Even me—someone who never looked hyperactive on the outside.
When I was first diagnosed, I was told I had ADD. Actually, I was borderline diagnosed because we didn’t (and still don’t) have great measures to pick up adult ADHD—let alone female adult ADHD.
For a while, I wore it like a badge. ADD meant I wasn’t the “bad kind” with the hyperactivity. ADD meant I was calm, book-smart, and quiet enough to pass under the radar. ADD meant I didn’t disrupt the classroom or the meeting.
And once I did a deep dive into ADHD and how it shows up in girls and women—researching obsessively (so ADHD of me, I’d later realize!)—ADD seemed to fit better than the other labels I had been given up until then.
But the truth? ADD isn’t even a thing anymore. And it never really described me.
ADD Is Gone
The term ADD was officially retired more than 30 years ago. Today, there’s just ADHD, with three presentations:
• Inattentive
• Hyperactive-Impulsive
• Combined
And yet, people still cling to ADD. Sometimes because it feels more accurate. Sometimes because it feels less scary. Sometimes because “ADD” sounds like a smaller problem than “ADHD.”
But here’s the problem: ADD minimizes what’s really going on. Because the “H” in ADHD—the dreaded hyperactivity—doesn’t always show up the way people think it does.
The “H” Was Always There
For years, I believed I didn’t have the “H.” In fact, that was the very reason I counted myself out of an ADHD diagnosis—just like so many women do—because I’d been told I had other things instead: anxiety, depression, even bipolar II.
I wasn’t bouncing off walls or talking nonstop. I was the opposite: quiet, reserved, sometimes frozen.
But inside? I was revved. My brain was a hamster wheel that never stopped.
Dr. Russell Barkley, my all-time intellectual crush, has a phrase for it: “a busying of one’s mind.” The first time I read it, I got goosebumps. Because that’s my ADHD.
Hyperactivity for me looked like this:
• Replaying conversations at 2 a.m., cringing at every word.
• Making mental lists on top of mental lists, none of them finished.
• My brain starting five businesses while my body couldn’t take the first step on any of them.
• Feeling like I was trying to live five different lives at once.
On the outside, it looked like I was fine. On the inside, I was restless, flooded, and dysregulated.
That’s ADHD.
Why This Matters
When people still say “ADD,” it reinforces the myth that inattentive ADHD is a milder form, or somehow less real. But the truth is:
• Inattentive ADHD gets missed more often.
• It gets mislabeled as depression, anxiety, or just “being scatterbrained.”
• And it leaves people blaming themselves for struggles they can’t control.
I get it—I did the same thing. I thought if I could just eat better, lose the weight, push harder, or buy one more planner, I’d figure it out. But none of that fixed it. Because the problem wasn’t laziness, sadness, or weakness. It was ADHD.
A Client’s Story
A client of mine—we’ll call her Rachel—came in convinced she had “ADD.”
She said, “I don’t have ADHD. I’m not hyper. I just can’t focus.”
As we worked together, it became clear: she was hyper. Not outwardly. But inwardly.
Her brain was constantly running: worrying about what people thought of her, overanalyzing every email, making ten different to-do lists at once. She wasn’t bouncing around the room—she was bouncing around inside her own head.
Once she reframed her diagnosis as ADHD, not ADD, it changed everything. Suddenly she wasn’t just “spacey” or “lazy.” She realized her struggles had a name. And more importantly, she realized there were treatments and strategies that actually worked for her brain.
A Better Badge
Here’s the irony: if I’d been diagnosed with almost anything else—even something dramatic, like schizoaffective disorder with delusions and paranoia—I probably would’ve worn the badge proudly if it helped explain me.
But instead, I got ADD. A half-diagnosis. An outdated term. A label that made me think my hyperactivity wasn’t real, when in fact, it was just invisible.
Now I know better. ADD is gone. ADHD is here. And when we name it correctly, we finally stop minimizing it—and start treating it.