Ultimate ADHD in Women Checklist with Real Life Examples

All the ADHD in women checklists give far too dry lists of symptoms that don’t do the reality of actually living with ADHD much justice. When I first read the symptoms, I didn’t think I met the criteria for ADHD any better than anyone else. It wasn’t until I started digging into what each of those symptoms looked like in real ADHD women’s lives that I started seeing the full picture unfold.

In that process, I also learned how many realities of life with ADHD are left out of the criteria, despite being validated by research. That’s why I created the Officially Unofficial ADHD in Women Checklist. It’s based on the DSM 5 criteria for ADHD, but it also includes what the DSM leaves out. Instead of a boring list of symptoms that only partially reveal the picture, this checklist gives real-life examples of what each struggle actually looks like and a more thorough picture at that. With a sprinkle of clinically sound humor, hopefully this is on ADHD in Women Checklist that won’t put you to sleep.

The ADHD in Women Checklist: Basics of the DSM 5 Criteria

Okay, in case you haven’t read the boring old dry ADHD criteria, let’s start with a very brief overview. If you’re already familiar, feel free to skip this part. ADHD and ADD used to be two separate diagnoses; now they are both lumped under the ‘ADHD’ umbrella, but divided into 3 types: Primary Inattentive Type, Primary Hyperactive Type, and Combined Type.

There are 9 inattentive symptoms and 9 hyperactive symptoms. They are as follows.

Inattention Criteria:

1. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or with other activities.
2. Often has trouble holding attention on tasks or play activities.
3. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
4. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (e.g., loses focus, side-tracked).
5. Often has trouble organizing tasks and activities.
6. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to do tasks that require mental effort over a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework).
7. Often loses things necessary for tasks and activities (e.g. school materials, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, mobile telephones).
8. Is often easily distracted.
9. Is often forgetful in daily activities.

If you are over the age of 17, and you consistently struggle with at least 5 of these symptoms and that struggle dates back to childhood, an ADHD-primary inattentive diagnosis may be appropriate. There are a few other caveats, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Hyperactivity Criteria:

1. Often fidgets with or taps hands or feet, or squirms in seat.
2. Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected.
3. Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is not appropriate (adolescents or adults may be limited to feeling restless).
4. Often unable to play or take part in leisure activities quietly.
5. Is often “on the go” acting as if “driven by a motor.”
6. Often talks excessively.
7. Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed.
8. Often has trouble waiting their turn.
9. Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games).

Like before, if you are over the age of 17 and you consistently struggle with at least 5 of these symptoms since childhood, you may fit the criteria for an ADHD-primary hyperactive diagnosis.

Combined Type:

If you’re an adult and have at least 5 symptoms in both categories, you may have combined type ADHD. Again, these symptoms have to be present in childhood, typically by the age of 12, though kids with highly structured environment growing up may have a harder time identifying childhood examples of these symptoms. Again, that’s a discussion for another day.

Now you see what I mean by dry, boring lists of symptoms. They feel a little too vague to be useful sometimes and unfortunately, this criteria is behind what the research has to say about ADHD. You’ll notice that as we get to the Officially Unofficial ADHD in Women Checklist below. Some of the realities, in fact, aren’t in the criteria at all. Read on; you’ll see what I mean.

The Officially Unofficial Little Miss Lionheart ADHD in Women Checklist

As you’re going through the ADHD in women checklist, keep in mind that while everyone struggles with these symptoms from time to time, someone with ADHD consistently struggles with them in ways that negatively impact their daily lives. No matter how great their sleep is; no matter how healthy they eat or how stressed out they are. ADHD is every present to some degree or another.

ADHD in Women Checklist: Inattention

We’ll go symptom by symptom, but hopefully in a far less dry, vague manner. Here’s the ADHD in women checklist for the Inattentive Types. These lists are by NO MEANS comprehensive. Use the examples as a spring board.

1. For You, the Devil is Definitely in the Details and His Name is ‘Mistake’ and ‘Please Dear God, No’

• You make stupid little tiny mistakes everywhere, usually born of not quite paying enough attention. Filling out paperwork, you put your name where the date was supposed to go. You overlooked a signature line. You forgot one page entirely. You missed the deadline date because you misread it and thought you had another week. You didn’t read closely enough to realize there even was a deadline.
• You’re good at big picture stuff but details, especially when there are a lot of them, leave you with that full body itchy feeling that makes you want to run. You avoid those details if at all possible.
• Only halfway paying attention to things has landed you in hot water or terribly embarrassing situations. How many times are you going to see your spouse’s first name calling and answer “hey babe” only to discover it wasn’t your spouse but another person in your life with the same first name? Unfortunately, I know from personal experience how awkward that can get.

