become artists or writers, women training for the same profession, women starting their own enterprises such groups can provide support, encouragement, advice, and contacts.
Enrolling in a class can provide both structure and support. The regularly scheduled class can help you keep on track, while contact with the teacher and with fellow students can provide you with emotional support and encouragement as she develops or enhances the skills you need to follow your dream.
Counseling or Psychotherapy
Working with a professional in counseling or psychotherapy may be very useful to help mid-life women with ADHD take stock in their life, to rekindle old dreams or develop new ones better-suited to the self that they have become. “The way it’s always been” no longer needs to be. Yet habit and expectations can have a powerful pull.
If you’re married or a mother, work toward creating a different balance in your relationship with your husband or young adult children. Psychotherapy may help you stay on track as you learn to give yourself permission to take care of yourself and to renegotiate long-standing patterns with your spouse.
ADHD Coaching
Psychotherapy is often the best approach for understanding the emotional and interpersonal issues that are getting in your way. However, when a woman is clear about what she wants to do, but can’t seem to mobilize herself to do it, coaching may prove very helpful. For example, if you have decided to return to school to earn a degree, a coach can help you get on track and stay on track, teaching you to set realistic goals, to break large goals into do-able steps, and to remain focused and motivated as you work toward your goal.
Mid-life can be a time of possibility and change for a woman with ADHD, a time to reassess, to find more time for yourself, and to set your sights on new goals. With structure, strategies, and supports in place, you can reassess your ADHD and add opportunities into your life to reduce chronic stress, become more balanced, and to accomplish things you only dreamed of in earlier your years.
Find out more about ADHD here, on BlackDoctor.org.
SOURCES: Chesapeake ADHD Center, Mid-Life Transitions for Women with ADHD, May, 17, 2018