Decoding ADHD: What It Actually Is, How It Feels, and Why We’re So Damn Loud About It

Let’s clear something up right now: ADHD is not just for little boys who can’t sit still.

It’s not a joke, it’s not about being “quirky,” and it’s definitely not just “you being lazy.” In this episode of So Frickin’ Healthy, Megan and I sat down with ADHD coach (and badass human) Kelly Brändli to talk about what ADHD really is—how it shows up in women and adults, why it’s so often missed, and why half of us were basically just out here self-parenting with zero support.

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📚 ADD vs. ADHD: Is There a Difference?

Nope. They’re the same thing now. The term ADD is just the outdated name for what we now call ADHD, inattentive type. So if you’ve always thought “but I’m not hyper, I just zone out and can’t finish a sentence,”—yep, still ADHD. Welcome to the club.

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🔄 The ADHD Experience: It’s Not Just Focus Issues

Kelly dropped some truth bombs that had Megan and me full-on wide-eyed nodding like bobbleheads. ADHD isn’t just attention problems. It can also look like:

• Emotional outbursts you regret 10 seconds later

• Not realizing you’re hungry or need to pee until it’s an emergency

• Feeling personally attacked by every “just a reminder” email

• Constant fidgeting, impulsive spending, or mood swings that hit like a freight train

And let’s not forget Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)—aka the drama queen of emotional dysregulation. Someone says, “Hey, could you remember to do XYZ?” and your brain hears: “You’re a failure, everyone hates you, go cry in the bathroom.”

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🧠 ADHD in Women: Why We’re So Often Missed

Here’s the real talk: girls and women are underdiagnosed AF.

Why? Because:

• We internalize our chaos (hello quiet, daydreamy girls who “just need to try harder”)

• We get REALLY good at masking

• Our symptoms often show up around university, motherhood, or menopause—aka when life suddenly requires us to function like a damn project manager with no sleep and 5,000 open tabs in our brain

Also: dopamine is tied to estrogen. So guess what drops in perimenopause? Both. Cool cool cool.

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🧩 Executive Dysfunction: The Real ADHD Core

Kelly broke down the eight executive functions (aka brain systems we’re supposed to rely on to “adult” properly):

1. Organization + time management

2. Impulse control

3. Planning + prioritizing

4. Emotional regulation

5. Flexible thinking

6. Working memory

7. Self-reflection

8. Task initiation

And no, we don’t all have issues with all of them—but even 2 or 3 out of whack can make daily life feel like wading through Jell-O in a fog.

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🤯 ADHD Burnout Is Real

I shared how perimenopause + burnout basically turned my ADHD from manageable to “holy crap, I’m drowning.” Kelly confirmed: it’s not just you. ADHD brains burn out harder, especially when we ignore our needs (because we didn’t notice we were starving/tired/stressed until we fully collapse).

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🔥 Crisis Mode Is Our Jam

Here’s the weird upside: a lot of ADHDers thrive in chaos. Need someone to run toward a burning building (figuratively or literally)? We got you. The crisis mode superpower is real—we just need to build systems that don’t require a crisis for us to function.

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❌ Busting the Big ADHD Myths

Quick hits from our rapid-fire round with Kelly:

• “Kids with ADHD can’t focus.” Wrong. They hyperfocus on what interests them (Minecraft, anyone?).

• “ADHD = bad parenting.” Nope. It’s genetic.

• “Meds cause addiction.” Actually, untreated ADHD increases addiction risk.

• “You’ll grow out of it.” Lol. No. You just get better at hiding it.

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🧡 Danna’s Real Talk Moment

Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my ADHD is my superpower. But only once I learned what it was, how it showed up in my life, and stopped trying to force myself into neurotypical boxes.

Yes, we’re loud. Yes, we interrupt. Yes, we leave cabinets open and forget appointments. But we’re also creative, compassionate, deeply intuitive humans who’ve been gaslighting ourselves for decades.

Let’s stop doing that, yeah?

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🎧 Full episode is live now on [Spotify / Apple / YouTube]
💬 Know someone who needs this info? Send it to them. Or just casually leave it open on their laptop. We won’t tell.

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