Hannah Mckenny- Therapist & ADHD Specialist

21/10/2025

ADHD is Brutal

It’s not quirky.
It’s not “just being distracted.”
It’s a lifelong challenge that many people will never truly understand.

It can steal your focus, your time, your energy and sometimes your hope.
It can shake your confidence, strain your relationships, and make everyday life feel like a constant uphill climb.

ADHD isn’t just about forgetting things or missing appointments,
it’s about feeling lost in the noise and chaos of your own mind.

You try to do better. You plan, you set goals, you mean well.
but your brain doesn’t always follow through.
And every stumble chips away a little more at your self-worth.

It’s exhausting.
It’s lonely.
It’s overwhelming.

People say, “Everyone’s a little ADHD,”
but not everyone lives in a brain that argues with them every single day.

ADHD can lead to burnout, shame, depression, and self-doubt.
It can make you question your worth, your abilities, your future.

But if you’re still here, still showing up, still trying,
you’re not failing.
You’re surviving something most people can’t see.

Living with ADHD isn’t easy
it’s learning to fight a battle that happens inside your own mind,
and still finding ways to keep going.

29/09/2025

Many of us carry wounds from childhood, sometimes they’re the result of obvious trauma, abuse, or neglect. But often, they’re formed in more subtle ways too: a lack of emotional support, positive communication, or being left to manage big feelings alone.

As adults, these wounds can show up in how we react to situations. Instead of responding from our grounded, adult self, we may find ourselves reacting from the hurt and frightened child within us.

Therapy offers a safe and compassionate space to reconnect with your inner child, to listen to their pain, and to begin offering the comfort and care they never received. Healing doesn’t erase the past, but it allows the “little you” to finally feel seen, heard, and nurtured.

✨ You don’t have to carry this alone. Together, we can begin the gentle process of healing.

29/09/2025

🌟 Living with autism in a world not tailored for you can be a challenging journey. In our latest blog, I explore the profound topic of autistic masking and share ways to navigate this experience with compassion—from practicing self-care to educating those around you. Let's take this step together toward understanding and acceptance. 💛 [Read the full post here]

Living with autism can sometimes feel like navigating a world that wasn’t designed with you in mind. You might find yourself constantly adjusting, adapting, and sometimes hiding parts of who you are just to fit in or avoid misunderstanding. This experience is often described as autistic masking. I...

04/09/2025

🌸 Why Women with ADHD May Struggle with Overeating

If you’re a woman with ADHD and find yourself turning to food more often than you’d like, you’re not alone and it’s not about “lack of willpower.” ADHD affects the way our brains regulate dopamine, emotions, and routines, which can make eating habits feel complicated.

Here are some common reasons:

🍫 Dopamine Seeking
ADHD brains run lower on dopamine. Foods high in sugar, carbs, and fat give a quick boost, which can temporarily improve focus, energy, or mood.

💜 Emotional Regulation
Food can become a tool for soothing big feelings, overwhelm, or rejection sensitivity when other strategies feel out of reach.

⚡ Impulsivity & Executive Function
Planning meals, grocery shopping, and eating regularly can be difficult. Skipping meals often leads to eating more later.

🎭 Masking & Social Pressure
Women often mask ADHD traits or overcompensate socially, which is exhausting. Eating may feel like a way to recover. Diet culture only adds to the cycle of restriction and overeating.

🌸 Hormonal Influences
Hormonal shifts across the menstrual cycle, perimenopause, or menopause can worsen ADHD symptoms and increase cravings.

👅 Sensory Needs
Food provides consistent sensory input taste, texture, chewing which can feel comforting and grounding.

✨ The takeaway: overeating is often a form of self-regulation, not a weakness. When ADHD is better supported (through routines, therapy, or sometimes medication), eating patterns often become steadier.

You are not broken, and you are not alone. 💜

01/09/2025

💜 Women with ADHD & Emotional Dysregulation

For many women with ADHD, emotions can feel like a rollercoaster 🎢—intense highs, overwhelming lows, and moments where it feels impossible to “switch off.”

👉 This isn’t because you’re too sensitive or overreacting. Emotional dysregulation is part of how ADHD shows up in the brain.
👉 Many women mask their struggles for years, making the inner chaos feel even heavier.
👉 The truth? Your emotions aren’t wrong—they’re signals. They deserve compassion, not shame.

