A Journey of Making Sense: A Descriptive and Interpretative Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of Women with ADHD, Prior, During, and Post-Diagnosis

Abstract

This descriptive and interpretive phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of females with ADHD across three critical stages: pre-diagnosis, diagnosis, and post-diagnosis. While awareness of ADHD in females is increasing, psychological descriptions and diagnostic frameworks still often fail to capture their internalised, masked, and affectively complex presentations. This study moves beyond brain-based and deficit-focused understandings of ADHD by offering a phenomenological account of female ADHD as dynamic, embodied, and embedded within sociocultural contexts, emerging through the interaction between neurobiology and socio-cultural environments. Within this process, women actively negotiated their sense of self through the conceptual frameworks available to them, shaping how they understand and experience their ADHD. This study's findings reveal that for participants, the experience of ADHD unfolded along a continuum of sense-making. Pre-diagnosis was marked by an absence of sense-making, characterised by flux and fluctuation across cognitive, emotional, and social domains, which profoundly impacted participants' sense of self and identity. Diagnosis provided a framework for sense-making and validation for experiences that had previously been invisible and misunderstood. Whilst this diagnostic sense-making was clinically validating, it was constrained by deficit-based frameworks that not only lacked gender sensitivity but also failed to capture the full complexity of participants' lived experiences. However, when participants were able to bring their lived experiences into the diagnostic encounter, this sense-making deepened and became more personally meaningful. An expansion of sense-making characterised post-diagnosis, as participants reframed their past to move toward self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-alignment, enabling them to develop strengths-based strategies, make intentional environmental adjustments, and move toward authentic self-connection and thriving. Drawing on the themes and patterns identified in the data across all three phases, a conceptual model was developed from participants' experiences in this study, highlighting sense-making as central to how self-understanding evolved across the diagnostic journey. This study offers new understandings of ADHD beyond deficit models, highlighting the dimensional and contextually situated nature of the lived experience of ADHD in females. The findings have implications for educational psychology, clinical practice, and the development of neuro-affirming discourses and environments that support girls and women with ADHD to recognise their strengths, achieve self-connection, and thrive.