to motivation yeah I guess totally
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I remember in the first conversation with my therapist, I was rejecting the diagnosis at first because I was like, I don't want to have this. Everything I read is that women who have this struggle in relationships forever. And I don't want to struggle in relationships forever. This is the thing I wanted to fix about myself, I guess.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I just remember saying to her, almost not expressing anger towards her individually, but towards kind of the entire field. But I was like, how did we miss this? Not just in me. I had been seeing her for four years. And when I said I had it or when I asked her about it, she sat forward so fast. I was like, yes, yes, I do. But I can't say that to you. So take the self-assessment.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And I was like, how did we miss this? Not just in me, but in an entire generation of women. This is not right.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
There's an episode where I'm with a group of women who have ADHD for almost an entire week. And I don't think I realized how universal a lot of the things are that a lot of women with ADHD experience. And that ended up becoming episode five. And in that episode, just the conversations that I had, the conversations that never made it into the show.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
It was like I was just hearing people express my inner thoughts for an entire week. And it was really interesting to realize, like, we all grew up in different circumstances, but also the same in a way. Hearing them describe their childhood experiences, it all just, I think that's the biggest thing I've learned is that I'm like, this is maybe a strange thing to say, but I'm not all that unique.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Like, so many of the things that I thought were slightly different about me are actually not once you start talking to other women with ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah, there's something relatable in the episodes that I've heard. Like it's I can relate to all of the stories that I've heard on the podcast, too. You know, yeah. Universality is a good way to put it.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah. No, I think it was the conversation with there's a woman in that episode in episode five. I would say all of the conversations in that one, but especially two conversations in that one. One was with a woman who was only she was coming to this camp for her children. And two weeks before camp, she was diagnosed with ADHD herself and it came completely out of nowhere.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Great. Yeah. No, I'm not convinced. The thing in my head right now is, yeah, how often I tend to overshare and how much I'm going to try not to do that.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And that conversation just it reminded me of I think sometimes you can think you haven't really learned anything about your ADHD or like progressed at all with managing your ADHD. And speaking to someone who was right at the beginning of having been diagnosed reminded me of how much I have learned and how much I think I have started managing it better. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And then there was a conversation with a woman who was in her 70s. She puts perspective on the diagnosis and on the rise in diagnosis that it just really helped me see it in a like, yeah, you live in the moment you live in and you only get to enjoy the amount of progress that has been made up to that moment.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
When I read Sari's first book, it blew my mind. So a lot of what Sari and I talk about in episode two, when I first sort of encountered the information, it blew my mind. And that's what led me to call Sari for the interview. And she is. Can you explain? Yeah. Sari Solden is a woman who wrote a book in the mid 90s called Women with Attention Deficit Disorder.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And she describes it just to a T, kind of like the feelings and the emotional experience of having ADHD, particularly for women. And in the 90s, that's... And in the 90s, that was groundbreaking. It was actually kind of rejected by a lot of the powers that be. So I think her findings were the most surprising to me.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And then the final episode is all about research that's being conducted into female hormones and ADHD. And there's several surprises in that one. One, just realizing I assumed I didn't know much about hormones and ADHD because I hadn't looked into it. And then in trying to... I think we... I have no idea how many.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
It was four or five actual versions of that episode that we wrote then before we finally landed on one that was working. But trying to report on the absence of something is really difficult. And I don't think I've done that very much. We did finally find some research that's being conducted. But I think that in a sense, that episode is about the absence of research, which is a tough story to tell.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah. I feel like climbing the walls is a giant overshare. So we'll just keep going.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
It's a story about something that doesn't exist.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Personally, I think we need treatments that consider female hormones and how those affect not only how they affect ADHD symptoms, but also how they affect ADHD medications. Right. And this is true, I think, not just in ADHD. It's true in we're starting to realize it's true in many other things. We're seeing it with Alzheimer's. We're most likely going to start seeing it with dementia.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
But we need treatments that are actually effective. And I don't want to say that are gendered because I don't think that's the exact right way to say it. But women and men do not experience any illnesses, conditions, any mental health differences in the same way because they don't have the same.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
