For adults with ADHD, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all path to finding alignment. In this article, I want to offer a perspective: the reason you may feel stuck in your “not-self” could be directly related to your ADHD symptoms.

Ra Uru Hu said: “It‘s the form principle. Everything about it is the form principle. When you get to the surface of Human Design you can see that this is all we‘re telling people. We‘re saying, ―Look, here‘s where your inner Authority is. It‘s your body.  Your inner Authority is your body. Inner Authority is below the throat. It‘s a body thing; it‘s your form that will tell you the truth. It‘s the form that has to make the decisions. It‘s the form that will liberate you. It‘s all form”.

This quote reminded me of a training I did at the Embody Lab.  Admittedly, I can’t remember what certification it was a part of as I have been certified in many trauma related specialties with them.  Regardless, the quote always stuck with me & it was “We are disconnected heads herding our bodies around”.

Put simply: If you are disconnected from your body you have little chance of being “embodied” or living your design through strategy & authority.

When it comes to ADHD, from my own background in Psychology, experiencing this myself, and working with clients to create my THRIVES Framework I noticed how this specifically relates to the adult ADHDer.  First, however, I want to address the statistics:

Statistics show us that males are almost three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than females. During their lifetimes, 13 percent of men will be diagnosed with ADHD. Just 4.2 percent of women will be diagnosed.  Women are also more often diagnosed later in life than men, frequently during adulthood, and often years after being misdiagnosed with depression and anxiety.  As someone that was diagnosed in my late 30’s I can’t blame the doctors on why I wasn’t diagnosed sooner.  I actually just didn’t ask, and when I did they were very understanding.

But why did I not ask until my late 30’s?

Honestly, I just thought it was who I was.  That I was just a perfectionist, had anxiety, was naturally impulsive, and overthought things.  I believed it was just who I was in regards to sensitivity around rejection, and when I learned about Human Design, I thought that was just my open solar plexus.  I thought that maybe a busy mind (I often found myself saying “I have thousands of browsers open in my brain”) was just who I was, and when I found Human Design I assumed the undefined head centre, and “thinking about things that don’t matter”, was the reason.

We each have our own reasons, however I do believe highly successful, high performing women with ADHD just believe it’s who they are and power through…. Until they can’t anymore.  And often, in searching for answers they find Human Design.  Maybe that’s how you found this blog. 

I also believe that for ADHD women it can become even more confusing when you first learn Human Design.  In fact, you may feel seen & heard for the first time ever and think, like I did, “OH!!! That’s why I am like this!  I have an undefined head centre or solar plexus!”, “OH! That’s why I am so petrified of rejection, I have an open solar plexus!”, “OH! That’s why I am making impulsive decisions, I have a Splenic Authority”, “OH! That’s why my partner and I have issues, I’m a Manifestor and I just have to inform him/her and they just need to deal with my impulsive decision because it’s my design as a splenic authority”.

In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves of what I refer to as “Pop culture Human Design”, meaning people that neither understand Psychology nor are properly trained in Human Design is “If you have ADHD and are a Generator your impulsivity is your superpower”.  Insert cringe face.

What I also find when women email me is that prior to their diagnosis, or prior to medication, the Human Design information DID help for a time.  Yet, as they continued on their experiment with Human Design they started to get an inkling that they aren’t actually following strategy & authority and maybe are more in your head than ever.

This is why I’ve committed to studying at the Differentiation Degree College with the International Human Design School. To truly heal, we need to go beneath the surface and reach the deeper layers of the body. But first, we must hear the body, and that can be incredibly challenging with a mind as busy as a chaotic dining hall—pots and pans clattering, voices shouting and laughing, glasses shattering. In such an environment, how can we hear a whisper?

Your inner authority speaks more softly than your fears, more quietly than the mind. So, how do we tune in to it amidst all the noise, distractions, and restlessness?

In the Primary Health System trainings at the International Human Design School Ra said:

“ Here again, and it‘s my reason for beginning with duality is to recognize something, that in order for the Personality consciousness to grasp that there is truly something wrong with its vehicle, it takes a long time, and it‘s usually too late. It‘s like all of these people who suddenly decide to go to a doctor after many, many years only to discover that they have something that they should have gone to the doctor about. It‘s just one of those things. It takes a very long time because we don‘t translate it directly. If the vehicle is not operating properly and it‘s building up deterioration, wherever that deterioration happens to be, it‘s not like the passenger is tuned into it. The passenger is absorbed with trying to control its life, and neither one of them operate purely within the quantum that‘s controlled by the Monopole within the illusion. You may end up on the surface with a Personality that‘s not aware of its vehicle, not aware of its body. You can have somebody that has definition that is only conscious and has no unconscious definition and has a poor sense of their vehicle on the surface. And the vehicle is screaming there‘s something wrong, something wrong and the Personality doesn‘t get it”.

