{"id":798939,"date":"2026-10-11T07:52:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T07:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/798939\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T07:52:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T07:52:34","slug":"undiscovered-adhd-in-women-diminishes-self-esteem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/798939\/","title":{"rendered":"Undiscovered ADHD in women diminishes self-esteem"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When people think of ADHD, they often think of the hyperactive boy or the daredevil. But women are rarely associated with it. The possible diagnosis of ADHD is often not even considered and overlooked in women. Such was the case with Angelina Boerger. For her, it often felt like she was “not quite right.” Angelina had problems with her self-esteem and sought help.<\/p>\n

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Misdiagnoses in women with ADHD<\/p>\n

By the age of 28, Boerger was at her breaking point: There are weeks when she is totally productive, and then there are weeks when nothing happens at all, where she can’t even get out of bed. When she also starts experiencing headaches and neck pain, she goes to the doctor. He refers her to a psychologist who makes a completely different diagnosis. “It sounded as if I was already standing with one foot in burnout at 27,” recalls Angelina in the ARD podcast “Die L\u00f6sung.”<\/p>\n

Cases like Boerger’s are not that rare: About five percent of adults have ADHD. Often, those who actually have ADHD are initially given another diagnosis, such as burnout, depression, anxiety, or addiction disorders. Unlike men, ADHD often goes unnoticed in women.<\/p>\n

Women with ADHD develop coping strategies<\/p>\n

Also because some ADHD symptoms manifest differently in women. The restlessness that is often associated with hyperactivity and aggression in boys and men is more internal in women, explains depth-psychologically trained psychotherapist Nike Hilber. “This is very typical for women; they cope well, do not stand out, because they have often developed a whole range of highly demanding adjustment and coping strategies, or have mastered the so-called masking perfectly.”<\/p>\n

Many affected individuals manage to put on a mask to conform because they often learned in childhood to adapt and sit quietly. “This is also expected of girls and women,” says the psychotherapist.<\/p>\n

Strategies: long to-do lists and setting alarms<\/p>\n

To avoid standing out negatively, many women with ADHD have developed a whole range of strategies: Some write meter-long to-do lists and set an alarm for every little thing. Still, some regularly fail to meet their own expectations. This failure burdens their self-esteem, Boerger knows. Therefore, she always plans to arrive early for appointments, yet it often happens that she gets on the wrong train. “This has been a struggle since my childhood. I always struggle with something going wrong or not working out. Then I always think: I’ve messed something up again.”<\/p>\n

In therapy, according to therapist Nike Hilber, it’s not about organizing better and structuring the daily routine \u2013 even though aids like apps are sometimes reimbursed by health insurance. “I look more at the unconscious conflicts. Especially in people with ADHD, the unconscious self-worth conflict often plays a significant role,” says Hilber. In therapy, the affected individuals learn and work on the understanding that they are not inherently wrong for being late to sessions, for example.<\/p>\n

Understanding helps stabilize self-worth<\/p>\n

It is important here to signal understanding from others towards the affected individuals. This has also been a healing experience for Angelina Boerger: “For me, the biggest aha moment was: There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m not broken, I just function differently.” By the way, Angelina Boerger also writes about this “being different” in her new book: “Normal was never the plan.” More about Angelina Boerger and the topic “ADHD in women” can be found in the ARD Psychology Podcast “Die L\u00f6sung.”<\/p>\n

An article written by Veronika Wawatschek (BR), initially published on 8 October 2026, 04:56 (CEST)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We need your consent to load this EBU contentWe use EBU to manage extra content that can set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-798939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}