ADHD and Anxiety: What's the Difference and What to Do About It

If you live with ADHD, chances are you’ve also experienced anxiety. In fact, it's estimated that more than half of adults with ADHD¹ also struggle with anxiety symptoms. The connection between ADHD and anxiety is so strong that it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Whether you’re dealing with a racing mind while experiencing hyperactivity, constant overthinking, or full-blown panic attacks, you’re not alone. The overlap between anxiety and ADHD (and sometimes depression, too) is more common than many people realize, especially in women, where symptoms can look different or be dismissed altogether.

In this article, we’ll explore the signs, causes, and treatment strategies for ADHD with anxiety, how the two conditions affect each other, and what it takes to manage both, whether naturally or with medication, so you can feel calmer, clearer, and more in control.

How to Tell if You Have Both ADHD and Anxiety

It can be difficult to tell whether you have ADHD, anxiety, or both—especially since the symptoms often overlap. However, identifying the presence of both conditions is essential for getting the right support and treatment.

Here’s how to spot the difference—and recognize when both may be at play.

ADHD Alone Often Looks Like:

Trouble starting or finishing tasks

Poor time management (e.g., time blindness)

Forgetfulness or constantly misplacing things

Frequent interruptions or impulsivity

Mind-wandering or zoning out in conversations

These symptoms usually begin in childhood and persist into adulthood. People with ADHD tend to struggle with executive function—planning, organizing, and staying on track—even when they’re not feeling stressed or worried.

Anxiety Alone Often Looks Like:

Excessive worry or worst-case-scenario thinking

Physical symptoms like a racing heart or muscle tension

Fear of judgment or embarrassment

Avoidance of triggering situations (social, work-related, etc.)

Sleep problems caused by looping thoughts

Anxiety tends to be more fear-driven and future-oriented. It may come and go depending on life circumstances and stress levels, and it often includes physical discomfort.

When You Have Both ADHD and Anxiety:

If you experience the following, you may be dealing with both conditions:

You procrastinate because tasks feel overwhelming (ADHD), then feel anxious about falling behind (anxiety)

You feel restless or fidgety (ADHD), but also hyperaware or on edge (anxiety)

You miss deadlines or forget things (ADHD), then obsessively ruminate over the consequences (anxiety)

You struggle with decision-making (ADHD), and second-guess yourself constantly (anxiety)

You’re emotionally sensitive or reactive, especially under stress

You often feel like your brain is on overdrive, even when you're trying to relax

These overlapping symptoms can fuel each other, creating a cycle of stress, avoidance, and burnout that’s especially common in women.

Signs You Might Have ADHD with Anxiety

Do you relate to these symptoms?

❒ I feel constantly overwhelmed, even with simple tasks
❒ I forget important details and then panic about what I missed
❒ I overthink everything and still struggle to take action
❒ I worry I’m letting people down, no matter how hard I try
❒ I struggle to sleep due to racing thoughts or restlessness

If several of these ring true, it’s worth talking to a healthcare provider who understands how ADHD and anxiety interact—especially in women and neurodivergent individuals.

ADHD vs. Anxiety Symptom Comparison Table

Symptom	ADHD	Anxiety	Both
Trouble focusing	yes	yes	yes
Racing thoughts	yes	yes	yes
Physical restlessness	yes	yes	yes
Excessive worry	no	yes	no
Impulse control issues	yes	no	no
Avoidance behaviors	no	yes	yes

Can ADHD Cause Anxiety? Understanding the Link Between ADHD and Anxiety in Adults

Yes, it absolutely can! ADHD creates a brain that’s constantly scanning, jumping, and processing at high speed. The mental overstimulation that's involved in ADHD—combined with executive function challenges like forgetfulness, time blindness, or difficulty completing tasks—can lead to chronic stress and overwhelm, which easily turn into anxiety.

