Pressing Pause

Episode #159

ADHD – what’s in a label?

Gabrielle Treanor

12/11/2025

A question that can be asked when you’re talking with someone about your ADHD suspicions or suggesting you might pursue a diagnosis is:

“What do you need a label for?”

That one question can feel like a shut down of this new, fragile and seismic realisation about yourself and your life to date.

The real question is, what other labels have you been carrying around with you for decades and what’s been their impact on you?

Resources:

Listen to Episode 146 The fear of your ADHD not being believed here.
If what I’m sharing resonates with you I’d love to hear from you, email me [email protected].
Read my posts about the experience of a midlife, late-discovered ADHD woman here.
Find out more about the Quiet ADHD Club here.
You can find find my coaching services here.
And you can buy my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment, or the book gift box, and support The Wallich homelessness charity in Wales by clicking here.
If you enjoy the podcast I’d love you to leave a review on iTunes so that others can find it too

Transcript

Pressing Pause ep 159 ADHD – what’s in a label?

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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, author and writer. Join me as I share the experience of life as a quiet, introverted, sensitive woman diagnosed late with ADHD, and I’ll explore how we can work with our brains to feel more peace, ease and joy.

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The Quiet ADHD Club is my online community for introverted and sensitive women who have or think they have ADHD to find understanding, support and connection with other women who just get it.

In the Club as well as accountability threads, body-doubling sessions, Q&As and community calls, we also take a deep dive each month into a particular aspect of our ADHD. In past months we’ve looked at overcoming procrastination, calming our overthinking brains, the connection between our hormones and our ADHD, dealing with RSD and our super sensitivity to criticism, how to eat well with ADHD, how to find focus and drop distraction and the power of being self-compassionate. And this month we’re focusing on decluttering and managing all the stuff in our homes with a guest expert.

But as well as all the explanation, information and practical tools, what members find in the Quiet ADHD Club is a place where finally they feel seen and understood, where they’re validated and accepted, and a place where they’re welcomed as their whole selves.

To find out more and join, go to quietadhd.com.

Right then, on with the episode.

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Welcome to episode 159. A question that can be asked when you’re talking with someone about your ADHD suspicions or suggesting you might pursue a diagnosis is:

“What do you need a label for?”

Seven little words can hold such weight. With the particular use of the word ‘label’ the person who’s sharing their ADHD suspicions hears an implication that it is a label and we shouldn’t want it. We shouldn’t be going down this path of investigation or pursuing a diagnosis or even talking about it openly.

When you start to share that you think you might have ADHD it can feel tender, exposing, and what you really need is for your vulnerability to be received with an open mind and heart. Because, chances are, you’re unsure yourself as the idea you could have been neurodivergent all this time – that it could explain so much about you and your life – is blowing your mind somewhat.

So, for someone you’re opening up with to ask, “What do you need a label for?” it feels like they’re shutting you down. Dismissing what is a seismic revelation as unnecessary attention-seeking. You’ve doubted yourself most of your life and just as you’re beginning to see a chink of believable light this one question slams shut the door.

In episode 146 I talk about the fear of being seen as jumping on the bandwagon when you suggest you may have ADHD so if you haven’t already do listen to that episode. I’ll include a link in the show notes.

Here’s the thing: we already have labels, many of them in fact.

Labels that others gave to us, that we took on board, that we gave ourselves.

Labels we’ve carried around since childhood that have shaped us, stopped us, gaslit us.

Labels that made us feel not enough and too much at the same time.

Labels such as: intense, faddish, careless, scatterbrained, lazy, erratic, too quiet, too sensitive, disorganised, over-organised, flaky, a daydreamer, a worrier, moody, forgetful, weird, a bit crap…

Now here’s the real thing: ADHD is not a label, it’s an explanation. It’s an understanding.

Your ADHD discovery makes sense, probably for the first time in all your decades, of who you are. Why you think the way you do. Why you feel and behave the way you do. It explains what feels difficult and different, as well as what feels easy. It lifts the heavy cloak of confusion, bewilderment and shame that you’ve carried all your life because things never felt quite right, you were never quite right (in others’ eyes at least).

So, what do we need an ADHD label for?

To replace and free us from the many untrue, harmful labels given to us since we were children, with an explanation that our brains aren’t wrong they’re different, and an understanding that we can work with

Thanks for listening, until next time.

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