Companion post to Episode 24 of The Chicana Therapist Podcast 🎧 Listen to the episode here → EPISODE LINK
If you’ve ever wondered why is adulting so much harder for me than for everyone else?…or if you grew up hearing “es que eres una floja,” “eres muy dramática,” or “tienes la cabeza en las nubes”…this one is for you.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s, in grad school. I had no idea it was even a possibility, because all I knew about ADHD was the stereotype: the little boy bouncing off the walls. I was one of the ones who got missed.
Finding out what ADHD actually is felt so validating…about my childhood, about my adult life. And at the same time, I felt a lot of grief. If I had known sooner, I think my life would have been so much easier, and so much less shameful.
I’m seeing more and more Latinas get diagnosed as adults. So let’s talk about what ADHD really is, why so many of us get overlooked, and what it looks like in our day-to-day lives.
A quick note: Nothing in this post is a diagnosis. If something resonates, take it as information to bring to a qualified professional. Sometimes what looks like ADHD turns out to be something else and a good evaluation helps sort that out.
What ADHD Actually Is
ADHD stands for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Clinically it’s called a disorder; I also think of it as a difference in how our brains work. It’s a neurodevelopmental condition, meaning it’s rooted in how the brain develops, which is why you’ll hear it described as neurodivergent (or, on the internet, “neurospicy”).
A few things to know:
- It starts in childhood. You don’t develop ADHD at 35. You can develop executive dysfunction later in life, after a traumatic brain injury, for example, but that’s not the same thing. What happens for many adults is that they finally recognize something that was always there.
- It’s not a lack of attention. It’s trouble regulating attention, directing it where you want, when you want, for as long as you need. That same regulation struggle can show up in your energy, your impulses, and your emotions.
- It’s consistent and impairing. “I had an ADHD moment” isn’t ADHD. For a diagnosis, the struggles show up across more than one area of life and get in the way of daily functioning.
- It is not a character flaw. It’s not a lack of intelligence, and it doesn’t mean you don’t care.
There are currently three presentations:
- Predominantly inattentive, the daydreamer, the one who loses things, the one who seems “spacey”
- Predominantly hyperactive-impulsive
- Combined
The inattentive presentation is much more subtle, and it’s the one that most often gets missed.
Why So Many Latinas Get Missed
Girls who don’t cause problems don’t get evaluated
Girls are more likely to present as inattentive…chatty, disorganized, distracted, rather than disruptive. If you’re not causing problems for the teacher, nobody sends you for an evaluation. Instead you hear “she talks too much, she needs to pay attention,” and at home you’re just muy platicona.
Labels instead of support
In a lot of our households, those symptoms got names: floja because your room was messy. Distraída. Platicona. “No pones atención.” “Eres un desastre.”
And for many of us, it wasn’t only about focus. It was about feelings, too. The women I see with undiagnosed ADHD were very often the ones their families called too emotional, too needy, too dramatic. Big feelings, sensitivity to criticism, a need for reassurance, these can all be part of how ADHD shows up. But we were taught they were flaws in who we are.
When you hear those labels enough times, they stop being comments and start becoming your identity. I’m too much. Something is wrong with me. That belief gets into every part of your life and undoing it is a big part of the work I do with Latinas diagnosed as adults.
Marianismo and the two paths
Then add marianismo: the expectation that we’ll be responsible, selfless, and on top of everything for everyone. I see this play out in two ways.
The overcompensator. Often the eldest daughter, caring for siblings, helping run the house. She’s the one with the lists, staying up late, double-checking everything because she doesn’t trust herself not to forget. From the outside she looks fine. On the inside, she’s exhausted. (If this sounds a lot like anxiety, it overlaps with a lot of what I talked about in the anxiety episode.)
The resentful one. She resents being asked to do all of it, and resents even more that when she tries, her ADHD makes it hard to do well. So she’s constantly told she’s lazy, or that something is wrong with her, because she can’t (or won’t) meet the expectations tied to being a Latina.
Stigma, language, and access
In many Latino families, mental health still means locura. And medication? “¿Le vas a dar pastillas al niño?”