It was the end of February of 2022. Pandemic diagnosis. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Bodies. There's a study coming out of the risk lab with Dr. Martell that looks at young adult women. The one we talk about in episode six is about adolescent girls because that's the one that exists right now. But Dr. Martell's study is going to come out. Hopefully. I have no idea what's happening with funding. I mean, the episode also gets into funding needs to exist.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And that's a whole nother story.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I think overdiagnosis was really difficult to tackle and how situational ADHD can be. And I think it's that like ADHD is always there, but it does express itself differently and different. And I'm saying situational instead of environmental because I think environmental gets confusing, but like situation or environment that you're in.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I think that was the hardest one for me to tackle because I think A lot of things have changed in the world in the last 100 or 200 years, and I don't think our brains have fully adapted. And I had a really hard time grappling with, is this something about the way the world is now? There's a book called, I believe the book's called Neurodivergent Mind.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
So I guess it was four or five months earlier. I had gone through a breakup and it was... The night of the breakup, I just had this really visceral reaction to a very normal conversation. And that surprised me. And I kept thinking about it for another, I guess, two months. I just felt like I had this very strong reaction. And I tried to figure out what it was.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I just kept wanting to throw the book across the room because it's essentially like the conditions we live in compound symptoms in a way that... is leading to like ADHD as a diagnosis is when it's impairing your life. And I think that a lot of people have lived with ADHD for a really long time, but it didn't impair their lives. Right.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
So I think that was the biggest thing for me to grapple with was like what is happening in the world that's causing a lot of this.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Right.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah. And I think it's almost the advantages, disadvantages, conversation or deficits and positive sides. Strengths. Yeah. And strengths. Thank you. Conversation becomes such a black and white conversations and things can coexist. Yeah. You know, like there can be situations in which it's advantageous and situations in which it's a deficit. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
So I think that there's still a little bit of black and white thinking around that. So that was a lot to grapple with, too.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I think I first met with Neil Drummings, the editor on the show. And I think we've, yeah, definitely shout out Neil. The show is only as good as it is because of him. I think we first met and talked about it maybe exactly a year ago.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah, thank you.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Oh, yeah. The title of the show comes from an interview with a woman named Terry Matlin. She's been treating women with ADHD since the 90s. And during the pandemic, she received more emails than she's ever received with women seeking treatment. And she said these women were just climbing the walls like they needed help. And yeah, that's where the name of the show comes from.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And I finally narrowed in on rejection. And then I started searching extreme reactions to rejection. And something popped up about rejection sensitivity and rejection sensitive dysphoria. As I read it, I was like, oh, this is actually a thing. This is not just one really strong reaction.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Thanks for coming in.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And in that article that I was reading, there was a line about rejection sensitivity often being a part of ADHD. It was sort of like, wait a minute, is this like, do I have ADHD? And then I started looking more into ADHD. I talked to my therapist and it just went from there.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I would say for the last few months of the relationship, I think we were both, I think the nicest way to say it is like navigating our way out of it. Nice. I've been there. Yeah. That's probably the best way to put it. It was a conversation that I think we both knew was coming. I had been away on a work trip for a week. And during that week, I had been looking at other apartments.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I pointed out the apartment to him that I was like, I'm thinking about moving in there. And in my head, it was, we don't have to break up, but I could move into my own apartment, which is... And I apparently I know this now as we drove by it, his thought was like, oh, OK, good. I don't have to feel bad about the thing I'm about to say to her tonight. So then it was just like.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
When we got home, I remember being completely exhausted and I wondered if this played into my reaction. But it was as we were starting to fall asleep that he initiated a conversation that was like, I've been thinking this week and I feel like I'm holding you back. He said it very nicely, but I just had this reaction that was like, just it felt out of character.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Like I kind of don't remember the specific details of everything that was said. My reaction was very much like, this is it. We're not going back from here. And I was taking frames off the walls. Like all of my stuff was packed. That same night? By like four o'clock in the morning. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I'm dropping that episode into the climbing the walls feed today. If you enjoy it, be sure to follow ADHD aha, wherever you get your podcasts or just click the link in the show notes.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And there wasn't like screaming, but it was just like the feeling in my body was even like, I feel like I was the meanest I've ever been. He tells me that I'm like, we're friends now. We've talked about it since. He's like, I think you're a little hard on yourself about how it went. But it was just such a visceral reaction. And the thing I finally came down to was like,
