Oct 15, 2026 · 33 min · 8 segments
For years, conversations about ADHD have largely focused on children, often centered on the image of a child who can’t…
Monica JohnsonGuest
Neha PathakHost
So I'm imagining the woman as you're talking go across her lifespan where these symptoms are changing, shifting, sometimes overwhelming, sometimes more manageable.
So how is it that some women, and some girls even, become good at masking their symptoms by over-correcting?
A lot of women, because of social and cultural norms, are trained in how to mask.
That's one of the reasons why sometimes it can look different between girls and boys, because girls are often kind of taught to be ladylike, to try to be quiet, and to kind of present in a certain way.
And so masking can end up looking like competence on the surface, but what you're not seeing is that this person stayed up until 3:00 in the morning to get this assignment done.
They've got eight different notebooks and planners that all have different parts of their system in it, and people don't always notice these things.
Masking can be dangerous because it runs on a lot of anxiety and effort, and that's one of the reasons why kind of ADHD burnout is a thing, because oftentimes these people are doing 10 times the amount of work just to present on a, quote-unquote, "normal" kind of day-to-day basis.
And is that what you mean when someone says that this person has an invisible functional impairment? Is that sort of the description?
Like invisible impairment is kind of typically the gap between the output and the cost of that output.
It took me an hour to do that." The person with ADHD may go, "Oh my goodness, it took me all day to get that task done that it only took you an hour to get done." So they may get the same amount of work done, but it's really digging deep into their resources to make that happen.
And so if someone's functioning like that for years and years, all of that effort for organization, for focusing, for managing her time and completing tasks, what does that look like with regard to self-esteem or emotional health over the long term?
So a lot of times women get the message, like if they don't know, particularly if they are undiagnosed ADHD, they often get a message that they're lazy, or they're stupid, or they're a mess.
So when you don't have an answer to what's going on with you, you're usually gonna make one up, and the one that you make up is typically going to be incredibly cruel.
And so what happens a lot of times over the years is that their shame starts to compound.
It can also feed into if they have a comorbidity of anxiety and depression, it can feed into that.
And there is one, Hinshaw's long-term study following girls with ADHD into adulthood found significantly elevated rates of self-injury and suicide attempts compared to their peers.
But kind of shame and self-esteem is often not a side effect when we're talking about ADHD.
So I'm imagining the woman as you're talking go across her lifespan where these symptoms are changing, shifting, sometimes overwhelming, sometimes more manageable.
So how is it that some women, and some girls even, become good at masking their symptoms by over-correcting?
A lot of women, because of social and cultural norms, are trained in how to mask.
That's one of the reasons why sometimes it can look different between girls and boys, because girls are often kind of taught to be ladylike, to try to be quiet, and to kind of present in a certain way.
And so masking can end up looking like competence on the surface, but what you're not seeing is that this person stayed up until 3:00 in the morning to get this assignment done.
They've got eight different notebooks and planners that all have different parts of their system in it, and people don't always notice these things.
Masking can be dangerous because it runs on a lot of anxiety and effort, and that's one of the reasons why kind of ADHD burnout is a thing, because oftentimes these people are doing 10 times the amount of work just to present on a, quote-unquote, "normal" kind of day-to-day basis.
And is that what you mean when someone says that this person has an invisible functional impairment? Is that sort of the description?
Like invisible impairment is kind of typically the gap between the output and the cost of that output.
It took me an hour to do that." The person with ADHD may go, "Oh my goodness, it took me all day to get that task done that it only took you an hour to get done." So they may get the same amount of work done, but it's really digging deep into their resources to make that happen.
And so if someone's functioning like that for years and years, all of that effort for organization, for focusing, for managing her time and completing tasks, what does that look like with regard to self-esteem or emotional health over the long term?
So a lot of times women get the message, like if they don't know, particularly if they are undiagnosed ADHD, they often get a message that they're lazy, or they're stupid, or they're a mess.
So when you don't have an answer to what's going on with you, you're usually gonna make one up, and the one that you make up is typically going to be incredibly cruel.
And so what happens a lot of times over the years is that their shame starts to compound.
It can also feed into if they have a comorbidity of anxiety and depression, it can feed into that.
And there is one, Hinshaw's long-term study following girls with ADHD into adulthood found significantly elevated rates of self-injury and suicide attempts compared to their peers.
But kind of shame and self-esteem is often not a side effect when we're talking about ADHD.
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