Allow Me to Interrupt

The world is right—ADHD girls and women do interrupt—but not all of it is unintentional, and almost all of it is extraordinary. If you picked up this book, chances are you want to learn more about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in females—and you just opened up a Pandora’s box. For many women, the lack of knowledge surrounding ADHD’s unique presentation in their lives has led to feeling misunderstood, criticized, frustrated, and alone. Female biology is complicated, and unfortunately, the mainstream understanding of ADHD often simplifies a condition that isn’t simple. One thing we are quickly learning about ADHD in women, which seems intuitive, is that the role of emotions and emotion dysregulation have been underemphasized in the ADHD criteria. Think about it: If it’s hard to control our behavior, it will, by default, be hard to control our emotional responses. And this relationship is amplified for girls, who are more susceptible to anxiety and depression than boys. Allow Me to Interrupt takes a deep dive into the most unjustifiably underrecognized ADHD symptom: emotion dysregulation. In an effort to educate, inspire, and support other women with ADHD, clinical psychologist and writer, Dr. Gilly Kahn, shares other women’s and girls’ ADHD stories along with her own. She also provides specific strategies backed by scientific explanations with a distinct focus on ADHD and emotion regulation in women. This book is written to empower you and teach you to love your beautifully strong brain. As women with ADHD, we are misunderstood, underappreciated, and unidentified. But it isn’t too late to interrupt the status quo, correct misperceptions, and describe the very real emotional lives of girls and women with ADHD. As Katherine so eloquently interjects in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: “Why; sir, I trust I may have leave to speak, and speak I will.”