2. You’ve Got Plenty of Attention to Pay. It’s Just of the Uncontrollable ‘Stick and Slip’ Variety.

• Your attention has two extreme states of being. It’s either hopelessly stuck and refusing to shift or it’s slipping and sliding all over the place. There is nothing in between and you don’t know who exactly controls it, but it certainly isn’t you. Something like this ADHD in women checklist could go either way–it’s too long to keep your attention for long or your hyperfocus has kicked in and your butt isn’t leaving the seat until you’ve inhaled every word. Am I right?

2.A. The Slip and Slide Attention: Your Brain is Everywhere at Once and Nowhere for Long

• You see things in ways hardly anyone else does, but you miss things almost everyone else catches. Your super power is not noticing the blatantly obvious.
• Even paying attention while driving is a struggle. You miss turns while caught up in your head and end up God only knows where before you come back to yourself.
• Thoughts come so frequent and fast that they interrupt each other and ricochet into oblivion before you can do anything with them. It’s like thinking in ill-mannered, rapid-fire fragments. And people expect you to pay attention with that kind of chaos going on mentally? I mean, honestly.
• The words that best describe what it’s like to live in your head are: random, fast, messy, chaotic, haphazard, unregulated, uncontrollable, and random.

Related: ADHD Exposed: What’s it Really Like Inside the ADHD Mind?

2.B. The Fishhooks and Velcro Sticky Focus: Obsessions and Hyperfixations to Keep Things Unpredictable

• Things that are really interesting (and I do mean really interesting) have a way of ensnaring your whole being. No slip and slide attention pulling you in a thousand directions at once. This kind of sticky focus goes narrow and deep, plunging you mentally down Alice’s Rabbit Hole and straight into Wonderland.
• In this hopelessly stuck focus place, you can get so lost in what you’re doing that you don’t notice important bodily cues. You may not realize you have to pee until the situation is so dire you may not make it to the bathroom in time.
• You get kind of obsessive about certain interests… at least, for a little while. Your brain just seems to narrow in on something, get obsessed with it, and then wring every ounce of joy you possibly can out of it before it loses interested and you move on to the next hyperfixation.
• These Rabbit Holes to Wonderland are the reason you know a lot of seemingly useless facts and trivia covering a wide and possibly somewhat strange range of topics. Unfortunately, it’s so all over the place, that knowledge isn’t usually related to what you actually need to know about and therefore, it rarely helps you move forward in your life.
   
  Related: 11 Fascinating Differences in how a Person with ADHD Thinks

3. “Huh?” is Your Frequent Pitfall of Listening, Socializing, and Basic Conversation

• It’s hard to stay focused in conversations. For a Number of reasons:
  • Your mind is constantly chaining things together. It latches on one word and before you know it, you’ve chased a mental rabbit across time and space. By the time you pull yourself back to the conversation, you’re hopelessly lost.
  • Everything is a distraction, pulling your attention away. Sounds, movement, background music, other conversations, or your own thoughts.
  • Even when you push yourself to focus on the conversation, you focus so hard on staying focused that you end up focusing on focusing instead of what’s being said. Therefore, you’re still lost.

4. You are the Queen of Side Questing but Not Exactly a ‘Finisher’

• When finishing a big project, if you take a break, leaving only the final few details or loose ends still needing to be tied up, they’re probably never getting done.
• You often overcommit because enthusiasm gets the best of you. Then you can’t follow through on some or all of those commitments and feel like a failure.
• Your biggest hobby is starting new projects. But finishing them is a different hobby, and one you are not particularly skilled at.
• You usually only half way follow directions. In your defense, you try to do everything expected of you, but if they give you three or more things to do, you’re going to forget at least one of them. You do better if they write them down for you, so long as you don’t lose the list before you’re done.
• While others pursue their main adventures, you live from side quest to side quest. You pursue jobs instead of building a career. You learn a new skill but stop before truly developing it because your interest waned. It’s been hard to get ahead in life because of it.
  

5. Disorganized is a State of Being for You; You are Disorganization Incarnate

5. A. Mess Follows You Like a Stinky Cologne. If Midas had the Golden Touch, You have the Disaster Touch.

• Your house, your car, your purse–they’re always a mass of chaos.
• You love the idea of being organized, if you’re being honest. But getting that way often feels like a feat, unless the stars align and your interest in it cooperates. And staying organized? That might as well be a mythical pipe dream akin to finding a unicorn or the elixir of life.
• Getting your space clean and organized feels like pulling teeth most of the time. UNLESS someone is coming over. Then it’s a mad dash to get the place presentable. There’s nothing more motivating that a last minute visitor.
• You keep buying planners hoping to organize yourself, only to use them once and promptly forget about them

5.B. They say your inner world reflects your outer world. For you, that’s Chaos, so they are definitely correct.

