What Does ADHD Look Like In Girls? - Things I Wish I Knew Ten Years Ago
I’m back, as promised, and today I’m going to talk about some stuff I wish I knew ten years ago- ADHD symptoms that are common in girls but often get overlooked. Why, you may ask? Because a teacher or parent normally won’t notice that a child is struggling unless it’s very apparent – if she is extremely hyperactive and disruptive, for example – or if the child admits that they are struggling. That girl in the corner who’s always daydreaming, but still gets good grades? Or the one who has a hard time making friends or making relationships work, but otherwise seems “normal” (whatever that means)? She’s going to be passed over while her teacher is busy worrying about the boy who can’t stay in his seat for more than five minutes. Plus, girls with ADHD are more likely than boys to internalize their struggles, so if you or your child is anything like me, you might not realize something is off until high school or even later, and even when you do, you might be too embarrassed to ask for help.
If anyone besides my mom ever starts reading this blog, one thing that would make me really really happy and feel as if I’ve made a difference is if even one young woman out there doesn’t have to go through the failed relationships, ruined friendships, and lost semesters that I had to go through before she realizes something deeper is going on than just laziness and being emotional. If you’re a girl who often feels like she’s getting in her own way and suspects there might be something up, but aren’t really sure what it might be, here are some often-overlooked ADHD symptoms that you might relate to.
1. Daydreaming/Getting Bored in School
As long as I can remember, I’ve had a hard time paying attention in class. When I was very young, I would get called out for daydreaming all the time. I worked on my French homework in science class, flipped aimlessly through my agenda while the teacher was talking, and doodled all over ever single desk I’ve ever sat in. In grade five, I got in trouble for – get this – reading a book during a spelling test. Don’t ask me how I thought I was gonna get away with that, but I was sooooooo booooooored and the teacher was taking soooooo loooooong to read these words that I knew how to spell in grade one. That’s a big reason why inattentiveness in female students often gets overlooked- girls with ADHD don’t usually perform poorly, especially in elementary school. Because I was gifted, my inattentiveness was treated as a quirk rather than a problem. I had a handful of teachers who tried to give me harder work to keep me motivated, but more often than not I was left to entertain myself. It always bothered me that kids who needed extra help got IEPs, the latest learning technologies, and one-on-one time with the teacher, but kids like me, who needed an extra challenge, were neglected
The most important thing to keep in mind when analyzing the behaviour of people with ADHD is that our brains don’t produce or transmit enough dopamine, which is the feel-good chemical that controls reward-motivated behaviour. Because of that, we seek out anything that will give us a dopamine rush… the only problem is that those behaviours are usually impulsive. You know the saying money can’t buy happiness? Yeah, not necessarily true for ADHD brains. At least for a little while after buying something we’ve managed to convince ourselves we so totally need, we actually do feel really happy, because we’re experiencing a dopamine high. My friend recently got me into doing my makeup properly, and I’m embarrassed to admit how much I’ve spent at Sephora in the last month. I know it’s dumb, but I do it anyway. Why? Because ADHD brains have a hard time distinguishing what is urgent from what is important. Once I get it in my head that I need that contour kit right now (because what if a surprise event comes up in the next week?), I can’t convince myself otherwise. That sense of urgency releases dopamine, which tells my brain that wasting $60 to look more like the MUAs on Instagram will make me happy. And for an hour or two it does!… Until I look at my bank account.
So, dopamine rush-producing behaviours are usually impulsive, right? What does that look like when it comes to romantic relationships?
Dopamine-seeking brains love anything that’s new and novel, and that includes the first phase of a relationship, when you’re sooooo in love and can’t get enough of each other. Of course, that phase ends, and neurotypical people settle into a more lowkey relationship just fine. ADHD brains? Not so much. If you don’t recognize what you’re experiencing as a dopamine withdrawal, you may interpret it is a lack of love from your partner, or as a sign that the relationship is getting boring. I tend to fall into the first category, and people like me can become really insecure thinking that our partner doesn’t care about us. We become excessively demanding and need dramatic displays of affection all the time, which naturally alienates our partners. If you’re somebody who just gets bored, that can result in two unhealthy behaviours: one, moving really quickly from one relationship to the next and never learning how to be alone, and two, cheating. If any or all of these three behaviours are a pattern in your life, you just might have a dopamine shortage, and are unknowingly looking to your partner(s) to fix it.
