Several years ago, Rhoberta Shaler, PhD, interviewed me on the topic of whether women with ADHD are at greater risk for entering into a relationship with a narcissist or toxic partner on her podcast “Save Your Sanity.” 

I have not done any qualitative research on the subject, but based on my experience as a psychotherapist and a coach, I have seen plenty of evidence that it may be true. 

I was contemplating recording a solo episode on the topic when I learned that Dr Shaler passed away unexpectedly in April 2024. 

So, instead of recording something on my own, I decided to share the best parts of the original interview on her show in honor of her important work.  

In this episode, Dr Shaler and I explore how women with ADHD,  who tend to be quite intuitive often miss the warning signs that the person they are involved is a narcissist. 

We unpack everything from the addictive allure of unpredictable partners to the internalized shame that makes us more vulnerable to remain in unhealthy relationships. 

Our dialog offers a fresh perspective on the dopamine deficiency that drives us, insights on how rejection sensitivity, impulsivity, and the hidden brilliance of ADHD play a part in partner selection.

If you have ever found yourself in a manipulative relationship, or questioned your self-worth, this conversation will provide the validation you need to seek out more information and healing.

Mic Drop Moment: 

 "I believe that women with ADHD can sense the abnormality in the hijackal’s behavior and the inconsistencies in how they behave, but we override our ability to trust our intuition because of our persistent self-doubt and all the negative messages that we have internalized."   Diann Wingert 

Rhoberta Shaler’s resources on toxic relationships and narcissistic abuse:

• YouTube
• Podcast
• Website

The original interview on Save Your Sanity Podcast: “Have ADHD? You Might be an Unwitting Hijackal Magnet” with Diann Wingert

Don't forget to share this episode with someone who needs to hear it 

Additional resources:

“It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People” by Ramani Durvasula, PhD

I Believe Your Abuse support groups in the U.S. 

Note: 

This episode is intended for information purposes only.  If you suspect you may be in a relationship characterized by narcissistic abuse, please seek out support from a qualified professional.

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H: Girls tend to be more inattentive and distractible, where boys tend to be more hyperactive and impulsive. If a girl is chatty, but she can sit still, she's not gonna be identified, but her hyperactivity is the fact that she talks when she should be quiet. So I think it's not understanding the gender differences and also not understanding that very smart, high ability, even high achieving people can still have ADHD, but they've learned some workarounds and they've learned some ways to manage it, such as regular vigorous exercise that allowed them to fly under the radar of the diagnosis.

Now it seems like everywhere I go, I see people that have ADHD, and I'm guessing twice as many people officially there's twice as many people who have it than officially have it. Because most people who have it don't know. They think they're stupid. They think they're lazy. They think they are unmotivated. They think they just don't try hard enough. They have negative thoughts about themselves, but they don't know that they actually would qualify for a diagnosis. And I think that's one of the reasons why many of them find themselves in unhealthy and toxic relationships.

G: Wow that was a lot.

H: A lot to process.

G: Yeah. Because, you know, I think too we get, at least early on, would have a connection in our mind between ADHD and a person who processes kinesthetically. Like, just because a child would be sitting in class, for instance, tapping a pen and getting up and wanting to go to the restroom and do all of that, we would say, oh, well, you know, they're prime candidate for, Ritalin because then they'll sit in the desk. But the fact of the matter was, were they paying attention? Were they using that movement in order to stay tuned in?

H: Exactly.

G: Movement to distract and move out. So we've come a long way in that 30 years, but you moved into a territory that people listening really wanna hear about. Like, if that happened to be prevalent in your background or if that was something that went unidentified in you, that could probably be a reason too for you to look and say, that made me very attractive to the people that I call hijackals. Because if you are a person who is supposedly distractible, then the slight of hand games emotionally could go by you right?

H: You can gaslight a woman with ADHD easier than a woman who doesn't have it for a few reasons. Number 1, as I've mentioned, by the time she's an adult, she's already been thinking, I'm stupid. I'm lazy. I'm crazy. I'm unmotivated. I can't pay attention. There's often a lot of problems with memory. You know, everybody talks about walking into a room and forgetting why they're there.