• If other people’s minds are somewhat of a straight line, yours feels more like a heap of tangled yarn getting batted around by a kitten
• Even when you get an idea, your brain seems to always drop you in the middle of it, rather than the beginning. That leaves you scrambling to organize it into anything you can act on. It’s like getting dropped in the ocean with no clue where the water starts or stops and you’re left scrambling to figure your way out.
• People frequently struggle to follow your thought processes or keep up with your rapid fire ideas.
• “Where do I even start?” is a recurring question that always seems to trip you up, no matter what you’re doing.
• While most women feel like they can’t keep up with life from time to time, that feeling is a constant for you. Even when there isn’t that much going on. It makes you feel incapable and inadequate, like you’re broken somehow.
  

5.C. Your capacity for disorganization seems to have shifted the very laws of time. At least…for you.

• Time is an elusive, unpredictable thing. It always feels like it’s either going way too fast or way too slow, and you’re always misjudging it.
• No matter how hard you try to be on time, you’re usually late OR you’re at least a half hour early to everything you do to be absolutely positive you aren’t late.
• It feels like there are gaps in your memory; like you are missing moments of time. Not in a dissociative sense, but because of time blindness. It takes two weeks to reply to a text and you’re shocked so much time has passed when it feels like yesterday you got the text.

Related: The Truth About ADHD and Time Blindness

6. If You’re a Pro at Anything it’s Procrastinating. In Your Defense, Heavy Concentration Tasks Make You Want to Scream

• Everything you do is last minute.
• You have the worst kind of aversion to doing things that require a lot of concentration or planning. Especially if they’re boring. Meal planning, taxes, dull projects, involved projects, etc… You’ll avoid and delay doing them as long as possible.
• You know you really need self discipline, but you’ve never successfully found it for more than a day. It’s made you wonder if the ‘self discipline’ part of your brain is broken or missing entirely. 
• When faced with getting your taxes over with early or doing something fun and interesting, the fun and interesting wins out every time. It’s like your mind and body chase interest above all else. At the last possible second, panic finally kicks you into gear and you get the taxes done just in the nick of time. Next year will be different, you promise yourself. But it never is.
• Planning, Organizing, Prioritizing, Making Decisions, Getting Started…you wonder why they feel so much harder and more taxing than they should.

7. If Losing Things Were a Skill, You’d be a Master

• You’ve been told you’d lose your head if it weren’t attached to your neck. That’s fair; you probably would.
• Things you forget:
  • Anything. Everything.
  • Your keys, wallet, phone, work badge, license, purse. Heck, you’ve probably misplaced your car before.
  • Your social security card–because of personal experience, you probably even know you’re only allowed 10 replacements in your lifetime.
  • Anything that’s in your hand. Or on top of your head. Or right under your nose.
  • Anything you put in a “special place” for safekeeping. That special place is probably the Bermuda Triangle.
  • Things other people let you borrow. Now you just warn them not to give you anything important.
  • Heck, if you print this ADHD in women checklist out to take to your doctor, you’ll probably lose it before you get there. Maybe bookmark it?
  • You’ve even lost things you tagged with a tile tracker, because your losing game is that good.
• The good news, if we can call it that, is you’ve probably gotten really good at finding lost things with all the practice you’ve gotten.
  

8. Getting Distracted is the Superpower You Never Wanted and Definitely Didn’t Ask For

• You can find absolutely anything to get distracted by. Anytime, anywhere. The tick of the clock, the whirl of the air conditioner. The hair sticking out of a mole on your coworker’s face while they’re talking about their weekend at work on Monday morning. If no distraction exists, your brain will simply create it’s own.
• You’re a distracted cleaner, which is to say that despite spending all day cleaning, somehow the house ends up messier for the effort. What started with putting laundry in the washer ended with books half organized on the shelf and half covering the living room, dishes lining the countertops so you could scrub the cabinets which never got finished, and so on. At the end of the day, the laundry still hasn’t made it to the washer.
• The only time distraction really gives you a break is during the fish hooks and velcro rabbit hole of hyperfocus.
  