It’s really hard for me to explain my tendency to over-explain every little thing (ha, that’s ironic), especially if I’m nervous about it. Have you ever taken seven sentences to say something that could have been said in one? Found yourself repeating the same thing in different words three times? I find I do this the most when I’m apologizing, or trying to explain why I did something that someone else didn’t like or understand. You think you’re being helpful, but really you’re just annoying the other person. Then you realize how annoying you’re being, and apologize for being annoying five times, and now they’re annoyed with you for apologizing for being annoying… okay, that’s when you know it’s time to turn your phone off and cool down.
On top of excessive explaining, ADHD brains can get a little word vomit-y when we’re talking about something we’re passionate about. Just ask my mom- get me on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or, at the moment, information about ADHD, and you won’t get me off it. Sometimes we don’t really know when to shut up. If you have a tendency to keep talking even when you know nobody is listening anymore, then you might want to keep reading.
Everybody road rages once in a while (okay, I’m told that not everyone does, but I don’t believe it. Come on, how can you NOT scream at the person in front of you going 5 km under the speed limit?) but I legitimately feel claustrophobic and panicky if I’m on a four-lane highway stuck behind a car in each lane going the same speed and I can’t get out to pass them. If the person in front of me is doing something stupid, I could literally run them over I get so frustrated, and not just if I’m already cranky- I yell at someone on the road every single day. I’m told this is “apparently” because of our “inattentiveness” and “inability to sit still”, and not because everyone else on the road is a freaking idiot. I don’t know if I believe it, but that’s what I’m told, anyway.
ADHD brains are also more likely to get into car accidents. I’ve never been in a major accident while driving, thank God, but I’m only 22, and I’ve had four minor fender benders that, embarrassingly, didn’t involve other cars, but me driving into things in parking lots. Once, I just wasn’t looking behind me and backed into a pole. Another time, I thought that texting in the Tim Hortons drive-thru was a good idea. You get the idea.
Again, everybody forgets things once in a while. But if you’re forgetting or misplacing your homework, your car keys, your purse, your work pants (yes, I have actually lost a pair of pants before) every single day, then there might be a problem. Once, I parked my car near campus, spent the day studying in my friends’ office, and then got a ride back to my car at the end of the day. My friend Dan was driving up and down the street I told him I had parked on asking me “is that your car? What about that one?” before I realized that I had parked on a different street on the other side of campus. I never thought being a bit scatterbrained was a problem, and if it only happens once in a while, it probably isn’t. But all of these symptoms together paint a different picture.
7. Difficulties With Motivation
I never really enjoyed studying, and I guess I was lucky that throughout grade school and high school, I didn’t have to do very much of it. It’s not that I didn’t like learning, it’s just that studying for extended periods of time is so boring. Even in my first three years of university, my super strict immigrant parents watched me like a hawk, so I did what I needed to do, as difficult as it was at times. That all changed when my fourth year rolled around and I moved to Ottawa for an exchange. With no one to stand at the foot of my bed and scream at me until I dragged myself out of it, I just… didn’t. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, it was just that I couldn’t bring myself to. Same went for going to class, doing my readings, handing in assignments, showing up for exams… it wasn’t pretty. This can also be a symptom of depression, and many people with ADHD, myself included, meet the diagnostic criteria for depression. The difference is that people with depression can’t get out of bed because they’re depressed; people with ADHD get depressed because they won’t get out of bed. We aren’t lying in bed all day because our mood is low, but because we struggle with executive functioning - motivation, planning, organizing, and self-managing. Those things happen in the prefrontal cortex, and ours are underdeveloped. It can be hard to distinguish where the cycle begins for you, and before being diagnosed, I thought I had depression for sure, but as soon as my psychiatrist explained how ADHD works to me, it fit like a glove.
8. Starting Projects and Never Finishing Them
This kind of goes hand in hand with lack of motivation, and it’s something I’ve struggled with all my life. It’s also one of the very few ADHD symptoms that isn’t also a hallmark of something else, like depression or anxiety, so it should be a huge red flag if it’s accompanied by some of these other symptoms!
Most people tend to procrastinate things they don’t want to do, like studying or cleaning their room. A big indicator that you might be dealing with something more than just laziness is when you procrastinate or don’t finish even things you actually really want to do. And it’s not because you’re lazy or don’t want to do it, it’s because as great as it sounds, you just… can’t. If you’ve ever started a scrapbook and tossed it to the side three days later, tried to start a club on campus but let it fall to the wayside, or created a blog then never actually updated it (I meant to have this posted a solid five days ago, whooooops), then you know what I’m talking about.
