Your Brain Is Not Broken: Understanding Women with ADHD with Jessica Covington
If you have ever felt like there are five radio stations blaring in your head at once…
Like the exhaustion never quite goes away no matter how much you sleep…
Like you have spent your whole life wondering why everything feels just a little bit harder than it seems to for everyone else…
This episode is going to hit differently.
This week on The Chaotic Middle, I sat down with Jessica Covington, founder of Fitology, an ADHD coach, a former dancer, and a mom of two teenagers. Jessica has spent over 12 years studying, researching, and living with ADHD.
What makes Jessica's approach unlike anything else in the field is that she has never forgotten about the body. While everyone else in the ADHD space focuses only on the brain, Jessica asked a different question: what happens when you treat the whole person? The answer, it turns out, changes everything.
I learned a lot in this conversation. I have a feeling you will too.
How Her Son's Diagnosis Changed Everything
Jessica did not set out to become an ADHD coach. Like so many of us, this path found her.
When her son was diagnosed with ADHD in second grade, Jessica did what any determined, research-obsessed mom would do — she learned everything she could. She read, she studied, she dug into the science, and she started looking at all of it through the lens she knew best: the body-mind connection.
Her background was in dance, her college degree was in dance, and she had spent years understanding how movement and the physical body connect to everything else. So when she started learning about ADHD, she could not help but notice that nobody else in the field seemed to be making that connection at all.
A year into her research, she got her own diagnosis. Suddenly, everything made sense. The way her mind worked, the way she had always felt, the coping strategies she had been using her whole life without even knowing that is what they were — all of it clicked into place. Dance, it turns out, had been her ADHD coping strategy since she was three years old.
"I firmly believe dance was my coping strategy for ADHD all along, even before I knew I needed to cope with anything. I wouldn't have made it without it."
From there, the business naturally evolved. Her mission became clear: help women with ADHD understand their own minds and finally bring the body back into the conversation.
Why Women with ADHD Go Undiagnosed for So Long
Ask most people to picture someone with ADHD and you’ll probably get a very stereotypical answer: a young boy, probably bouncing off the walls, unable to sit still in class.
That stereotype is so deeply embedded in the way we talk about and diagnose ADHD. It ended up leaving an enormous number of women completely invisible to the system for decades.
The reality is that ADHD looks wildly different in women. It is quieter on the outside and absolutely relentless on the inside. Women with ADHD are often incredibly good at masking. They perform a version of themselves that looks like they have it together, while internally managing a level of overwhelm and mental noise that most people could not imagine.
They meet the deadlines, they show up, they do the things. And because they look fine from the outside, nobody thinks to ask what it actually costs them to do all of that.
The piece that Jessica says is most consistently ignored is emotional regulation. It shows up in the difficulty of managing emotions and how a seemingly small thing can completely derail a day. It’s usually brushed off as a personality flaw or an overreaction. What it actually is is a core feature of ADHD that women have been told to manage, suppress, and apologize for their entire lives instead of being given language and support for it.
"The shame that surrounds ADHD, especially if we don't know about it until later in life … that was something I set out to dissolve."
A late diagnosis is not a failure. For most women with ADHD, it is the first time someone finally handed them an explanation for something they have been quietly struggling with alone for years.
The Signs That Are Easy to Miss
ADHD in women is easy to miss because it often hides in plain sight for years before anyone puts a name to it.
Jessica describes it as five radio stations blaring in your head simultaneously, from the moment you wake up until the moment you finally crash at night. Not occasionally. Not when things are stressful. Always.
And what nobody talks about is how completely exhausting it is to have that level of constant internal noise and still be expected to show up, focus, perform, and hold everything together like everyone else.
The burnout that comes with that is something Jessica sees in almost every client she works with. It is a bone-deep, relentless exhaustion that has nothing to do with how many hours you’ve slept. It’s more about how hard your brain has been working every single waking moment just to keep up with itself.
Other signs that often get overlooked include:
Difficulty with emotional regulation
Trouble with transitions
Hyperfocus on things that are interesting and a complete inability to focus on things that are not
A chronic sense of underachieving despite being clearly capable.
Women with ADHD are often labeled as too sensitive, too scattered, or too much. In reality, they are simply running a system that requires a completely different kind of support from the one they were given.
"The overwhelm and the burnout — the exhaustion that is just not fixed by sleep. No matter how much sleep you get, it is still draining."
If any of that sounds familiar, you are not imagining it. And you are not alone.
The Body-Mind Connection Nobody Is Talking About
When Jessica entered the ADHD coaching space, she noticed something that surprised her: everyone was going brain first.
It didn’t matter if it was medication, cognitive strategies, or behavioral interventions. All of it focused almost entirely on the neck up. The body was an afterthought at best and completely absent at worst. For someone whose entire background was rooted in movement and the physical experience of being human, that felt like a massive missing piece.
