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November 24, 2025
Dr. Gilly Kahn spent years studying psychology before realizing how much of her own emotional world had been shaped by ADHD.
Dr. Gilly earned a Master’s in Experimental Psychology, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and built a full clinical practice before receiving her ADHD diagnosis in her early thirties. Looking back, the signs had been there all along: migraines that never made sense, intense emotional reactions, shifting hormones, and a lifelong habit of masking so well that even she missed the patterns. Like many of us, she excelled in school and in her career, which kept her symptoms invisible until they could no longer be explained away.
Now based in Atlanta, Dr. Gilly specializes in neurodiversity and emotion regulation, helping women understand the parts of ADHD that rarely get named.
In this conversation, she and Tracy explore why women are so often misdiagnosed, how migraines and PMDD intersect with dopamine and estrogen, and why emotional dysregulation is often the hardest part for women who appear “put together” on the outside. Dr. Gilly also breaks down the science behind sleep, memory, and hormones, and explains why trauma is often confused with ADHD in clinical settings.
Her new book, Allow Me to Interrupt, brings clarity to the experiences so many women have carried silently for years and focuses on the emotional patterns that shape women’s ADHD, from hormonal shifts to migraines to the pressure to stay composed even when everything feels overwhelming.
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“If you’ve read anything about ADHD in women, you’ll see front and center that estrogen is associated with dopamine. When your estrogen goes down, your dopamine goes down.”
- Dr. Gilly Kahn
“Women with ADHD often have hormonal conditions like PCOS. OB-GYNs don’t understand ADHD. They don’t understand how birth control affects the ADHD brain.”
- Dr. Gilly Kahn
“You can’t give someone the thing they’re addicted to and expect things to get better.”
-- SDr. Gilly Kahn
"If I could get rid of my ADHD, I wouldn’t. I think a lot of the empathy and creativity comes from ADHD."
-- Dr. Gilly Kahn
"People think trauma created my ADHD. That’s not correct. Trauma makes anything worse, but ADHD was always there."
- Dr. Gilly Kahn
"More, more, more—that’s the ADHD brain. We’re always scanning for what’s next."
- Dr. Gilly Kahn
- Dr. Gilly Kahn shares her later-in-life ADHD diagnosis at 33, describing years of being first labeled with depression and PMDD while her busy, non-worry-based brain and intense emotional dysregulation went unexplained.
- She connects ADHD with hormonal conditions like PMDD, PCOS, and migraines, explaining how fluctuating estrogen impacts dopamine and thus ADHD symptoms, mood, and sleep.
- The conversation highlights how current ADHD criteria focus on observable behavior, miss women’s internal distress, and contribute to misdiagnosis and higher suicide risk in women with ADHD.
- Dr. Gilly describes lifelong masking, people-pleasing, and being a “master masker,” including painful experiences of being criticized for speaking up, which fueled rejection sensitivity and internalized shame.
- She and Tracy explore traits common in women with ADHD—justice sensitivity, blunt honesty, challenging gender norms, intense interests (like Shakespeare), and being labeled “snobs” or “too much,” while actually driven by values and authenticity.
- They discuss how supportive environments, scaffolding, and higher IQ can delay diagnosis, plus how working memory issues, math word problems, balance/cerebellum, and exercise-based activities like ballet intersect with ADHD traits.
[00:50:00 – 01:04:00] Redefining How ADHD Writers Work
- Dr. Gilly explains emotional dysregulation as a core ADHD issue, the overlap and confusion with trauma, and why misattributing everything to trauma erases the neurodevelopmental nature and strengths of ADHD.
- She details behavioral addiction and reinforcement using a powerful teen gaming case, showing how video-game–driven dopamine, impaired self-regulation, and family dynamics can spiral into school refusal and the need for higher-level care.
- They delve into estrogen, pregnancy, perimenopause, and the lack of research on women with ADHD, while Dr. Gilly emphasizes writing everything down, making tasks playful (“Team Gilly”), and ultimately affirming she wouldn’t trade her ADHD because of the creativity, empathy, and impact it gives her work and book on women’s emotional lives.
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here
- Linkedin: gilly-kahn
- Instagram: drgillykahn
- Website: www.drgillykahn.com
- Article: Research Advances and Future Directions in Female ADHD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAg0EnN_nwN1cVTM3P9cyD1wFspLg71m/view?usp=sharing