You’re in the middle of a sentence and you completely lose your train of thought. Alternatively, you’ll be halfway through a sentence then think of something more important that you want to say and totally abandon the idea you’re halfway through and start talking about the new one instead. You interrupt people a lot, because you feel like you HAVE to say the thought that just popped into your head right now, lest it no longer be relevant if you wait five minutes, or even worse, you forget it again in 30 seconds. You’re in the middle of an important text conversation but you open Instagram while you’re waiting for them to text back… then half an hour later you’re creeping your crush’s ex’s brother’s best friend when you realize you never answered that super important text. You zone out while people are speaking directly to you, which makes you look super rude because it seems like you aren’t paying attention. Our inability to focus hard on things can affect our lives in ways you never would have guessed- for example, I am terrible at proofreading and finding typos, and the number of assignments I’ve handed in with words missing from the middle of sentences is embarrassing. If this sounds like you (and if course, if this happens all day every day rather than once in a blue moon, because everybody get scatterbrained when they’re overwhelmed), then you’ve come to the right place.
10. Being SUPER Enthusiastic… Sometimes
We’ve already established that ADHD brains can have trouble with motivation and with staying committed to something long-term, but that doesn’t capture the entire picture. If you think of depression as basically always being in a low state, ADHD is different in that you sort of swing from highs to lows and back again. Like I mentioned, ADHD brains don’t have enough dopamine transmitters, and we kind of get addicted to anything that does produce a dopamine high. So if something does make us happy or excited, we’re gonna be the happiest, most excited people on earth. My psychiatrist gave me a situation where an ADHD person might win $5 on a scratch off ticket, but the way they jump up and down all excited makes the people around them think they’ve won a million dollars. In my case, this often looks like getting really excited about a paper or assignment for a class I’m particularly interested in. I’ll take out books from the library and hyper-focus on planning the assignment for about three days… then the whole “starting a project but never finishing it” kicks in, and that’s a whole different story…
11. Verbal Aggression (As Opposed to Physical Aggression)
Although I don’t mean to generalize or to imply that every single boy or girl is the same, this tends to be a notable difference between girls with ADHD and their male counterparts. Girls are much less likely to be physically violent, but when you piss us off, or trigger our Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (that’s what my next post is going to be about, by the way!)… watch out. You might get a verbal beatdown like you’ve never experienced before. This is one of the ugliest and most frustrating things about having ADHD for me. I’ll tell the people I love that I hate them, that they’re ruining my life, that I wish they were never born; I’ll pick on the things I know they’re sensitive about and call them every curse word in the book… only to regret it five minutes and sheepishly try to convince this deeply wounded person that I didn’t actually mean it. It sucks. Big time.
And finally, the one I really wish I knew all this time…
12. Being Diagnosed With Something Else
Throughout this post, I’ve given a dozen examples of the ways ADHD symptoms can appear like symptoms of depression and anxiety. ADHD in girls is notoriously misdiagnosed, and girls with ADHD are three times as likely as boys to be treated for depression before being properly diagnosed. Beyond that, ADHD can be comorbid with anxiety and depression. I’ve dealt with anxiety and panic attacks since I was eight, and was formally diagnosed with anxiety at 17. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was told that I meet all the diagnostic criteria for depression, but it was likely that treating my ADHD would make it go away. My depression went away within literally one week of starting ADHD medication. My anxiety did not go away, but it has been reduced by about 50%. I realized that about half of the somatic experiences I identified as panic attacks were not triggered by mental anxiety but by sensory overload because, as ADHD brains do, I was perceiving way too much of what was going on around me and getting overwhelmed to the point that I would experience panic attack symptoms- dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea, you know the drill. Another statistic that would have made a difference in my life is that girls with ADHD are 2.7 times more likely to suffer from anorexia nervosa than girls without ADHD. I struggled with anorexia from age 16 to 19, so this was quite a shock to discover three years later. There’s definitely some cool brain science behind that why that is, so maybe it’ll be the subject of a future post!
If you have any questions about this post, or think that you or a loved one might be dealing with ADHD, do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions! I also want to stress that this might seem like a lot, and that anyone dealing with all of this crap would stand out from a mile away, but if that was the case, so many of us wouldn’t go undiagnosed until post-secondary. I experienced all twelve of these signs and symptoms, but the only ones that pushed me to see a psychiatrist were relationship problems, difficulty with motivation, and verbal aggression. Most of these things didn’t seem like they were impacting my day-to-day functioning- I get good grades, have a job, and have no trouble making friends. So please don’t get fall into the trap of telling yourself that what you’re going through “isn’t bad enough to be a real problem.” If something feels off, see a doctor, because you deserve to live the best life possible.
That’s all for now folks! Stay tuned for my next post about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.