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah, it was a thing I had also been thinking about doing but didn't. And it felt like such a strong rejection in the moment. I think I like got straight out of bed and got in the chair across the room, that kind of thing. And there was like a kid curled up in a ball in a weird way, too. Yeah. I mean, breakups are really hard. Well, the breakup was for the best. Yeah. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
That's why I couldn't understand why I was still feeling so weird about it.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I think I, in hindsight, was able to see how successfully I've avoided rejection my entire life. That I was sort of like, oh, this is the thing I've been avoiding. And this really does... Yeah, this is not fun. Okay.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I mean, I can tell you that like three or four. I don't know when I saw him again because I went straight. I like I remember my passport was being renewed and it came back three days later. And two days after that, I was in Mexico City. OK. And I stayed for a month and then I went to Belize. I'm out of here.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
But I know that whenever I saw him again, I remember him telling me that I should get my anger checked. So I think I was mean that night. Oh, okay. But he now said, I don't know if that was more his reaction, because he now is like, no, I don't think you were actually that bad that night. Yeah. In the moment, it felt bad. I mean, he was probably feeling the feelings as well. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And I don't think we'd gotten in a single fight our entire relationship. And that was probably more so me bottling some things up and like masking throughout the relationship. But it definitely caught him off guard.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yes.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I mean, there were other moments in our relationship, and I know now that this is a very ADHD thing, but I regulated by completely shutting down. And in this moment, I didn't shut down. I just let it all out. I think it had felt to me a few times like if I said what I really thought, the relationship would end. And in this moment, it was already over.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
So I could say whatever I wanted because I was no longer risking anything.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
flail like yeah almost like going from the rejection to the what some people call raging which is an unfortunate term but it packs a lot of punch as a word in an interesting way i think the relationship itself helped me recognize my adhd once i knew how adhd shows up in relationships and i started looking back because it's like i think you can think that you've
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
started to regulate your emotions and you've grown up and you, you know, you're in your mid thirties. And then I just started to realize that there were a lot of situations I had never been in because I hadn't been in a relationship. I hadn't been living with a partner.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And seeing how I acted in those, I was like, I'm not as mature as I thought I was.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And I've been avoiding those situations my whole life.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah. I joke that it was the longest relationship I've had, but I've been in longer breakups. I get that. I've been in like situationships that lasted a lot longer. Situationships. Yeah. That's probably the best thing to call them. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I think it always did work out a certain way. And then it shifted actually shortly after finding out I had ADHD. I remember I got the diagnosis and then I was sort of aware that I should be finding an apartment. But a friend of mine was going to Peru for a month. It's like, oh, great. Apartments in Peru are six hundred bucks a month and the flights two hundred.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
My rent here would be three thousand a month. You know, I did the math and of course I'm going to Peru for a month. I don't have an apartment yet. I'll just do this first. I remember specifically not telling my therapist I was going because she would have a reaction because I had just gotten back from this like Mexico and Belize.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And then I like stayed home long enough to get diagnosed and then immediately went to Peru. And I think I had to go to Aspen for work for a week. So I went straight from Aspen to Peru. And when I did get there, I was on a telehealth appointment with my therapist. And she just was like, it's the first time I saw her seem completely just like exasperated with me.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And she was just like, Danielle, what are you running from? I was like, how dare you? And I thought about it. And then I was like, I mean, my immediate reaction was I don't think I'm running from anything. And then I thought about it a little more. And I was like, I feel like I'm running towards something.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And like the thing that I think with traveling that I always feel like I'm running towards is stimulation. I guess if I was going to put it in ADHD terms, it's like stimulation. When you get to a new place, I never look things up before I go. I leave my phone and I just walk outside and then just figure out a day. And I think we don't get that anymore at home.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Everything's so planned or it's just like, I don't know, I guess you could call it the sense of discovery. Like it just doesn't exist for me at home in the same way anymore. So I think that's what I get out of traveling is just like completely new surroundings, no idea what I'm doing and being forced to figure it all out. Yeah. The novelty. The novelty. Yeah. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I don't know if I would have discovered it sooner because even like 2013, I was in grad school and my advisor always joked that I had shiny ball syndrome. And I remember one of my professors saying that I was always doing two things at once, even in class, but that she had started to notice that I seemed to focus better if I was doing two things.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
