01/24/2026
"For the past two years, I feel like I must have ADHD. Can it come out of nowhere?"
If you've had this conversation in your head or with a friend, believe me, you aren't weird! By our 40s and 50s, women have experienced quite a few significant life events involving change and loss. We tend to push the grief and emotions aside, stay strong for others, and keep everything running as smoothly as possible.
But our brains begin backfiring, and we think... is it perimenopause? ADHD? The beginnings of alzheimer's? Or am I just crazy?
We don't often wonder, "is this accumulated and unresolved grief?" because that's not how our society thinks. Grief is vastly misunderstood at best, and at worst treated like a pathological disease.
Unresolved grief (from one loss or accumulated) can look like ADHD because of the increased stress it brings to the executive functioning system in our brains (which also plays in regulating our emotions and "catastrophic thinking"). For those with ADHD, grief does hit differently. Studies show that about 60% of adults with ADHD experience chronic feelings of grief.
We know these stuffed emotions hurt our heart; but it impacts our health, too.
Sometimes unresolved grief starts with a breakup, or when the dog dies, or job loss. Then, a tipping point is reached and unresolved grief mixes with a new loss and more unresolved grief. No wonder you feel like your brain is broken. It's been carrying too much.
Resolving our grief isn't passive. It's taking specific actions that help your brain and heart complete what's still "undone" so you can be free.
