hormones, ADHD, and the midlife balancing act

Being in perimenopause is all kinds of challenging. Now more women are discovering that their brain fog, lack of impulse control, and constant feeling of distraction may be a clue to something else entirely.

- LESLIE GOLDMAN

Melanie Hutchinson had always been messy, but in 2020, as she entered her 50s, her home became overrun with clutter.

A mountain of laundry overtook her bedroom and piles of paper and junk accumulated everywhere. Before Zoom meetings, she'd hurriedly throw things into laundry baskets and stash them in the basement to avoid an embarrassing background. The Ontario, Canadabased finance operations manager also found herself struggling with impulse control: She couldn't stop herself from bingeing on sweets, and she would find herself seething with rage while grocery shopping. "I'd want to scream at people if their cart was taking up the whole aisle," she recalls.

These changes coincided with several stressful life transitions, including starting a new job and watching her daughter prepare to leave for college.She was also in the throes of perimenopause, the hormonally turbulent years leading to menopause. Her periods grew extremely heavy and painful, and she started to experience fatigue, a constant sense of being overwhelmed, and brain fog so intense that she began Googling early-onset dementia. (And, oh yes, there was a global pandemic going on.) Though she had been disorganized and anxious her whole life, this level of chaos felt alarming.

Then one day in the middle of all this, she suddenly thought back to the moment six years earlier when her daughter, then 12, had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). When the psychologist had discussed her child's social anxiety, extreme sensitivity, and academic difficulties, Hutchinson had thought, This all sounds like me. But she had never heard of a grown woman with a successful career having ADHD, so she had dismissed the idea.