But if you have ADHD, that's a regular occurrence. You may write down your grocery list and leave for the store with the list on the counter. Everyone does these things sometimes, but if you actually have ADHD, you do them on the regular. Well, you can imagine that self talk over time can become pretty malignant. I mean, a lot of women, even the really smart, really successful ones that I work with, the way they talk to themselves is just horrible and it's a habit. They learned it long ago, and they just keep on thinking, oh, man, why can't I just get my stuff together? Why am I so forgetful? Why do I keep making the same mistakes?

If I could just, you know, or I procrastinate till the last minute on everything, and then it has to be just right, so I miss the deadline. All of these things that happen. So when you have a hijackal in your life, all they have to do is listen to the way you talk to yourself, and they have some real good clues for how they can gaslight you. For example, expressing concern about your poor memory may sound like a supportive partner, but what they're really doing is sticking it to you in the most tender part of your low self esteem.

G: Yeah, they really like to pick at your vulnerabilities. And what a person who's longing to be known, and then they start to date somebody who is in the chameleon stage of being a hijacked call. So I will be everything you ever wanted me to be. I will listen intently to what makes you happy, and I will be that or give that or do that and so it's just like reeling you in. And in that situation, then you tell tender things. You've longed for someone to share your vulnerabilities with, like, you know, I really am forgetful. And it's something that, you know, I feel really badly about.

It's kind of embarrassing and the hijackal goes, oh, ding, ding, ding, ding. I know where I can get her later, or I can get him later because there are equal number of hijackals that are male and female, just like ADHD presenting. They present a little differently, but just as many of them. And they're looking for those vulnerabilities so they can go, oh, soft spot and touch it and then make then, like, why are you told me that, you know, I didn't make that up.

H: You were the one that brought up your memory problems. I was just agreeing with you. I mean, it's perfectly obvious you can't remember things.

G: Yes. Yes. So why are you making me wrong for that? You're the one who has the problem. And you can see, and everybody listening, you know, from listening to other episodes that a hijackal is looking for your soft spots and they will become all tender and mushy and sweet and loving in order to get you to divulge them and feel safe enough to have that connection that you really wanted to have and thought you were having. So they they'll even go back and hook you in after they've been nasty to you to get you to give them a little more ammunition to beat you up with.

So if you're ADHD and you are in that situation where someone is paying attention to you and you are feeling like you are safe and you divulge things, you are simply handing them a brief on how to embarrass you, how to keep you in low self esteem, how to keep you second guessing yourself, so that's a big deal. So if you're listening and you're thinking, okay, Diann just said women over 40 are the fastest growing number of people coming to this realization.

Wow, I never thought of myself, I was so busy raising my kids. I was so busy doing these things, I didn't even stop to think. Is that what's causing what's going on for me that I find so frustrating and causes me to think less of myself? So that might be a really good clue. So a per a toxic person, a hijackal, you know, for those of you who haven't listened to me before, that's my term. I trademarked it. Why did I trademark it, because I don't want you running off to the Google goddess saying, here's what's happening in my relationship, and then mistaking the Google goddess for a clinical mental health professional.

Yeah, she's not that, folks. She's an index. You put in behaves this way, she says, oh, narcissistic. Has nothing to do with you and that person. It has to do with the words you put in there. So I wanted to term that we could talk about the patterns, trait, cycles, and behaviors of people that are predictable and that you can notice over time. And I gave that the term hijackles because that's how those people behave. So if you're new and that that term is not part of what you've been thinking about, now you'll know what I'm talking about. So I wanted to ask you, something.

You had this quote, Diane, and I will read it for everybody, you said “We develop all this resiliency through our efforts to try to conform. Maybe your ADHD will be concealed, but your giftedness goodness will also be suppressed and that's a shame because it's your magic”. Now that dichotomy where you can get really caught, you're making yourself small with your self talk, and yet you have these phenomenal insights and skills, and the balance gets off frequently. And in that balance being off, you may be susceptible to a toxic person coming and saying, gonna grab you. I'm gonna pull you in right?

H: Yes. It's so remarkable and it's so confusing and contradictory to the person experiencing it and to all different. And just imagine this, you've got a brilliant woman. She may be highly educated and very successful and very well respected in her field. And very likely her ADHD is passing for normal. Before I was identified with ADHD, I knew there was something different about me. In fact, if you have ADHD as an adult, you've always had it. There's no such thing as adult onset ADHD.