🌱 Some gentle ways to support yourself when emotions feel too big:
✨ Pause and name what you’re feeling (even “I don’t know” counts).
✨ Try a grounding tool—movement, cold water, or a calming object.
✨ Give yourself permission to take space, without guilt.

💬 You are not broken. You are human. And learning new ways to work with your emotions, instead of fighting them, is possible.

💜 If this resonates, you’re not alone.

15/08/2025

✨ The “oh wait, I forgot what I was doing” Olympics ✨

Some funny little quirks of adult ADHD in women:

• Starting 5 tasks… finishing none (but the cupboards are slightly reorganised)

• Forgetting what you were saying mid-sentence and just… smiling through it

• That moment you walk into a room with purpose, only to instantly lose the plot

• Switching between tabs like you’re DJ-ing the soundtrack of your brain

• Thinking about doing laundry… and finding yourself deep-cleaning the fridge instead

🧠 ADHD isn’t all chaos, sometimes it’s unintentionally hilarious.
💜 Which one feels the most you?

15/07/2025

💫 ADHD & S*x – A Woman’s Perspective

ADHD doesn’t stop at the bedroom door.
It follows you into your most intimate moments with all the intensity, distractions, and emotional undercurrents it brings.

🧠 Your brain might be too loud to focus on your body.
💡 You may want intimacy, but your nervous system says, “not now.”
🔥 You crave deep connection, but sometimes feel disconnected from yourself.

S*x isn’t just about desire it’s also about attention, vulnerability, and regulation. And for women with ADHD, those things can feel complicated.

✨ You might:
• Zone out mid-s*x and feel ashamed for not being “present”
• Feel overstimulated by certain touches or textures
• Struggle to communicate what you want without guilt or fear
• Crave novelty and intensity but also deep emotional safety

And here’s the thing: none of that means you’re broken.

👉 Your experience of intimacy is real, valid, and worthy of compassion.
👉 You don’t need to “fix” yourself to be desirable, connected, or confident.
👉 You can build a s*x life that works with your neurodivergence, not against it.

You deserve pleasure that feels safe, grounding, and fully yours.

💜 If no one ever told you this: There’s nothing wrong with the way your brain experiences intimacy.
💬 Let’s start talking about it. What shows up for you when it comes to ADHD and s*x?

*x *xualHealth

14/07/2025

🧠 ADHD & Communication in Relationships 💬

Living with ADHD can mean experiencing emotions more intensely and struggling to express them clearly in the moment.
You feel everything but the words? They get stuck, jumbled, or come out all wrong.

This can leave your partner confused, hurt, or feeling shut out even when your heart is wide open.

💔 You might walk away mid-conversation to avoid conflict.
💬 You might say “you’re right” just to end the tension.
🤐 You might mask how you really feel because you’re scared it’ll be “too much.”

👉 But here’s the truth: ADHD doesn’t make you bad at relationships.
It just means you might need a different way to communicate, one that works with your brain, not against it.

💡 Learning to pause, name your feelings, and come back when you’re ready isn’t avoidance its self-awareness.

You can build connection without abandoning yourself.

✨ Save this for when you need the reminder.
🗣️ Tag someone who gets it.
💬 What’s the hardest part of communication for you?

04/07/2025

🧠✨ Autism + ADHD in Women: The Hidden Overlap

Autism and ADHD often show up differently in women. The classic signs people expect, like obvious social difficulties or hyperactivity might be absent or subtle. Instead, many women quietly manage a hidden tangle of masking, people-pleasing, anxiety, or exhaustion.

You might feel both easily overwhelmed and always forgetting things. You could crave routines for comfort but struggle to keep them. Maybe you swing between needing order and being surrounded by creative chaos.
Sometimes you’re too sensitive, sometimes you act impulsively, and sometimes you feel both at once.

Many women with both autism and ADHD spend years wondering why they feel “too much” and “not enough” at the same time. It can feel like living in two worlds: deeply noticing everything while losing track of the basics, caring intensely but missing hidden social rules, wanting connection but getting burned out from masking your real self.

If this resonates, you’re not broken. You’re neurodivergent and there is so much strength in finally understanding yourself.
You deserve spaces where you can show up as your full, authentic self, no more hiding or shrinking to fit.