So she stopped asking me to stop, even if I was just looking at things on an iPad or whatnot. Yeah. I think people have actually been telling me I have ADHD my whole life without even knowing that's what they were telling me. Oh, interesting.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah, because I switched. It was like, yeah, like traveling. But I've also, I've been in New York since 2008 and I switched apartments every single year. So I had to just... make my life about constant change in almost every possible way.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
For better or worse. Yeah. I can't go on without my fidget. Yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah, I really like this one. And I don't know that I thought it was a problem. I guess that's the other thing is like, I don't think I ever thought anything was wrong until it was like, oh, my God, that's how I act in relationships. Like, That's who I am or that's how I react to a breakup. I want to know if there's ways to be better at this. Career-wise, I was happy with how things were going.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
There were definitely a lot of moments where I wished I was capable of working for one company and wanting to stay there, but I would hit. There was one time I had a full-time job for two years and I hit the one-year mark and was like, really? It was like some sort of itch. And then at the second year, I quit because I was like, I just can't do this.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And I think I've been really lucky that things have lined up every time I do something like that. But things could have gone much worse.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
But yeah.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
No, I haven't. I've dated a few people since then, but I'm now, I think, so much... Well, I think I had always had questions about how happy I would be in a relationship to begin with. I think I was 34 or 35 when that relationship started.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And I was becoming extremely aware that, like, people thought it was weird that I... Like, even... It was almost like you didn't get as much of a chance with people because they're like, you've never been in a relationship. I don't want to teach you how to be in a... You know, like, there's like a... So I think I was feeling rejection in that sense.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And there is a part of me sometimes that thinks the relationship lasted as long as it did because I was like, no, I'm going to have this almost like I don't know. I just it was like, no, no, no. I'm going to know what it's like to stick it out. I'm going to win at this. Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to at least know what it's like to have been in one for two years and like see what that's like.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Yeah, and I think I was kind of internalizing what everyone around me was saying. Like, I think everyone was always like, are you ever going to settle down? Are you ever going to pick one? Are you ever going to do this? And there was a part of me that was like, I don't even know if it's all me not picking. There's also, like, I haven't met someone that makes sense to me. That's not a requirement.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
It's not a requirement.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I mean, for me, it's even like if I send a pitch, even if I get a response from an editor quickly, it usually takes me almost like two or three days to open it because I don't want it to be a rejection. And it's like... Sometimes it's an acceptance, but they want to have a conversation. They're like, can you talk later today? And now I've wasted three days. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I didn't get back to you. But it's like my fear of like, I don't mind putting things out there, but I don't really want to know how anyone reacts to it for you. I mean, that's I was going to ask you about work, too.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
I think that I'm so much more confident in work than I am in dating that the sensitivity doesn't get to me as much. I think it's also easier to not take it personally. I don't think there's a journalist in the world who hasn't heard, editors are swamped. Like, if they don't read your pitch, it has nothing to do with you or your pitch.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
And there was also a couple pieces where, like, you can keep going back to an editor without seeming desperate in the way that there's so many tropes about women being desperate that, like, in dating, you're not going to, like, keep trying again with the same person. With an editor, you can try a thousand times and it might be what gets through. And I'm like, you don't know me for mad.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
Like, this is fine. It doesn't show up for me in pitching. It shows up for me in publishing. Like, I... sort of just want to like hide under a rock for days after something comes out and I don't want to know what anyone thinks of it. I don't know what that is but I think it's like I think anytime I write anything about anyone I'm sure they're going to call me and like ream me out.
Climbing the Walls
Danielle’s story: A breakup, an intense reaction, and ADHD diagnosis (from “ADHD Aha!”)