You may be distracted, you may be anxious, you may have memory problems that are related to stress and trauma and anxiety and all kinds of other things. But if you actually have ADHD, you've had it ever since childhood. It doesn't emerge later on. But if you're smart and resilient and resourceful, and you've been able to cover it up and suppress it, it has been at the expense of what some people like to call your ADHD superpowers. What might they be? Typically, for an ADHD woman, creativity, out of the box thinking, problem solving, intuition, a unique perspective where connections can be made between things that other people wouldn't be able to recognize. You see many successful women with ADHD in the creative fields, also in fields that require them to think quickly under pressure because that's another trait.

And I think in public school, we have to sit still, be quiet, wait our turn, not bother other kids, not interrupt the teacher, not ask too many questions, not daydream, not wiggle, not fidget. And that's a lot for someone with ADHD. So all of the energy that gets devoted to suppressing all that excitement and creativity in the brain means that all the good stuff that comes with being this way gets suppressed as well. Well, fast forward, now you are a grown up and you are suppressing all of that in the boardroom. You are suppressing all of that at a Zoom meeting. You are suppressing, you suppress it regularly in your real life. But let's say your hijackal is your romantic partner.

Well, that's usually the one person that gets to see the real you, where you get to let your hair down, you get to take off your defenses, and just be who you are. So they're gonna be the one who knows that maybe you have addictive tendencies with sugar, or they're gonna be the ones that are gonna hear about all the crazy, risk taking things you did as a teenager, which is very common for those with ADHD. They're gonna know all of the things that you are most ashamed of about yourself. And there's also something else I should mention that's it's recently becoming better understood about adults with ADHD and that is rejection sensitivity.

G: Oh, yes.

H: Now, this is something I was hoping that we would talk about because rejection sensitivity is considered to be very common to people with ADHD, but it's only recently being well understood. In fact, most people refer to it as yet another acronym, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It can cause people to think that they're bipolar or a borderline personality disorder because when they feel criticized or rejected, by another person, even if it's just an intuitive sense because of the way the person is looking at them, or maybe they're rolling their eyes, or they're scoffing at what they're saying, or just turning away when they're still talking.

It could be the slightest breach, and it could be a manipulation of the hijackal. That woman with ADHD can really go down a shame spiral and then start to behave in a way that may look, let's just say a little hysterical. That will be something that the hijacker will absolutely capitalize on, thereby making the woman even less likely to trust emotional reactions. But yet, you can see how it would become a real dynamic that would just keep being perpetuated in the relationship and I've seen that in a lot of my clients, sad to say.

G: Oh, that's a really big deal because if you have been told you should pay attention, you talk too much in class, you do all of these things, those are those are a shaming thing, it's saying you are not good enough. You are not right enough. You are not appropriate enough. You know, there's something wrong with you. And so, yes, that sensitivity to rejection becomes hairline sense of justice for many people because, okay, that's a potential downfall for me. There it goes again and you start building up a place in you that goes, nobody wants me. I am never good enough. That is like self grooming with that self talk to get you ready for the hijackal or the swoop in and have a really quick period of time to enact what I call the gotcha factor.

That is that they want to see how they can pull you in, usually get you to agree to marry them, marry them, get pregnant or move in together, in the shortest possible time. So they have the greatest potential for having power over you. And if you're already pre-groomed for all of that, and then they come in and they pick up a few of your sensitivities and then they play on them, you are comfortably uncomfortable in that relationship, and somehow, you relax as well. You say, alright. Yes, that person sees me. They see that I am this incompetent person. They see that I have these flaws and everything. And even though the mind may go, how dare you, there's this uncomfortable comfortableness with the familiarity of being in that situation.

H: The confirmation of your deepest life long fears that I am broken. I am damaged, I am defective, and no matter what I accomplish or achieve, I will never be okay. That is a very insidious trap for this woman in that relationship.

G: Absolutely. Now if you're just hearing that and you are just hit right in the solar plexus, notice that. Notice that this may be new information, it may have been said in a way that you really were able to take it in. And if you're in a toxic relationship, now maybe you have a new idea of why you were susceptible to that. So as we're talking about these things and you become aware of that, know that there is many, many ways in which you can grow through this and beyond this, and that this is not a picture that we're painting of how your life is going to be. This is a picture of saying, maybe these things have been contributing factors to where you find yourself today. So we're susceptible if we're in that group. We're susceptible to a hijackal or coming in and picking us off like a nighthawk picks up a mouse right?

H: I say like a sitting duck in the shooting gallery.