You are not alone. There is nothing wrong with your brain.

18/06/2025

🧠 ADHD is rarely just ADHD.
It often travels with friends, other conditions that can impact mental health, emotional regulation, learning, and daily life.

Here are some common co-morbidities you might experience alongside ADHD:

✨ Anxiety Disorders – Racing thoughts, chronic worry, and overstimulation can make it hard to feel calm or safe in your own body.

🌧️ Depression – Feeling “not good enough,” burnt out, or stuck can lead to low mood and hopelessness, especially when ADHD goes undiagnosed.

🧩 Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC)– Many people have both ADHD and autism, and the overlap can bring unique strengths and challenges, especially around masking, sensory needs, and social fatigue.

📚 Learning Difficulties – Dyslexia, dyscalculia, or dyspraxia often go hand-in-hand with ADHD and can affect confidence and performance in school or work.

🔊 Sensory Processing Differences– Bright lights, noise, textures, and smells can be overwhelming. This isn’t about being picky, it’s about needing a nervous system that feels safe.

😴 Sleep Disorders– Trouble falling or staying asleep is incredibly common and can worsen focus, memory, and mood.

💔 Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)– Intense emotional pain from perceived rejection or criticism. It can feel sudden, deep, and out of proportion, but it’s very real.

💡 You’re not too sensitive. You’re not lazy. You’re not broken.
You’re navigating a neurodivergent brain in a world that wasn’t designed with you in mind.

💜 You deserve understanding, not shame.

If this resonates, I offer ADHD-informed therapy—online or face-to-face—to help you untangle the overwhelm, understand your patterns, and move forward with more compassion and clarity.

15/06/2025

💔 Growing Up Without a Father: The Wound That Follows You Into Adulthood

An absent father doesn’t just leave a gap in your childhood, he can leave echoes that show up for years in ways you might not even realise.

Whether your dad was physically absent, emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, or only present in a way that made you feel invisible… the impact is real. And often, it’s silent and long-lasting.

𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚 𝒐𝒏:

* That love is something you have to earn

* That your needs don’t matter — or are too much

* That if someone walks away, it must be your fault

* That staying quiet keeps you safer than being honest

𝑨𝒔 𝒂𝒅𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒖𝒑 𝒂𝒔:

🌪 Overthinking, over-giving, over-achieving
💔 Choosing emotionally unavailable partners

🧱 Difficulty trusting others or letting anyone in

😞 A constant feeling of “not being good enough”

🚪 Shutting down when relationships get close

🔄 Repeating cycles of abandonment, even when you desperately want connection

➡️ This is not your fault. These are protective patterns you learned to survive.

But here’s the truth: You are not that child anymore. And healing is possible.

Healing from the wound of an absent father doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t matter. It means honouring how much it did, and then gently, intentionally starting to meet those unmet needs.

💬 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒎𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆:

❤️‍🩹 Naming the pain instead of minimising it

❤️‍🩹 Allowing space to grieve the relationship you didn’t have

❤️‍🩹 Learning how to set healthy boundaries and say no without guilt

❤️‍🩹 Reconnecting with the parts of yourself that were silenced

❤️‍🩹 Finding relationships — with others and yourself — that are safe, kind, and consistent

❤️‍🩹 Reparenting your inner child: offering the love, stability, and validation you needed back then

You are allowed to feel the pain and grow beyond it.

You are allowed to heal, not because it erases the past, but because you deserve peace in the present.

If any of this resonates with you, know you’re not alone. This journey is tender and often complex, but with the right support, it’s absolutely possible.

💌 You don’t have to carry this alone.

13/06/2025

RSD is one of the lesser-known, but deeply felt aspects of ADHD.

It’s not “just sensitivity.” It’s an intense emotional reaction to:
🔹 Criticism
🔹 Rejection
🔹 Disapproval
🔹 Even the idea of letting someone down

For people with ADHD, this can feel unbearable. And it often leads to:
💠 People-pleasing
💠 Avoiding new experiences
💠 Shutting down emotionally
💠 Misunderstandings in relationships

RSD isn’t about weakness. It’s about how the ADHD nervous system processes emotional pain.

✨ If this sounds like you, know that you’re not alone — and you’re not broken.
✨ With awareness and support, it’s possible to build emotional resilience and reduce RSD’s impact.