I’m not pro- or anti-medication. I believe people deserve the choice of what works for them, but that choice shouldn’t be made out of stigma. Add language barriers, insurance gaps, schools that don’t refer, and parents working multiple jobs without the bandwidth to notice, and it’s no surprise so many of us reach adulthood without support. I’ve met plenty of Latina adults who say no to even exploring medication simply because of what they’ve heard.
What Is Executive Function?
Executive function is the set of skills that help us plan, start, stay on track, and adjust as needed. Think of it as your brain’s management team, with the CEO sitting in the prefrontal cortex, right behind your forehead.
In ADHD, the brain networks behind executive function develop and work differently. Dr. Russell Barkley, one of the leading experts in ADHD, offers a clinical rule of thumb that executive function can run roughly 30% behind a person’s age. Newer research is challenging how precise that is, but many clinicians still use it because it captures what so many adults feel: carrying grown-up responsibilities with skills that are still catching up.
That management team also runs on chemistry, mainly dopamine and norepinephrine. In ADHD, those signals are less consistent, which is one of the things ADHD medication targets.
A note for women: hormones matter
Estrogen boosts dopamine activity. So when estrogen drops (before your period, after giving birth, during perimenopause) many women notice their symptoms get worse. The research is still catching up (of course it is…research on women is always behind), but it matches what so many women report. When I hit perimenopause, I honestly can’t describe how much my symptoms changed. People with ADHD are also more likely to experience PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder).
The key takeaway: ADHD isn’t about not knowing what to do or when to do it. It’s that your brain struggles to make you do it.
The Executive Functions ADHD Affects
1. Task Initiation, the “on” switch
What it is: Starting a task when it needs to be started, not when it becomes an emergency.
What’s happening in the brain: This is about the reward system. Dopamine travels to the part of the brain that basically asks, is this worth it? Studies of adults with ADHD have found lower availability of dopamine receptors and transporters along that pathway, and a weaker response when the brain anticipates a reward. So a task can be important, we can even want to do it, and still not generate enough signal to get us moving.
Some describe this as an interest-based nervous system: we need interest, novelty, challenge, or urgency. Importance alone doesn’t do it. Urgency works because a looming deadline floods the body with stress hormones that finally raise arousal enough to start. That’s why panic works, and why living on it is so draining. Dr. Barkley adds the time piece: for the ADHD brain there’s now and not now, and not now barely registers.
What it can look like:
- Late fees, missed grant or loan deadlines, paying extra to expedite a passport you meant to renew months ago
- A four-minute email that lives in your head for days
- Clean laundry that lives in the basket all week
- Sitting down to work and suddenly needing coffee, your phone, anything else
- Someone keeps reminding you about a form, and the guilt makes it even harder to start
- “I work better under pressure”, when really, crisis mode is the only gear you’ve had access to (hola, grad-school me)
It’s not a motivation problem. It’s an activation problem.
2. Working Memory, the mental sticky note
What it is: Holding information in mind for a short time while you use it — following directions, keeping track of a conversation, doing mental math, holding the steps of a task.
What’s happening in the brain: Norepinephrine strengthens the signal you want to hold, and dopamine filters out the noise. In ADHD that tuning is less consistent, so the signal fades faster and a sound, a notification, or a new thought overwrites it before you can use it.
What it can look like:
- Walking into a room and forgetting why
- Your tía asks you to bring a few things to the carne asada, and you show up with one
- Reading the same paragraph three times
- Losing your train of thought mid-sentence
- Leaving the pot on the stove because you went to grab one thing (this literally happened to me the day before recording)
- Interrupting, because if you wait, the thought will be gone
It’s not that we don’t care. The information just doesn’t stay put long enough to use.
3. Planning and Prioritizing, the brain’s GPS
What it is: Figuring out the steps from here to done, and deciding what matters most.
What’s happening in the brain: Planning is heavy prefrontal work, and ranking tasks happens in working memory, so if working memory is already full, there’s no room to sort, and everything has the same volume. The ADHD brain also discounts future rewards more steeply, so what feels good now beats what pays off later. And under stress, the prefrontal cortex essentially goes offline and the more habitual parts of the brain take over. That’s the freeze.
