Therapy for ADHD

What is ADHD?

ADHD (or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects all areas of your life. ADHD is often misunderstood as a disorder of hyperactivity or lack of attention, but at its core, ADHD is a disorder of regulation.

Some symptoms of ADHD in adults include

  • Chronic procrastination or difficulty starting tasks.

  • Overwhelm with planning, prioritizing, or follow through.

  • Mental fatigue from constant overthinking or masking.

  • Difficulty managing time.

  • Hyperfixations or hyperfocus followed by burnout.

  • Emotional reactivity, sensitivity to criticism, or mood swings.

  • Forgetfulness or frequently misplacing items.

  • Inner conflict between high standards and inconsistent output.

  • Persistent self criticism or shame for “not meeting my potential”.

  • Justice sensitivity and low tolerance for unfair or inequitable situations.

  • High levels of emotions when being told what to do.

  • High levels of anxiety or perfectionism.

  • Chronic stress from overworking to “keep up”.

  • Depression or low self worth from years of internalized failure.

  • Difficulty relaxing or “turning off” a busy mind.

 

Masking

Paradoxically, the more high achieving you are, the more likely it is that your ADHD will be missed, because you’ve become such an expert at masking neurodivergence. “Masking” refers to the the strategies used to compensate for neurodivergent brains in a neurotypical society. While masking can help us perform and fit in, it also come with a lot of shame, anxiety, and challenges.

Common Examples of Masking

  • Overpreparing or overcompensating to avoid making mistakes or appearing “scattered”.

  • Hiding struggles with basic routines like paying bills, replying to emails, or keeping the house organized.

  • Downplaying emotional overwhelm or “pushing through” burnout to maintain appearances.

  • Avoiding asking for help due to fears of being seen as incompetent or dramatic.

  • Scripting conversations in advance to avoid going off-topic or interrupting.

  • Working late into the night to meet deadlines others completed during business hours.

  • Creating highly structured systems (calendars, task lists, color coding).

  • Using humor or charm to redirect from memory lapses or forgetfulness.

The Grief and Compassion of Late Diagnoses

Adults who finally receive an ADHD diagnosis later in life have lived through decades of silently struggling with focus, overwhelm, and emotional regulation. For many, these struggles have often been internalized, hidden behind a constant push to “hold it all together”.

Because of that, a late diagnosis can feel like both a blessing and a curse. Often, late diagnoses come with a lot of grief. A yearning for the life that you could have lived if you had gotten the proper attention before. Sadness for the young child that internalized their struggles as their own moral deficit and failures. Anger for all the years that you were struggling without the right support.

While those feelings of grief, sadness, pain, and anger are all normal, a late diagnosis of ADHD can also unlock a new portal of self compassion. Before, it may have been automatic to attribute your ADHD symptoms as a moral and personal failure; now, you can see those same symptoms with compassion and acceptance. A late diagnosis can help you replace your harsh judgment of yourself with a more loving and kind connection with yourself.

Hardware vs Software: How can Therapy Help with ADHD?

Your ADHD is the hardware, and how you live with it is your software. We can support our brains by taking medications, but for the most part, the hardware you were given at birth is unchangeable.

When it comes to our software, that’s where therapy comes in. Especially with late diagnoses, we may have ‘software’ from constantly being misunderstood, not meeting expectations, and the constant pressure to fit in. Therapy can help us unburden from those experiences, and rewrite the software of how we live with ADHD.

The purpose of therapy isn’t to get rid of your ADHD - your ADHD is neither good nor bad, it just simply is a neutral fact about you. But what it can do is help you live with ADHD in a compassionate and healthy way.

If you’ve been recently diagnosed with ADHD, or if you think that you may have ADHD, therapy can offer you a much needed safe space to change your software. You don’t have to keep holding it together alone. If you’re ready to change your life with ADHD, please reach out for a free consultation.

Therapy can help you

  • understand your own reactions to the expressions of your ADHD.

  • build a compassionate relationship with the Parts of you that criticize, avoid, or overwork.

  • acknowledge your overwhelm and exhaustion from trying to hold it all together.

  • grieve for all the things that could have been, and acknowledge the pain that you’ve endured.

  • unburden the harmful inner narratives from a lifetime of perceived failures.

  • strengthen your connection with your own self.

  • learn what it’s like to see yourself with compassion, instead of judgment and criticism.

  • manage ADHD to experience a fulfilling connection with your partner.