ADHD & Shame: Unmasking My Truth at 45

For most of my life, I carried this deep, quiet shame. I never felt enough. Never quite put-together enough, organised enough, calm enough. I tried SO hard to be perfect, but everything just took longer. Everything felt harder. And I couldn’t figure out why.

Then, at 45, I was diagnosed with ADHD.

And honestly? Everything made sense… and nothing did. All at once.

Suddenly, the little girl who couldn’t sit still at the table, who fell off her chair, who was constantly being told off for fidgeting, daydreaming, zoning out - it wasn’t because she was naughty or weird or “too much.” It was because she had ADHD.

It was like someone handed me a mirror and said, “Here. This is why.”

And once you know, you can’t unknow.

ADHD Isn’t Just a Boy Thing

Let’s get one thing straight: ADHD isn’t just for hyper little boys bouncing off classroom walls. It shows up differently in women, often as perfectionism, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, people-pleasing, and burnout. We're the queens of masking.

We get good at hiding it. Too good.

We become high-functioning hot messes. Externally holding it all together, smiling, achieving. Internally? Planning our own funeral while replying to an email, drinking coffee, catastrophising, forgetting what we were saying mid-sentence, and wondering if we’re just broken. (Spoiler alert: we're not.)

The Grieving Hits Hard

There’s this weird grief that comes after a late diagnosis. A sadness for the younger you who was always trying, always misunderstood. It’s like: If only I’d known sooner…

But also: Thank God I know now.

Because now I get it. The clumsiness. The fidgeting. The absolute rage that builds in my soul when someone chews near me before my period (we’ll just call that hormonal, not ADHD—but you feel me, right?). The socks that made me feel like I was being tortured. The way I couldn’t drink just one or two because alcohol numbed the constant brain chatter but then left me drowning in anxiety the next day.

I know now why I had to touch everything. Why silence felt unbearable. Why I’d drink fast, think fast, cry fast, crash hard, and bounce back like nothing happened. ADHDers - we’re like emotional rubber balls. We don’t just feel emotions, we live in them.

Unmasking is Real AF

For years I masked. I learned to hide the chaos, keep the peace, blend in. And that served me… to a point. Masking helped me survive, but unmasking? That’s helped me thrive.

It’s learning to accept all the weird little parts of myself. The tapping. The leg bouncing. The way I have to be doing something with my hands to listen properly. The fact that I need to move, it’s not rudeness, it’s regulation. It’s TIMING. It’s sensory processing. It’s just… me.

Spirituality + ADHD = Surprisingly Good Combo

Meditating with ADHD can feel like trying to herd cats in a windstorm. But when I found sound baths and guided visual meditations? Game changer. My imagination is wild, and when I give it somewhere to go, it becomes this beautiful, peaceful place.

Spirituality helps me come back to myself. To the now. It doesn’t fix everything, but it gives me the space to breathe through it. And sometimes, that’s all I need.

You're Not Broken. You’re Brilliant.

ADHD can be a challenge, yes. But it’s also magic. We know things - it's like a sixth sense. We can read people’s energy without them saying a word. We’re deep feelers, quick thinkers, creative problem-solvers, and big dreamers.

But most of us grew up believing our traits were bad. That we were too loud, too sensitive, too messy, too emotional, too everything. And that shame sticks.

So here’s the deal: There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re not too much. We’ve just been trying to exist in a world that wasn’t built for brains like ours.

But guess what? There are so many of us. We are the society. And it's time we started talking about our symptoms, our quirks, our truths—because the more we speak up, the more we realise we’re not alone.

Let’s Celebrate Our Weird

Let’s stop hiding. Let’s start embracing. Let’s talk about how squeeky socks make us want to scream, how we process 47 thoughts at once, and how sometimes we need to pace the house while we think.

Let’s laugh at the chaos. Let’s find tools that help. Let’s meditate, fidget, journal, cry, and cheer each other on.

You’re not alone in this. You’re not broken. You’re not weird, you’re authentically you and that’s exactly who you’re meant to be.

Lisa Jo

If this resonates with you, you might love my sound bath sessions Bali Retreat or podcast episodes where we get real about ADHD, healing, and embracing who we are.