ADHD Aha!

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adhdaha@understood.org

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Perimenopause, brain fog, and noise sensitivity: Lizzie O’Leary’s late ADHD diagnosis

September 29, 2026

Journalist Lizzie O’Leary spent decades asking sharp questions for a living. Then the words started disappearing. Brain fog. Surprising rage. A head full of buzzing bees.Lizzie, who hosts Slate’s What Next: TBD podcast, was diagnosed with ADHD at 50 after perimenopause made her ADHD symptoms too powerful to push aside. Lizzie talks about emotional regulation challenges that hurt her career, sensory sensitivity she’d written off as quirks, and what she wishes she’d known when she was younger.F...

Calm saving lives, paralyzed by a pasta recipe: ADHD and executive function (Jim Leitch’s story)

September 15, 2026

Jim Leitch could intubate a patient in the middle of the night — alone, short-staffed, smiling — and feel completely calm. Ask him to follow a pasta recipe? That’s where things got hard: Everyday tasks and executive function challenges.Jim is a former critical care respiratory therapist and current VP who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. In this episode, he talks about the exhausting gap between knowing where you want to go and not being able to get started, growing up with perfectionism ...

ADHD contradictions: Hot mess and high performer in equal measure (Sabrina Caluori’s story)

September 01, 2026

A former boss once described their first meeting this way: “She showed up late and disheveled, and I hired her anyway.” That’s Sabrina Caluori in a nutshell. Sabrina is the chief marketing officer at Chief, the largest private network for ambitious women. Diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, she describes herself as a contradiction: “High achieving and a hot mess in equal measure” — a leader who can hold an entire company’s strategy in her head but can’t manage her own calendar. Sabrina shar...