From Bridget Jones to Reality: Female ADHD Without a Script

When we hear the acronym ADHD, our collective imagination almost immediately delivers a ready-made image: the restless boy who disrupts the class and can't sit still.

Yet behind this loud stereotype, there exists a silent narrative.

There's a complex reality lived by girls and women who, because they don't fit the classic frame of physical hyperactivity, remain invisible. We grew up hearing that we're just "daydreamers", "distracted", or worse—that we "don't try hard enough".

The goal of our conversation today isn't merely to list symptoms, but to unpack this experience.

We're going to look at how media—sometimes romanticising our traits as "charming quirks", sometimes ignoring our pain entirely—has shaped the way we see ourselves. And most importantly: how we can reclaim authorship of our own story, becoming Architects of the Future.

Unpacking the Inner Experience: When Chaos Is Invisible

Clinically, ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition. But for us women, I believe biography shapes biology in a unique way.

While the boy externalises chaos by running around the room, women frequently internalise the chaos.

For many of us, hyperactivity isn't in our legs—it's in our minds. It's an unrelenting stream of thoughts, a mental radio that never switches off. We're labelled "daydreamers" because our external stillness masks a psyche working at maximum velocity, yet struggling to anchor in the "here and now".

Notice how the translation of experience shifts when we look through the feminine lens:

Where the classic stereotype searches for physical hyperactivity (running, climbing on things), the female reality presents mental hyperactivity. It's a restless mind—anxious and exhausted by overthinking. A true "tapestry" of ideas weaving together endlessly, generating a constant internal noise that no one sees, but you feel deeply.

While boys are diagnosed through disruptive behaviour, girls often struggle with internalised inattention. It's that tendency to "daydream", to lose yourself in reverie mid-conversation and appear distant. Often, this "head in the clouds" isn't disinterest—it's a psychic refuge for coping with boredom or overwhelm.

Finally, what presents as motor impulsivity in the classic pattern manifests in us as verbal and emotional hyperactivity. This shows up in the need to talk excessively out of sheer enthusiasm, interrupting others unintentionally, and feeling emotions with overwhelming intensity—a painful phenomenon known as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD).

This disconnect between surface calm and inner storm is fertile ground for underdiagnosis.

The "Good Girl" and the Cost of Masking

Why do so many of us only receive the map to our own functioning—the diagnosis—late in adulthood?

The answer lies in deep social barriers. Society expects girls to be "keepers of harmony": organised, attentive, calm, and meticulous. When we fail at this role, we don't receive clinical support; we receive moral judgement.

To survive that judgement, we learn to engage in Masking.

We construct a façade for the world, hiding our organisational struggles and our forgetfulness. But the price of this performance is the depletion of our vital energy.

Living without answers generates an accumulation of psychological suffering:

• The Voice of Self-Criticism: We internalise that we're "lazy" or "defective", eroding our self-worth.

• The Echoes of Non-Treatment: We often treat anxiety and depression for years, without realising they're merely the tip of the iceberg—comorbidities masking the neurodivergent root.

• The Sense of Not Belonging: That chronic feeling of being "the odd one out", of always trying to decode a social script that everyone else seems to know, except you.

The Distorted Mirror: From Bridget Jones to Reality

If society doesn't see us, where do we seek mirrors? Unfortunately, pop culture often offers us distorted reflections.

We see characters like Bridget Jones or Rachel Green, with their chaotic lives, impulsivity and forgetfulness, portrayed as "charming". Cinema fetishises our neurodivergent traits—the impulsivity, the intensity, the non-linear thinking—stripping away all the pain, dysregulation and anxiety that come in the package.

In fiction, forgetfulness is a cute quirk that ends in a romantic meet-cute. In real life, forgetfulness generates debt, missed deadlines and shame.

We are not comedic accessories. We are complex subjects.

The Power of Authentic Representation

On the other hand, when representation touches truth, the effect is healing. This is why so many of us are moved watching Anne with an E.

Anne isn't just "creative"; she's intensely dysregulated, speaks frantically, feels rejection as physical pain, and uses imagination to survive trauma. When we see Anne, we don't just see entertainment. We see validation. We see someone whose unique architecture is finally recognised.

An Invitation to Integration

Receiving a late diagnosis isn't receiving a limiting label; it's like receiving a compass.

It's the validation that your struggle was real. It's the relief of finally understanding that you weren't "broken"—just navigating with a map for a different city.

ADHD doesn't define who you are, but understanding how it shapes your perception is the first step towards stopping the fight against yourself. We're not seeking to "fix" our essence, but rather the integration of our fragmented parts.

If you're tired of trying to fit into scripts that weren't written for you, I invite you to start writing your own.

I created the Online Immersion: ADHD and the Multidimensional Being to be this space of both holding and strategy. A place where we dive deep, without romanticising the pain, but also without pathologising your power.

This is clinical work grounded in lived experience—where evidence-based practice meets the wisdom of the neurodivergent journey.

Ready to recalibrate that compass?

I WANT TO EXPLORE THE IMMERSION AND NAVIGATE WITH CONFIDENCE

P.S. Currently this project is in Portuguese only.