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FLASHSALE
Imagine with me…
What if the way back to yourself isn’t another system, strategy, or productivity hack, but instead learning to trust what you already know? Your intuition. Your knowing. Your power. The things you knew in your bones before you were forced to bury or hide or shrink them.
As a neurodivergent human and therapist who works with neurodivergent women, I have noticed that so much of the conversation around ADHD often seems to be about how to function better in a world that wasn’t designed for your brain.
There is a lot of value in that and personally, I still love to help connect my clients with those strategies.
Medication can be life-changing.
Accommodations matter.
Understanding executive function matters.
Learning strategies for time, tasks, organization, emotional regulation, and overwhelm can make life so much more navigable.
But I’ve been wondering about something else… what happens after we learn how to “manage” our ADHD?
What happens when you’ve downloaded the apps, bought the planner, made the lists, created the routines, learned about dopamine, figured out your morning routine and you’re still left wondering:
What do I actually want?
Who am I underneath all of this?
Why am I so disconnected from myself?
How do I know what is intuition and what is anxiety?
What if the life I’m trying so hard to organize isn’t actually the life I want?
I think there’s a piece of ADHD support we’re not talking about enough.
Maybe you don’t need to become better at managing yourself.
Maybe you need to slow down so that you can reconnect with yourself and know yourself more wholly.
Most ADHD tools are built around a particular goal: Help me do the thing that my brain struggles to do.
Get the task done.
Remember the appointment.
Answer the email.
Keep the house somewhat functional.
Stop impulse spending.
Create a routine.
Manage the overwhelm.
These things all matter, but I fear there is subtle danger when all of our support is focused on functioning.
We can become incredibly good at performing a life that doesn’t actually feel like ours. A life where we are a guest in our earth suit who learns to optimize our schedules while ignoring our exhaustion. Who learns to override our body’s signals because the deadline is more important.
We can become experts at figuring out what we should do while becoming increasingly disconnected from what we actually want. We can spend years asking, “How do I get myself to do this?” without ever asking, “Do I even want this?”
That’s the question I’m interested in.
Because what the fuck is the point in creating a life that we are miserable living. A life that checks the boxes while abandoning ourselves. A life that may look fun and shiny but makes us feel dead inside.
What if your ADHD isn’t only something to manage?
What if your neurodivergence has also shaped the way you experience the world?
The things you notice and the connections you make. The intensity with which you experience emotions and the ideas that arrive seemingly out of nowhere. The ability to see patterns other people miss.
The way your attention is pulled toward what feels meaningful, interesting, alive, or urgent. The unconventional paths your brain takes to arrive at an answer.
I’m not interested in romanticizing ADHD. ADHD can be genuinely difficult and make existing really hard... It can create real barriers and real suffering and we don’t need to turn every challenge into a superpower.
But I also don’t want the only story we tell to be: Here are all the ways your brain makes life harder. Now let’s teach you how to compensate.
So instead, I want to sit with this question:
What can we learn by becoming deeply curious about the way our brain already works?
And this is where intuition comes in.
As I have referenced before, intuition is not a magical ability that gives you all the answers. The intuition I am referring to is the quieter knowing that can get buried underneath years of second-guessing yourself.
The feeling in your body when something is a yes.
The heaviness when something isn’t right.
The sudden idea that you can’t quite explain.
The sense that you need to leave, pause, change direction, or pay attention.
The thing you “just know” before you can articulate why.
The problem is that many of us have been taught not to trust those signals.
I remember waking up one morning and thinking, “What if I’ve spent so much of my life trying to appear “normal” that I’ve lost touch with what actually feels natural to me?” And truly, that is when everything changes.
Coming home isn’t the same thing as becoming someone new.
This is the idea behind something I’ve been creating called The Wild Way Back Home.
It isn’t another ADHD productivity program. It isn’t about becoming more disciplined or building the perfect morning routine.
It isn’t about finally becoming the version of yourself who remembers everything, answers every text, keeps up with laundry, and drinks enough water.
It’s about something different.
Coming home to yourself.
Coming home to the parts of you that got quiet.
The parts that learned to perform.
The parts that learned to ask everyone else what was okay.
The parts that got labeled “too much.”
The parts that became really good at adapting.
The parts that stopped trusting their own knowing.
And underneath all of that: remembering who you are and who you have always been.
Maybe the wildest thing we can do is finally trust ourselves and our knowing.
Maybe the goal was never to become better at being someone else.
Maybe the goal is to find your way back home and then, run free.
Want more? Let’s connect!
Join my Substack Community: The Late Diagnosis ADHD Club
Local to Charlotte, NC? Come to Neurodivergent Crafting Night Out and walk away with good times, new friends, and a few crafty creations.