G: Exactly. So, you said that one of the strengths of ADHD, the brain is the ability to make connections in an intuitive way so why wouldn't this help us see the hijackals patterns if our brain is so hyper capable of doing that?

H: I am so glad you asked that because it is confounding. In my experience and my belief and I've because I'm completely surrounded by women with ADHD, my sister, my nieces, my daughter, myself, and all of my clients and many of my friends, I think we are born with a brain that is very intuitive because we can make connections between things and sense things that are maybe not self evident to others. So I believe that women with ADHD can sense the abnormality in the hijackals approach in their behavior, in the inconsistencies between how they may behave at one time and then another, but we override our ability to lean into, to trust our instincts and our intuition because of the persistent self doubt and all the negative messages that we have internalized the things that were said to us.

I even had a teacher tell me that I raised my hand too often and I should give the other kids a chance. Now, I raised my hand a lot. You too huh, I raised my hand a lot because a, it helped me focus by anticipating the question the teacher was gonna ask. And as soon as I knew what information she wanted, I put my hand up. I had to sit in the front row, center seat so that I could stay focused. If I was in the back, I would be paying attention to the other students and what was going on outside the window. So, but being shamed for being eager, for being a quick thinker, thinker, for being able to anticipate what the teacher wanted and put my hand in the air instead of her thinking, wow, this girl's very bright and very eager. I need to give her some extra work to keep her occupied and stimulated.

I got shut down for it, and I looked around and other people are like, yeah, why don't you give someone else a chance? Now never mind, no one else wanted to put their hand up. But so here's the woman with these intuition instincts thinking, wait a second, why, why is he talking to me this way when it is exactly the opposite of what he just said the other day? But yet, the signal gets jammed, like the ability to trust that intuition and those instincts. The signal gets jammed because of all the negative self talk and all the internalized negative beliefs about herself combined with the hijackals charm and confident delivery of the information. She learns over time, I don't know what I'm doing.

And sadly, Rhoberta, one of the things that I help my clients with is restoring their ability to trust their own decision making capacity, because I believe they do know best. They are good decision makers, but that signal has been drowned out with all the negative messaging that creates self doubt and procrastination and perfectionism. Because if I can't make good decisions, and I can't trust myself, I'm gonna try to avoid making them as long as possible. And even when I do, I need them to be perfect or I'm just gonna feel doomed to failure. It's really a very exciting thing to transform because I think these women are so brilliant and have so many gifts to share with the world. That the biggest obstacle of all is their negative self evaluation. And if they happen to have a hijackals in their life who is gumming up, an opportunist.

G: Yeah, because that's what they're looking for. They're like that nighthawk who's looking for the, you know, the eyes.

H: Easy prey.

H: Yeah. Like, oh, there's one there's one who's kind of giving away their power because they've been groomed to give away their power. Like, other people can see that I am a procrastinator, other people can see that I'm not perfect. And then when that person says it, they, oh, yeah, they know, they see me. And, you know, a hijacker will say this phrase, and I want everybody to just perk up if you hear someone say this. I know you better than you know yourself. Dangerous. If that happens to you and you hear someone say that, even your mother and you're an adult, you say, no, no, no. Let me run away and evaluate myself in this situation because I know myself better.

And if I don't, I'm gonna go to a therapist and I'm not gonna have someone holding that over me. Because if someone says to you, I know you better than you know yourself, and they are grooming you to be their romantic partner, they're saying, I will get you to believe this and have power over you forever. And this is a very, very sad thing to do so I really take your point about the rejection and also the second guessing. Because even if you don't have ADHD, being with a hijackal will cause you to second guess yourself and question your sanity. It will cause you from the gaslighting, from the giving away of power, from just being a great human who gives people a second chance, the benefit of the doubt, a new beginning from having compassion. A hijackal sees that as, oh, great, live one here.

H: Endless second chances for me.

G: Yes. Yes. Yes. You know, the other day, I put out a graphic. Actually, I put it on my Facebook page, not just not my page. I actually put it on my profile because it's so important. And the graphic said, and I paraphrase, a person who apologizes without changing their behavior is not apologizing, they're appeasing you. And it's really important to recognize that difference because a hijackal will promise you everything, promise to change, and they may change for a hot minute. And in that hot minute, you go back to, oh, there, I wasn't wrong, they are that wonderful person. And you go back to being hooked on hope that that person you fell in love with who doesn't exist and wasn't real, that was their chameleon get yourselves.

