ADD folks have a lot of great things going for them. They’re creative, highly intelligent and intuitive, as well. But ADD also makes you sensitive, and you may not be able to show your emotions, especially if you’re a man. Certain emotions aren’t proper in society, and it really doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. Most people go around hiding their true feelings for a good part of every single day. But did you know that doing this on a regular basis can hurt you?

Our endocrine system is made up of several different glands: pineal, adrenal, pituitary, pancreas, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus and gonads, which are our sexual organs. Each gland has its special nutritional requirements and responds in a unique way. In fact, it is the endocrine system that causes us to react in emotional situations. Every single feeling we have affects our body in some way. You really can’t stop it, no matter how hard you try because this system works together, automatically. Resisting emotions can damage this balance, when we continue to resist our true feelings, and if you don’t give your emotions free reign in one way or another, this resistance can make us ill.

But society makes it hard for us to express our full emotions most of the time. ADD makes it even harder. You feel as if you’re losing control. Since that makes people with ADD very uncomfortable, when an emotion overtakes us by surprise, we reject it.

For your own sake and the sake of other people around you, you need to release those pent up emotions. If you’re a private person and prefer not to show how you really feel about things in public, you can do it privately.

Anger is often associated with ADD, and is usually based in either fear or frustration. When you have a new situation to deal with, you may become angry because you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Or, you have to get some job done, but your ADD distraction mode is on, and you can’t get your work done. So, you become frustrated, and your anger gear kicks in. That doesn’t make you a bad person. Everyone experiences the whole range of emotions, ADD or not. It’s how you deal with your feelings that will help or hurt you.

When you’re very angry, go to a private place, put your face into a pillow, and growl. Or do something else that will make your frustration and anger go away. Try to avoid breaking things, unless it’s something small, like a pencil. Sometimes just the mere sound of the snap will help to dispel your negative feelings.

But just because you’re an adult, don’t think you should have grown out of sensitivity. That just won’t happen. In fact, sometimes, your emotions can get pretty intense, just like any other adult , even adults without ADD. Try not to bottle those feelings up inside because it will only hurt you. Find a harmless way to express your feelings and just let it all hang out.

In business, we refer to the word “fires,” a lot of times. These are “fires that happen,” not literal fires, but things that need to be taken care of. A fire could anything that someone else thinks is really important and they come to you, and try to throw it on you as your problem because when you have ADD, you’re probably good at putting fires out.

You may say, “Oh, let me go take care of that” because when you have ADD, you have a tendency to want to control things. But you can find people that will work for you to put out fires, to take care of interruptions. Stop your ADD brain from the fear of losing control. There are wonderful people out there that specialize in taking care of certain types of problems. Though your ADD may tell you that you need to be on top of everything, you don’t.

Here’s an example: If you regularly run into unexpected technological problems in your business, perhaps you have found a few people that are very good at responding, at lightning speed, and fixing any problems that you might run into with any of your websites. But maybe they’re not particularly good at keeping ahead of those problems on their own, given their own devices. If you just say, “Here, monitor this and make sure it stays okay,” they may not be good at that. If a problem goes unnoticed, it just causes a bigger problem. You still have to manage your delegates, so you can put your ADD mind at ease. Even when you delegate tasks, you are still in control.

Putting out fires is a symptom of systems–or a lack of them–and it’s that ADD fear of losing control. Even if you have people working for you, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to manage whatever the task is, stuff still happens. Some of the people that are best at putting out fires actually are ADD types. People with ADD are good at switching gears. People with ADD are good at changing directions. And though some would call it “being distracted,” people with ADD are good at allowing their minds to switch from one thing to another and taking care of something when it needs to be taken care of.

Most ADD people try to go one way or the other. Some have extremely strict policies about when they’re going to make appointments, how they’re going to do it, and are very strict, which allows for zero flexibility. Their ADD has them terrified of losing control. Yet, if something comes up, they’re in trouble. Rigidity can cause a lot of anxiety.

