“Perimenopause Didn’t Create My ADHD. It Exposed It.”

My entire life, I believed two things about myself: I was anxious, and I needed to try harder.

Try harder to stay organized, to remember friends’ birthdays, and to bring muffins for Teacher Appreciation Day. Try harder to stop losing my keys and my train of thought. Try harder to stay focused and stay in control.

For years, I sat in therapy offices trying to understand why daily life sometimes felt impossible, even though I loved my family, loved my work, and objectively had a very good life. Every single mental health professional diagnosed me with anxiety and OCD tendencies. Those things may be true, but they never really explained what I was feeling.

My husband, Penn, and I co-authored a bestselling book called ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To [Mostly] Thriving With ADHD. He, of course, had been diagnosed years before. My role in the book was how to partner and support someone with ADHD. At every turn, he’d write about a symptom or sign of ADHD and I’d argue, “Well, that can’t only be ADHD because that’s how my brain works too.”

The ping-ponging thoughts, the slightly-obsessive way you can attack a project (then totally exhaust from it), the inability to measure time. Isn’t that EVERYONE? Doesn’t every busy mom feel that way?

[Read: ADHD Symptoms in Women Aren’t ‘Hidden.’ They Are Misinterpreted.]

Apparently not.

So at 49 years old, after writing an entire book on ADHD, I was diagnosed myself. (Which is either deeply ironic or the most ADHD thing that has ever happened to me.)

Looking back, there were signs everywhere. But, I was a girl in the 1980s and ‘90s, and those signs didn’t look like what people expected ADHD to look like. I wasn’t disruptive in class. I wasn’t bouncing off the walls. I was a quiet rule-follower who struggled but performed well in school. I learned early how to compensate. At home, after keeping it together at school all day, I remember feeling intense emotions. A bad grade or a disagreement with a friend left me spiraling for hours.

I became hyper-responsible. Hyper-vigilant. Hyper-aware of disappointing people.

Then came perimenopause.

Suddenly, all the coping mechanisms that had barely held my life together started collapsing like a Jenga tower in an earthquake. The brain fog became impossible to ignore. I had been able to white-knuckle life through intense emotional dysregulation and now, that was out the window. My ability to prioritize, initiate tasks, and manage overwhelm disappeared.

[Take This Self-Test: Is It Perimenopause or ADHD?]

I remember thinking: This is more than perimenopause.

I knew the research, particularly newer research about women, but I never had the guts to ask the question: Could I, the keeper of the family’s schedule and the air-traffic-controller of our life, have ADHD?

Over a series of appointments, a highly trained and incredibly patient therapist evaluated me for ADHD. She read me the screening questions on multiple evaluations (which was great because there’s no way I would have finished them all on my own). We did an archeological-level dig into my childhood to see if these patterns had existed my entire life.

At age 49, after a lifetime of struggling and thinking I was causing my own mental struggles, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I couldn’t immediately process the emotions around the diagnosis. I told Penn, but no one else. I felt like a fraud because I wrote an entire book on how to support someone with ADHD yet never had the courage to raise my hand and ask the question for myself. I felt grief for all the years believing my struggles were character flaws. I felt some anger on behalf of all the women like me whole were simply… missed.

I always felt like if I could just meditate more or eat less sugar or find the perfect planner THEN my brain would feel less chaotic. Now I know: This was never my fault. It’s a strange sort of relief to know that no, it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m wired. Now I understand my brain was never broken.

I do think many healthcare professionals missed it, not out of negligence, but because understanding how ADHD presents in girls and women is just now being revealed. Somewhere along the way, we were socialized to internalize our struggles for fear we may make those around us feel uncomfortable. So instead of disrupting classrooms, we disrupt ourselves.

Perimenopause didn’t create my ADHD. It exposed it.

After months of silently processing the diagnoses, I now feel more peace than panic.

My life makes sense. I used to think getting diagnosed at 49 meant I was late.

Now I think it means I still have time.

And honestly?

That feels pretty awesome.

Late ADHD Diagnosis in Women: Next Steps

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