S1 E45 ADHD Women & Major Life Changes | Why Your Brain Needs Time to Catch Up
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Why do major life changes feel so overwhelming for women with ADHD?
Have you ever found yourself getting frustrated over something that should have been easy? Not because the task was hard, but because your brain was expecting things to work the way they used to.
Today, we're talking about what happens when life changes, but your brain's still operating from the same mental map. 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. It's real, honest conversations about being women with late diagnosed ADHD and everything that goes along with it. Take what resonates and leave the rest. This episode came out of the one that we did on moving, that conversation that we started, at least among ourselves, of w what it's like when your brain still works with the old map.
We had a conversation that ended up on the cutting room floor. But really the more we talked about it, the more we realized that it's not just about moving. No, it's a grief.
There are so many triggers that can back these major transitions divorce, losing the person you love, becoming an empty nester, being diagnosed with ADHD at forty or fifty, and just suddenly realizing the life you've been living doesn't fit you anymore.
Your life changes, but your brain, it's just not catching up yet.
We rely so heavily on the workarounds and the systems that we've developed over the years, some knowingly, most of them unknowingly. A major life change disrupts those carefully built coping systems we have in place. It turns a struggle for us to shift our mental gears and to let go of those established workarounds and adapt to that new information.
The map doesn't automatically update. It's there, but we kind of forget it is. It's sort of a ghost in the machine situation, which I love. My ADHD brain is very much a ghost in the machine, period. But This is a moment where it definitely shows up for me. That old map, it keeps giving us the same direction. It's the one that's guiding that autonomic nervous system that allows us to reach out for the pencil we know is going to be next to us or to go to that landing pad where our purse is, even though we don't call it a landing pad. And even though we don't think of it as being the exact place that it naturally happens, then when that space is gone, that's where the frustration really starts to weigh in and begin.
Especially if you lived in your last place a really long time, you had you'd spent years building all those workarounds and those systems just to function. We really depended on those. We didn't know we were building them, but we were. And then you lose them all overnight and that is just generally destabilizing.
Right now, this is the part that is surprising me the most. I've gone from a rental home to a Airbnb to another Airbnb, all within the span of three and a half months. My brain has had enough of it. Until now. I knew there were systems that I had in place and I knew I would get frustrated when I moved and I would get overwhelmed. But I never realized how many systems I truly had built out until I've had to restart it over and over again. I would say it's like Groundhog Day, but it's not because I'm not retaining anything and the fricking environment is changing. So it's like I'm so screwed. It's man, it's like I grabbed my purse of life and just shook it out on the frickin' floor.
What invisible systems do ADHD women build to keep daily life running?
You think you're just existing, but really you're creating hundreds of tiny supports that just help your ADHD brain function. Maybe your keys always go into the same bowl or the coffee maker has to be positioned exactly where you can see it. The calendar's on a specific place in the kitchen. You mentioned the landing pad. And I remember reading about that. Like you should have a landing pad and realizing, oh, well, my purse is always in the same place all the time. I don't lose my keys because my keys are in my purse and my purse is always in the same place. And then it was an example of those things that we build ourselves. We don't even know we're doing it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do major life changes feel so overwhelming for women with ADHD?
0:02–3:28
2
What invisible systems do ADHD women build to keep daily life running?
3:28–5:38
3
How does grief differ from simple sadness during big transitions?
5:38–8:08
4
What does *The Grieving Brain* reveal about ADHD and change?
8:08–10:48
5
Why does the brain keep using old mental maps after a move or divorce?
10:48–12:36
6
How do executive‑function fatigue and decision‑fatigue show up in new environments?
12:36–15:18
7
What strategies help rebuild a new “autopilot” after a major transition?
15:18–18:07
8
When will the new neural pathways feel familiar again?
18:07–20:49
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