Being a Woman With ADHD: Hormones, Burnout, and Misdiagnosis

For years, I thought I was just bad at life. Disorganised. Overwhelmed. Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too tired. And no matter how many lists I made or planners I bought, I still couldn’t seem to get it together like other people seemed to.

It wasn’t until my 30s, after a long string of burnout cycles and a fair bit of therapy, that I began to seriously question whether something else was going on. Eventually, I got the answer: ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. But the diagnosis didn’t come easily, and it didn’t come early.

The Lost Girls

If you grew up as a girl in the '90s or early 2000s, you might have a very specific image of ADHD in your head: a loud, hyperactive boy who couldn’t sit still in class. That’s the version we were taught to notice. What we weren’t taught was that ADHD can look very different in women, especially when hormones come into play.

Girls with ADHD are often the daydreamers, the doodlers, the “chatty” ones who drift off mid-task but still manage to scrape by. We’re not disruptive enough to raise red flags, so we slip through the cracks. Instead of getting support, we get labelled: lazy, messy, dramatic, scatterbrained. Sound familiar?

ADHD and the Hormone Rollercoaster

Now here’s the plot twist no one warns you about: hormones can make ADHD worse - or at the very least, harder to manage. Oestrogen, in particular, plays a key role in regulating dopamine, the neurotransmitter linked to focus and motivation. When your hormones fluctuate (hello, PMS, perimenopause, pregnancy, and postnatal periods), so can your ability to function.

I noticed it most starkly during the week before my period. The brain fog was unbearable. I couldn’t focus, regulate my emotions, or even string a full sentence together without losing track halfway through. I thought I was losing my mind. It turns out, I was just experiencing a completely normal ADHD hormonal dip - but no one had ever connected those dots for me.

Burnout: The ADHD Crash

Because so many of us remain undiagnosed for years, we develop coping mechanisms to try to keep up. We mask. We overcommit. We people-please. We try to be perfect, organised, helpful, cheerful - even when our brains are in chaos. And then we crash. Hard.

Burnout is incredibly common among women with ADHD. It’s not just tiredness; it’s a full-body, emotional, mental shutdown. The kind where even brushing your teeth feels like a Herculean task. And because we often internalise the idea that we’re “failing”, we don’t seek help - we just push through until we can’t anymore.

Misdiagnosis and Medical Gaslighting

Getting diagnosed is its own uphill battle. Many women are misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, or even borderline personality disorder before anyone considers ADHD. That’s not to say those conditions don’t co-exist - they absolutely can - but ADHD is often the missing piece of the puzzle.

Too many of us have heard:

•  “Are you sure it’s not just stress?”

•  “Everyone’s a bit forgetful.”

•  “You’re just a mum/tired/hormonal.”

And when you hear that enough times, you start to believe it. You start to shrink yourself down and apologise for struggling, instead of getting the support you need.

Rewriting the Narrative

Being a woman with ADHD means unlearning a lot of shame. It means giving yourself permission to stop pretending you can do things the “neurotypical” way. It means allowing softness, messiness, and rest. It means finding your own rhythm - even if it doesn’t look like anyone else’s.

Since being diagnosed, I’ve started to understand myself with so much more compassion. Yes, I still forget appointments. Yes, I still lose my phone ten times a day. But I’ve also realised that my brain is not broken - it’s just wired differently. And there’s power in finally naming that.

If you’ve ever felt like the world wasn’t built for your brain, you’re not alone. There’s a whole community of us out here - late-diagnosed, brilliant, burnt out, and finally learning how to rest. We’re unmasking. We’re unlearning. And we’re rebuilding - on our own terms.

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Hana Ames is a professional content writer with hundreds of pieces of content under her belt. She is a cat and dog mama, a feminist, and a musical theatre fan, who enjoys cooking, playing board games and drinking cocktails. She has been writing professionally since 2018 and has a degree in English. Her website is www.hrawriting.com and she is always interested in discussing exciting new projects to see how she can help your business grow. Catch her on Twitter @hrawriting, Instagram @hrawriting and Facebook: www.facebook.com/hrawriting