Dropping the Mask: ADHD in Women, Late Diagnosis, Hormones + Burnout

Описание: Late ADHD diagnosis in women often arrives alongside another shift: hormonal changes that make previously sustainable patterns impossible. What happens when the hyperfocus and adrenaline that got you through decades of work suddenly stop working? When the internal chaos you've been masking becomes too exhausting to hide? This session addresses the collision between undiagnosed neurodivergence, declining oestrogen, and workplace cultures that reward urgency over sustainability.

Caz Pringle-Bowden explores how ADHD presents differently in women, why diagnosis often comes late, and how the oestrogen-dopamine relationship affects capacity across the menstrual cycle and into perimenopause. She examines the hyperfocus-crash-shame cycle many women experience, the difference between adrenaline-driven and dopamine-supported work, and why masking eventually becomes untenable. The session connects individual experience to systemic patterns, including how workplaces inadvertently reward unsustainable performance.

This session offers frameworks for understanding variable capacity as physiological rather than moral, language for recognising burnout as nervous system injury, and practical approaches to pacing that work with cyclical energy rather than against it. It won't solve complex diagnostic or hormonal challenges, but it provides perspective on why certain patterns emerge and what sustainable support might look like in workplace contexts.