28/06/2026
For years she was told it was anxiety. It turned out no one had asked the right question.
This week the BBC followed Hayley Pearce β pregnant with her first baby and talking openly about facing motherhood with ADHD. Her story will feel familiar to a lot of women: overwhelmed all the time, no concept of time, a house full of sticky notes just to keep up.
Here's the part that matters. ADHD in women is often missed β for years, sometimes decades β because it tends to look different from the hyperactive-boy stereotype most people picture. In women it frequently turns inward and gets labelled as anxiety or low mood instead.
There's a hormonal thread too: oestrogen affects dopamine, the brain chemical tied to focus, so symptoms can shift across the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, after birth and into perimenopause. That's why so many women say it finally became undeniable at one of those moments.
This doesn't mean every anxiety diagnosis is "really" ADHD. But if the explanation you've carried for years has never quite told the whole story β you're allowed to be curious about it.
You don't have to be certain to take the next step. π€
Expert psychiatric care, wherever you are. How can we help?
π https://www.harleymindcare.com
This is information, not a diagnosis.
Read the BBC piece that prompted this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yzkgx0n2eo
Hayley Pearce wonders how her "neurospicy" brain will handle the challenge of having a new born.