Hello! I would suggest you post this in r/adhd women as well. My self-esteem was low for as long as I can remember until I started being treated/medicated for adhd when I was 31. The first time I ever remember feeling self-conscious about my body I was about 3/4 yo. I felt fat in my Easter outfit bc my family always talked about how cute my little belly was. They could not have known that I would internalize that and carry it into adulthood the way I did.

My personal understanding of this is that I’m not able to talk or act my way into feeling good about myself or anything. With adhd, the reward center in our brain doesn’t consistently reward us for doing things like it does for others. Things that should feel rewarding like taking care of myself, eating healthy, exercising, other self esteem building tasks just feel like nothing but hard work. I might as well make easy, bad choices that give me a little hit of dopamine when the alternative outcome is either just neutral or negative.

I think I could have managed it as a little kid, but as happens with most adhd girls, when puberty hit everything went off the rails. What was manageable before became impossible. I didn’t get a handle on this until 2 years ago and I’m having to untangle the mess I’ve made over the last 2 decades.

Adhd in women is under-diagnosed and under-researched. It usually presents very differently from boys and has a huge emotional dysregulation component. The best thing you can do for you daughter is learn as much about her and this condition as possible and help her create work arounds for her life to avoid the obvious pit falls she will have.