It's never happened before. It's never happened but I'm just so sure. So that's probably how it shows up but then it's already out in the world so I can't do anything about it.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
She said that in one post, a woman cited a statistic about other Black women with ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
In these posts, she heard women describing why young Black girls are rarely diagnosed with ADHD. Or at least they were rarely diagnosed. Data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the largest increase in diagnosis from 2000 to 2010 happened among Black girls. But that statistic is tricky.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
It might have been the biggest increase because they were the most overlooked group of kids, and there was some catch-up happening. It doesn't mean there was enough diagnosis, and many young Black girls are still undiagnosed.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Another study, conducted by the Mayo Clinic and released in 2021, concluded that Asian, Black, and Hispanic children are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD compared with white children, and that many Black and Hispanic children go undiagnosed because of the ways their behavior is misinterpreted. This may be changing. The CDC releases data on ADHD diagnosis among kids every year.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The latest numbers show that 12% of Black and white children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with ADHD, compared to 10% of Native American and Hispanic kids, 6% of Pacific Islander kids, and 4% of Asian American kids. These numbers indicate more equity in diagnosis, and that's good news for kids. It doesn't mean much for adults, like Parker.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Some said they'd learned about ADHD on social media, and now they wanted to talk to their doctors about it. They wanted help navigating these conversations.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
It's harder to find data on adult diagnosis, but research indicates that Black and Latino women show symptoms of ADHD at the same rates as white women, but are far less likely to be diagnosed, and even then, less likely to receive treatment. I never think algorithms are helpful, but in this case, I'm actually like,
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
the algorithms figuring it out and getting the information, the not only getting information to you, but getting you information from the people who could be more helpful.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
All's well that ends well, right? Parker got her second opinion and found her people. But what about that King of Prussia doctor who tried to convince her that she didn't have ADHD? What was up with that? I looked into this issue of Black women being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder. I found that it's not only a problem for Black women with ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
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Doctors also fail to accurately diagnose Black women who actually have bipolar disorder. Often, according to what I read, emotional swings are dismissed as being those of angry Black women. For Parker, having the diagnosis of ADHD gives her a way to contend with this classic racial bias and others.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Like in meetings, if she's quiet and someone thinks she's not a team player, she can now tell them, No, I have ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
She handed me her phone to show me a photo. It was a spiral notebook. On the page, names of movies filled every line, top to bottom.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
But she was focusing. Writing out these filmographies made it easier to focus. And now it's easier to explain this.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Terry took this as a sign of progress. For decades, medical schools failed to educate psychiatrists and other doctors on the ways ADHD shows up in everyday life, especially for women. The lack of education and training led to years of misdiagnosis. She was happy to see that women were now more informed. She also worried about that information. In 2021, she joined TikTok to see if she could help.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
I lied when I said I was off social media for 2021. I had a couple of relapses here and there. Once, in April, I reactivated my Instagram account and a post caught my eye. It was a drawing of a woman in jeans and a sweatshirt. Across the top, it read, women and ADHD. Across the bottom of the page, it said, start a free assessment today. I looked at where the post was from.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Only then did I realize it was an ad. The account belonged to a company called Dunn. It seemed weird to me. An ADHD company? What even is an ADHD company? And why is it posting on social media? I didn't remember that from before the pandemic. Dunn and ADHD Online LLC are two of maybe a dozen ADHD-focused companies that appeared on social media during the pandemic. This is not a coincidence.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
It actually happened because of the pandemic. Remember when I said diagnosis got easier? Early in the pandemic, states eased strict regulations around how doctors can diagnose and prescribe stimulant medications. For the first time, doctors could prescribe via telehealth.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
With the hassle removed, the roadblock eased, thousands of women who might have previously been deterred by the steps were now able to handle the process before they had a chance to get distracted. This policy shift definitely contributed to the rise in diagnosis. It also sparked questions around over-diagnosis. I told you I'd come back to this.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Once these strict telehealth policies changed, people took advantage. Not individuals, as far as I know, but entrepreneurs. People created ADHD companies and started advertising services on social media. Companies like the ones that sent ads to me and Parker. The algorithm sent these ads to millions of women who, like Parker, took the assessments.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The companies contracted psychiatrists and hired them. It looked like an ad hoc improvement in the healthcare system. And it was, mostly. Then, in 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice received complaints about one of these new companies, a company called Cerebral. The complaints claimed Cerebral was pressuring clinicians to prescribe Adderall and Ritalin to increase patient retention.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The investigation was settled in 2024, with Cerebral agreeing to pay millions of dollars for, quote, engaging in practices that encouraged the unauthorized distribution of controlled substances from 2019 to 2022. As of June 2024, the telemedicine company Dunn is also under investigation.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The founder and CEO and the clinical president were arrested on allegations that they instructed Dunn prescribers to prescribe Adderall and other stimulants even if the Dunn member didn't qualify. The Justice Department alleges that the executives prioritized profits over customer health, leading to addiction, abuse, and overdoses.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
