Amanda Moore, MS, LPC

06/01/2026

05/18/2026

**“The ADHD woman is not lacking passion.
She’s usually drowning in too many versions of herself at once.”**
One of the biggest myths about ADHD is the idea that people simply need to “find their purpose” and everything will suddenly click into place.
But many women with ADHD do not struggle because they lack passion.
They struggle because their brain feels passionately interested in everything… all at once.
For a while, one idea feels life-changing.
A new business.
A creative hobby.
A career path.
A degree.
A side project.
A completely different version of life.
And in that moment, it feels real.
Not fake motivation.
Not laziness.
Not confusion.
Real excitement.
The ADHD brain is heavily driven by interest, novelty, stimulation, and emotional engagement.
So when something feels meaningful, the brain lights up intensely.
But when the novelty fades or overwhelm appears, many women suddenly lose access to the same energy they had days earlier.
And that creates deep shame.
Because from the outside, it looks inconsistent.
People say:
“You never stick to anything.”
“You just need discipline.”
“You keep changing your mind.”
Meanwhile, the ADHD woman is privately wondering why she can care about something so deeply one week…
and feel emotionally disconnected from it the next.
Over time, this creates an identity crisis many women never talk about openly.
They stop trusting their own excitement.
They stop starting things they genuinely want.
They become afraid of their own potential because unfinished goals begin to feel emotionally painful.
And eventually, some women stop asking:
“What am I passionate about?”
And start asking:
“What if I never become anyone at all?”
Clinically, this experience is extremely common in ADHD, especially in women diagnosed later in life.
Research shows ADHD in women is often internalized rather than externally disruptive.
Instead of hyperactivity, many women experience chronic overthinking, emotional dysregulation, burnout, perfectionism, identity confusion, and cycles of intense motivation followed by paralysis.
The problem is not lack of ambition.
It is difficulty sustaining attention and nervous system regulation in environments that demand consistency without considering neurological burnout.
Many ADHD women also grew up masking heavily.
They became the responsible one.
The high achiever.
The people pleaser.
The emotionally aware friend.
But underneath that mask was often a nervous system constantly shifting between overwhelm and hyperfocus.
And because they looked “fine,” nobody realized how hard basic functioning actually felt.
So they kept waiting for the moment adulthood would finally begin.
The moment they would become organized enough.
Stable enough.
Focused enough.
Certain enough.
But many ADHD women spend years believing their “real life” starts after they finally fix themselves.
When in reality, their life was already happening while they were busy feeling behind inside it.
Sometimes healing begins when an ADHD woman stops trying to become one perfectly consistent version of herself…
…and starts building a life flexible enough for the brain she actually has.
Reference:
Journal of Attention Disorders ADHD in Women and Identity Development
National Institute of Mental Health ADHD in Adults
Quinn PO & Madhoo M. A Review of ADHD in Women and Girls
American Psychological Association Emotional Dysregulation in Adult ADHD

04/28/2026

There’s a certain kind of anxiety that doesn’t respond to reassurance.

You do everything you can to ward it off: you tell yourself you’re safe, you build a stable, reliable life. You say no more often than yes, without realizing you’re organizing your life around avoidance.

But you feel it. You always feel it. Something is coming for you; something catastrophic and irreversible.

You fear you'll have a breakdown and you know you won’t recover from it.

So you do everything you can to prevent it. You tighten your grip on your children. You stay braced and stay inside. You're in a state of constant anticipation thinking that will prepare you for when it finally hits.

Your life gets smaller; your dread gets larger.

In 1974, the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott offered an idea radical for its time: the thing you’re most afraid of has already happened.

He meant this literally.

At some point early in life, something overwhelming happened. You were abandoned, rejected, disappointed. Whatever it was happened at a stage of development so young, there was no "you" to experience it as an event. So it never become integrated as a memory.

It wedged itself into your nervous system as fear.

And when it returns later, when you're a developed self, it doesn’t feel like something that happened. It feels like something that will happen, and so you feel dread.

Which is why avoidance doesn’t work.

Because you can’t escape something that already occurred.

I wrote about this fear, D.W. Winnicott, and the strange relief that comes when you finally understand that the breakdown you're afraid of already happened.

Read the full article in the How to Live Newsletter. The link is in the comments

04/22/2026

💛

05/11/2024

“Today in one of our classes I introduced the children to two apples (the children didn't know this, but before the class I had repeatedly dropped one of the apples on the floor, you couldn't tell, both apples looked perfect). We talked about the apples and the children described how both apples looked the same; both were red, were of similar size and looked juicy enough to eat.

I picked up the apple I'd dropped on the floor and started to tell the children how I disliked this apple, that I thought it was disgusting, it was a horrible colour and the stem was just too short. I told them that because I didn't like it, I didn't want them to like it either, so they should call it names too.