(You may have heard that kids with ADHD are “about three years behind.” Larger studies suggest the differences are smaller than first thought and vary a lot from person to person.)
What it can look like:
- Big tasks look like one giant overwhelming blob
- Freezing, or doing the easiest, most fun thing first
- Reorganizing your whole inbox instead of writing the one email
- Researching the perfect planner or color-coding system
- All-or-nothing: if I can’t finish it today, why start?
- Being busy all day and feeling like you got nothing done
When I tried to clean my whole house in one day, I ended up reorganizing drawers and cabinets, and making a bigger mess. Your brain doesn’t automatically rank things for you, so it has to happen on purpose.
4. Organization, keeping track of things
What it is: Keeping your space, papers, digital files, and belongings in a system you can actually find things in.
What’s happening in the brain: Organization isn’t one skill. It pulls on planning, working memory, and sustained attention, all on tasks the reward system finds deeply boring. Filing and putting things back are low-reward, so maintenance doesn’t happen. And because working memory doesn’t hold what you can’t see, it’s out of sight, out of mind. If it’s in a drawer, your brain acts like it doesn’t exist.
What it can look like:
- Losing things constantly, or rebuying things you already own
- Putting something in a “safe place” and forgetting where that was
- A messy car, a messy purse, a million open browser tabs
- Doom piles, stacks of I’ll deal with it later that keep growing
Plus the embarrassment, because people are very quick to point out a messy house.
5. Time Management, sensing time
What it is: Sensing time passing, estimating how long things take, and planning around it.
What’s happening in the brain: Our internal clock depends on timing circuits that run on dopamine, and research shows people with ADHD are less accurate at estimating time intervals. Dr. Barkley calls this time blindness. A deadline next week doesn’t feel real yet. And in hyperfocus, time vanishes.
What it can look like:
- “I’ll leave in five minutes” becomes 40
- “Let me do just one more thing” before walking out the door
- Back-to-back scheduling with no travel or buffer time
- Ordering the birthday gift the day before the party
- Overcommitting, and strained relationships because of it
In our communities, this sometimes gets brushed off as “Latina time”, or read as disrespect. Often, it’s a time perception issue.
6. Sustained Attention and Shifting
What it is: Staying with a task long enough to finish it, and switching gears when you need to.
What’s happening in the brain: Two networks are supposed to take turns, one for focus, and the default mode network that runs when your mind wanders. In ADHD, the default mode network doesn’t quiet down as well, so it keeps intruding. And attention follows dopamine: a boring task can’t hold you, and an interesting one holds you so tightly you can’t let go. That’s hyperfocus.
This is why ADHD is a regulation problem, not a lack of attention. We can pay attention. We just can’t always choose what to pay attention to. (So no, “but you can focus when you want to” isn’t the gotcha people think it is.)
What it can look like:
- Zoning out in meetings
- Hyperfocusing until 2 a.m. and forgetting to eat
- Starting a million projects and finishing one
- Switching from work mode to mom mode feels like changing lanes without a turn signal
7. Impulse Control, the pause
What it is: The pause between an impulse and an action — in what you say, spend, decide, and how you react.
What’s happening in the brain: The brain’s brakes tend to be less active at the moment you need to stop a response. Combine that with a reward system that weighs immediate payoff heavily, and the impulse wins before the thinking part catches up.
What it can look like:
- Interrupting or blurting things out
- Shopping sprees, and the financial stress that follows
- Saying yes before checking whether you can actually commit
- Sending the angry text you should have sat on
People may label us rude, too direct, or “too much.”
8. Self-Monitoring, noticing yourself in real time
What it is: Catching mistakes, reading the room, and checking your progress as you go.
What’s happening in the brain: The brain has an error-detection system that flags when something is off. Studies show weaker error-related signals and less in-the-moment awareness of mistakes in ADHD. And monitoring means splitting attention between doing something and watching yourself do it — which strains working memory even more.