It's been said that “In adult ADHD, comorbidity with other issues², including ADHD, “is the rule rather than the exception.” As many as 80% of people with ADHD³ will have at least one other psychiatric disorder in their lifetime, often including periods of intense anxiety.

If you feel like you're struggling with anxiety and ADHD at the same time, you might feel like you're:

Always behind schedule
Forgetting important details, dates, and responsibilities
Failing to meet expectations and “dropping the ball”
Letting people down and disappointing yourself

All of this can trigger a near-constant, low-grade feeling of panic, aka anxiety. This is often called “anxious ADHD”, and it’s especially common in women.

Why Behaviors of ADHD Often Overlap With Anxiety

Recent studies suggest that ADHD and anxiety share common neurobiological causes, including deficits in certain neurochemicals. ADHD and anxiety can develop through different pathways, and one may appear before the other depending on the person.

In some cases, early problems with executive function and emotional regulation⁴ (often linked to ADHD) can make it harder to manage anxiety, leading to a combination of both conditions. In other cases, chronic anxiety can overload the brain’s ability to focus and self-regulate, creating symptoms that resemble or worsen ADHD.

From a brain chemistry perspective, both ADHD and anxiety involve disruptions in key neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. ADHD is primarily associated with dopamine and norepinephrine imbalances, which affect attention, motivation, and impulse control.

Anxiety, on the other hand, is often linked to heightened amygdala activity and low serotonin levels, which increase fear and worry responses. When these systems are out of sync, it can lead to overlapping symptoms and make each condition more difficult to manage.

Can Anxiety Cause Hyperactivity?

In some cases, yes, people who feel overwhelmed or afraid may cope by pacing, multitasking, over-talking, or staying constantly busy to avoid anxious thoughts.

Many common ADHD behaviors can also be driven by anxiety, or mistaken for it, including:

Hyperactivity or constant movement, which may be a response to internal stress or agitation
Restlessness and fidgeting, hallmark traits of both anxiety and ADHD
Avoidance of tasks, often caused by fear of failure, perfectionism, or executive dysfunction
Trouble sleeping, due to racing thoughts, looping worries, or overanalysis

Helpful definitions while you read:

Executive dysfunction: difficulty with planning, organizing, or managing time and tasks, common in ADHD.

Hypervigilance: a trauma-related state of constant alertness often confused with ADHD hyperactivity.

Related: ADHD and Hormones

How Common Is Anxiety in Adults with ADHD?

Studies⁵ show that psychiatric disorders in adults with ADHD are very common⁶ and that anxiety is the most common comorbidity.

According to available research:

47% to 50% of adults with ADHD have an anxiety disorder that is considered “severe”
38% to 50% have a mood disorder⁷, such as depression, and 18% have major depressive disorder⁸
50% say they experience severe stress or generalized anxiety
38% have a social phobia⁹ (social anxiety)
20% to 30% have an impulse control disorder
15% have a substance use disorder
12% have PTSD¹⁰

Common ADHD Anxiety Symptoms

Living with ADHD and anxiety can feel like being stuck in a loop. Your mind races, tasks pile up, and before you know it, the pressure becomes paralyzing. These two conditions often reinforce each other, creating a cycle of stress, avoidance, and self-blame that’s hard to break without support.

Here are some of the most common ADHD anxiety symptoms to watch for:

Racing thoughts or inability to slow down: Your brain feels like it's always in overdrive, jumping from one worry or idea to the next without pause.

Procrastination followed by panic: You put off tasks because they feel overwhelming, only to be hit with intense anxiety when deadlines loom, as you feel like you're falling behind.

Avoidance of tasks that seem too overwhelming: Even simple things—like opening an email or making a phone call—can feel impossible when your executive function and emotional regulation are both under stress.

Constant fear of forgetting something: You live with a nagging sense that something important is slipping through the cracks, no matter how many reminders or lists you make.

Physical tension, heart racing, or restlessness: Anxiety shows up in the body, too. Tight shoulders, clenched jaw, and a general sense of unease are all common, especially when ADHD is left unmanaged.