Or, it flips to the other side of, “Oh I guess I’ll just look at this open calendar for the week, and whatever comes up, comes up.” While that’s not what people say consciously, that’s generally what they tend to do. It’s one end of the pendulum to the other.

But you don’t have to be that rigid to control your ADD. You can have a flexible calendar. You can get all these things in. You can have the fires as they come up, if you need to, and you can deal with some of these things and manage your ADD.

It’s all about expectation–what other people are expecting of you. If you are always available to put out fires and your ADD has you always wanting to be in control, then people will expect you to always be available to put out fires. “Oh my gosh, We’ve got to pay this bill right away! Oh my gosh, we’re running out of money! Oh my gosh, a customer’s calling and they’re upset. Oh my gosh, we have to do this refund.”

You may have to put up a sign that says, “Use your own brain, mine’s busy.” If you don’t have people that are coming in, you still have phone interruptions, and fires, and so on. It’s about NOT setting the expectation. If you don’t set people up to expect things from you, they won’t.

Because girls with attention deficit don’t usually have the hyperactivity component that accompanies ADD, they’re thought of as being “emotional” or “difficult.” When they do have the hyperactivity factored in, then people call them tomboys or think of them as flaky or flighty. These girls also have more fights with peers because of their emotional spikes, and still, nobody recognizes that the girl is ADD. The interesting part is that they share all of the attention deficit symptoms with males, such as disorganization, impulsivity, and issues with time management, but still nobody recognizes the attention deficit side of some girls until they become adults. Usually, this is when their own children are diagnosed.

Yet, when ADD girls grow up to be women, many of the symptoms give them a very hard time. Girls are often expected to become multi-tasking women, and then, some definite issues that are special to women with adult ADD arise.

Many women, whether they have adult ADD or not, have the feeling that women have to be better than men to succeed in the workplace. This expectation creates an incredible feeling of anxiety for adult ADD women, who see things that way, and the anxiety is only increased because they realize that they have issues with organization and focus. But as they see it, society expects them to be perfect, when that’s just not possible for anyone, let alone someone with attention deficit. If a woman can’t meet the expectations she sets for herself or that she sees as society setting for her, she becomes depressed and her self-esteem just plummets.

Shame and guilt compound the negative feelings when a woman has trouble with things like getting her kids to school on time or having the family evening meal ready on time. Since women with adult ADD have difficulty with organization, her house is often a chaotic mess, and because of that, she prefers that no one comes over to visit. In fact, the stress that she feels over someone knocking at the door when she can’t keep a tidy house can be stressful, and because women tend to internalize their feelings, depression can set in.

And when adult ADD women have to work outside the home, there’s added stress. They have to get to work on time and perform their jobs at an acceptable level. But she has to deal with the added stress of what to do with her kids while she’s working, getting the groceries, dropping off cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, and all the other things a mother is expected to do. Due to her inability to manage time well and be organized, this can be very, very difficult. But that’s only if there’s a complete family, a two-parent household.

When an adult ADD woman becomes a single parent due to divorce, which is highly possible in adult ADD relationships, what happens? Now, she not only has her job, and her regular household duties, but now she has to take on the onus of the other partner, as well. Everything having to do with the house is her problem. What does she do when the water heater blows or when there’s a leak in the roof? Oh, she’ll deal with it like any other adult, but when so much is expected of her, it can be devastating, especially since these pressures on the adult ADD woman are not just external.

The hormonal imbalances associated with menopause or the monthly cycle can cause emotional ups and downs in all women. Yet with an adult ADD woman, these symptoms and emotions can be more intense.

When many girls with attention deficit reach maturity, they have learned to control some if not all of their symptoms. They may have a tendency toward impulsiveness, for instance, but have solved the issue with time management. But women shouldn’t allow the remaining ADD tendencies to control them. If they fall too far, they can find the dark side of attention deficit—depression, addiction, and crime. Exaggerated symptoms may require professional assistance, where women can learn to employ the good side of adult ADD–the creativity, the exuberance, and an incredible ability to hyperfocus, among others. Professionals can show women how to make ADD work for them, rather than against them.