Women often get diagnosed with anxiety or depression instead of ADHD because the diagnostic criteria were built around hyperactive boys. Emotional dysregulation—overwhelm, stomach-pit feelings, a need to hide—gets overlooked even when tasks are done and logic says everything's fine. Many women don't realize they have ADHD until their child's evaluation reveals it.
Chapters
I'll tell you, if, like, even in my own case, I can feel these kind of emotional swings and I can feel extremely overwhelmed and I might get to a spot where I'm getting all of the stuff done, like all of the stuff I've delegated or I've gotten rid of and it's off of my to-do list and I still feel that overwhelm and that pit in my stomach and that just like, I want to hide. I can't do anything right now. I just want to hide. That is emotional dysregulation, where it's like, I have the logical part of my brain that's like, you don't have anything to worry about. You're fine. Things are going well. You're okay. But still, you're having these big ups and downs that you're dealing with at the same time. And I think that's so vital to talk about, because that's what gets misdiagnosed.
Well, my greatest wish for this episode is that this sparks a change. in the way that ADHD is defined. Because you can see that if society thinks ADHD is jitteriness and, you know, kind of the typical little boy like our son was bouncing around in a classroom that can't sit still and can't focus. And if that's all that we think it is, then doctors and pediatricians don't have the right definition for it. No. So of course they're gonna continue to go, well, Only if you're jittery does it look like this, but anything in the realm of dealing with emotions must be something related to anxiety or depression. We're going to keep seeing this problem.
Originally, the ADHD criteria was developed looking at hyper young boys. It's not even— our criteria is not even built to look at everyone else. It's not built to look at girls. It's not built to look at adults. I think part of the biggest flaw in this Right? Is that when you— just moving on from like the hyper young boys, part of the issue is they're looking at these highly observable behaviors. Like these are the kids that are disrupting classes and these are the kids that can't stay in their seat. But what about all those other presentations where the only people they're disrupting are themselves and they're just getting passed from class to class to class to class? And then later, Mel, Those are the people that are getting diagnosed with anxiety and depression because, by the way, you're too old to have it now. That was me. And that's what I hear day in and day out when I'm hearing from women over and over and over again that I, my whole life, I have felt like something was off. There was something missing. And they have never put together those pieces. And then their child gets evaluated. And that's when the pieces kind of come together.