Our job is to be able to see it in the vehicle long before it becomes a risk to the Personality. But again, to really understand that wherever we go beneath the line we need to recognize that the moment that we see something, we are seeing an aspect before it becomes part of the quantum. The only way ultimately, that the work that I do with my clients within the PHS is really going to be of value is when on the surface my clients are at least operating experimentally correctly. Because this is going to truly provide the opportunities for us to be able to fulfill our role, to be able to provide for the well-being of the vehicle, and to make aligned decisions. 

Does Living Your Design Heal Your ADHD?

Do I believe that living our design alone can heal ADHD? No, I don’t. In fact, this realization was the catalyst for starting this blog. For a long time, I believed that understanding and living my design would be enough to manage what I thought were just aspects of my personality, or aspects of my design. Yet, and maybe you can relate, I found myself continuing to make emotional or impulsive decisions, no matter how much I knew about my design.

And, like many high performers, I always found a way to make it work. But I could feel my body and mind paying the price—I could sense the wear and tear from constantly working against myself. The exhaustion, the strain of making things harder than they needed to be, was slowly taking its toll.

The greatest gift we can give ourselves is the ability to make correct decisions and follow strategy & authority.  This is the only way we can live out our purpose, and yet, this is often something those of us with ADHD struggle with the most in the beginning, is actually hearing inner authority amongst the chaos.

“Most human beings live their life out of conditioning.  The key is to live life from your own truth, your own authenticity, and not from the pressure of what you think you are supposed to be” ~ Ra Uru Hu.  

And for those of us with ADHD often who we think we are is the greatest illusion at all.  I figured this out when I finally made the jump and started with medication for my ADHD.

The Journey with ADHD Medication

Ra Uru Hu said “But it‘s obvious to me that if you‘re going to be able to truly help someone, if you‘re going to be able to do that, you cannot do it from the surface. You can‘t. You have to go directly to the source. You have to go beneath the illusion. Beneath the illusion, that because the symptom appears to be over here, that the source is over there too”.

Yet, how do we get to the depths of our design if we aren’t even following strategy and authority?  Moving to a cave or mountains means nothing if the mind told us to move there.  As soon as the mind is making decisions based on what it THINKS you have to do to be aligned, you are missing the point.

For me, a big part of being more embodied & making aligned decisions rather than emotional or impulsive was medication.  And, I believe something that is important for the high performer to hear is that it does not mean you are a failure, that you aren’t tough enough, or intelligent enough to sort out your symptoms without medication.

I specifically remember saying to my doctor, when I originally got my official diagnosis, “I know something is wrong because I KNOW I am making an impulsive decision, but I can’t stop.  I know I am getting distracted and it is destroying my day and negatively impacting my businesses but I can’t stop.  I know I need to focus but I get distracted and then lose track of time.  I’m an intelligent person.  I am a successful person.  WHY CAN’T I JUST DO what I know I should be doing or should not be doing?!”.

And therein lies the problem because ADHD is not a disorder of not knowing what to do, it is a disorder of not being able to follow through on what you know you should be doing or not doing…. Including following strategy and authority.  Richard Rudd, the founder of Gene Keys, once said “There is no transformation without awareness.  Awareness is the solvent that can turn every base substance into gold”.

Is your awareness being blocked due to the busy mind & inability to focus, no matter how intelligent or knowledgeable you are? That’s only for you to know.  I do not claim that medication is the answer for everyone, I simply know it completely transformed my life (and the lives of many of my clients) in conjunction with coaching, Human Design, Gene Keys, & Positive Psychology tools.

I want to share a simple yet profound story:

I’ll never forget my first day on medication. At first, I didn’t even realize how effective it was—its impact was almost immediate, but it took a small, everyday action to reveal how much my life had shifted.

I reached for my phone, as I usually would, prepared to lose myself in an hour of doom scrolling. But as my hand moved, I heard an internal “No.” I put the phone down and returned to what I was doing. A few minutes later, I paused, stunned.

That internal “No.” I had a schedule to follow, and I wasn’t supposed to check messages until noon. For the first time in my life, it felt easy. I wasn’t battling my brain or the constant worry—“What if someone messaged, and you missed it? Now they’re upset because they had to wait.”

I didn’t feel the urge to check the Facebook notification icon. I just… continued doing what I was doing.

Such a simple yet profound moment.  And in that moment I thought to myself “Is this how normal people function?  You just say you are going to do something and you… do it? Without being distracted?!”.  

That is when my relationship to my inner authority really deepened and I was more clearly able to see the intersection of Human Design, conditioning, the not self, ADHD, and who I was within it all.

THIS is also why I am so passionate about helping others with this.  I hear so often of women finding Human Design, pre diagnosis, and thinking they are seen for the first time ever.  And it works for a short time, until they realize they are STILL operating from the “not self”.  Understanding the nuances of your unique brain, your unique design, and YOU is critical in understanding yourself on a deeper level and creating strategies that truly allow lasting change in your life.

If you are interested in learning more about the work I do please see: https://www.adhdandhumandesign.com/

I do have 1:1 coaching available now here: https://www.adhdandhumandesign.com/adhd-human-design-coaching 

Ashley

Founder of ADHD + HD

Creator of THRIVES with ADHD + HD

[email protected]