High-achieving with ADHD and completely overwhelmed (Susie Owens’ story)

From the outside, Susie Owens looked like she was gliding. Straight-A student, entrepreneur, devoted mom — and exhausted in ways nobody could see. When you’re an ADHD high achiever, masking is a whole job.

Susie spent years in therapy for anxiety, quietly holding it together. A second child tipped the scales. Through her ADHD diagnosis, she learned that her struggles weren’t a reflection of who she was as a person or as a mom. It was just ADHD. 

• Listen: Emotional regulation, and yelling, as a mom with ADHD (Patricia Sung’s story) 

• Read: Mental load: The invisible weight women with ADHD carry

• Watch: Renowned ADHD expert on how to juggle ADHD and motherhood

Susie Owens: I told him like, "Hey, I think I have ADHD." And he's like, "Yeah, but you're such a high achiever." And I'm like, "Yes, I am, but I don't think I'm letting people know how difficult it feels internally to get to that high achiever status."

Laura Key: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to "ADHD Aha!", the show where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they had ADHD. When you have ADHD and you're a high achiever, it can seem like you're just gliding through life. But what people don't see is the frantic paddling that's happening underneath the surface. My guest today knows that feeling well. I'm here with entrepreneur, mentor, and mother, Susie Owens. Susie, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Susie: Hi, thanks. That was great. Thank you.

Laura: You like the intro? Thank you very much. Susie, so you were diagnosed with ADHD in 2025. Correct? What was going on? How were you feeling?

Susie: Yeah, I would say — so my second daughter was born in May 2024. So I was looking forward to May 2025 to see if like, yeah, as I start to wean off nursing and I don't have to plan for pumping and all those things and storing milk, would some of my brain energy or brain capacity come back?

And I know postpartum can last way longer than a year, but just for my first daughter, I knew like things started to feel a little bit different after that first year. And that did not happen the second time. I was still really struggling, forgetting things, just feeling all over the place, these intense feelings of just being stuck and unable to start or launch into a thing, but feeling so overwhelmed and knowing I had a thousand things to do. So yeah, I was just really struggling internally.

Laura: Yeah, going from one kid to two kids is already so much. Dealing with postpartum, breastfeeding, nursing, pumping. I appreciate that you brought that up specifically because it requires so much organization and planning, and it's mentally and physically exhausting to go through that. Maybe on another show, I'll tell you about the day that our refrigerator died and I lost three months' worth of milk that I had worked so hard to save. But different conversation.

Susie: I feel that.

Laura: You said your deadline was May. How did things start to unfold that eventually led you to seek out an ADHD evaluation?

Susie: I had been in therapy with a postpartum therapist since my first child. All these years in therapy and being treated for anxiety, there still wasn't progress. I was like, there has to be something else to this. Like there has to be another layer to this. And so I started to do research about like, what could that be? I started to wonder like, oh, could it be ADHD? As I was kind of relearning a more broad definition of how ADHD could show up specifically for women and postpartum women.

Laura: You mentioned forgetfulness. What other ADHD-related challenges were you experiencing?

Susie: The emotional reactivity piece. That was a really strong piece that made me want to figure something out because I was like, I want to be a good mom, I want to be a present mom. But you get me to 7:00 at night and there's devices buzzing and the TV's on and we're getting dinner on the table or clearing dinner and I will just tense up and I can become reactive in that moment. Like, "Everybody turn everything off! Mom can't hear any more sounds or I'm going to fall out of my skin." So that emotional reactivity was kind of scary to me, honestly.

Laura: Those few hours between work and bedtime are very telling. They're hard for everybody because you're exhausted and everybody — you love your kids and you want to spend time with your kids, but you're also like, "Can you go to bed now? Because I need time for myself." But the reactivity that can come with ADHD and the filtering things out and figuring out what to give attention to is — it can be really heavy.

Susie: Yeah, and the guilt that comes from that too.

Laura: Yeah, because you're supposed to — like, this is your moment. You're supposed to spend all day at work dreaming about coming home to your family, right? No.

Susie: But I think that was one of the things that made me say like, "I have to take it out of internet, Instagram research 'quote-unquote' and give it to someone who can really help me think about it."

05:32 Susie discusses her struggle with emotional regulation and her decision to seek an evaluation.