There's no way to know how many people were misdiagnosed through these telehealth companies or to determine the accuracy rate of diagnosis during the pandemic. I get that. But I believe the women seeking a diagnosis were genuinely seeking help. All these conversations that sprung up online about ADHD during the pandemic, they helped normalize such conversations in the real world as well.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Not only were more women talking to their doctors and therapists about ADHD, they were also discussing it openly with each other, their communities, and their families.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Parker is a podcast host herself. Inevitably, she turned the interview on me. Yeah. So I've talked to my mom about it. I was trying to not tell anyone. And of course, I shared because I just overshare everything.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
No matter how much I'm like, I'm not going to tell. I'm on the phone and then I'm telling. And I talked to my mom and she's like, that can't be possible. You did so well in school. That's the same thing. And she was like, maybe you have it. But my generation didn't have this.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Hello. Terry is one of many health professionals who jumped into the social media conversations. In 2021, the New York Times wrote about this phenomenon. A headline says, Therapists are on TikTok. How does that make you feel? A group of researchers in Dublin, Ireland, tracked 28 active social media accounts owned by mental health professionals. All of these accounts had at least 100,000 followers.
Climbing the Walls
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As Parker learned more about ADHD and how it showed up in daily life, she started to see her mom in a sort of new way.
Climbing the Walls
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This is so familiar. I had the same reaction with my mom. Different details. Same story.
Climbing the Walls
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Parker thinks her mother has undiagnosed ADHD. We're no doctors, but I think mine does, too. It's a thing. Honestly, I think this is yet another reason diagnosis rose among women during the pandemic. As more women recognized their own ADHD, they started to notice it in their moms. My mom didn't seek a diagnosis. Neither did Parker's. But many women did.
Climbing the Walls
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I have two friends whose moms were recently diagnosed in their 60s. Sari Solden told me about a client who was diagnosed at 83. Regardless, conversations on TikTok and, yes, for-profit companies offering screeners on TikTok helped Parker and thousands of women begin to consider ADHD during the pandemic. The pandemic opened more doors to these conversations, and TikTok helped them spread.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
But ultimately, it's the conversations themselves, the normalizing of talking about ADHD, that helped women from all different communities access information that they took to their doctors or to their therapists and said, please help me consider if I have ADHD. These conversations are still happening. I hear them everywhere. On the train, in bars, at birthday parties.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
I always wonder if this is some sort of Brooklyn phenomenon. I remember Parker once telling me she's sort of the cool cousin in the big city. I ask if that role has come into play in terms of ADHD. Does she bring it up when she's back in Baltimore? Though her mother didn't bite, Parker has become a role model for others in her family.
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Not just because she's a self-determined, professional woman with an impressive career, but because she's open about her ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
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They will all be fine. Perhaps more than fine. Because they're years ahead of either of us in knowing they have ADHD. They're years ahead of the many women diagnosed during the pandemic. many with the help of something they saw on TikTok. Parker doesn't know it, but this advice she gave her family member, I think it explains one other element of this massive rise in diagnosis. Listen closely.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Believe it or not, I wasn't on social media during the height of the pandemic. Instagram got boring. No one was going anywhere or doing anything. There was nothing to be mindlessly voyeuristic about. I deleted my accounts and wasn't really on from March 2020 to November 2021, except a few days here and there. I never join TikTok because I'm afraid I'll get addicted.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The little kid's fine. They got superhuman strength. Superhuman strength. Before I was diagnosed, I don't remember hearing anyone describe ADHD as a strength. Maybe that's because I wasn't paying attention. Regardless, I don't know where that rhetoric started, but it gained a ton of popularity during the pandemic.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
When I first considered that I might have ADHD, I read about the common aspect of the condition called hyperfocus. Some people consider that to be a strength. By 2023, though, public perception of ADHD on a whole seemed to have shifted. People were calling it a superpower. And I'm pretty certain that this new way of looking at ADHD contributed to the rise in diagnosis during the last few years.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
And according to the study, a third of the creators' posts aimed to educate people about mental health concerns. The value of all this mental health content is up for debate. Whether it contributed to the sudden rise in diagnosis is not. There is no question that TikTok and the pandemic sparked something. Social media made it easier for information to spread to more people.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
In many people's eyes, it went from an affliction, a source of shame, to a desirable attribute. Again, I can't say who started this, but after a little digging, I can point to one man who has taken it upon himself to rebrand ADHD.
