How Group Therapy Can Help Women with ADHD Feel Less Alone

By Zara Fischer-Harrison, Nurse Psychotherapist

If you’re a woman navigating adult ADHD, there’s a particular kind of loneliness that can come with it.

It’s the feeling of being capable and overwhelmed at the same time.
Of holding everything together on the outside while internally juggling unfinished tasks, emotional intensity, forgotten appointments, and relentless self-criticism.

It’s the quiet question many women ask themselves:

“Why does this seem easier for everyone else?”

Adult ADHD in women is often layered and complex. Many of the women I meet were diagnosed later in life - sometimes after years of being labeled as anxious, scattered, overly sensitive, or “just stressed.” Some are still exploring whether ADHD might be part of their story.

What they often share isn’t just difficulty with focus or organization.

It’s isolation.

The Invisible Load of Being a Woman with ADHD

Women with ADHD are frequently managing more than one role at a time (professional, partner, parent, caregiver, friend ) all while trying to compensate for executive functioning challenges.

There may be:

• Chronic mental clutter

• Emotional intensity that feels hard to regulate

• A pattern of procrastination followed by urgency-driven productivity

• Shame around missed details or unfinished tasks

• Exhaustion from masking or overcompensating

Many women have spent years working incredibly hard to appear “on top of it.”

From the outside, they may look organized and high-functioning. Internally, it can feel like constant effort just to keep up.

Over time, that effort becomes isolating.

Not because you don’t have people around you — but because it feels difficult to explain what’s happening beneath the surface.

Why Group Therapy Can Be So Powerful

Individual therapy offers important space for exploration and support. But group therapy provides something uniquely healing: shared recognition.

There is something transformative about hearing another woman say:

• “I do that too.”

• “I thought I was the only one.”

• “I feel that exact same shame.”

Group therapy gently interrupts the belief that your struggles are personal failures.

Instead of viewing ADHD-related challenges as evidence that you’re “bad at adulting,” you begin to see patterns - and understand them within a neurodivergent framework.

In a thoughtfully facilitated group, participants often experience:

Reduced shame
When experiences are normalized in community, self-blame begins to soften.

Connection instead of comparison
Rather than measuring yourself against others, you hear honest stories that reflect the complexity of real life.

Language for your experience
Sometimes someone else articulates what you haven’t yet been able to name.

Practical strategies grounded in lived reality
Tools and insights shared in group often feel more relatable because they come from people navigating similar circumstances.

Emotional validation
Being witnessed in your struggle without judgment is powerful medicine.

The Conundrums of Adult ADHD

Adult ADHD in women often shows up in nuanced ways:

• Feeling deeply capable yet chronically behind

• Caring intensely but struggling with follow-through

• Hyper-focusing on some things and avoiding others entirely

• Experiencing emotional overwhelm in relationships

• Questioning your competence despite clear evidence of strength

These aren’t moral shortcomings. They are patterns shaped by neurobiology, environment, expectations, and years of adaptation.

When women come together to speak honestly about these experiences, something shifts.

Isolation becomes connection.
Shame becomes understanding.
Confusion becomes clarity.

You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone

Exploring ADHD as an adult can bring up grief, relief, anger, and self-compassion, sometimes all at once. Doing that work in community can feel steadier.

Group therapy is not about fixing you.
It’s about supporting you in understanding yourself more fully.

If you’ve been carrying the quiet weight of feeling “different,” “behind,” or “not enough,” you deserve spaces where those feelings are met with empathy and insight — not correction.

Community doesn’t erase the challenges of ADHD.

But it can soften the isolation.

And sometimes, that makes all the difference.