October is ADHD Awareness Month, and Paris Hilton continues her advocacy work to make conversations around neurodivergence more visible.
The pop culture icon and reality entertainment entrepreneur’s 11:11 Media company is known for using her platform to protect youth, drawing attention to behavioral correction centers such as Provo, where Hilton was sent and experienced firsthand unethical abuse.
“So many of the kids at these schools are only there for ADHD,” she said at her first annual Unstoppable Summit. Along with other victims, they helped bring about Provo’s closure after years of advocacy and passing bills on Capitol Hill.
Related: Paris Hilton's Anti-Child Abuse Bill Passed by U.S. Senate: 'Still in Shock'
For Hilton, her story with Provo is deeply connected with her late-diagnosis ADHD journey and recognizing that she and so many other victims ended up in places like it due to their neurodivergence being punished instead of being identified early on and helped. She continued, “I hope by us speaking about this, that other people, maybe who don’t have ADHD, can understand and be more sensitive towards it and create environments where children with ADHD can thrive.”
With the Unstoppable Summit, Hilton threw open the doors of her home to creators and figures in media with ADHD, inviting them to build a space for understanding, celebration, and connection without the narrow lens of stigma. In its first year, Unstoppable carves out a compassionate community with the potential to keep growing and give more people, including late-diagnosed adults like me, a place to begin.
View this post on InstagramBeing neurodivergent is hereditary, and as a new mom, preparing myself to raise a child who might be too is so important. In my journey, I’m open to reframing my ADHD as both my biggest strength and recognizing its limits when it backfires on me. All of my experiences as a writer, both good and bad, are due to a “lack of risk aversion,” something I discovered at Unstoppable was a thing. Nancy Armstrong, Certified ADHD Parenting Coach and creator of the award-winning documentary The Disruptors, explained, “It’s not that you don’t see the risk; it’s just that the risk doesn’t win.” My mind was blown.
Diagnosis for women can usually come later in life, as masking is something we’re societal ingrained to do. For most of my life, I didn’t realize I had developed ways to assimilate and navigate social spaces like school as a kid and workplaces as an adult. In my experience, it was adopting methods to succeed and fit in while hiding how much my risky quirks fueled my resilience. Armstrong elaborated, “We can do better in focusing on strength because we focus on strength. The lion’s share of your interest will go toward things you’re actually good at and that you love, and that is so important”
Often, it’s not until a life-changing event, such as postpartum, that the toolset from masking can fall away. For me, it began with my infertility journey, where my hormone changes began to exacerbate my emotional, undiagnosed state, leading to a high-risk pregnancy and prolonged postpartum anxiety. I was lucky to be listened to by my all-women OBGYN team and a therapist who encouraged me to seek an ADHD diagnosis. Something that at the time, I was privileged to have easier access to, but that’s not the case for everyone and is not guaranteed to always be readily available.
Around my early postpartum months, I was watching Paris’ similar journey into motherhood and how her ADHD impacted it; she and one of my closest friends with ADHD definitely inspired me to seek testing. When I got confirmation, I felt a wave of relief, and research backed up why I felt this way. In the years after childbirth, studies have found that diagnosis rates in women rise, while, according to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in the U.S., women with ADHD find themselves experiencing postpartum mood and anxiety disorders.
At the summit, Dr. Sasha Hamdani illuminated why I felt so much shame and rejection during what was simultaneously the happiest moment of my life with my baby. “We just focus on the focus part of it. But for so many of us, it’s the emotional side that is so truly difficult,” she said about the role emotional dysregulation plays in ADHD.
View this post on InstagramInternalized ableism and misalignment with people in my life, while experiencing waves of emotional dysregulation, suddenly made more sense as she elaborated: “When you think about the brain processing emotion, you think about two different areas. Number one is the amygdala. This tiny almond-shaped structure deep in the brain, and that’s your emotional threat detector. And so that is hyper-responsive for highly emotionally sensitive people. And then the other part is your prefrontal cortex, directly under your forehead. And that is the very smartest part of your brain, in charge of judgment and decision making and processing. That is under-responsive. So now you have this super-responsive emotional side and this underperforming logical side. So your emotions are going to feel bigger every time.”
As a new mom, it’s a part of the journey that, at least, I got meaningful and valid takeaways from Unstoppable, even as a Latina writer without a big following. I just needed to hear that stepping into parenthood as fully myself, unmasked, while scary, would be enough for my kid to learn from. “It won’t be perfect, and you’ll have to forgive yourself, and you’ll have to go back and repair when you screw up. That’s really important. But the love is there, and that’s the most important thing. Love these children fiercely. They’ll accept you for the imperfect person that you are, and they’ll get through it.” Armstrong encouraged the parents in the crowd.
Photo by Miranda McDonaldPhoto by Miranda McDonald
Hilton emphasized that her children inspire her ADHD journey as a parent and shared how she’s aware of her ability to help improve the world around her: “I love working hard. I love everything I do. I love inspiring my children that they can go for their dreams and do everything they want in life. And be like, ‘Oh my god, my mom is now on Capitol Hill. She just passed a bill’. ‘Oh, my mom is now performing at World Pride in front of 100,000 people’. ‘My mom can do anything.'”
Obviously, gender, socioeconomic background, and access play a role, which is why the social media maven began to the initiative to uplift platforms, resources, and information distribution through creators of all sizes. Organizer Sarah Greenberg, psychotherapist and vice president of expertise and behavioral health innovation at Understood.org, shared, “When creators share their ADHD stories, it can help start conversations that may not otherwise happen. And pairing that storytelling with expert-backed information can turn awareness into real support.”
Being a part of a very public forum with inclusive creators and members of the media at Unstoppable was a powerful start in a country that can stigmatize women’s mental health until it’s too late. Greenberg looks to the event’s growth: “At Unstoppable, leading mental health and neurodivergence experts gave creators facts and trusted resources to better understand their brains, share their stories with confidence, and help their audiences find accurate ADHD information to help them thrive.”
And with the intention to include even more speakers and creators in future events, Unstoppable is partnering with auditory sensory tool manufacturer Loop, during ADHD Awareness Month, to donate a portion of proceeds from every Loop Engage to help fund 11:11 Media Impact’s neurodivergent-focused programming, education in partnership with Understood.org, content aimed at reducing the stigma around ADHD, and initiatives supporting early diagnosis within the neurodivergent community.
For information and Hilton’s curated ADHD Toolkit, visit here.
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