S1 E43 Why ADHD Women Benefit From ADHD Friendships | Understanding, Validation & Support
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Why do ADHD friendships feel different from other friendships?
Something I really long for. Is having someone understand Exactly what's happening in my life. without having to explain every piece of it. Or if you had someone just show up for you during one of the hardest moments of your life simply because they understand. what overwhelm felt like. Today we're talking about why ADHD friendships can often feel different and why being understood can sometimes matter more than being fixed. This is Angry on the Inside. I'm Jess. And I'm Janine. We're both certified ADHD coaches, but this podcast isn't coaching. It's not therapy and it's not medical advice. Is real honest conversations about being women with late diagnosed ADHD and everything that goes along with it. Take what resonates and lead the rest.
When people hear the word support, they often picture somebody swooping in and solving all of your problems, somebody showing up with a checklist and fixing your life. But that's not what support has looked like in my ADHD friendships. Most of the time, much quieter than that, it's somebody saying, Hey, I've got this piece. It's just somebody just checking in, understanding why you're struggling without making you defend the fact that you're struggling. The moments in my life where I felt the most overwhelmed. What I needed wasn't necessarily somebody to solve the problem. Most of the time, the problem couldn't be solved. What I needed was somebody who understood the weight of what I was carrying, especially in those moments where my ADHD is just pushing down on me.
There's this tendency to immediately make it about you. You don't think Wow, I'm caring a lot right now. You're not giving yourself grace. This is where friendship and ADHD come together in a different way. When you're stuck in the why can't I handle this better? That is where we get many of us get stuck. We've just spent so many years convincing ourselves that if we could just try harder, be more disciplined, yada yada yada, H need. Yeah. Have you yada yaded friendship? Did I what? I I said, have you yada yadded friendship? I thought you were being serious. In fact I have yada yada friendship. I knew it. He hasn't everybody. When life becomes overwhelming, our instinct isn't usually to ask for help. It's to work harder or to isolate.
I'm really good at that. I can disappear. I've convinced myself that I need to figure everything out before I come back and interact with people. Somewhere in my brain, there's this belief that I need to handle it privately. I've experienced it, you know, we all wanna be hyper independent. Part of it's because we had to, and part of it's because we spent so much of our lives trying to prove that we're capable, that we're responsible, not flaky. All the things that we don't want to be, that we think we are, that we actually aren't. I wonder sometimes if some of our hyper independence from especially very young age that it comes from having to do things for yourself, not having the support you needed in that time.
But I wonder too.
How does hyper‑independence make it hard for ADHD women to ask for help?
If some of that hurt comes from s misunderstandings, when we're first starting to have friendships, maybe as kids we don't recognize other people with ADHD. And as we become women, we're not recognizing because we're we're rather standoffish and we we are hyper independent and we're trying to make sure that we're doing the right thing and we're masking and that maybe we're missing those other people. But Janine, you had brought up an interesting concept a while back and we never had a chance to touch base on it when we were recording once you had said the idea is that maybe you were what's the right word? Maybe you were actually avoiding those people because you were already struggling trying to fit in.
You could see them struggling trying to fit in. You didn't want to be associated because you knew that would just increase the daily cognitive load almost when you're young. Yeah. You're already feeling different, quote unquote. And I can kind of think back, especially to high school. uh the mist makes me feel horrible, but trying to avoid somebody who I thought, well, they really don't fit in.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do ADHD friendships feel different from other friendships?
0:01–3:00
2
How does hyper‑independence make it hard for ADHD women to ask for help?
3:00–6:20
3
What childhood friendship wounds contribute to adult ADHD friendship struggles?
6:20–9:08
4
Why is the idea of a “perfect” friendship a myth for ADHD women?
9:08–11:56
5
How does Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria affect expectations in ADHD friendships?
11:56–15:06
6
What is the ebb‑and‑flow pattern of ADHD relationships and why does it matter?
15:06–18:09
7
How can friends offer understanding without trying to fix the problem?
18:09–20:38
8
Why is validation such a powerful tool for overwhelmed ADHD women?
20:38–22:13
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