Episode 55 – ADHD Mum: What You Need to Know After Your Diagnosis [Solo Episode]

Jane McFadden:
I’m so excited to share something with you. I started this podcast because I kept having the same conversations about ADHD and mum life with friends. But then after I started the podcast, the same requests for more information in writing kept popping up in my DMs and Facebook group.

That’s why I created the ADHD month shop, a place where you can grab the answers to your biggest questions. These guides are straightforward, no fluff, no upsells, no one-to-one, no courses, just the answer to your question that you’re asking. If you want a topic added, shoot me an email.

Jump in and check it out. Hello and welcome to ADHD Mums. In this podcast, we tackle the tough, often unspoken realities of motherhood, neurodiversity, and mental health.

Hello and welcome to ADHD Mums. Today, we are talking about getting diagnosed with ADHD as a mum. The moment is different for everybody. It can be a mix of relief, confusion, anger, grief. It could feel like something you’ve always known. You may have seen it on social media or someone’s told you about it, or maybe it came out of nowhere when one of your kids was being diagnosed.

It might feel like someone’s handed you what could be the answer, but then you’ve got no instruction manual, you don’t know what to do, and you’re just left wondering, what now? Here’s the thing, you are not alone. Maybe you’ve tried the basics, timers, lists, breaking the task down. You’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, behind.

This episode is for you if you’re a mum juggling kids, work, life, balance, mental load, huge piles of things that you need to do. Plus, you’ve got ADHD kids possibly, and you’re trying to navigate your own diagnosis. It’s not for you if you’re looking for beginner advice, like just use a planner, set reminders.

We’re going to go a fair bit deeper than that, and we’re going to start to look at systems that actually work for your brain. Now, imagine you’ve set an alarm on your phone to remember to sign the school permission slip. You’re starting to feel organised, but on the way to grab the form, you spot crumbs on the bench, so you wipe it down, but then you realised you really should reorganise the pantry.

Next thing you know, you’ve pulled everything out of the pantry, you’re starting to get rid of random old food, then you’re thinking about donating food to charity. Now it’s 9pm, and the form’s still not done. The pantry, unusable because you haven’t finished, and you’ve just given up partway through.

Or, you promised yourself a quiet evening after a tough day. You tell your partner you’re going to sit down together, but then the overflowing washing basket, you see it. Next thing you know, you’re rage cleaning until 11 o’clock, fuming at yourself for being like this, and fuming at your partner for not helping when he thought that you were just going to have a quiet night off and he doesn’t know what changed.

The moments hit differently, but when you realise they’re part of the ADHD experience, you start to see yourself a little differently. It can be really exhausting because on the outside it looks like disorganisation, but on the inside it feels like your brain is in constant overdrive. So what are the biggest struggles that ADHD mums face after getting diagnosed?

One, grief and self-blame. You look back on careers, relationships, opportunities, and you think, if I had have known sooner, things could have been different. Over-stimulation, noise, clutter, demands. You hit sensory overload so much quicker than other people do.

Rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. You start to feel criticism or judgement like a gut punch, even when it’s small. You get that masking burnout where you’re holding it together everywhere and you’ve got nowhere to put down your mask.

The mental load. The ADHD brain is terrible at holding onto invisible to-do lists, yet we’ll all seem to be expected to just do them perfectly. First up, it’s really normal to feel grief.

The cycle of grief is one that could go in any direction. You may be excited in the beginning, but then move to anger. You may feel imposter syndrome like, oh, I don’t think I really have this. Other people have it worse than me. If you take a long time to feel okay about it, that’s really normal. The grieving process is so overlooked, people just like to jump to the strategies and the fixing, but they forget about the grieving.

A lot of us have spent years struggling to understand why. You are not grieving just lost time or missed opportunities. You’re grieving energies, relationships, self-belief, confidence, mistakes, regrets. So many things that you didn’t finish. And that feeling of never being good enough that has lingered your whole life.

We know that ADHD diagnosis come late in women, often because they present differently. Less hyperactivity, more internalized struggles, like anxiety, perfectionism and overwhelm. There’s no wonder that so many of us were misdiagnosed and dismissed. Grief is really common when we start to realize that ADHD was not something that we could have just tried harder to overcome.

The struggles weren’t our fault. It was our brain trying to survive. We might have carried shame and guilt for things that were never about our effort or character.

Some things to start to process. One, the compassionate reframe. Instead of asking yourself, why didn’t I know sooner? Ask yourself, what can I do now to help me move forward? Allow yourself time to grieve.

If you need to talk to a psychologist one-to-one, go for it. If you need to journal, meditate, you like to talk to friends, give yourself a chance. You may not jump to ADHD is a superpower straight away or ever. It’s okay to take time to process it and it’s okay to feel pissed off.