ADHD vs. Anxiety: How Are They Different?

It can be tricky to separate ADHD and anxiety, especially since both can cause difficulty focusing, restlessness, and trouble sleeping.

Here’s a simple way to think about it:

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects attention, impulse control, and executive function from a young age. It’s brain-based and often lifelong.

Anxiety is a mental health condition marked by excessive worry or fear. It can be triggered by stress, trauma, or health issues, and may come and go.

The two are different but often feed into each other, as explained above. For example, attention deficit disorder anxiety might look like not being able to focus during a meeting because you're afraid of missing something, which creates more pressure, which then makes your ADHD symptoms (like lack of focus) even worse.

ADHD and Anxiety in Women

Women with ADHD are frequently misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, often being told they have anxiety, depression, or mood disorders instead. One reason this occurs is that many women experience more inattentive symptoms (like daydreaming, disorganization, or emotional overwhelm) rather than hyperactivity.

When anxiety shows up, too, especially in the form of perfectionism or people-pleasing, ADHD can go unnoticed for years. This can lead to a painful internal cycle of self-criticism and burnout, even though it can appear that you're “fine” and high-functioning to everyone else.

Research suggests that women with ADHD tend to be diagnosed later than men, and are more than twice as likely to develop depression¹¹ compared to women without ADHD.

The Link Between ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression

The connection between ADHD, anxiety, and depression is more than a coincidence. These three conditions are often linked due to overlapping symptoms and shared root causes.

Adults with ADHD are significantly more likely to experience both anxiety and depression¹², often due to years of unmanaged symptoms (sometimes for years on end), self-criticism, emotional overwhelm, and sensitivity to judgment from others.

For many women, these co-occurring conditions aren’t recognized until later in life, because their ADHD often presents without the stereotypical hyperactivity. Instead, it shows up as chronic overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, emotional sensitivity, and burnout, all of which can fuel both anxious thoughts and depressive lows.

In women, hormonal fluctuations—especially during perimenopause, postpartum, or the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle (such as during PMS or PMDD)—can make ADHD, anxiety, and depression symptoms even more intense.

Women with ADHD might find themselves constantly second-guessing themselves, struggling to keep up with daily demands, and feeling like they’re failing, despite working twice as hard to perform and keep up.

Over time, this can spiral into depression, marked by low self-worth, hopelessness, and fatigue. Women with ADHD have four times the odds of experiencing generalized anxiety disorder¹³ (GAD), and more than half of individuals with ADHD and GAD also have a history of depression.

ADHD often adds fuel to the anxiety and depression fire, creating a cycle of restlessness, irritability, rumination, and panic attacks layered on top of executive dysfunction. Recognizing how these conditions interact, especially in women, is the first step in getting the right diagnosis and support.

The Anxiety Hormone Connection

12 Ways to Reduce Anxiety Before Your Period

ADHD and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

There’s growing recognition of the connection between ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder¹⁴ (PTSD), particularly in adults who experienced childhood trauma or emotional neglect.

Living with undiagnosed or unsupported ADHD can be traumatic on its own because this often leads to environments where emotional regulation, attention, or impulsivity are punished or misunderstood rather than worked through. PTSD may also rewire and affect the development of a growing brain¹⁵, limiting the growth of areas that control emotional regulation, impulses, and self-awareness.

When PTSD is layered onto ADHD, symptoms like panic attacks, emotional flashbacks, or hypervigilance can intensify. This is why it can be very helpful to take a trauma-informed approach to ADHD or anxiety treatment, especially for women with adult ADHD and anxiety.

How to Calm ADHD Anxiety in Adults

Managing both conditions at once is not only possible—it’s essential. But treatment needs to be nuanced, especially for women, and should take into account trauma history, hormone health, and individual brain chemistry.

For help managing the overlap between anxiety and ADHD, check out my ADHD Woman’s Hormone & Brain Sync Guide, which is a FREE 5-day mini course designed to help women with ADHD support their hormones, focus, energy, and emotional balance.

