Virtually every ADHD woman I know overworks.
Yet virtually every ADHD woman I know thinks she’s lazy.
Is this you?
Lemme explain why this happens to us. ⬇️
ADHD women have a million experiences of INCOMPETENCE over the course of our lives. These start from their earliest memories (and even pre-memory), and extend all the way up to five minutes ago.
We have "spiky skillsets"—moments of brilliant, almost-otherworldly facility alternate with extended stretches of dullness, excruciatingly obsessive rumination, overwhelm, and memory lapses.
Our moments of brilliant facility are why some people describe ADHD as a "superpower".
In those moments, we:
- Come up with the brilliant idea
- Make the unexpected genius connection
- Grasp complicated matters in a moment
- See into people's souls
- Accomplish in 12 hours what takes other people weeks or months
But a lot of our lives DON’T feel brilliant.
Our lives are filled with things like:
- Living in clutter that overwhelms us
- Inability to just do the damn laundry
- Being late to pick up the kids for the millionth time
- Finishing the work project at the absolute last second
- Ruminating obsessively about slights
- Wondering if everyone hates us.
- Embarrassing blurting at social events
- Checks bouncing unnecessarily
- Social gaffes of allllll kinds
- Feeling too exhausted to get out of bed
- Etc. etc.
So even though, in certain circumstances, ADHD women are EXTREMELY COMPETENT, we have many, many experiences of showing up in a way that others regard as INCOMPETENT.
We have many experiences of showing up in ways that WE OURSELVES regard as incompetent!
Because WE KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE BRILLIANT.
We know what it's like to shine!
And yet, a lot of the time, we ain't shining.
So here's what you need to understand:
🦄 ADHD women have spiky skillsets.
💪 We know what it is to feel competent.
😩We know how it feels to be incompetent.
🥹 We SO, SO BADLY want to feel competent.
(All humans yearn for competence.)
😖 However, because ADHD is an ADA-RECOGNIZED DISABILITY, there are many circumstances where we cannot show up at our best.
We need more support, more rest, more accommodations to be able to show up as our most competent selves.
Friend, the way to close the gap between where you are now (FEELING INCOMPETENT) and where you want to be (FEELING COMPETENT) is not to work harder.
Hard work WILL NOT CLOSE THAT GAP for an ADHD woman.
This is good news! You don't have to keep destroying yourself with labor!
However, if hard work won't do the trick, you're going to have to figure out some other strategies.
Other strategies can include things like:
- Looking at your life as a whole and seeing what's working/not working
- Learning what accommodations you need
- Asking for them/creating them
- Wrestling with the possibility that you won't get them from others
- Struggling to create them for yourself
- Figuring out what to do if your first attempts don't work
- Etc. etc.
Hacks don't work for this, you know?
This is way more nuanced and complex than just implementing a hack.
This is why I do what I do.
ADHD women deserve lives that are aligned with our spiky brilliance, NOT our capitalist culture's fcked up values.And most of us need support in creating lives like that.
If you're ready to stop dancing to someone else’s tune,
and start dancing ecstatically to the music of your own ADHD heart,
book a free Discovery Call with me.
A lot more is possible for you on the other side of that call.
Warmly,
Emma