Some people like to write a letter to their younger self. I knew you were struggling. I knew you did the best you could. I see you now. I’m giving you the tools you reserve. I wish things could have been different.

The reality is if we had have known that we had ADHD back then, it would have changed us if we were living in today. But back then, we probably would have just been given lots of Ritalin, not a lot of therapy, not a lot of tools, lots of medication, and the teachers wouldn’t have understood it.

When we say we wish you had have known sooner, it’s if we were living in today. The kids that are finding out now who are getting proper help, proper advice, proper therapy, proper help from their parents, yes, they are going to do better. But for us now in their 30s and 40s and 50s, knowing back then may not have really changed much.

There wasn’t the knowledge, there wasn’t the tools. Yes, I think some stimulant medication would have done me good, but there also would have been a lot of stigma. It would have been a really tough road no matter what.

If you can’t stop thinking about how you quit university because it was too overwhelming, or you changed your course a million times, finished none, or you cycled from job searching all the time, and you just feel so much regret about what you could have been, know now that you have the knowledge to change and move forward. But also know that you did the best with what you knew every step of the time.

It’s so easy to look back in hindsight and be like, I can’t believe I did that. That was so stupid. I wish I had have done that differently. Knowing what you know now. But when you’re in the position and you’re going with all the information you have, you don’t know.

So don’t get caught into looking back and thinking that you were an idiot, or you were stupid, or you could have known better. You probably couldn’t.

Two, remember that your brain works differently. It’s not bad. It’s not wrong. It is different. It can be a flaw. It can be a strength in some ways.

ADHD affects your executive function, which is working memory, cognitive flexibility, and regulating impulses. So if you don’t know what those things are, working memory is holding information temporarily, cognitive flexibility is shifting between tasks, and then regulating impulses is like impulse shopping, wanting to do this, jumping around jobs, changing your mind constantly. These are all managed by the prefrontal cortex, which in the brain imaging shows clear differences between the brain.

If you add in dopamine deficiency, and we’re struggling to regulate the neurotransmitters responsible for motivation and reward, no wonder we find it all overwhelming. Some things that you can do that some people think work is gamifying, so turning those tasks into challenges, see how much you can get done, or putting in a reward after doing a task that you don’t like, listening to a podcast whilst you’re doing something, adding in urgency with a deadline, having a rule where you just have to get it done if it’s after two minutes.

To be fair though, I couldn’t do any of these without medication. If you need to take medication and that’s the path you choose and you want to try it, you go for it. So give yourself a break if you’ve just found out. This is an episode for people that have known for a while that are wanting to take it to the next level.

The strategies are going to be easier if you are taking medication, so be aware of that. Don’t hold yourself to an impossible standard. I had never successfully took any information out of a school newsletter and put it into my phone or a calendar without medication, not one time. If that’s where you’re at, don’t beat yourself up. These things are hard.

Now think about systems that work. Traditional systems like planners that are usually built for neurotypical brains, even if they say they’re for ADHD brains, often they’re really overwhelming. We need flexibility, visibility and simplicity.

ADHD brains can struggle with task initiation, time blindness and prioritizing. Small tasks can feel enormous, like cleaning the house. You could start 10 things and finish none of them, but feel really busy and stressed out. You could be in fight, flight or freeze all the time, which feels like chronic stress and anxiety.

Some things to make it easier. Write down everything in your head. Write down in a dump zone list reminders, priorities. Check out my ADHD calendar that’s available on my website and the system that’s there. It’s for our brains.

Also, reduce decision fatigue. Rotate the same meals. Set up auto debits on the payments. Wear the same outfits if you need to. Buy the same things. Try and reduce the constant decision making if you can.

There’s also what’s called the Eisenhower box, where you sort tasks into do it now, schedule, delegate and delete. So look at ways to prioritize your life. And again, my calendar and the system has all of that in there for you as well.

So instead of staring at your entire to-do list, feeling paralyzed, look at it visually and think, what can I do today? Pick out just a couple of things and just get started. Please don’t get caught in sitting and crying instead of getting started. And I only say that because that’s what I have done, is instead of getting started, I just sit and cry and I get really overwhelmed. Just get started somewhere and build the momentum, even if it’s something easy.

Have a look at RSD, which is rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Emotional regulation and RSD is quite difficult because we’ve got differences in the amygdala, which is the emotional processing center of the brain. Rejection is going to hit you harder.

If you get left out of a mum’s dinner group, you may spiral into a doom spiral. A small comment can have you feeling shame, guilt and like a failure. How can we work with that? You can use the pause, validate, redirect method.

So when you start to feel a rise in emotion, just take a pause, acknowledge that it’s feeling really hard and that you may be having an RSD moment and then ask yourself, what do I need in this moment? And try and step away and come back calm. So for example, if you get a message in, I would not be writing back straight away. Take a moment.