Here are some strategies to calm ADHD anxiety:

Medication:

Some stimulant medications (like Vyvanse or Adderall) can worsen anxiety in certain people, while others find that treating ADHD reduces their anxiety.

Non-stimulants or the best ADHD meds for adults with anxiety, like guanfacine, atomoxetine, or bupropion, may be better tolerated. Always work with a provider who understands the overlap between the two conditions.

It's important to note: when it comes to ADHD and anxiety medication, it’s important to personalize your approach. Some adults with ADHD find that starting ADHD medication first reduces their anxiety by improving focus and reducing chaos. Others may need to stabilize anxiety first, especially if panic attacks or trauma are part of the picture. Combination therapy, under the guidance of a skilled provider, can often be the most effective route.

Therapy:

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), EMDR, and mindfulness-based practices can be especially helpful for managing anxiety, emotional regulation, and perfectionism. You can practice these at home using help from apps and videos, or seek out a professional to get you started.

Mindfulness and Meditation: These practices support improved attention, emotional regulation, and self-awareness by helping to quiet mental distractions and reduce impulsive reactions. Even just a few minutes a day of deep breathing, body scans, or guided visualization can create more mental clarity and calm.

Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy: CBT helps people learn tools for organizing thoughts, managing time, and coping with overwhelm, while also addressing patterns of negative thinking that can fuel anxiety or low motivation. Working regularly with a trained therapist can empower long-term change and improved quality of life.

Lifestyle Changes:

Consistent sleep, blood sugar balance, exercise, and nervous system support (like vagus nerve work or breathwork) are key to regulating both ADHD and anxiety symptoms. Here are some key steps to get started:

Regular Physical Activity: Consistent physical exercise—especially aerobic movement like jogging, swimming, or cycling—can help balance dopamine levels and enhance executive functioning. Regular workouts not only boost focus and mood but also help manage restlessness. Aim for at least 30 minutes most days to see lasting improvements in attention and mental energy.

Nutrition for Brain Support: A nutrient-dense diet filled with colorful vegetables, fruits, lean protein, healthy fats, and whole grains can nourish the brain and support mental clarity. Cutting back on processed foods and added sugars while emphasizing whole, unprocessed meals may improve focus, mood stability, and energy throughout the day.

Supplements and Nutrients:

There are several supplements that can promote a calm mind. L-theanine is a nutrient that has been shown¹⁶ to have a calming effect, without causing drowsiness. Passionflower is an herb that works with the GABA system in the brain to promote a sense of calm and soothe the nervous system¹⁷. The Dr. Brighten Essentials Adrenal Calm formula contains both of these nutrients, plus Ashwaghanda, magnesium, and herbs known as nervines, which promote a calm nervous system.

Magnesium: Helps regulate stress hormones and supports neurotransmitter function, promoting calm and reducing overwhelm. I suggest taking magnesium glycinate (found in my Magnesium Plus supplement) to assist in absorption and reduce side effects such as an upset stomach.

Saffron: Shown in studies to boost mood and reduce anxiety¹⁸ by supporting serotonin activity and calming inflammation in the brain.

Omega-3s: Essential fatty acids that improve focus, reduce emotional reactivity, and support overall brain health. Look for high-quality fish oil supplements that are third-party tested for purity, like the Omega Plus formula, which provides an appropriate daily dosage of omega-3s for most adults.

Ashwagandha: An adaptogen that allows your body to lower cortisol levels and helps the body respond more calmly to stress.

Rhodiola: Enhances mental stamina and resilience while helping to balance mood and reduce fatigue from chronic stress. You'll find Rhodiola in Adrenal Support, which can be taken daily, often taken in the morning to avoid disrupting sleep.