Some children looked at me like I was insane, but we passed the apple around the circle calling it names, 'you're a smelly apple', 'I don't even know why you exist', 'you've probably got worms inside you' etc.

We really pulled this poor apple apart. I actually started to feel sorry for the little guy.

We then passed another apple around and started to say kind words to it, 'You're a lovely apple', 'Your skin is beautiful', 'What a beautiful colour you are' etc.

I then held up both apples, and again, we talked about the similarities and differences, there was no change, both apples still looked the same.

I then cut the apples open. The apple we'd been kind to was clear, fresh and juicy inside.

The apple we'd said unkind words to was bruised and all mushy inside.

I think there was a lightbulb moment for the children immediately. They really got it, what we saw inside that apple, the bruises, the mush and the broken bits is what is happening inside every one of us when someone mistreats us with their words or actions.

When people are bullied, especially children, they feel horrible inside and sometimes don't show or tell others how they are feeling. If we hadn't have cut that apple open, we would never have known how much pain we had caused it.

I shared my own experience of suffering someone's unkind words last week. On the outside I looked OK, I was still smiling. But, on the inside someone had caused me a lot of pain with their words and I was hurting.

Unlike an apple, we have the ability to stop this from happening. We can teach children that it's not ok to say unkind things to each other and discuss how it makes others feel. We can teach our children to stand up for each other and to stop any form of bullying, just as one little girl did today when she refused to say unkind words to the apple.

More and more hurt and damage happens inside if nobody does anything to stop the bullying. Let's create a generation of kind, caring children.

The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words.”

Words by: Mum in the Moment

RESOURCES:

Need to find out more about kids and bullying: https://parenttv.com/?s=Bullying

How to help look after your child’s mental health: https://parenttv.com/topics/mental-health/

04/30/2024

💛

My mother very kindly bought my 7-year-old daughter and me season passes to a local water park last year. We had only been a handful of times while temperatures soared above 100°, but decided to take advantage of a slow day at the park one Friday morning. Most other kids were back in school and the temperatures had finally dropped a bit, so we swam for hours, fueled by soft pretzels and Hi-C.

One of the places we spent the most time was the wave pool. I’d squat down to my daughter’s height in the water and together, we’d jump with and into the waves, over and over again.

After a while, she noticed one area of the pool where the waves were crashing down harder and insisted I pull her to that spot while she floated there in a Superman pose. 🤦‍♀️😂

Once we arrived, though, the waves were a LOT. They were crashing down, getting into our eyes and noses and just generally beating us up. At one point, my daughter received an especially big splash in the face and seemed a little shaken up. We were far from the wave pool exit, so I grabbed her by her life jacket and lifted her up and down with the waves while she recovered.

While I was lifting and lowering her, *I* was getting beat up…slapped in the face by waves, nearly pushed over several times. I was feeling frustrated when I suddenly remembered…why was I still squatting down in the water?! I immediately stood up and realized at my full height, the waves were annoying but manageable.

It turned out that after squatting and floating on my knees for nearly an hour, I was so accustomed to it that I forgot I was a full-size adult. I shrugged in stupid amazement as I told my daughter, “Hey! I just remembered I’m tall!” and we both cracked up laughing.

But friend…how easily do we forget who we are? We often spend so much time surrounded by drama or small minds or angry words or pettiness or whatever…that we forget we’re bigger than that, that we can just…stand up!

Stand up and save your friends and family from that mess. Or just stand up and leave it altogether. But whatever you do, don’t allow those negative surroundings to slap you in the face or push you over or try to drown you. Don’t allow them to bring you down to their level.

Instead friend, remind yourself of who you are, who you were created to be, your purpose, your value, your birthright. Your own two legs.

Stand up. Because the waves aren’t stopping any time soon.

04/26/2024

Paradoxically, an overwhelming desire to please is rooted in an addictive quest for control – by pleasing others we are better able to manipulate them, albeit unconsciously. Believing that we need to control our bodies, families and jobs if we are to avoid annihilation is a dangerous illusion. It leaves us split between head and body, intellect and emotion, fantasy and reality. We cannot reconcile our yearning to be perfect and god-like with the reality of being human and fallible. We mistakenly believe that the inner judgmental voices will shut up if only we can achieve our goals. Life turns into a prison from which we seek to escape by gaining yet more control and by becoming supposedly more perfect. As we misguidedly run as fast as we can towards the mirage of perfection, we eventually meet our own starving and abandoned self.

~ Marion Woodman

[Art: Mihail Zablodski: https://zablodski.com]

02/19/2024

09/22/2023

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others! ~Carl Jung

(Book: Memories, Dreams, Reflections https://amzn.to/3ZxmnAo)

(Art: 'Stańczyk', 1862 by Jan Matejko)

09/05/2023

Keep going!