9. You Are More Forgetful than Your 90 Year Old Grandmother’s but She at Least has a Good Excuse

• It would be far easier and simpler to list the things you don’t/won’t forget. At the very least, the list would be way shorter.
• But here’s a sample of things you forget about:
  • Things you do every day. Like making dinner. Or eating in general. Or drinking water. 
  • Things that are in your hand
  • The glasses on top of your head
  • The vegetables you bought last week that are currently rotting in the fridge.
  • Paying your bills (autopay is a lifesaver)
  • The load of laundry you stuck in the washing machine two days ago that has now soured.
  • What you were talking about (while you were talking about it)
  • What you were doing (while you’re doing it)
  • Anything that’s out of your sight. You hate to admit it, but you’re very much a ‘out of sight, out of mind’ kind of person.
  • Basically, anything is fair game. Your memory sucks except for random things that happened forever ago and anything related to your current hyperfixation.

And there you have it: The ADHD in Women Checklist for Inattentive Types. The more of these symptoms you have, and the more frequently you deal with them, the more likely you are to actually have ADHD.

ADHD in Women Checklist: Hyperactivity

Now for the energizer bunny forms of ADHD. Again, we’ll go symptom by symptom for the hyperactive aspects of the ADHD in women checklist.

1. You’re a Fidgeter if There Ever Was One. Squirming is Written into Your DNA

• Sitting completely still, not even fidgeting, makes your entire body feel like it’s itching in the most maddening kind of way. It’s an effective kind of torture and you’re not sure you are even capable of doing it for long.
• You have to have to be moving in order to focus. You always grab something to fidget with in your hands, pull at loose threads you find, bite your nails, pick your skin, play with your hair, bouncing your leg, chewing on things, something. You are never still for long.

2. You’re Not the ‘Sit Still and listen to this Long Meeting Without Getting Up’ Kind of Person

• In long meetings, conferences, sermons, or lectures you may have a reputation by now for pacing instead of sitting. Or for getting up and moving when the rest of the group is still sitting at the conference table, listening to your boss. You can’t help it. Sitting still is awful.
• Most likely, though, you’ve found socially acceptable ways to leave your seat when your body absolutely refuses to stay down anymore. Otherwise unnecessary bathroom breaks just to stretch your legs will do the trick.

3. Are you Hyperactive? Maybe just Hyper-Restless

• Your body often feels restless and you have no idea why. You might call it anxiety but you don’t feel anxious over anything in particular. It’s like your body is anxious even when your mind is not.
• That hyperactive energy may be visible for others to see–you may bounce or sway while standing, or having other, frequent micro movements that betray your abundance of energy.
• Or it maybe fully internalized and even though you feel the physical sensations of it, your body doesn’t show it. Instead, your thoughts go even faster and your attention bounces even further than it does for the inattentive types.
• This restlessness can make it hard to sleep at night or do anything very relaxing.
  

Related: When You Think it’s Anxiety, But it’s Really ADHD

4. Speaking of Things You Aren’t Good At, Being Quiet is at the Top of the List

• You can’t help it; it’s just that every task really seems to require sound. Be they sound effects, randomly narrating your own actions, talking to yourself, singing at random, humming, whistling, clicking your tongue–you just find that silence requires noise.
• You’ll also settle for using things that make noise: clicky pens, squeaky shoes, you just really like having the sound of something around you.
• You can’t even focus without noise. Quiet is intolerable.
• Regardless of how, everything you do is noisy and that’s a fact, Jack.

5. You’ve Actually Been Compared to the Energizer Bunny and You Can’t Really Deny the Likeness…

• You are a very ‘on the go’ kind of person. Always moving on to the next thing like you’ve got an internal battery that just won’t stop
• You don’t like to stay anywhere for too long. You’re often the first person to leave any gathering you attend because it always feels like it’s lasted too long.
• Getting stuck at home would be one of your worst nightmares. You practically want to jump out of your skin on snow days where it’s impossible to go anywhere.
• Your ‘Gotta Go’ Energy just doesn’t quit. It may not be terribly productive. It may move on way too quickly to get anything accomplished. But it aint no quitter.

6. Chatty Cathy’s Got Nothing On You

• You. Are. A. Talker. And that’s an understatement. You left other talkers in the dust several rambling monologues back.
• You try really hard to just keep your mouth shut because whenever it’s open it feels like you talk way too much, over share, and/or completely forget to employ a filter. You’ve had varying degrees of success with that, though.
• In school, the thing you got in trouble for most was talking when you weren’t supposed to.
• You can talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. About anything. About everything. It just… might be hard for them to get a word in edge wise.

7. You’re an Impulsive Blurt-er

• Yes, you have a habit of blurting out answers before the question is fully complete. You’re just excited. Showing initiative. Or something positive like that…
• And okay, yeah, you finish people’s sentences for them. Frequently. You’re just saving them the trouble.
• You might even find yourself doing more socially awkward blurting. Like mimicking the way someone talks or laughs, even right in front of them. Or blurting out random sound effects. You don’t mean to; it’s just out of your mouth before your filter even realized you were talking.
• Also, sometimes you say things before you think and like, a half second after it comes out, you realize it really shouldn’t have.

