Guiding Your Journey

Masking is the same demand in different clothes. If you have to manufacture a calm, pleasant, easy-to-be-around version of yourself as the price of admission, you have been assigned the giver role, and the bill comes due the same way.

When did you learn that taking care of yourself was selfish? Most of my clients cannot point to a moment. It just accumulated. This post is about human giver syndrome, what it does to ADHD adults who learned to mask, and why the usual self-care advice keeps missing the point.

Part 2 of 5 in my Nagoski-informed series on stress, ADHD, and burnout. I can usually tell before a client says a word. They arrive a few minutes late, still holding their keys, already apologizing. Traffic was terrible. They hit every light. And even though they're here now, sitting across from me in a quiet room, their body hasn't arrived yet. Heart still going. Thoughts still on the highway. The stressor is over. The stress is not. As I explained in my last post on...

I keep coming back to a particular kind of appointment. Someone comes in having done their research, maybe having taken a dozen online screeners, maybe having read about ADHD for months. They lay out their history, and what they’re describing is clearly ADHD. But somewhere along the way, a teacher, a doctor, or a previous clinician told them it wasn’t. “You’re not hyperactive enough.” Or: “You seem to be doing fine.” They weren’t fine. They were exhausted from compensating.

By Mary Rawson Foreman, PhD | Psychologist in Kirkland, WA | ADHD Treatment and Diagnosis in Kirkland, Washington Photo Credit - Vitaly Gariev In part one of this series, I wrote about the dynamic that builds up over time in relationships where one partner has ADHD. The load imbalance. The slow slide into a parent-child dynamic. The resentment that grows quietly on both sides until it isn’t quiet anymore. A lot of people read something like that and think: okay, so we need a

I was on vacation recently when someone I'd just met started telling me about their marriage. The more they talked, the more familiar the pattern sounded — one partner carrying the household, the other leaning on that structure without realizing it. This dynamic has a name. And naming it is often the turning point.

One of the most painful things a partner or friend can say to someone with ADHD is this. You do not listen. You do not care. The hard truth is that for many adults with ADHD those two things have become tangled together in the minds of the people who love them. Not listening reads as not caring. And that is a wound that goes deep, especially for someone who does care, deeply, but whose brain makes sustained attention genuinely harder than it looks. If this sounds familiar you

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria can feel like emotional whiplash. One moment you feel steady, and the next a small comment lands with the force of a judgment on your worth.

For many adults with ADHD, emotions don’t just visit and leave politely. They move in, unpack, and start redecorating.

My colleague and mentor Don Baker has been running TRACTION groups for over thirty years, and I’m constantly amazed at how much heart and humor he brings to the work. If you’re a neurodivergent adult who’s tired of trying to “do life” solo, this might be exactly what you’ve been looking for. Connection really does create traction.

Today’s Sirens live in our pockets and on our screens.Social media, streaming, gaming, online shopping — all designed to capture our attention and feed the brain’s dopamine system. In her book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence(2021), psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke writes: “We are drowning in dopamine. The quantity, variety, and potency of highly reinforcing drugs and behaviors has never been greater.”

A diagnosis can bring relief and understanding, but it doesn’t define you. Learn how to integrate ADHD, autism, or anxiety diagnoses with self-compassion and balance.

ADHD and autism are distinct neurotypes, but they often overlap. Research shows a large number of people meet criteria for both. And when they do, the mix of traits can be both fascinating and challenging

For many adults, the path to an ADHD evaluation begins with a quiet question: “Could there be a reason things have always felt harder for me?”

As our understanding of mental health evolves, so does the way we talk about it. Neurodiversity reminds us that brains come in many beautiful variations — ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and more — and that difference doesn’t automatically mean disorder.