How to Tell If You Have ADHD - Executive Function Symptoms | ADHD Symptoms
For years, I blamed my forgetfulness on mommy brain.
I joked about my inability to finish certain projects and excused my persistent procrastination as a result of my “busy” schedule.
In reality, I’d been experiencing these and many other for ADHD symptoms since childhood and long before I became a mom. I just figured everyone’s brain felt that way.
But it turns out, not everyone’s brain experiences regularly experiences forgetfulness, inability to finish projects, and procrastination.
When I first started producing content for social media about ADHD and entrepreneurship for moms, I received several comments saying “that’s just normal behavior” or “everybody feels like that”.
And while I will totally admit that most people will experience the symptoms we will discuss if they are tired or hungry or their mood if off due to hormones, the difference is that those of us with ADHD will experience these things all day, every day. Sometimes these symptoms make it difficult for us to hold down a job or keep a relationship.
So I wanted to shed light on how ADHD manifests itself. Because research over the past 20-30 years has revealed that ADHD is so much more than your 9-year old classmate with ants in their pants.
And while I do recommend you seek a diagnosis from a professional if you feel like the symptoms we discuss today are making a significant impact on your life, I hope that this can serve as a primer to help you understand how an ADHD brain operates and what it might look like for you or someone you know. Or maybe, if you’ve already been diagnosed with ADHD, you’ll realize that a particular behavior is a result of your neurodivergent brain.
Alright, so enough talking about what I’m going to talk about…let’s dive into the most recognizable ADHD symptoms for us moms aka executive function.
What is Executive Function?
If you’ve been around the ADHD community for any amount of time, you will hear talk of executive function.
Executive function is the management system of the brain responsible for activities like planning, prioritizing, self regulation and organizing.
And, if I may, a quick primer on how your ADHD brain works…. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for executive function in the brain. Us ADHDers have chronically low levels of dopamine than a neurotypical person would have. Thus, lower levels of dopamine create challenges for your brain when it comes to tasks involving working memory, flexible thinking, or self control as you will see when we dive deeper into our discussion of ADHD symptoms.
Regularly used executive functions us ADHDers struggle with include:
Inattention…Inattention is less about paying attention and more about a difficulty staying focused on a task, making careless mistakes, and being forgetful. You may find your inattention cause you to frequently lose items like keys, phones, or important documents.
Hyperfocus…On the flip side of inattention, hyperfocus means we have an over abundance of attention. Typically this happens when we’re working on a task or project that peaks our interest. It’s almost as if we get lost in what we’re doing and time passes without us noticing. It’s great, because it shows that we can focus when the circumstances are right. But hyperfocus can get us into trouble when we’re hyperfocusing on tasks or projects that may not be a priority to avoid something that is a priority.
Impulsivity…ADHD can cause difficulty controlling your impulses. This can lead to making impulsive decisions, such as hasty purchases, engaging in risky behavior, or interrupting others in conversations. (The interrupting thing was a big “aha” for me when I read about it.)
Disorganization…It’s not that a person with ADHD wants to be messy. It’s just that organizing requires a lot of executive function based challenges motivation, prioritization and decision making. And those are executive functions many ADHDers struggle with.
Time Management…In a similar, vein…many ADHDers struggle with time management. It could look like time blindness, meaning you lose track of the passage of time and spend too long on a task or project. Or it could be a difficulty keeping a schedule or remembering where you need to be when.
Procrastination…Do you regularly put off important tasks until the absolute last minute? Would you prefer to pull an all nighter the day before a project is due than rather than working on it a little bit at a time each day leading up to the deadline? Turns out, that anxiety of a pending deadline may actually increase the dopamine in your ADHD brain and allows you to focus and get your work done.
Difficulty with Finishing Tasks… Speaking of getting your work done….You may find that starting tasks isn’t much of an issue. But completing them…well, that’s a different story. Many of us moms with ADHD have a trail of unfinished projects in our rearview mirror. This is usually due in part to the task or project no longer seeming exciting or new like it did at the beginning. Then that impulsivity kicks in to encourage you to jump into something that is exciting and new.
Chronic Forgetfulness…This is one of my biggest struggles as someone with ADHD. I definitely rely heavily on reminders and alarms to stay on track. I make notes and lists constantly. I joke about my need to put everything on an external hard drive. And the reason for this struggle is working memory. Working memory allows us to create a temporary sticky note of sorts to hold information in our brain until we are ready to use it.
And if you’re now thinking “hmmm, this all sounds very familiar”? Here are some next steps I would suggest…
Learn more about ADHD. Two resources that I found particularly helpful and that I often suggest to my community are the book “Driven to Distraction” by Drs. Edward Hallowell and John Ratey and the website for Attitude Magazine, which you can find at www.additudemag.com.
Think about getting a diagnosis if you haven’t already. In next week’s episode, I’ll get more indepth on what the ADHD diagnosis process looks like but a great first step is to discuss it with your primary care physician. In many cases, you’ll receive your diagnosis from a licensed mental health professional but your primary care physician may have resources suggestions for diagnosis. In many cases, they are also the go-to person for prescription medications, if you decide to go that route, so it’s good to loop them in on what’s going on.
And if you’d like additional support for your executive function and ADHD symptoms, I’d love to help! My coaching programs work to identify your executive function challenges while creating ADHD coping skills designed for you, your lifestyle, your business, and your family.
Click the button below to book your free, no-obligation call with me to discuss your goals, my ADHD coaching programs, and how I may be able to support you!