Laura: So how did that go?

Susie: So it took me a little bit, I think, to build up my courage to bring it up even to my therapist, even though we had been working together for a while.

Laura: Why is that?

Susie: I think I felt like, would I be believed? Or is ADHD real? Is it just personal failure? Is it connected to all these other things? Like just not having a role model for this? I was not raised by my mother. I was raised by a single dad and he had a lot of help from my grandma, but I just wasn't around women in their 30s and 40s in close enough to see like what raising kids could be like. So I thought, okay, well, is it just a me thing? Like I just don't know enough or don't have these experiences to lean on?

And also there's a lot of stuff on the internet and that doesn't necessarily mean you're diagnosed with a thing. And my dad being a therapist and like, I know what the DSM-5 is and those kind of things, I just — I didn't know if I had enough evidence. Being a high achiever, I always feel like I have to have enough evidence to like prove a point, even if the evidence is my own lived experience and that should be enough.

Laura: Eventually you work up the courage to talk about this with your therapist. Would you be open to sharing what that conversation was like?

Susie: Yeah, I don't remember all the pieces of evidence that I brought, but I was like, "I think I have ADHD." And she kind of paused and reflected and she was like, "I haven't noticed that, you know, we've really been talking about anxiety." So we talked about how ADHD can drive feelings of anxiousness.

We focused for a while on strategies. For example, we targeted first the timeliness — like being on time to meetings. Setting timers for myself, putting reminders on my phone. The thing that really showed me that the strategies alone were not going to do it for me was when I showed up to therapy one day and she's like, "Hey, what are you doing here?" And I was like, "What do you mean? I have therapy. Like, you know, I'm here because I have therapy."

She was like, "Yes, but we decided — like, driven by me — that we would meet virtually because you said meeting early in the morning would cause you a lot of stress because you'd have to drop off the girls and get through traffic, so you said it would be easier for you to meet virtually." And Laura, do you know I did not even remember that conversation? Like truly, I didn't even remember that. So I was like, that's how I knew like, "No, I do have good intentions like for myself and for showing up, but like I'm just too underwater to even get to the point where I can activate those good intentions." And so I was just like crying in that meeting and I was like, "Yeah, I want to pursue actual evaluation and talk about possible medication."

Laura: I'm really struck by something that you just said about even your best intentions to manage your symptoms. You're trying to give yourself grace, you were trying to make life more manageable with these ADHD symptoms by making it virtual, and you couldn't even like remember that you had done that.

Susie: I'm like, yes, everybody see? Yes, this is what I'm talking about.

Laura: Was that kind of a breakthrough moment for your therapist as well to be like, "Yeah, maybe you do have ADHD"?

Susie: She definitely — she could tell like I was really distraught, really frustrated. She may have even used self-loathing, and I was like, "I don't try to be like that, but I don't like that this happens and like how frequently this happens and that it not only impacts me, but, you know, relationships and my family if I miss an appointment. I don't want to hate myself or hate these traits, but it's kind of hard when it makes life so much more difficult not to feel that way."

Laura: And it sounds like the strategies that you were working on, they were more like the task management and time management and not the emotional regulation part of ADHD. I mean, they're all tied together, I'm sure that helping with one maybe helps with the other, but what feels harder? The executive function tasks or the executive function managing emotions part of it for you?

Susie: I think that I focused on the task pieces first because they felt more accessible with strategies. I don't think I could have even materialized how to address the emotional component before I was medicated. I was just in too much of a spirit of being overwhelmed that it's taking me months of additional treatment, working with other ADHD supports and learning about it to even understand the emotional dysregulation part more.

And it was just going to be hard for me personally to implement strategies without being medicated to just get me to an even basis because I had been so underwater for so long, and I'm such a high achiever that I kind of needed to level set before. And so now I can do the tasky stuff and the systems and also start to work on the emotional strategies. And that also had something to do with me withdrawing my energy from other places so I could bring that energy back to myself. So like I have to — that high achiever — like, can you bring some of that focus on not trying to win ADHD but to understand it, which means like you can't be in all these other things in all these other places.

Laura: What is it about you that you think made this therapist hesitant to think that it would be ADHD?