You get hooked that you weren't wrong. That person really exists, and they're just twisting it long enough to get you to believe in them again. We call it hoovering, they suck you back in like a vacuum. You're like, oh, she was just about gone, but got her back got her back believing that I know her better than she knows herself. Oh, come to me, little girl, we got this nailed down. Now I can treat you as badly as possible because, of course, there's nothing good about you, you know that. You've admitted that to me yourself.

H: You've always known you were damaged goods and if you have an official diagnosis, just, I mean, if you think about it, I really would like ADHD to be renamed. It is a dopamine deficiency disorder.

G: I'm so glad you said that let me just stop you right there because my next question was gonna be do you really think attention deficit hypersensitivity disorder names what's really going on?

H: No, absolutely not. It is a dopamine deficiency disorder and frankly, Rhoberta, we are both clinicians. So I can say this to you because you understand all of the training that we've had in mental health and in the brain and how it works. If your brain has a hard time producing dopamine and a hard time getting the dopamine it produces to do its job, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It means there's a little bit of a chemical problem that may need some assistance and some support. But to say that you have a deficit and that you are disordered, I think is an absolute misnomer.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that rewards behavior by causing us to continue what we're doing. So when we do something that feels good and we have enough dopamine on board, we'll keep doing it. Well, no wonder people have a hard time following through, finishing what they start, walking into a room and forgetting why they're there when their dopamine isn't working properly. But that doesn't make them broken. It doesn't make them defective. I think ADHD has a terrible name for that reason because it's inaccurate and stigmatizing. And a lot of people, especially women, they are not hyperactive. They are distractable.

They're inattentive. They are second guessing. They are, they may be dreamers. They are often extremely creative, but they could sit for 27 hours a day. They're not the least bit hyperactive. So there's just so much misunderstanding baked into the diagnosis. I mean, no wonder so many women make it to 40 and beyond, including myself. And I had seen not one, but several different therapists in the meantime. They couldn't figure it out.

G: No, so well described, Diann. This is a new thing to think about, it's a new approach. It can cause you to sit back and take a new perspective and say, does that fit for me? That's really important to do and now I wanna ask the $1,000,000 question. If you can see all these things, why would a person with dopamine deficiency not step away from such a relationship? What would cause them to stay and take their lumps, which would go on forever and the lumps would get harder and bigger?

H: Okay. Couple of reasons that, we have already described somewhat. Number 1 is that they don't trust their instincts and their negative self talk allows them to be talked out of what they know in their gut

G: Yeah.

H: Is I need to get out of here and I think just the tendency to believe over time that I actually don't deserve to be in a healthy, loving, mutually supportive relationship because we both know I'm broken, that's number 1. Number 2 is that because of the dopamine deficiency, you've probably heard that many people with ADHD get involved with drugs, get involved with alcohol. Some of them even become criminals. It's been said that the prisons are full of people with unidentified ADHD. And the reason why is because of the dopamine deficiency, that's why we do things impulsively. Something seems like a good idea, so we jump at it.

It's kind of like, ready, fire, aim, as opposed to ready, aim, fire. So the impulsivity, the hyperactivity, the risk taking can cause us to jump into a situation without thinking it through. And once we're in it, unless we want to jump in and out of relationships, one after the other and feel really out of control. We might stay in a relationship even when it doesn't feel good to us because we jumped into it in an impulsive way. Maybe we were drinking. Maybe we were at a party. Maybe a charming stranger swept us off our feet, and we just impulsively, in true ADHD fashion, jumped in with both feet. And by the time we realized that we were getting some major red flags, we were already hooked.

And it is true that many women with ADHD, even very successful ones, do have addictive tendencies because that is part of the brain chemistry of dopamine deficiency. It's very likely that the thing they become addicted to is the hijackal because of the innermittent reinforcement, hot cold hot cold. The ADHD brain is very attracted to novelty. You've heard the squirrel and the shiny object syndrome comments. That's what they're talking about. When something is unpredictable, it grabs our attention better than anything. It's one of the reasons why people are always looking around and looking for something new, and they call that shiny object syndrome. Well, a hijackal can do a very good job of providing you with shiny objects because they keep changing their own behavior and the way they relate to you. So that can be a hook that can be very hard for a woman with ADHD to pull out.