8. You’re Also an Impulsive Wait-er

• In your defense, waiting is hard. No one has ever mistaken you as a patient person.
• You HATE lines. They feel completely intolerable. Like you might claw your skin off. Or maybe someone else’s, it just depends.
• Honestly, you may or may not have even made it this far in the ADHD for Women Checklist. It may have felt like time to move on a while back.
• Road rage is too tame a term for you. Other drivers turn you into the Incredible Hulk.
• Once you get the impulse to buy something, you buy it NOW. No second thought given.
• You eat impulsively, talk impulsively, make decisions impulsively. You even start and stop jobs impulsively.
• For you, impulse is action and action is impulse and once you get the flood of desire, you act on it in the exact same breath. It’s only after it’s done that you have the space to consider whether the impulse was a good one or not or remember lessons you’ve previously learned from doing this.
  

9. Interrupting is Another Tick on Your ‘Skills I Wish I Weren’t So Good at’ List

• Speaking of conversation struggles, interrupting people while they’re talking is one of your biggest reasons you’re so well acquainted with the internal face palm. It’s very akin to blurting, except you’re blurting out full sentences without an end to the interruption in sight.
• Sometimes you even talk over them either to get it out before you forget or because your mouth was moving well before your brain caught up
• Your interrupting isn’t just about talking or conversations though. You’ve got a bad habit of interrupting people while they are working in order to say or do something that definitely could have waited until they weren’t busy. You just didn’t think it through before doing it.

ADHD in Women Checklist: The Off Script Symptoms Brought to You By Research

Remember how I mention the DSM criteria doesn’t do a very good job of relaying the full reality of ADHD symptoms? This part of the ADHD in women checklist is based on what research says about ADHD symptoms that still haven’t made it into the DSM. These can’t be used for diagnostic purposes really, because diagnosis is based on the DSM criteria. But I hope one day the criteria match the research. In the mean time, I use these clinically to help with identifying the possibility of ADHD. And I definitely talk to ADHD clients about it.

ADHD in Women checklist Offscipt

1. You’ve Got the RSD
2. Your emotions are as chaotic and messy as your thoughts.
3. You’ve got a lot of “Anxiety”
4. You’ve been told some form of “you aren’t living up to your potential”
5. You’ve often been called lazy, ditzy, spacey, crazy, or unambitious
6. You get misunderstood a lot. People tend to think you not paying attention, struggling to get things done, or being late to things is a sign of general not caring, being selfish, or disrespect.
7. You’ve never been able to stop the symptoms on this checklist, but you’ve probably found ways to hide them from others (ie your a high masking maestro)
8. Your Kryptonites are as follows:
   • Boredom
   • Anything that requires heavy concentration and isn’t hyperfixation-able
   • Lack of deadlines
   • Lack of structure/routine, even though you also hate structure/routine
   • Anything detail oriented
   • Time. In general.
   • Adulting. Also in general.
   • Staying organized
   • Tying up loose ends once you’ve got the big stuff done
   • Criticism
   • Injustice
   • Prioritizing 
   • Structuring things in a linear way
   • Getting started
   • Making decisions
   • Knowing when to stop
   • Regulating anything (thoughts, emotions, energy, you name it)
   • Staying on task
   • Sitting still
   • Redundancy and repetition
   • And lastly, Anything that can be a distraction. Which is to say…anything.

And there you have it: The ADHD in Women Checklist for Hyperactive Types. The more of these symptoms you have, and the more frequently you deal with them, the more likely you are to actually have ADHD. If you meet 5 of the criteria in both the inattentive and hyperactive criteria, you may have combined type ADHD.

ADHD in Women Checklist: Wrap up

That’s a wrap for the Officially Unofficial ADHD in Women Checklist in real life terms instead of clinically vague jargon.

If a lot of points on this list are sounding familiar, you should take the Little Miss Lionheart ADHD Test for Women. In my completely biased opinion, it’s the most practical female ADHD self test on the internet. It can’t diagnose you, but it’s a great starting place for exploring the possibility of having ADHD. I also have a free ‘Help Getting an Accurate Diagnosis’ resource complete with a self test, ideas on how to talk to your doctor, and how to find an ADHD-aware clinician if you’d rather not attempt a discussion with your current doctor.

I hope this list is helpful. If you’re already diagnosed, I’m curious what examples you’d add to this ADHD in women checklist? Drop them in the comments!