Or if you’re mid-argument with a partner and you feel yourself spiraling into defensiveness, say, look, I’m sorry, I just need a minute. Go outside for 10 seconds. Come back in. Often it’s not the argument that’s the issue. It’s the doom spiral, the defensiveness that can blow it up. So be aware of emotional regulation.

And you may want to talk to a psychologist or a psychiatrist about that and what you can do to help yourself at a higher level. Also, we want to address the masking. We know that suppressing the ADHD traits to appear normal leads to burnout and resentment.

Your partner needs to understand that masking drains you. Your family, your friends need to know that masking drains you. If you have a partner or family at home, you may need to be honest. I hold it in all day to look normal or air-quoting normal, whatever that is. And at home, I need to let my guard down.

You also need to share your needs clearly. Often we need more rest, breaks, external tools. You may need to share that with someone without shame and say, look, I just need 10 minutes to reset before I dive into the dinner chaos. Look, I just need to walk around the garden for five minutes. I just need you to keep the kids away from me while I get dressed.

If you only need five to 10 minutes, your family, your friends, if you’re in a healthy, good relationship with someone who’s supportive, that should be okay. But think about what are you going to do in those 10 minutes. Don’t doom spiral on social media. Do some breathing, do something that will actually regulate you.

Have a bit of a think about as well when we’re in relationships. Try and look at the way that we talk to each other to really hone in on that emotional regulation. If you have a neurodivergent partner, it can be explosive, just a simple conversation. So Gottman, he’s got some great research and he talks about having a soft startup line.

So instead of saying, you never helped me, I’m doing it all myself again. You may say, hey, I’m feeling so overwhelmed. Can we figure out how to split this task? You don’t want to go to black and white either.

By saying you never helped me also discredits everything that person’s done to help you. I always do this myself. What about the times they’ve helped you? It’s just a way to upset everybody.

Think about the way they were opening this up and you may need to learn to emotionally regulate before having these conversations. If you’re starting to feel like you are overwhelmed emotionally, take a break, pause, reset, come back. You also may need to say, hey, I’m sorry I said that wrong. Can we start over?

If you are the one coming home and you couldn’t believe the house is still messy, try to fix something else that they’ve done well first. If you can see they’ve been playing a lot, been interacting with the kids heaps, but it is really messy, you could say, hey, seems like you’ve been spending some quality time together. That’s awesome.

Do you want me to take them for a bit while you clean up or you clean up together? Or just acknowledge that sometimes, that if he’s been playing with the kids or she’s been playing with the kids, that’s awesome. Because the other side of it is that they give them technology to clean up, that he’d come home and they’re all like, can we go to the beach? Can we do something? And you’re exhausted. Like you can’t have everything.

And if we have ADHD, we’re a little perfectionistic. We don’t want to put impossibly high expectations where our partner feels like they’re doing something wrong all the time. So think about the way that we are handling our relationships.

Also, let’s just have a look at the moment for our strengths. I don’t believe ADHD is a superpower, but ADHD people are fun. We always have a good time. We’ve always got a great story. And a lot of us have got excellent problem solving, which means that we can adapt to chaos. We can thrive.

We thrive on a deadline. Some of us are really good in a last minute situation or an emergency. Also, our empathy can make us incredibly tuned to our kids’ needs, where we can focus for a really long period on things that other people can’t.

So look and take a moment to acknowledge what you’re really good at, because some of our ADHD is positive. Many people in the ADHD Mums Facebook community have shared stories about feeling dismissed, invalidated, feeling like they’re failing after diagnosis. ADHD is a part of how you function, but it’s not who you are.

Some people think that getting diagnosed is going to just fix them overnight. Not that they’re broken, but it’s about relearning who you are. It’s about rebuilding yourself and letting go of some of the judgments that you had on yourself for not being able to keep up or comparing yourself to other people who are neurotypical.

If you could do something this week, just pick one strategy from today’s episode and implement it, whether it’s creating a decision-free zone, a sensory reset, or even just start to process your grief. Talk about it to somebody, because you’re not broken. You’re not behind. You are a mum who’s showing up for herself and her kids, and that’s enough.

Give yourself permission to grieve, unmask, and take some steps forward. Getting an ADHD diagnosis isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. It’s the moment when you stop fighting yourself and you start to build a life that works for you.

Is it perfect? No. But will it get easier? Yes. You’re not failing. You’re just learning how to thrive with the brain you’ve always had. There’s so much hope on the other side of this.

Thank you so much for listening and have a great day. The key message here is you are not alone. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us on Instagram or head over and join our amazing ADHD Mums Podcast Facebook community. Everything you do matters and helps to spread the word about what neurodiversity in females looks like.