What it can look like:
- Not noticing you’ve been talking for ten minutes, or talking really loud
- Not realizing a deadline slipped until right after it passed
- Hitting send and then seeing all the typos
- Your tone landing in a way you didn’t intend
- Feedback and consequences that feel like they came out of nowhere
9. Emotional Regulation, the one people forget
What it is: Managing how intense emotions get and how long they last.
What’s happening in the brain: Emotions start fast in the amygdala, the brain’s alarm system, and the prefrontal cortex is supposed to step in and turn the volume down. In ADHD, that braking is weaker, so emotions arrive faster and bigger and take longer to settle. Stress hormones make it worse, and for women, estrogen dips (like the days before your period) lower the dopamine support the prefrontal cortex relies on.
Emotional dysregulation isn’t in the official diagnostic criteria, but many researchers and clinicians consider it central to ADHD. Many people also describe rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), an intense sensitivity to rejection or criticism.
What it can look like:
- Going from zero to a hundred, especially when overwhelmed
- One comment ruining your whole day
- Crying over small mistakes out of frustration
- Having a hard time when someone is upset with you
- Replaying a conversation all night
- A hard time taking feedback at work
The feelings are real and valid. The brain just has fewer brakes. And this is where you’re too emotional, too needy, too dramatic comes from, labels that chip away at our self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence, and breed a deep shame that often becomes the center of the work in therapy.
Explanation, Not Excuse
To my fellow ADHD people: a diagnosis, or even a strong suspicion, explains why something is hard. It doesn’t erase the impact on the people around you, and it doesn’t take away your responsibility to work with your brain.
Self-compassion and accountability can absolutely live together.
Compare:
❌ “I forgot your birthday because I have ADHD.”
✅ “I have ADHD, so I know I need calendar reminders, and I’m sorry I didn’t set one up. I’m going to fix that.”
The first is an excuse. The second holds you accountable and repairs the relationship.
I get it. After years of shame, finally having a name for it is such a relief that it’s tempting to land on this is just how I am.But validation is a step, not the end.
The good news: you don’t need a diagnosis to start supporting your executive function. There are tons of ADHD strategies out there. Some will sound ridiculous at first, like breaking getting out of bed into get up, walk to the bathroom, brush your teeth. I hear a lot of “but I shouldn’t have to do that.” Maybe. But if it’s what your brain needs, it’s what your brain needs.
Want a full episode on tools and strategies? I’d love to do one, let me know through the feedback form: [GOOGLE FORM LINK]
Getting Assessed
A diagnosis can come from a qualified professional such as a psychologist, psychiatrist, or some other licensed clinicians and medical providers. A good evaluation looks at your whole history, not just how you’re doing this month.
That matters because trauma and ADHD can look really similar. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, it can be both, but a thorough evaluation helps sort that out.
Treatment can include medication, therapy, or coaching. Medication isn’t the right fit for everyone, and it’s definitely not a moral failing if it is right for you. It can be life-changing, it was for me. But that’s a conversation for you and your provider, not for your tías at the family gathering.
Making Room for the Grief
For many adults, myself included, realizing ADHD explains so much of your life brings up grief. What if someone had noticed? What would my life look like if I’d had support instead of struggling through it?
Let yourself feel that. It’s completely valid.
And then, little by little, start rewriting the story:
- From “soy floja” → “My brain works differently, and I deserve support.”
- From “I’m too much” → “I feel deeply, and I’m learning what helps.”
This is cycle-breaking work. ADHD is hereditary, and when you understand your own brain with compassion, you’re much less likely to call your own kids flojos or too dramatic. You’re giving the next generation language you maybe didn’t get.
The Recap
- ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, not a character flaw.
- Many Latinas were missed because we masked, overcompensated, or got labeled instead of supported.
- Executive function is the heart of it, and each skill can be affected in different ways.
- An explanation is meant to help you move forward, not keep you stuck.
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Cuídense mucho.
— Dr. Xochilt Alamillo, PhD, LCSW
This post is for educational purposes only and is not a diagnosis or a substitute for professional care. If something here resonates, please reach out to a qualified provider.