Climbing the Walls: ADHD, Women, and the Stories We’ve Missed with Danielle Elliot

Sep 1, 2025

Danielle Elliot, a health and science journalist and documentary filmmaker, dives into the surge of ADHD diagnoses among women since the pandemic. She debunks myths surrounding women's ADHD, highlighting the societal misconceptions and the significant role of social media in raising awareness. The conversation also explores how hormonal factors are often overlooked in research. Through personal stories and practical insights, Danielle sheds light on the unique challenges women face, emphasizing the importance of individualized strategies for managing ADHD.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

DMN Framing Clarifies ADHD Restlessness

The default mode network (DMN) helps explain ADHD attention shifts and restlessness.
Listeners found the neuroscience framing clarifying even if it feels technical.

INSIGHT

Women’s ADHD Was Known — Not Heard

Women with ADHD were known about for decades but often not listened to by medicine and media.
Danielle Elliot found 1990s resources that accurately described women's ADHD long before recent coverage.

INSIGHT

Why Diagnoses Spiked Around 2020

The 2020s surge in diagnoses came from multiple forces converging, not a single cause.
Pandemic disruption plus social media spread made many women seek evaluation at once.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Today I’m talking with Danielle Elliot, a health and science journalist, documentarian, and host of Climbing the Walls, an investigative podcast from Understood.org digging into the surge in ADHD diagnoses among women—especially since the pandemic. If that sounds familiar, it’s cause I did a number of ads for her show a few months back, and I just wanted to make sure that I mention that, since while I’m not getting paid for this episode, I have done work with Understood before and probably will be promoting more of their stuff in the future.

Anyway, in our conversation today, we cover a lot of ground, from debunking the idea that no one knew women could have ADHD until recently, to how social media has reshaped the conversation, to why research on hormones and ADHD is still way behind. We also get into the everyday realities of living with ADHD, the default mode network, and why we need far more research into how ADHD shows up in women. It’s a mix of science, lived experience, and the kind of practical reflection that can help you rethink how ADHD fits into your life.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at http://hackingyouradhd.com/241

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Instead of guessing when you’ve overbooked yourself, start tracking it like an experiment. For a few weeks, note each day you have social, professional, or mentally demanding activities beyond your baseline, then try and figure out how many consecutive “on” days it takes before you feel fried.

2. Downtime doesn’t magically appear and needs to be scheduled on the calendar, or it often just gets eaten by other people’s needs or whatever’s loudest in the moment. If someone asks you to do something during that block, you can truthfully say you already have something scheduled. Treating self-care time as a legit appointment protects it from getting deprioritized just because it’s “only for you.”

3. A common ADHD trap is overestimating how awful or time-consuming a task will be, which makes it easier to avoid it. Try timing your tasks to give yourself actual data to challenge your brain’s “this will take forever” narrative and can turn a dreaded job into something you knock out in a couple of minutes.

4. Consider hormonal factors when tracking ADHD symptoms, as hormones have a big influence on your ADHD symptoms, yet are often overlooked. Hormonal changes can affect focus, energy, mood, and even how well ADHD medication works. Tracking your symptoms alongside your cycle or other hormonal shifts can help you spot patterns and adjust strategies accordingly.