I wish I had a nickel for every ADHD woman who told me through tears what a failure she is.
Meanwhile… 👇
I ask her about her educational history, her professional life, and her relationships…
…and she has an enormous set of accomplishments to her credit!
In fact, many ADHD women feel like worthless frauds, ALL THE TIME, regardless of their accomplishments.
Why this disconnect?
First of all, those accomplishments were purchased in blood.
Most ADHD women do not think of ourselves as people with disabilities. So we completely discount the fact that what we accomplished was done with the equivalent of one hand tied behind our backs.
Instead, all we see is how painfully we have to abuse ourselves in order to achieve that accomplishment. The fact that we have to work so hard feels like proof that we are intrinsically incompetent.
Second, people with ADHD do not get the hit of dopamine that neurotypical people get upon completion of a task.
That’s a key biological mechanism in how executive functioning works in neurotypical brains— neurotypicals do the thing, and then they get a little hit of dopamine that feels satisfying and buoys them over to do the next thing.
ADHDers have much less of that. So tasks and accomplishments are intrinsically less satisfying.
Third, ADHDers often have issues with short-term memory. We literally do not remember our successes.
Human beings in general have what’s known as “negativity bias” – the tendency to focus more on negative experiences, thoughts, and emotions. This is amplified in people with ADHD. We literally struggle to remember our successes, or keep them in focus.
Fourth, ADHD women are subconsciously trained to mask their neurodivergence from the earliest childhood.
So there is a gap between how we feel on the inside, and how we are showing up on the outside.
Masking has enormous, extremely painful repercussions for ADHD women. And one of the most painful is the way that it creates feelings of being an imposter, of being a fraud.
My dear —
You’re not a strange horse.
You’re perfectly normal zebra.
It’s not that you are an incompetent weirdo.
It’s that you have an ADA-recognized disability, one that you either haven’t known about or haven’t fully accepted. That disability makes a lot of things really hard for you.
Your experiences might be really weird for horses (neurotypicals), but they are totally normal for zebras (ADHDers).
Okay?
I am genuinely curious about what this brings up for you.
Book a call with me and tell me–do you often feel like a failure?
Warmly,
Emma