10/09/2025
🧠Hormones don’t cause ADHD — they reveal it.
🧠Estrogen plays a major role in the dopamine and norepinephrine systems that regulate attention, working memory, and emotional control, etc.
🧠As estrogen levels decline in perimenopause and menopause, many women who once “masked” their ADHD symptoms suddenly find those masks slipping.
🧠Tasks that felt manageable before like juggling details, remembering steps, keeping emotions steady, (and more) become overwhelming.
🧠As a neuropsychologist, I often ironically describe this hormonal shift as an accidental assessment measure. When the brain is suddenly under new stressors, executive function weaknesses that were ALWAYS there become visible in daily life….almost like a formal neuropsychological evaluation might uncover them! (Obviously this is not a verified way to diagnose, and some cognitive changes come with menopause that aren’t ADHD).
🧠Suddenly, for so many women, things start to make sense. It’s like we start to play the movie of our lives in our mind, and in rewinding we realize how we actually did struggle in SOME way, but used scaffolds and masks to adapt, until we couldn’t.
🧠This isn’t late-onset ADHD. It’s late recognition, and the cost of years of being overlooked.
I love you. Surthriving With You,
XO, Dr. Jen
