ADHD and Masking in South Asian Women

ADHD doesn't look the same for everyone. It presents differently depending on your culture, your family system, your social conditioning, and of course, the unique way your own brain works. For South Asian women, ADHD can be particularly difficult to spot. It gets hidden, masked, or overlooked, leaving many South Asian women to struggle alone, in silence.

The Pressure to Perform

Many South Asian women grow up in environments where external expectations are deeply intertwined with their sense of self-worth. There's pressure to excel academically, to be diligent, to perform. From a young age, you're expected to get top marks, pass scholarship exams, earn a place in selective-entry schools, and make the family proud. Meeting these expectations can become part of survival. Because it feels like the love, approval and acceptance of your parents and community depends on how well you perform.

So what happens when you're a kid with ADHD in that environment?

Common symptoms of ADHD include difficulty concentrating, retaining information, or sitting still. You might struggle to focus unless you're deeply interested in the task. Your brain might work in bursts of passion, rather than in consistent, linear effort. But when the expectation from those around you is to be focused on academics, high-achieving, and organised at all times, it feels like there's no space for that wiring. So you find ways to adapt.

The Cost of Adaptation

You push yourself. You study ten times longer than your peers. You punish yourself with harsh self-criticism. You disconnect from your body, your needs, your joy. You develop perfectionism, not because you want to be perfect, but because not meeting the mark feels unbearable. Almost life-threatening. You learn that failure means being less lovable. That love is conditional.

This isn't just about school. These patterns bleed into other parts of life too, like how you're expected to show up in your home. Especially if you're the eldest daughter, the pressure to be dutiful, obedient, responsible, tidy, organised is all amplified. But if your ADHD makes cleaning feel overwhelming, or you constantly lose things, or motivation simply doesn't come unless you're interested, you might feel like you're failing again. Like there's something wrong with you.

And that's the dangerous part. When the way you naturally are (messy, impulsive, energetic, nonlinear) doesn't match the image of what a "good" brown girl should be, you start to internalise shame. You see yourself through the disappointed eyes of your family, your teachers, your community. You think, maybe I am defective.

Children form their self-concept based on how they believe they're being seen. If they feel seen as not enough, that becomes their truth. Those beliefs often carry quietly into adulthood, where so many brown women still feel like they're holding up a mask.

Masking in Different Spaces

Masking doesn't just happen in academic or domestic spaces. It's social, too. Brown girls are often taught to be quiet, kind, obedient, soft-spoken. But if your ADHD shows up as hyperactivity or impulsivity (blurting out answers, talking a lot, interrupting, struggling to sit still), it can clash hard with those social norms.

And it's not just family who reinforce that. You get the looks from peers too.

"Why is she like that?"

"Why can't she wait her turn?"

"Why is she so loud?"

And again, those messages go inwards. Something must be wrong with me.

But here's the truth: there is nothing wrong with you.

What if those messages weren't reflections of your worth, but reflections of your community's conditioning? Of the narrow definitions they inherited about what's "right," "good," "proper," or "respectable"? What if the struggle wasn't in you, but in systems that were never built with your kind of brain in mind?

The Path to Healing

This is where healing begins: by externalising those messages. By recognising that they don't define you. You can challenge them. You can question them. You can refuse to let them be the lens through which you see yourself.

Because imagine this: what if your family, your school, your culture had understood your brain? What if instead of telling you to be less, they had helped you be more? What if they had helped you harness your ability to hyperfocus, your bursts of creativity, your wild enthusiasm, your passion, your relational intelligence, your compassion, your detail-orientation when you care about something deeply?

Because ADHD isn't about a deficit of attention. It's about how we regulate attention. It's about interest, stimulation, emotion, connection. And when supported, people with ADHD are some of the most brilliant, innovative, kind, fun, fiercely loving, and wildly alive people out there.

But the systems haven't seen that. Even the diagnostic label, "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder," frames ADHD through a lens of lack. As if there's something missing. But maybe the problem isn't with the brain. It's with the label. With the misunderstanding. With the systems that pathologise difference instead of embracing it.

What if we saw ADHD not as a disorder to be fixed, but a brain to be understood, celebrated, and supported?

That shift needs to happen in our schools, our diagnostic processes, our cultures, and our families. But systems don't change overnight. And so, for the brown girls with ADHD, living in between who you truly are and who you were told to be, how do we live in this in-between? How do we hold the truth that the systems are flawed, and still find love for ourselves within them?

Dreaming of a Different Future

We begin by reclaiming. Reclaiming our joy, our creativity, our playfulness. Reclaiming the parts of us we had to hide.

We talk to our inner child, the one who still feels scared, messy, too much, not enough, and we say:

Your lovability was never conditional. It was never based on what you did, or how tidy you were, or how much you could focus in math class. You are lovable because you are here. You matter because you exist. Your brain is not broken. Your energy is not too much. Your softness is not a weakness. Your uniqueness is your gift.

And then, we dream. We dream of a future where our communities are kinder to different brains. Where our cultures evolve to hold space for nuance and difference. Where our daughters don't have to unlearn the shame we've carried. Where support is built in, not begged for.

We may not get there tomorrow. But with every brown woman who chooses to see herself through loving, curious eyes instead of critical ones, with every voice that says "no more masking," we get a little closer.

ADHD is not a deficit. It's a different way of being human.

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This article is for general educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. If you are considering an assessment or treatment, please consult with a qualified mental health professional. You can read more about Sanduni’s approach to ADHD assessments here.