For more help managing anxiety— including with help from supplements and lifestyle changes—check out these articles:

Healing Anxiety with Functional Medicine

7 Natural Ways to Curb Your Anxiety

How Hormones Affect Mood Throughout Your Menstrual Cycle

How Women Can Reduce Holiday Stress and Burnout

ADHD and Anxiety FAQ

Can ADHD and anxiety be treated at the same time?

Yes, ADHD and anxiety can (and often should) be treated together. These conditions frequently co-occur, especially in women, and addressing both can improve focus, emotional regulation, and overall well-being.

Treatment may include a combination of medication, therapy, lifestyle support, and supplements. Some people benefit from starting with ADHD treatment, which often reduces anxiety by improving executive function. Others may need to stabilize anxiety first, especially if panic attacks, trauma, or chronic stress are present. A skilled provider can help create a personalized plan.

What are the best medications for ADHD and anxiety together?

The best medications for ADHD with co-occurring anxiety depend on your brain chemistry and symptom profile.

Some options include:

Non-stimulants like guanfacine or atomoxetine (Strattera), which can support attention without increasing anxiety.

Bupropion (Wellbutrin), which may help with both attention and mood, especially in women.

SSRIs or SNRIs, such as sertraline or venlafaxine, are often used to manage anxiety and can be paired with ADHD medications.

Stimulants, like Vyvanse or Adderall, work well for many, but can sometimes increase anxiety. When used thoughtfully, they may actually reduce anxious overwhelm caused by unmanaged ADHD.

A trauma-informed or hormone-aware provider can guide safe and effective treatment combinations.

How do I know if I have anxiety or ADHD?

ADHD and anxiety share many symptoms—like restlessness, focus issues, and trouble sleeping—but they stem from different root causes.

Here’s how to tell the difference:

ADHD usually begins in childhood and involves chronic struggles with attention, impulsivity, and executive function—regardless of how calm or stressed you are.

Anxiety is often more situational, with excessive worry, fear, or avoidance that’s triggered by stress, pressure, or specific fears.

If your brain feels like it’s chaotic and forgetful, ADHD may be the driver. If it feels tense and fear-driven, anxiety may be at the root. If it’s both? That’s common and treatable

Does anxiety make ADHD worse?

Yes, anxiety can absolutely worsen ADHD symptoms.

When you're anxious, your brain’s executive function takes a hit. This can make it harder to focus, remember tasks, regulate emotions, or get started on things—amplifying core ADHD challenges.

Anxiety also triggers mental noise, perfectionism, and fear of failure, which can lead to procrastination and task avoidance. This creates a feedback loop where ADHD symptoms feel more intense, leading to more anxiety—especially in women with undiagnosed or unsupported ADHD.

Calming the nervous system and supporting both conditions often leads to noticeable relief.

Final Thoughts on the ADHD and Anxiety Connection

ADHD and anxiety often overlap but are distinct—and both are treatable. Whether you’re struggling with focus, emotional regulation, or racing thoughts, addressing both conditions with the right tools—like therapy, medication, supplements, and lifestyle strategies—can dramatically improve your mental clarity and sense of calm. If you suspect you’re dealing with ADHD and anxiety, start by downloading my free ADHD Woman’s Hormone & Brain Sync Guide.

References

About The Author

Dr. Jolene Brighten

Dr. Jolene Brighten, NMD, is a women’s hormone expert and prominent leader in women’s medicine. As a licensed naturopathic physician who is board certified in naturopathic endocrinology, she takes an integrative approach in her clinical practice. A fierce patient advocate and completely dedicated to uncovering the root cause of hormonal imbalances, Dr. Brighten empowers women worldwide to take control of their health and their hormones. She is the best selling author of Beyond the Pill and Healing Your Body Naturally After Childbirth. Dr. Brighten is an international speaker, clinical educator, medical advisor within the tech community, and considered a leading authority on women’s health. She is a member of the MindBodyGreen Collective and a faculty member for the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine. Her work has been featured in the New York Post, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post, Bustle, The Guardian, Sports Illustrated, Elle, and ABC News. Read more about me here.