Susie: I think I didn't even realize all the ways I was masking because I had been doing it so long. And so I probably wasn't bringing up all of those things. Like, for example, if I'm just talking about exhaustion. "Well, yeah, you're exhausted, you have little kids, you know, you're postpartum." But I don't think I knew enough to give the details of the exhaustion and that I'm burned out from being a high achiever for so many years and masking for so many years and the people-pleasing and the rejection sensitive — like I didn't know even those — the language or those words, which I think that made it probably harder to see the ADHD that could be underneath the anxiety.

11:51 Susie describes the evaluation process and her husband’s initial skepticism.

Laura: So you go for — for the evaluation. What was that like?

Susie: I'm smiling because actually I was just really grateful that there was an explanation other than personal failures or motherhood failures. I had made a list in advance, a note in my phone, about all these symptoms that I had. And I tried to be really specific about naming symptoms that I had even before children. I shared that list in advance and then we went through the 90-minute evaluation and I think at the end I was like — like, "Do I have it or like, what do you think?" And she was like, "Oh, pass with flying colors. Like, yes."

She said actually she called it classic ADHD, and I thought that was kind of baffling. Yeah, because it just didn't seem visible to other people, but also I probably wasn't giving people all the context of my childhood either. Like when me and my therapist started, it was around postpartum support and so we didn't talk about how I would have panic attacks over late deadlines in high school — like those kind of things that, you know, I came prepared with that list because I didn't want to forget anything in the 90-minute evaluation.

Laura: Very high achiever coded of you to make this thorough list going into your evaluation.

Susie: Yeah. She was like, "I'm so sorry you've been through this." Because ADHD can be very treatable and learning those strategies. And she just really made what I experienced feel common, and not in a way to dismiss it, but in a way to say like, "Yeah, there's help and there's support and this is something we can work on together," where I truly felt like, "I don't know how I'm ever going to work my way out of this feeling."

Laura: How did your husband react when you told him that you had ADHD?

Susie: Yeah, so I called him from the car and I think I was like laughing-crying because —

Laura: You didn't even wait to get home? You called him from the car?

Susie: No. Yeah, I think I was laughing-crying because again it was the hopefulness of like even knowing how to name it or having that name be verified. And he was like, "How does that make you feel?" And I said, "I feel excited to get help." Like this felt like a puzzle that I couldn't figure out and now I have some support and a pathway. And so that made all the difference.

Laura: Am I right that before you got officially diagnosed, you raised this with your husband and he was like, "No, there's no way you have ADHD"?

Susie: Yes. I told him like, "Hey, I think I have ADHD." I definitely was listening to "ADHD Aha!" by this time and I even sent him an episode.

Laura: Oh, thank you. Really? Truly?

Susie: Yeah, really, truly. I'm like, "Do you hear what this woman is talking about? Like this is everything that I'm talking about. This is me." Like I think I was crying listening to an episode in my car. It was someone who had a birth experience, a traumatic birth experience, and it really led to them investigating. So yeah, when I brought it up to him, he was like, "Yeah, but you're such a high achiever." And I'm like, "Yes, I am, but I don't think I'm letting people know how difficult it feels internally to get to that high achiever status."

And again, I don't think I had the language of that. Like how I am checking my calendar literally like every 15 minutes to see if I forgot something or is it in person or is it virtual? But even though he didn't see it, he understood that I wanted to pursue it and find out more.

18:09 Susie explores how ADHD symptoms manifested during her childhood and school years.

Laura: Let's talk about growing up. I have a feeling that I'm going to relate to like 99% of what you say as the straight-A student that I was, who was also panicking over things that ultimately didn't really matter. Tell me about what it was like in school for you.

Susie: Okay, well, Laura, I got this far without crying. I was a high achiever from a young age. I felt relatively self-sufficient living in a home with a single parent, and my dad was trying to build a career. He was going to community college and his bachelor's and master's and certification hours for therapy, so he was out of the home a lot. And it was me and my two younger sisters often left in the house. So, you know, I had to help them and try to help myself.

