“Life After an ADHD Diagnosis: Healing the Parts That Hurt”

Receiving an ADHD diagnosis can be a pivotal moment in your life. It marks the beginning of understanding how your brain works and what supports can help — whether that’s medication, therapy, or building executive functioning skills. But beyond the practical tools, this period also offers something deeper: a chance to heal.

For many of us, living with undiagnosed ADHD meant constantly feeling like we had to try harder, stay up later, and push beyond our limits — all while wondering why it was still so hard to keep up. This can lead to deep-seated beliefs that we’re lazy, unreliable, or simply not good enough (Russell, Hoxha, & Murray, 2025). Over time, these beliefs can create internal "parts" of ourselves that are driven by fear and shame.

You might recognise some of these parts:

o   A critical inner bully that says you're not doing enough.

o   An overachiever who’s never satisfied, no matter how much you accomplish.

o   An over-controller who micromanages tasks or routines, often to manage anxiety.

These parts often begin as adaptive strategies — in psychology, that means they helped us cope with overwhelming demands or protect us from criticism or rejection. But over time, they can lead to burnout, self-blame, and emotional exhaustion.

Working with Our Parts

Understanding and working with these parts is where therapy can be life-changing. While cognitive strategies are helpful (e.g. reminding yourself you’re not a failure because you’ve finished your degree or are raising beautiful children), that doesn’t always shift the feeling. Sometimes you still feel like a failure — and that’s where compassion-based and integrative therapies can help.

One therapy framework that brings both emotional healing and cognitive growth is schema therapy. Schema therapy helps you explore how painful early experiences have shaped your beliefs and emotional patterns. It also helps you build your Healthy Adult part — the part of you that is warm, compassionate, fair, realistic, and protective of your needs (Young, Klosko & Weishaar, 2003).

 Reframing ADHD Challenges

Let me share a personal example. One of my ADHD challenges is working memory. In practice, this sometimes means I’ll tell a client I’ll send them a resource, then forget to follow through. When that happens, the “critical bully” part of me might say, “You’re unreliable — how can you be a good psychologist if you can’t remember something so simple?”

But when I bring forward my Healthy Adult, she reframes it with kindness:

"Working memory challenges are part of your ADHD — it’s not a moral failing. What you can do is put systems in place to support yourself. And if you forget something occasionally, that doesn’t make you a bad psychologist — it makes you human."

This shift doesn’t happen overnight. But one powerful first step is simply noticing when those unhelpful parts show up. Ask yourself:

“Is this part of me helping or hindering right now?”

If it’s hindering, try gently acknowledging it: “I know you're trying to protect me, but right now you’re making things harder.”

Moving Forward with Support

You can change the way ADHD impacts your self-worth — not by “fixing” yourself, but by healing the parts of you that carry pain, fear, or shame. Therapies like schema therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), compassion-focused therapy (CFT), and ACT with a parts-based approach can all help you reconnect with your values, rebuild self-compassion, and live in a way that feels more aligned.

If you’re ready to start healing these parts of yourself, consider connecting with a psychologist trained in these approaches. You don’t have to do this alone.

You're not broken — you're just learning a new way to care for yourself.

For support, arrange your appointment at MindCare Clinics.