Inattentive ADHD and the Impact of Somatic Work

The hum of the TV is on in the background. I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop open. Sleep weighs in my eyes from the three-hour nap I just took. There’s a bowl of tortilla chips resting somewhat precariously on the armrest.

The sky has gone dark, and headlights are dancing on the window panes. A web browser is pulled up on my computer screen open to my favorite artificial intelligence, and in the submission box I’ve asked, “Can ADHD make you feel exhausted?” On the left-hand side of the browser you can see my past searches: “struggling with ADHD when alone”, “ADHD paralysis”, “ADHD and isolation fatigue.”

The list of prompts continues. I’m desperately trying to understand the crash I felt after my partner left on their month-long trip to Argentina. After just a couple of days alone in my apartment, my system collapsed. I didn’t realize how much I’d been regulating my cycles and the passage of time based on my partner, or how much stimulus their presence was adding to my environment. With them away, I lost my sense of time. Whole days would pass, and even though I logically could list everything I’d done in a day, it felt like nothing had happened. I experienced no satisfaction from work or leisure. I kept the TV on almost the whole day as a way of avoiding both the excruciating silence and boredom that would quickly descend. My bedtime was inching later and later. Weirdest of all, though I arguably had quite a bit of free time and was sleeping more and more each day, I felt utterly exhausted. I realized that, as hard as I thought it was to manage my ADHD as a work-from-home freelancer, when I was actually alone all day, things got even worse.

When I thought about what someone with ADHD looked like, I never pictured myself. I was a good student. I got good grades. I always got my work done. Only when I ended my demanding, fast-paced, many-hatted full-time job at 31 and found myself unrecognizable did I begin to consider I might be neurodivergent.

To explain why I didn’t recognize myself, I should paint a picture of the Mari I had gotten to know up to that point. I was honestly impressed with my ability to focus. During my seven years as a classroom teacher, I was able to work 12-hour days without distraction. The only time I veered off task was to quickly change lanes and accomplish an even more urgent task before seamlessly returning to the other midstream. I was a multitude of people: a team leader, coach, carer, social media content creator, communications specialist, social worker, relationship manager, clown, and teacher all at once.

Honestly, sometimes my own ability to keep going would surprise me. Wow Mari, you didn’t look at your phone once today? You inputted grades while finishing your morning coffee and read critical documents while eating your lunch. This is seriously impressive. You never let a ball drop.

When I moved to Berlin and made the conscious decision to leave behind classroom teaching, my life suddenly looked a lot different. I went from overfull and demanding days to an expanse of open time. My partner had the material security to support me as I navigated a career change. There is a huge privilege in this that I’m very aware of. To have the support needed to move in a new direction is a luxury many people can’t afford. I wasn’t rushed or pressured to figure things out quickly. I had all the time I could need.

For me, however, this was the start of a period of massive confusion. The Mari who went to a demanding college and studied in the library every evening, who never pulled all-nighters, was gone. The Mari who worked 12-hour days without checking her phone, and worked on Sundays so she’d walk into Monday ready, had disappeared. The extraordinary focus that kept 100 things spinning suddenly collapsed into exhaustion, brain fog, and paralysis. I had space to pursue my interests but couldn’t make myself do anything. I often literally couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t understand what had happened.

Then a friend casually mentioned my “inattentive ADHD.” “You think I have ADHD?” I inquired curiously. I can no longer remember his reasoning at the time. I think it was a hunch more than anything, based on the fact he had ADHD himself. Desperately in search of answers and an explanation for this new, unfamiliar Mari that had emerged in the open space of my life, I began to do research.

My idea of someone with ADHD had been a little boy incapable of sitting still in class, physically fidgeting with no impulse control. This did not describe me at all. I was the picture of the “good kid.” Petrified of getting in trouble, anxious about doing things right, and severely untrusting of any adults or figures of authority who had the power to deem me “bad.” I was a very sensitive child. Every time an adult yelled at me was seared into my memory.

