Signs of ADHD in Girls and Women

Below is a fairly thorough list of some of the signs of ADHD in girls and women. Although a lot of the traits can be the same for inattentive, hyperactive and combined, there are significant differences in how they manifest in girls and boys and the diagnostic criteria were originally based on boys alone which is why boys are three times more likely to be diagnosed than girls as children. (Source) A lot of the reason that girls and women receive later diagnosis is because of the enormous impact that female hormones have, things often get a lot worse around a period, after giving birth and during big hormonal changes like puberty and menopause and usual coping methods become redundant or mental health issues caused by living undiagnosed worsen severely.

Add to this the very damaging stereotypes that only boys get ADHD, that you have to be hyperactive or have done badly at school and also the fact that girls are better than boys at ‘masking’ which is basically observing how others behave around them and replicating it and it becomes more obvious how it gets missed so often. Having only found out about my ADHD at 37 and getting an adult diagnosis, I’ve been on a mission to raise awareness to help others who have struggled for much of their lives and to try and smash some of these very damaging stereotypes!

Here are some of the signs that girls with ADHD are more likely to have, remember that it is a spectrum and so you won’t tick every box and may present in ways I haven’t mentioned but if there is enough here to ring alarm bells for you, please try one of the free online self assessments to give you a better idea.

Some of the signs of ADHD in Girls

Some of these are direct opposites which is why diagnosing ADHD requires an assessment with a psychiatrist who can look at other factors and thoroughly examine the child and the same with adults.

• Daydreamer (I used to hear ‘away with the fairies’ a lot!)
• Finds it difficult to make and/or to keep friends
• Constantly losing things / being incredibly ordered with a fear of losing things
• Easily distracted
• Reads all the time / finds it difficult to sit down and concentrate enough to read
• Can’t sit down through a meal
• Can’t ‘let things go’ if someone upsets them. (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria)
• Very talkative / painfully shy (Sometimes a child is very talkative when comfortable at home and shy out in public.)
• Difficulty starting and/or finishing important schoolwork
• Revises for exams at the last minute
• Messy (the thought of tackling a room can be very overwhelming when you can’t see a clear path through!)
• Perfectionism
• Low self esteem, calls themselves ‘stupid’ and gets angry/dejected with themselves for not doing their work.
• ‘Lazy’ (this is very wrong, often we won’t do things because we can’t, not because we don’t want to!)
• Eating disorders (girls with ADHD are almost 4 times more likely to have an eating disorder, read about Binge Eating Disorder)
• Difficulty regulating emotions

Some of the signs of ADHD in Women

Again, we will all present slightly differently and life factors are more involved now. The societal pressures are greater and we learn to ‘conform’ to societal expectations, no matter how badly it drains us, which can mean that outwardly we seem fine but we are actually struggling daily with the inability to be organised and feeling like failures compared to everyone else.

• Disorganised (can’t meal plan, goes food shopping, spends a fortune, not enough to make one meal!)
• or Highly organised (Anxiety can really drive you!)
• Repeated diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression
• Low self esteem
• Inability to form habits no matter how important (drinking enough water, taking vitamins, taking the pill, taking regular medication)
• Interrupts in conversation (worried about missing the moment or forgetting what we wanted to say)
• Doesn’t listen to instructions (mind wanders during conversation)
• Too many thoughts (head is noisy)
• Needs time away from people to ‘decompress’ after social situations.
• Hyperfocus (the ability to concentrate incredibly hard on something that interests you)
• Multiple hobbies (this can be very time consuming and often expensive. Learning all about something and buying the equipment only to lose interest totally. Some hobbies you never think of again, others you might pick up every so often when it recaptures your interest. Guilt is particularly bad if someone else buys you equipment for the hobby and you lose interest!)
• A constant feeling of failure (Why am I not like the other adults?)
• Weight issues (eating disorders but also impulsivity and using food/sugar for dopamine boosts)
• ‘Thrill seeking behaviours’ to get dopamine boosts (risk taking, starting arguments, binge drinking, taking drugs, spending too much)
• Multiple jobs, gets bored easily/ highly successful (but works twice as hard to keep it up)
• Did very well academically (this is one of the big misconceptions that if you have qualifications or a good job, you can’t have ADHD, it would likely have been a real struggle to meet the deadlines etc though people might never have realised)
• Not finishing things
• ‘Getting stuck’ (being unable to start things, especially important ones)
• Read a lot as a child but can’t focus enough to read now
• Poor memory (this is why it can be scary to do the ADHD forms as we can’t remember much about our childhood!)
• Piles of clutter everywhere (the fear of an unexpected visitor is real!)
• Very very tidy (anxiety from undiagnosed ADHD can often trigger OCD)
• Loses important things regularly
• Has a lot of planners, diaries and calendars (I was always trying to buy my way out of my executive dysfunction with the belief that somewhere out there was the perfect system or app to ‘cure’ my disorganisation)

This is a long list and you won’t relate to all of it, especially because some of the signs of ADHD in girls and women are in direct contradiction to each other, but if you are starting to feel like a lightbulb is going off for you and your life is finally making sense, you can do the free self assessment here I mentioned above, which will give you an indication of whether you should contact your doctor to ask for an assessment.