I didn't really know how to ask for help, though. So when it came to school and I could get relatively good grades, but I was severely disorganized. Like things in my backpack, the papers would be all scrunched up. I would try to like unroll them, uncrinkle them and smooth them out. It was difficult keeping up an agenda. I would turn in things late. But I was a likable person. Like likability helps you when you have ADHD because you're like, "Sorry, I'm 20 minutes late, but I know we're good friends." So deadlines were a real struggle for me. Thinking about like the science fair, even in middle school, turning in things on time all the way up to that time I was having a panic attack because I had an AP World History paper to turn in. I think it was five pages and like the night before I was like, "Okay, it's 6:00 p.m." I'm counting down the hours. "Okay, you got 12 hours to get this done before you got to wake up for school." Like 10:00 p.m., midnight, and I was just like, "How am I going to get anything from a blank piece of paper?" It was just really hard.

Laura: Yeah. What'd you do?

Susie: Cried and panicked. I think maybe I got something on the paper — not five pages, maybe three pages. So I did turn that in, but I think that teacher knew me well enough and he was like, "This is not your best work. I'm going to let you redo it." And me feeling so grateful. Yeah, that was very nice. It was just hard for me to ask for help ahead of time before the panic set in. I just — I didn't have — no one helped coach me on that. Like how to translate what was happening in my brain and body into asking for the support that I needed. And there were other people in my family who I felt like needed more support, so I felt like I just would try to handle things on my own.

Laura: Can you remember what it felt like in your body when you were — let's use the world history paper example. I'm always interested in how these things kind of manifest somatically for people.

Susie: Difficulty breathing, running a loop in my head, but also the time clock in my head. So that is propelling the feelings of anxiousness. "I'm going to let people down, they're going to see I'm a fraud, they're going to see I'm not as smart as they think I am, I should know better, you should definitely start a paper, a five-page paper, before the night before."

And all those churning thoughts just led to again a lot of things that maybe people would label as anxiety. Like, yeah, the shortness of breath, feeling physically stuck, like I've left my body, I just am going through the motions until everyone goes to bed and then I'm going to process all this myself. But then the flood comes, the flood of emotions and like your body's hot and — that nervousness is in your body and you don't know how to get it out. Having difficulty being able to start a task was something that was a thread through childhood through today. And so all that stuckness is kind of just in your body and it's making you tight is how I experience it.

Laura: Like you're trapped. And other people — you're like, "Why are — how are you able to just start?" Other people, you know? It's annoying. It's just annoying.

Susie: Yes. I've felt that way a lot, even in with the postpartum stuff.

Laura: Yeah, and waiting for everyone else to go to bed or to is interesting too. What is that?

Susie: I think it's maybe fear of being seen, of being vulnerable, of being weak. And it's so interesting to me that I felt that so young that I didn't want to be a burden to anyone. Like I knew my dad was working hard to take care of three little girls and I guess I just didn't want to add to any more stress for anyone else and I didn't want my sisters to feel like they couldn't lean on me or — you know, if I'm the most stable one and the most — in quotes, I'll say — the most stable one is falling apart, like what does that mean? What hope does any of the other ones of us have? So I felt like, yeah, I had to cover a lot.

24:42 Susie explains the duck analogy and her journey toward creating ADHD-friendly systems.

Laura: Is that a similar feeling to in the summer of 2025 when you're coming home from work and you're like, "Can everybody just go to bed?"

Susie: Oh my goodness, Laura, you just did that. What? That was just like a real-life ADHD aha moment. I'm not kidding. Wow. You're right, that — another thread from childhood to today is I need that alone time to recover too or to first process and then recover. And so if the noises are happening and the high touch, you know, kids are hugging you and touching you and all the things, like I feel like I need that cocoon of safety before I can emerge and go back into the day. My therapist and I, we would call it turtling — like I really like put me in my shell. Yes, like I just want to shrink into the shell. And we talked about that before even the ADHD that that was just a strategy that I did.

Laura: Let's talk about being a duck too, because I kind of used that analogy in the intro. Do you feel like people throughout your life have looked at you and been like, "She's just gliding. She's doing great. She's gliding"?

Susie: Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah, I feel like since I was little, maybe first in my family, but then in school and then that carries out until work. And it's interesting because you might get like accolades and awards because you're an achiever, but it can also be really isolating because you feel like people don't see you in your full humanity. But also it was difficult for me to figure out how to share my full humanity with people. And so that analogy of the duck swimming was really helpful because it helped me explain to people like my husband, people who did know me but didn't see the ADHD parts to say like, "I've been showing you like you see the duck gliding on the water, but I'm paddling furiously underneath to keep pace." And I'm doing that at work where, you know, I'm an achiever and I hit goals and my career continues to elevate and so there's like, "Oh, yay!" claps and applause, but it's like, "Yeah, I'm kind of killing myself at the same time."

