You’re sitting in the office when you receive an email from your boss: “What’s happening with the presentation you were supposed to send this morning?”
You look at the screen. Your heart starts pounding, and almost immediately you type: “Almost ready. I’ll send it shortly.”
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You may be dealing with one of the lesser-discussed aspects of ADHD: fibbing
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There’s just one small problem: you haven’t prepared a single slide.
That doesn’t mean you’re a bad employee. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a liar — at least not in the way most of us understand lying.
You may be dealing with one of the lesser-discussed aspects of ADHD: fibbing — a small, almost automatic act of “rounding the corners” that many women engage in out of pressure, overwhelm, shame or fear of disappointing others.
“From the outside, it can look like avoidance, and if you’re looking at it from the side, you might say: ‘She lied,’” says Inbal Green, an organizational consultant and business coach who specializes in working with women with ADHD. “But in the world of ADHD, I don’t call it lying. It’s a survival response. It happens when the brain experiences a threat, even if from the outside it looks like a simple question: Why were you late? When will it be ready? Why didn’t you do it?”
A significant underdiagnosis of girls
ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders. A broad review published in 2021 estimated that about 2.58% of adults worldwide live with persistent ADHD, and that the proportion of adults experiencing ADHD symptoms may be as high as 6.76% — meaning hundreds of millions of people around the world.
But when researchers try to determine how many of them are women, the picture becomes more complex. During childhood, boys are diagnosed much more frequently than girls, while in adulthood the ratio of diagnosed men to women approaches 1:1. A review examining ADHD in women notes that during childhood, approximately three boys are diagnosed for every girl, suggesting a significant underdiagnosis of girls.
“With boys, you often see more of the hyperactive or behavioral side,” says Green. “With women, it often shows up more in the emotional realm: emotional overwhelm, difficulty with emotional regulation, daydreaming, internal chaos. A girl may appear quiet, as though she’s listening, so she’s less likely to be diagnosed.”
Green, 42, is married and the mother of a daughter. For more than 17 years, she has worked with businesses, companies and entrepreneurs. She has worked with small startups as well as large corporations, but in recent years, instead of focusing solely on organizational structures, goals and processes, she found herself increasingly drawn to what goes on behind the scenes in the lives of women managing careers, businesses or households, trying to understand why the seemingly “small” things in life repeatedly trip them up.
“There are a million business consultants and a million organizational consultants,” she says, “but many of them simply don’t understand how an ADHD brain works, and certainly not how a woman with ADHD functions.”
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ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders
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What don’t they understand?
“First of all, the word disorder already causes damage. When people hear ‘attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,’ it sounds as though there’s a normal brain and then there’s a brain with something interfering with it. But ADHD is not a defect in a person. It’s a different neurological structure.
“The goal isn’t to take a woman with this kind of brain and teach her to function as though she had a different brain. The goal is to understand how her brain works and build tools around it that fit the way it operates.”
According to Green, one of the central experiences of women with ADHD is an almost unbearable gap between their internal abilities and their external results.
“They know they’re capable,” she says. “They know they’re intelligent, creative and ambitious. Then they ask themselves: Why can’t I send invoices on time? Why can’t I finish a project? Why am I always doing everything at the last minute? Why do I keep promising myself that this time will be different, and then it isn’t?”
In the workplace, that gap can be especially confusing because from the outside many women with ADHD appear highly functional. They are charismatic, quick-thinking, fast to respond, capable of saving situations at the last minute, able to improvise, generate ideas and shine under pressure.
But behind the excellent presentation that was submitted on time may be a sleepless night, tears, guilt and a sense of collapse.
“You might see that I showed up with a fantastic presentation,” says Green. “But you won’t see that I worked on it until five in the morning. You won’t see that the second the presentation is over, I’m already in bed crying and asking myself why I did this to myself again.”
Is this just procrastination?
“Not necessarily. There are things that look like procrastination, but they’re not. With ADHD, you can open a to-do list and your brain simply becomes overwhelmed. You can’t access the task.
“It’s not that you don’t want to do it, and it’s not that you’re lazy. Often there’s a tremendous amount of motivation. You genuinely intend to do it. You really do sit down in front of the computer. But something in the mechanism of starting, continuing or finishing gets stuck.”
One of the central concepts in this context is “time blindness.” Green explains that for many women with ADHD, time is not experienced as a clear sequence of now, an hour from now, tomorrow and next week.
“The brain often operates in two time frames: now and not now,” she says. “What’s urgent, what’s burning, what has a deadline in an hour — that can be handled. But anything that isn’t now becomes amorphous.”
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'Many of them simply don’t understand how an ADHD brain works, and certainly not how a woman with ADHD functions'
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How does that affect completing tasks?
“A woman with ADHD can sincerely promise that a task will be finished by Friday. She genuinely believes it. The problem is that in practice, she doesn’t necessarily know how to estimate how long the task will take, how many stages it involves, when she needs to start or what will happen if something goes wrong along the way.
“When that gap repeats itself again and again, the people around her may start seeing her as unreliable, and she herself begins to believe that she’s the problem.”
And is that where fibbing comes in?