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In the next episode, I'm going to try to see it through his eyes and to try to understand how that might have impacted the rise in diagnosis.
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How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
That's next time on Climbing the Walls. Climbing the Walls was written and reported by me, Danielle Elliott. It was edited by Neil Drumming. Sound design by Cody Nelson. Brianna Berry was our production director. Ash Beecher was our supervising producer. And Diana White was our associate producer. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Research by Karen Watanabe.
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Our music was composed by Kwame Brant Pierce, with additional music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our mixing was done by Justin D. Wright. This series was brought to you by Understood.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia.
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From understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Koshier, and Seth Melnick. A very special thanks to Ray Jacobson, Julie Zietz, Jordan Davidson, Sarah Greenberg, and Kathleen Nadeau. If you want to help Understood continue this work, consider making a donation at understood.org slash give.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
Women started talking to each other, and they started understanding that they weren't the only ones struggling in the ways they were struggling.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The few times I've looked at it, I've ended up scrolling through snowboarding videos for hours. So, no, I wasn't on social media during the pandemic. What'd I miss? The birth of ADHD social media, apparently. By the time I tuned in, in early 2022, there were millions of posts with the hashtag ADHD. They had more than 11 billion views on TikTok. They filled my entire Instagram discovery page.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
I wanted her to tell me her story because of how well it illustrates how many women came to their ADHD diagnosis through the explosive combination of the pandemic and social media, as well as the ups and downs of that process. So, Parker, can you introduce yourself?
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How did you figure out that you have ADHD?
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
She is. Me too. This is Climbing the Walls, a podcast where I try to figure out why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm Danielle Elliott. It was around 2020. My friend Parker was going through what she described to me as a mini breakdown. She couldn't focus on work. She'd be up all night procrastinating and then, at 10 o'clock, decide to whip up a batch of salmon croquettes.
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Her own daily behavior didn't make any sense to Parker, but she was tuned into social media, and TikTok seemed to recognize exactly what was going on with her.
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How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
I mean, I'm not sure. This was something that, up until then, Parker had not really considered. Parker had simply thought of herself as quirky. Though the medical community was slow to recognize ADHD in adult women, social media discussions among the women themselves go back almost as far as social media itself. Terry Matlin says she hosted AOL chat rooms about it in the 90s.
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Women connected in Facebook groups. Instagram launched in 2010, Snapchat in 2011. At first, they were personal feeds, and later, people were using them to distribute information. But when TikTok launched in 2016, things started to ramp up. Popular accounts like Black Girl Lost Keys were openly discussing ADHD.
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By the height of the pandemic, the app's powerful, albeit mysterious algorithm was connecting thousands of women with ADHD-related content at a previously unheard-of rate. These were some of the same women who emailed Terry Matlin looking for guidance. Parker ran the idea by her own personal expert.
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TikTok wasn't done. Soon after her conversation with her therapist, the all-seeing algorithm changed. sent Parker a video in which someone takes an ADHD test. Parker asked her therapist again. It's like, should I take this thing? And they're like, you can. I mean, you got paid for it. Like, it's your money.
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How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
I happen to know there's a free screener available online from the World Health Organization, the same screener my therapist suggested I use. I mentioned this to Parker.
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How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
For women who were on social media during the pandemic, these posts sparked an explosion of interest in ADHD. Terry Matlin, author of The Queen of Distraction, has been treating women with ADHD since the late 90s. She told me she's never received such a sudden flood of emails from women looking for treatment.
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Parker scrolled through her Gmail history to find the name of the organization that issued her test.