So she built her approach around four core elements:
Movement
Nutrition
Metacognition
Mindfulness
When these four elements were combined with systems and tools that actually work for the way an ADHD brain is wired.
One of her most powerful tools is also one of the simplest. She asks her clients to think back to when they were six years old and remember what felt really good to their bodies. Whether it was dancing, spinning in circles, or digging in the mud, that answer gives her a direct clue into what kind of sensory input and physical movement that person's nervous system is still craving as an adult.
"Even if you don't have the time or the ability to move around, even just go sit in the sun and look at something green can make an enormous difference."
What to Do If You Think You Might Have ADHD
If you are reading this and something is clicking in a way it never quite has before, first of all, that feeling is valid.
Here’s what Jessica suggests you should do as next steps:
Start with a professional evaluation if you can access one. Evaluation options range in cost and accessibility, but the information you walk away with is worth pursuing.
Shift the work inward. Self-compassion first. Grace second. Then a genuine curiosity about your own specific mind, because no two people with ADHD are the same.
Start moving. Not necessarily a strict gym routine or a rigid exercise plan. Just intentional, enjoyable movement that feels good to your body.
Make small adjustments to your nutrition, mindfulness practices, and systems built around your actual life.
"To know one ADHD person is not to know them all. Figuring out what works exactly for you and making those adjustments is a key component."
There is no one-size-fits-all answer here. What works brilliantly for one person may do absolutely nothing for another, and the process of figuring out your own combination of supports is not a failure of the system. It is just how ADHD works.
Raising Teenagers with ADHD While Running a Business
Jessica started a family and two businesses in the same year. She would like everyone who told her that babies sleep a lot and she would get so much done during nap time to know that both of her babies had ADHD and did not sleep at all. Just for the record.
Now that her kids are teenagers, parenting looks completely different. It’s not necessarily easier, just different in ways that require an entirely different set of skills. The physical exhaustion of the early years, all the lifting and dragging and park trips and never sleeping, has given way to something that is harder to put down at the end of the day: the mental and emotional weight of guiding two human beings through one of the most complicated seasons of their lives.
With ADHD in the mix, that weight gets heavier. Teenagers with ADHD have a higher propensity for risky behaviors and dopamine-seeking habits — social media, substances, anything that creates a quick spike of stimulation.
Jessica spends a significant amount of time and energy not just trying to keep her kids safe, but teaching them to keep themselves safe. Because the goal was never to control them forever. The goal is to build something in them that holds even when she is not in the room.
She also offers a reframe that I think every parent of a teenager needs to hear. The more you push, the more they pull away. ADHD brains, in particular, are wired to resist authority and demand autonomy. It’s a pattern clinically described as a pervasive drive for autonomy.
"The more you can guide them and help them believe and understand that it's their idea and their self-interest, the better off you'll be."
Easy in theory. Genuinely hard in practice. But knowing it is the approach makes all the difference.
Answering the Chaotic Questions
At the end of every episode, I ask each guest the same three questions. Here's how Jessica answered:
If you could go back and talk to your 2005 self, what would you tell her?
"Work really hard right now on solidifying your values and knowing exactly what is important for you to feel like you are living in integrity with yourself — and never let go of that."
A new mom comes to you for advice. What's the first thing you tell her?
"Do it your own way. There are plenty of experts you're welcome to consult and plenty of peers who will be all too happy to give you advice, but at the end of the day, you really have to find your own way. And that's okay."
What do you hope your kids remember about you as their mom?
"More than anything, I want them to know they were loved beyond any words. Loved unconditionally. And I want them to be able to take that feeling and turn it inward — to love themselves that much, and take such good care of themselves that they are unshakable by any disaster that may come their way."
Where to Find Jessica
If you're a woman quietly questioning your own brain or a mom trying to navigate your child’s diagnosis, Jessica is exactly who you want in your corner.
You can find everything in one place at Fit-ology, where she offers both private and group coaching programs along with a library of free resources, downloadable tools, and low-cost classes.
If you’re not ready to commit to a full program yet, check out her library of free resources and her podcast, ADHD Alchemy.
You can also find her on:
Want to Hear More Stories Like This?
I came into this conversation thinking it would be interesting, and I left feeling like someone had just handed me a flashlight in a room I had been navigating in the dark for a very long time. Jessica is the kind of guest who makes you think differently about yourself, the people you love, and how we talk about mental health and neurodiversity in general. I am so glad she came on the show.
If this episode resonated with you, you are going to love The Chaotic Middle Podcast, where every week I sit down with real people navigating the beautiful, messy, unpredictable overlap of work, life, motherhood, and everything in between. No highlight reels. No perfectly curated advice. Just honest conversations with people who are figuring it out in real time — just like the rest of us.
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Because the world needs more conversations like this one. More honesty about the things we carry quietly. More women saying me too. And maybe yours is next.
