ADHD in women makes it hard to settle and relax, especially if their environment is unpleasant for them in any way. While being overattentive to one thing, they may completely zone out the next. Overstimulation can make them easily feel overwhelmed, whether with people or with doing things like going shopping.
Many people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) feel constantly bogged down by logistical tasks, whether it's managing a household, planning a vacation, or simply remembering to pay the bills. The constant stream of small decisions can be paralyzing, and it's easy to become overwhelmed and give up.
Girls with ADHD often have lower self-esteem and feel more anxious and depressed than their peers. Getting diagnosed can help. Understanding why she is struggling and getting the treatment and support she needs to succeed can make a big difference.
A girl with ADHD may have impulsivity and be hyper-talkative. She may be verbally impulsive, interrupt others, talk excessively, or change topics repeatedly during conversations. She might even blurt out words without thinking about their impact on others. Girls with ADHD can also be overly sensitive.
ADHD symptoms
Inattentive only: The person has difficulty paying attention but does not tend to be disruptive. Hyperactive and impulsive: A person's hyperactive and impulsive behavior can cause disruptions. Combined inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive: The person has all the above symptoms.
Research is showing that the symptoms of ADHD often intensify for girls during puberty when estrogen increases in their bodies.
Similar to the hyperactive symptoms, impulsive symptoms are typically seen by the time a child is four years old and increase during the next three to four years to peak in severity when the child is seven to eight years of age.
Symptom differences between girls and boys
These hyperactive/impulsive symptoms get noticed more easily by parents and teachers while inattentive symptoms sometimes get ignored. Girls are also less likely to be diagnosed earlier because they often display more symptoms of anxiety.
With high expectations and pressures to perform and act a certain way, girls can experience more perceived impairment in their social relationships. Additionally, emotional lability or shifts in mood are common in kids with ADHD.
Hyperactive and impulsive girls sometimes have trouble taking turns or not getting their way. They might be too loud and aggressive, or just seem immature to other girls their age. All these things make them more likely to face rejection from their peers.
After decades of further rejection, women with ADHD feel like impostors, fearing that their perceived failures will be discovered and provoke rejection. Well-documented gender differences describe these women as having less confidence, lower self-esteem, and more distress than men with ADHD or women without ADHD.
Similarly, people with ADHD can also experience 'meltdowns' more commonly than others, which is where emotions build up so extremely that someone acts out, often crying, angering, laughing, yelling and moving all at once, driven by many different emotions at once – this essentially resembles a child tantrum and can ...
For many adults living with ADHD, overwhelm can shut them down and keep them from moving forward.
Too many feelings: Emotional Overwhelm
Because ADHD is, at its heart, an issue with regulation, ADHD brains struggle to feel anything just a little bit. It gets bowled over, flooded, and submerged by the feelings it feels.
With ADHD, a child or teen may have rapid or impulsive speech, physical restlessness, trouble focusing, irritability, and, sometimes, defiant or oppositional behavior.
Sometimes, the way a child's ADHD presents can change in their teenage years. The symptoms might become more noticeable and more challenging, so it's common for ADHD to be diagnosed while a young person is going through puberty.
The main signs of hyperactivity and impulsiveness are: being unable to sit still, especially in calm or quiet surroundings. constantly fidgeting. being unable to concentrate on tasks.
Research indicates that girls and women, compared to boys and men, are consistently under-identified and underdiagnosed for ADHD using these diagnostic criteria2.
However, in adulthood, the number of men and women with ADHD is much more similar (5.4% for males compared with 3.2% for females). Studies suggest that females may be nearly as likely to have ADHD as males, but because their symptoms may look different, they are being diagnosed later or not diagnosed at all.
Methylphenidate is the most commonly used medicine for ADHD. It belongs to a group of medicines called stimulants, which work by increasing activity in the brain, particularly in areas that play a part in controlling attention and behaviour.