Join my upcoming group: Chaos to Compassion for women with ADHD . This group is a 6 week program open to participants worldwide. Groups run from 12-1PM EST or 6-7 PM EST via Zoom.
Work with me: I offer virtual counseling in NC and SC as well as ADHD coaching support to those outside of NC & SC.
Email: rachel@racheltenny.com for more information.
Resources for ADHD: I have a library of mental health resources and a section just for ADHD and Women with a Late Diagnosis!
Are you a therapist? I offer supervision and consulting for therapists as well as The Therapist Toolbox Resource Library for other providers.
Related posts
When was the last time you did something simply because it was fun?
Not because it was productive.
Not because it was good for your mental health.
Not because you could turn it into a hobby, a side hustle, or something to check off your list.
Just because you wanted to.
For many women with ADHD, this question can be surprisingly difficult to answer, because we become very good at doing, managing, remembering, planning, catching up, and trying to keep everything together.
And somewhere along the way, play can quietly disappear as our energy and brain power/spoons for the day shift to managing instead of being.
As long as I can remember, I felt and perceived everything around me. Fun fact, the average human with ADHD filters through up to 8x the information that someone who is neurotypical does in a day.
That can show up as feeling everything around you. The energy someone was holding in, I could sense it. The pain someone held in their body, I could feel it too. The passing judgmental glance someone else might have missed, repeated in my mind. I could zoom out and watch the world and relationships happen around me and it was also super confusing and overwhelming for a child.
While there was pressure to be “good” or “well behaved”, it wasn’t always said explicitly, often implied. “Don’t say the weird thing.” “Please just behave like the other kids.” “Don’t be rude to xyz person.” And the thing is that I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t like xyz person, my entire being just knew I didn’t want to be around them.
As a child, my intuition often felt like a sword or arrow, very direct and clear, but after being told I “couldn’t do that” or “that wasn’t okay to say”, I had to bury it. Just like each of us does, we often bury the parts of ourselves that we perceive keep us from being safe or loved by others. Burying my intuition was self-abandonment in part, but it was also survival. It was how I had to stay safe enough and not be “too much”.
When you have ADHD, it can feel like you are never not “managing” yourself. Whether it’s trying to make sure you’re doing enough, showing up in a way that doesn’t show how hard things are, or just trying not to drop the ball. It’s a lot…and your inner critic, well she (he/they) are often sitting on your shoulder making sure you don’t mess up and reminding you of all the times you did in case you get too comfortable.
I like the idea of externalizing our inner critic as “us, but not us”. Our inner critic is a part of us that likely developed to keep us from those moments when we experienced guilt and shame and heartbreak. Even when we try to slow down or take a break, our inner critic is often there, watching and waiting. Like the house guest who won’t go away, because more than anything, they don’t want us to experience failure or hard emotional responses.
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When you have ADHD, procrastination is often highly misunderstood. It’s rarely avoidance, laziness, or lack of motivation. Many people with ADHD want to start earlier, but struggle to access the mental energy needed to begin.
The issue is often task initiation, not intention. As I shared a few week’s ago in the post all about Task Initiation, ADHD brains are interest-based. Tasks that feel boring, repetitive, overwhelming, unclear, or emotionally loaded can be hard to start.
Then suddenly, when the deadline gets closer, urgency kicks in and the brain finally starts to activates. Often intensely.
There’s a very specific kind of frustration that comes with ADHD and executive dysfunction.
It’s not just about being distracted or forgetful.
It’s the experience of knowing what needs to be done…and feeling completely unable to follow through.
Not because you don’t care. Not because you’re not trying.
Just… stuck in the gap between intention and action.
From the outside, it can look like laziness, inconsistency, or a lack of discipline.
But internally? It often feels like your brain won’t cooperate with you.
One of the most common things I hear from adults with ADHD, especially women and late-diagnosed folks, isn’t about focus or productivity.
It’s this:
“I feel misunderstood all the time.”
And not in a loud, dramatic way.
In a quiet, accumulating way.
The kind that settles into your nervous system and slowly teaches you not to trust yourself or to minimize your intuition and needs.
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Group therapy offers more than just support—it provides connection, perspective, and community. Whether you're navigating a new diagnosis, identity shift, or season of overwhelm, this post explores how group spaces can help you feel seen, supported, and less alone.
For years, I blamed myself for being "scattered" or “bad at adulting.” I thought if I just tried harder, I’d finally get it together. But what I didn’t realize was that I was struggling with executive dysfunction—something that impacts nearly every part of life for people with ADHD. In this blog, I’m sharing my own experience with a late ADHD diagnosis and unpacking why struggles with focus, time, and task initiation aren’t signs of laziness—they’re signs you might need support.