When I started researching inattentive ADHD in females, the profile matched. My dysgraphia as a child, omitting words because my brain raced ahead of my hand. My chronic skin-picking habit, fingers always searching for rough spots to go after. My need to doodle any time the teacher spoke and constantly shift positions in my chair. My extreme sensitivity to rejection and the depths of my emotions. My perfectionism and critically low self-worth. Why the library was the only place I could focus in college, why I had to work in my school classroom during COVID instead of being able to work from home because of body doubling. Why having the TV on paradoxically helps me concentrate. Why deadline pressures trigger hyperfocus and double my energy. I share this in case someone else recognizes themselves here.

It turns out, if one’s ADHD doesn’t negatively impact their behavior in the classroom or their grades at school, no one bothers to consider it or talk about its expression. If you’re a high-functioning female-bodied person, you might never realize you have it until you’re in the exact circumstances I was in: in my thirties, hormones less capable of masking my ADHD expression, and in the midst of a career change capable of showing me the exact circumstance where my mind struggles to function the most—when there is no external pressure or reward system that can give me the dopamine hit necessary to step into action.

These ADHD characteristics led me, in a way, to my career as a somatic practitioner. My sensitivity, my perfectionism, and the fact I’d learned to function and navigate life by running on cortisol are big reasons (though not the only reasons) why I struggled with anxiety and depression so intensely during my teens and early twenties. My neurodivergence also connects with how big and intense my feelings are. Even bringing this up, acknowledging the struggles I had for so long, brings tears to my eyes. I needed help, even before I connected these markers to ADHD. I even risked losing a relationship at the time in my mid-twenties. “Mari, I need you to find a way to care for yourself and manage your emotions, or I’m going to have to leave.” This ultimatum was a kick in the butt I needed.

Meditation and somatic work helped. It taught me how to meet my harsh self-critic with compassion, and to experience discomfort—whether from perceived rejection or my own mistakes—as sensation that I could learn to sit with non-judgmentally. I discovered that somatic practices offered something my nervous system had been missing: a way to ground myself in physical sensation when my thoughts spiraled, and to start finding regulation inside my own body rather than always needing external stimulus.

When I first started writing this piece, it felt like a story about challenge, and it still is. I am a self-employed freelancer working from home, which for someone with ADHD is a perfect storm. I should note that the challenge isn’t necessarily the wiring itself. In certain contexts, ADHD can be advantageous. The struggle is the mismatch between how my attention works and what self-employment demands. Motivating myself without external deadlines and accountability structures is a daily challenge as I build my somatic practice.

Often it still feels like I’m at the bottom of a hill, staring at the top and wondering, “How am I going to do this?”

Yet, as this post has unfolded, I see there is a bright side, which is how far I’ve come. Yes, I still struggle with boredom, time management, and motivation. But I’ve softened my inner critic and learned to ride my emotional waves, both accepting their sensory presence and creating safety in my nervous system through somatic techniques. The person I was in my twenties—sad, negative, highly self-critical, prone to worst-case thinking—has transformed into someone others describe as calm, bold, and optimistic. I credit this to the somatic work I’ve engaged in as a client for over six years.

What makes this struggle bearable, worthwhile even, is knowing why I’m doing it. As I learn to work for myself and build the structures I need, I’m preparing to support others as a somatic practitioner the way I was and continue to be supported.

The silver lining is that my neurotype actually makes me a better practitioner. My heightened emotional response and sensitivity to stimuli mean I pick up information from very subtle cues in my clients. Learning the histories, challenges, and uniqueness of others is something I’ll thankfully never get bored of. My mind thrives on novelty and the process of continuous discovery. Each somatic session is a many-forked path requiring immense flexibility to navigate in response to both my intentions for the session and what’s arising for my client. It’s a space where trusting my intuition and impulse is encouraged, and becomes something valuable I can offer others.

So even though I see the climb ahead, and I don’t know what obstacles still lie in my path or exactly how I’ll make it up the hill, I do know where I’m going, why I’m headed there, and that my challenges and uniqueness will be a gift for those I serve.