And so how do I like slow down the paddling? Or how do I — one of the really things that I want to learn and build as I learn more about the ADHD is reveal myself. Like my real self and in places where it's safe to do that so that people can support me. Because I know people love me and care about me and want me to be well, but it's hard for them to activate and act on that if I'm not sharing what's going on.

Laura: What are some little ways that you think you might start to do that?

Susie: I think — like at home, asking for breaks if I need them. Like, "I'm going to take a 10-minute timeout." Another signal has been I asked for Christmas for noise-canceling headphones because I was learning about the over-stimulation. And so that has been a signal for my family — like, Mom has on her headphones. And it's not that I'm blocking out all sounds most of the time, but even if I put on like a low vibration buzz in my ear, it kind of is a buffer between the sounds going on in the home and so that will allow me to push through a task like cleaning up dinner or those kind of things.

Laura: How does bedtime feel to you now? I'm not — I wouldn't pretend that it's like magically now the best time of the day, but now that you understand yourself a little better, does it feel a little different when you come home from work? And if the answer's no, that's fine too. If you still hate it, that's totally fine.

Susie: I will say sometimes. It is getting better, right? I'm still — it's not even been a year being diagnosed and starting to figure these things out. But there are times where I'm just like really proud of myself because it is bedtime and the kids might have higher emotional reactivity and I'm able to stay at a neutral and not fall into that with them and can even sometimes help them to come back into — especially the five-year-old sometimes, "You know, can I have another sip of water? Oh, okay, I'm hungry."

Laura: They never go to bed, the five-year-old. They won't go to bed.

Susie: Right. So it's like, "You know what? I have to set boundaries with her too to not let myself fall into her every whim. If I do feel myself starting to build that emotional reactivity is — 'Hey, bedtime's this time, I'm going to — we're going to do our stories, maybe you can — I'll turn on some calming music for you, but then I'm leaving this room.'" Because then I need that hour to myself before it's bedtime or else then my bedtime goes late because I'm searching for refilling my bucket, whether that's scrolling or listening to music or whatever, and then I'm up late.

Laura: So you have a five-year-old and your other one's two now. Is that right? My kids are three years apart as well. I remember when they were five and two and that's a lot. So you hang in there, Susie. That's — it's such a beautiful time. I mean, you'll — it's just it's a lot. What has been the most surprising thing about ADHD that you've learned in your young ADHD journey?

Susie: One of the most surprising things, but also one of the things I'm most excited about, is these cool ways that people are making their lives and their homes work for them and not being afraid to that everything has to align with some picture-perfect ideal that we have. Like if it helps you to keep a basket in the hallway because you know that's where you drop stuff, just put the basket in the hallway, like who cares? So that's what I'm really excited for is to break myself out of this shell of what I feel like how things should be and create these systems that work for me even if they're not aesthetically pleasing or don't make sense to other people. Like there's a freedom in that that I'm excited to learn more about and explore.

Laura: Oh, cool. I love that. Great answer. Susie, is there anything else that you want to share before we hop off?

Susie: No, I don't think so. No, this has been great. Thank you. And you helped me with another aha about the time alone in the evenings. You know, that's another thing of like learning what works for you. So if that's a pattern that has worked for me, like protect that time. And so, no, I'm walking away with something again. So thank you so much.

Laura: Well, I walk away from all these interviews. A lot of this is me processing my own stuff as well with wonderful people like you. So I appreciate you. Thank you for listening to the show, for writing in, and thank you for sharing.

Susie: Glad to be here. Thanks so much.

Laura: Thanks for listening today. As always, if you want to share your own aha moment, email us at adhdaha@Understood.org or send a message to our voicemail inbox. You'll find a link in the show notes along with resources and links to anything we mentioned in the episode. This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"ADHD Aha!" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine.

Jessamine Molli: Hi, everyone.

Laura: And edited by Alyssa Shea. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Production support provided by Andrew Rector. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive producers are Scott Cocchiere and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.