ADHD, Perimenopause and the “Speedy Brain” with Hester Grainger

This conversation is taken from our first PERI Panel lunchtime event – a series where we bring together medical experts, specialists, and women with lived experience to talk honestly about the chaos of perimenopause.

You can replay this event HERE

For this session, our co-founder Wizz Selvey sat down with Hester Graiger – neurodiversity advocate, former TV presenter and BBC radio host, and co-founder of neurodiversity consultancy Perfectly Autistic.

Hester was diagnosed with severe combined ADHD at 43, she is now 48 and in perimenopause. Hester runs a fully neurodivergent household, while also working to help big brands like Red Bull, TUI, the NHS and Marks & Spencer understand how to better support neurodivergent colleagues.

This is her story of how ADHD and perimenopause collided – and what she’s learned about surviving (and increasingly thriving) with a speedy brain in midlife.

At the same time Hester was feeling this way, her children were being assessed by a psychiatrist. They were initially diagnosed autistic, then with ADHD. It was during one of these ADHD assessments, that the psychiatrist turned to Hester and said:

“You’ve got ADHD, haven’t you?”

Her immediate reaction was: “No.” But now she sees that this was the start of everything unravelling – and finally making sense.

One of the greatest ongoing struggles for Hester, and for so many of the women we speak to at Valerie,  is working out what’s ADHD and what’s perimenopause.

Common perimenopause symptoms include:

• Feeling overwhelmed
• Brain fog
• Losing concentration
• Forgetting mid-sentence
• Struggling with sleep
• Forgetfulness
  

For women with ADHD, however, these are likely symptoms that they have struggled with for their entire lives

So what changes in midlife that leads to more women seeking help?

2. Find or build your community

Online, in person, group chats, memberships – it all helps:
“Being able to talk about things is really important… ADHD or perimenopause, it's that connection piece. Knowing you're not alone is huge.”

3. Work with your learning style

If you aren’t sure what the best learning style for you is, ask yourself”

Are you a visual person? 
If so, whiteboards on the fridge and walls and lists where you can see them are a fantastic way of getting more organised.

Do you need things spoken?
In this case you will feel massively helped by talking things through with people and by recording voice notes and conversations

Hester finds recording on her phone extremely helpful:
“If I go to the doctors, I’ll be like, what was that bit? I don’t remember it. So I record so many conversations because I just forget otherwise.”

4. Protect your non-negotiables

ADHD or not, perimenopause or not, Hester encourages women to identify what they need to function and to think of these as your non-negotiables. These might include things like: 

• Sleep
• Movement / exercise
• Nourishing food
• Actual downtime

“Work out those things that you need for yourself and prioritise them above all else so that you are able to function at your best.”

Layer onto that:

• Guilt
• Loneliness
• Worry about work and career
• The expectation to be “all things to all people”

“As women, we so often don’t put ourselves first. We’re at the bottom of the pile, and then we wonder why we’ve run out of juice.”

For many ADHDers, there’s a big streak of people-pleasing too:

“I want my kids to want me, but actually, it's really healthy for them not to want me and to be doing their thing. Then you're a bit like, oh, what can I do for myself?”

How to rediscover joy

Hester’s favourite coaching question is ‘what brings you joy?’ For many women it has been years since they thought about their own happiness not in relation to others, therefore, to answer this question Hester encourages women to look backwards:

• What did you love when you were younger?
• What filled your cup?
• What made you excited?

Also what brings you joy doesn’t have to be huge or noteworthy, it can be things as simple as:

• Watching “trash TV” without shame
• Five minutes with a cup of tea and a favourite magazine
• A song on full blast and dancing round the kitchen

“It can be five minutes. It doesn't have to be singing lessons or something big. Just, what can you do for yourself today or this week?”

She also notes how easy it is, with ADHD, to literally forget that good things exist:

“The other day I was like, I forgot music exists. I forgot I can ask my Alexa to play some music and it will make me really happy.”

For that reason, she likes visual prompts – whiteboards, notes on your phone – to remind yourself of joy, not just tasks.

Sadly, many women still feel dismissed or gaslit when they bring up ADHD or perimenopause with their doctor.

Hester’s advice is clear:

1. Trust your gut

“I feel women are so gaslit by the medical profession. Trust your gut.”

2. Gather evidence

To be diagnosed with ADHD, you need traits that were present before the age of 12.

That might include:

• Impulsivity (Hester remembers pushing a neighbour into a pond and locking her teacher in a cupboard – then negotiating her way out of detention)
• High word count / talking a lot
• Lifelong forgetfulness, disorganisation, losing track of time

Write down memories, examples, school reports – anything that backs up your experience.

You’ll also usually need an informant form – someone who knew you when you were younger (a parent, sibling, long-term partner or friend) who can describe what you were like.

3. See a different GP if needed

If one doctor dismisses you:

• You don’t have to change surgeries – you can request to see a different GP
• Ask who in the practice is the ADHD specialist
• For perimenopause, ask to see the menopause specialist nurse if there is one

You will often know within a minute if this is someone who “gets it”, again, trust your gut on this. 

4. Use online screening tools as backup

Online ADHD questionnaires won’t diagnose you, but they can support your case. Use these to take screenshots, print your answers, and bring them with you to appoinments.

5. Teach your children to advocate for themselves, too

Hester models this with her 16-year-old daughter:

“I start her off and say, the reason we’re here is X, and then I say, do you want to explain more? She can advocate for herself. It’s one of the most important things you can teach your children.”

“You grow out of ADHD”

It was only in 2008 you could be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. Before that, they thought it was something you could grow out of.

“You can’t be autistic and ADHD”

If you're autistic, there's about a 70% chance you've also got ADHD, but It was only in 2014 that you could be diagnosed as autistic and ADHD. Before, it was like, pick a team – you're autistic or you’re ADHD. They didn't think you could be both.

If you suspect both, Hester recommends seeking a dual assessment, so you’re not sent down two completely separate pathways.

We asked Hester what one change organisations can make that has the biggest impact.

Her answer: communication.

“People worry we’re going to tell them to rip down walls and put new lighting in. But actually communication has the greatest impact.”

Hester’s neurodiversity consultancy firm Perfectly Autistic focuses on supporting everyone, rather than singling out people who already have diagnoses.

“You don't go, we think Janet's autistic, Gary's dyslexic and Jackie's got ADHD, so we'll treat them differently. You just treat everybody with that flexibility.”

Perfectly Autistic look at how to support teams as a whole and some of the ways they do this are by:

• Asking people how they like to receive information
• Offering both verbal explanations and clear emails afterwards
• Using visuals where helpful
• Making it normal to say, “I prefer this format”

These simple strategies don’t cost anything – however, they can transform how safe and supported people feel at work.