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As far as ADHD online was concerned, the results were conclusive. Oh, yeah, girl, you got ADHD. You have ADHD inattentive. Parker looked into what exactly inattentive ADHD entailed and what she learned tracked with her own life experience, especially when she read about the ways people with ADHD are able to hyper-focus.
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She took the test in November 2020. Parker sought out a psychiatrist who understood ADHD and could prescribe medications. That's when things got complicated. Her therapist gave her a list of names, but even with her existing health insurance coverage, the cost would be steep.
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A little over a year later, in 2022, Parker was thinking about leaving her job. That meant she was going to lose her health insurance. As everyone with ADHD knows, external motivation helps us do things. Knowing she might soon be without healthcare coverage drove Parker to finally address her ADHD. She found a psychiatrist, but he was located in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
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Like me, Parker begrudgingly went ahead and booked a telehealth appointment. It was hardly her ideal situation.
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I felt the same way when I talked to a psychiatrist for the first time, also in early 2022. Neither of us knew at the time that this was really odd for a few reasons. I mean, it felt odd because it was odd. But it was also strange because, until the pandemic, this wasn't allowed. There were strict rules around prescribing stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin.
Climbing the Walls
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They could not be prescribed via telehealth. I'm not sure I would have gotten very far in the process if I'd had to wait for an in-person appointment. I haven't had an annual physical in years because I never get around to scheduling them. So even though the appointments could be awkward, telehealth made it easier. This is another reason for the rise in diagnosis.
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In the simplest terms, getting diagnosed got easier. That, of course, led to questions about our diagnosis. And we'll get back to those, I promise. But first, I want you to hear about Parker's bizarre video call and what happened after. Remember, it was early 2022, and she was working from home, waiting for her 7.30 appointment with the King of Prussia guy.
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Parker was worried that the doctor might suspect her of trying to get her hands on prescription meds.
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I think the anxiety around all of this, the way the appointment feels, is a reason a lot of women never seek a diagnosis. Unfortunately, in Parker's case, that anxiety was well-placed, considering what happened when she tried to tell the doctor about her ADHD.
Climbing the Walls
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It's just, like, I freeze, and I can't do anything. Parker went into the call hoping to get help with her ADHD. Instead, in less than 30 minutes, he'd suggested she was bipolar. I've heard many women report a misdiagnosis of anxiety or depression. Being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder seems like another level.
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Parker steered the conversation back to ADHD, and the doctor prescribed her the appropriate medication. Here's where it gets weird. The next time she looked at TikTok, it was as if the app had updated the dossier it was keeping on her.
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We like to talk about the algorithm, like it's some omniscient, even clairvoyant supermind. Probably because none of us know how it works. But it's not. It's more like some complex combination of statistics, probability, and soylent-fueled software engineering. The important point here is that it worked.
Climbing the Walls
How social media changed ADHD forever | 3
The algorithm started directing Parker to more and more accounts by Black women, specific and useful accounts like ADHD While Black, which she now follows. I didn't get these recommendations. The algorithm seems to know I'm white. But in 2022, Parker's feed spoke directly to her experience. These accounts offered helpful ways to manage her ADHD and encouragement.
Climbing the Walls
Introducing “Climbing the Walls”
For years I felt like I was falling short. No matter how hard I tried, I struggled to get on top of things, to stay in relationships, to understand how anyone enjoys all the mundane parts of life. It never crossed my mind that there might actually be a way to explain why I couldn't keep up. I knew about ADHD, but I thought of it as something that made it hard for boys to sit still in class.
Climbing the Walls
Introducing “Climbing the Walls”
Then, a doctor diagnosed me. I was 36, and finally, it all made sense. Apparently, I'm not alone. 61% of women with ADHD are diagnosed in adulthood. In the year I was diagnosed, the diagnosis of women skyrocketed, and I wondered, what's going on? Why women? Why now?
Climbing the Walls
Introducing “Climbing the Walls”
Welcome to Climbing the Walls, a podcast that attempts to understand why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD and what happens now that the world is catching up to what women have been saying for decades.
Climbing the Walls
Introducing “Climbing the Walls”
Join me, Danielle Elliott, as I dive into the real reasons why women have been left behind in the ADHD conversation. We'll hear from experts and those who have lived through it as we uncover the untold truths about ADHD in women. This is Climbing the Walls, a new podcast from understood.org. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.