“Yes. Fibbing is essentially a response to a threat. We’re familiar with the classic survival responses: freeze, fight or flight. There’s another response that receives less attention, called fawn — people-pleasing. That’s the place where, instead of running away or fighting, you try to appease the person in front of you in order to reduce the threat.”
In people, she explains, people-pleasing can manifest as excessive niceness, taking responsibility for things that are not realistically manageable, automatically agreeing to requests or giving answers designed to reassure the other person.
“Someone asks, ‘Can you take this on?’ And you absolutely can’t, but you say yes. Why? Because in that moment you feel uncomfortable, you can’t bear disappointing someone, or your brain experiences saying no as a threat.”
In cases of fibbing, the response may take the form of an inaccurate answer.
“Someone asks when it will be ready, and you say Friday. Someone asks why you were late, and you say there was traffic. Someone asks whether you’ve started something, and you say yes, even though you haven’t actually started.
“From the outside, it looks like lying. On the inside, it’s often an automatic attempt to stop pain, fear or shame.”
What happens in the brain at that moment?
“The brain activates a survival response. The amygdala, which is like an alarm button, switches on. In people with ADHD, it can switch on in response to emotional threats as well.
“Not only a tiger in the forest, but also an email from a boss, a message from a client or a spouse asking why you forgot something. The brain doesn’t always distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional threat. From its perspective, there’s danger and it has to react quickly.”
Added to this, she says, is a heightened sensitivity to rejection.
“None of us likes it when someone is angry with us,” she says. “But for some women with ADHD, that feeling is experienced with much greater intensity. It’s not just, ‘Oh, this is unpleasant.’ It can feel like unbearable pain. And then the answer comes out before you’ve had a chance to think.”
Fibbing, she emphasizes, does not necessarily stem from a desire to deceive. Sometimes it arises from impulsivity: the mouth answers before the brain has checked. Sometimes it stems from time blindness: the woman genuinely believes she’ll manage to do it. Sometimes it comes from filling in gaps: the brain supplies a missing detail, and she becomes convinced that’s what happened. And sometimes it comes from shame — the desire to avoid the moment when someone once again tells her she’s irresponsible, unserious or unable to keep her word.
“The problem is that after it happens a few times, you start believing that you’re a liar,” says Green. “And the people around you start labeling you that way too. But inside is a woman who genuinely wanted to follow through, genuinely intended to do it and genuinely believed that this time she would succeed.”
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Fibbing, she emphasizes, does not necessarily stem from a desire to deceive
(Photo: shutterstock)
How does it affect relationships?
“There’s a concept I use a lot called compassion fatigue. At first, a spouse may laugh about the fact that you’re late or forgetful. But after years, when they feel it repeatedly affects them too, the compassion starts to wear away. If people don’t understand that ADHD is involved, the relationship can end up dealing with very serious conflicts.”
Beyond lateness and disorganization, there are also the emotional intensities.
“Many people with ADHD experience things very intensely,” she says. “You can get excited in a huge way, fall in love in a huge way, enjoy things in a huge way, but you can also crash very hard. Then you ask yourself: Why am I so dramatic? Why do I make such a big deal out of everything? But it’s not that you’re creating drama. Sometimes you genuinely experience things differently.”
According to Green, mothers with ADHD may face particular challenges.
“Parenthood confronts women with ADHD in their most difficult areas. A child requires constant forward planning: What’s happening tomorrow? What needs to be brought? When is the birthday party? What needs to be prepared? What will the afternoon look like? And that’s exactly where things can be difficult for us.”
Alongside the organizational challenges, there is also an internal struggle around presence and patience.
“Many women struggle with themselves not to snap, to sit, explain, play and remain engaged in situations that don’t provide enough stimulation for their brains. Then a tremendous sense of guilt arrives: Why am I not like everyone else? Why can’t I be a calm, organized mother?”
So what can be done?
“First of all, stop working against your brain. Learn it. If you know you have time blindness, don’t try to defeat it with willpower. Measure it. Write down how long you think a task will take, and then check how long it actually took. After doing that several times, you’ll see the gap, and you’ll be able to start planning according to reality rather than according to what your brain tells you.”
What about tasks you can’t seem to start?
“I like preparing a list in advance of small, simple tasks — things that don’t require many decisions. Tidy up something small, send a short email, wash the dishes, organize a bag.
“When you’re frozen, you can’t always approach the big task, but you can stay in motion. Very often, the movement itself helps break the paralysis.”
Movement, she says, can also help in moments of emotional overwhelm.
“Sometimes you need to get up, move around, go outside and take a 10-minute walk. Nature is very helpful for calming down, and so is movement. The goal isn’t to force yourself to sit in front of a screen when you’re frozen. The goal is to help the brain return to a state in which it’s capable of functioning.”
Green concludes: “I think the most important thing is validation. Many women rediscover themselves at 30, 40 or 50 and suddenly say: ‘I’m not broken. There’s nothing wrong with me. I have a brain that works differently.’
“That doesn’t solve everything, but it removes an enormous amount of shame.
“In the end, the goal isn’t to turn a woman with ADHD into a ‘normal’ woman — always organized, always consistent, always calm. You don’t need to become someone else. You need to understand how you work.
“The moment you understand your brain, you can stop fighting it and start building a life that fits it.”