Sarah West I Certified ADHD Coach

Sarah West I Certified ADHD Coach Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm a nurse, ADHD assessor and certified ADHD coach specialising in supporting women who are late diagnosed ADHD and in perimenopause.

I knew something wasn't right.I knew I had ADHD. I knew I was experiencing perimenopause. I said both, at different poin...
19/09/2026

I knew something wasn't right.

I knew I had ADHD. I knew I was experiencing perimenopause. I said both, at different points, to my GP.

I was told I couldn't have ADHD because I had a job and didn't look hyperactive.

Later, when I thought I was in perimenopause, I was told I was too young and that I'd need a blood test to confirm it.

Neither of those things was correct.

Yet each time, I walked out questioning myself all over again.
Looking back, the problem wasn't that I couldn't explain what I was experiencing. It was that I had nothing tangible to show the person sitting opposite me.

Nothing that set out the signs of ADHD in women, how hormones can affect ADHD, why so many women are missed for years, or how much ADHD and perimenopause can overlap.

I hear versions of this story almost every week.

Women go into appointments having spent months, sometimes years, researching their symptoms. They know something isn't right, they know themselves better than anyone, yet they leave feeling as though they've imagined it all because the clinician doesn't recognise what they're describing.

That's why I have two free resources for you.

They aren't designed to diagnose you. They're designed to help you make sense of what you're experiencing, recognise your own patterns, and give you something practical to take into appointments.

• An ADHD symptoms checklist and assessment guide
• A guide to how hormones can affect ADHD during perimenopause and menopause

Print them, highlight them, tick the boxes that apply to you, and take them with you.

So that next time, you don't have to rely on trying to explain everything from memory. You can walk in with something tangible that helps you explain what you're experiencing.

Links to both free downloads in the comments.

What's the one symptom you've found hardest to explain to a healthcare professional?

You've spent years struggling with your ADHD.You feel desperate to find someone who understands what's going on and can ...
16/09/2026

You've spent years struggling with your ADHD.

You feel desperate to find someone who understands what's going on and can actually help you find what works for your brain.

You've read about ADHD coaching and started thinking, "Maybe this could finally help me."

Then you realise there's a sea of ADHD coaches out there.

How on earth do you find the right one, especially when getting it wrong could cost you money you've worked hard for?

Years ago, if someone told me they were a coach, I'd cringe a bit. I assumed it was all a bit tree hugging and airy fairy.

I couldn't have been further from the truth.

Done well, coaching can genuinely transform people's lives. Done badly, it can cause more harm than good.

THIS IS WHERE YOU NEED TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

ADHD coaching is currently an unregulated space, which means someone can call themselves an ADHD coach without meeting the kind of statutory professional requirements you might assume come with the title.

That doesn't mean there aren't brilliant ADHD coaches out there. There absolutely are.

It means you need to know what you're looking for.

ASK ABOUT THEIR TRAINING.

Where did they train? What qualifications do they have? What ongoing professional development do they do?

Don't be afraid to ask what neuroaffirming coaching actually means to them in practice either.

Not just what it says on their website.

What does it look like when they're actually working with you?

USE THE DISCOVERY CALL FOR YOU.

Most coaches will offer a free discovery call.

It's easy to think of this as them deciding whether you're a good fit for their coaching, but you're also deciding whether they're the right person for you.

Are they actually listening?

Are they curious about you and your experiences?

Or are they already telling you what you need to do before they've really understood you?

YOU'RE ALLOWED TO ASK QUESTIONS.

You're potentially making a significant financial investment in someone who will be supporting you with something incredibly personal.

You shouldn't feel awkward asking about their experience, training, approach or boundaries.

A responsible coach should welcome those questions.

Finding the right ADHD coach isn't just about finding someone who understands ADHD.

It's about finding someone who understands you.

If you've worked with an ADHD coach, how did you know you'd found the right one?

Three years ago I couldn't post a photo of myself online. A couple of weeks ago I stood in a sold-out room in The Exeter...
15/09/2026

Three years ago I couldn't post a photo of myself online. A couple of weeks ago I stood in a sold-out room in The Exeter Phoenix in front of forty-five women, and could have talked to them all night.

I'd spent most of my life feeling like the outsider, the weirdo, the one who couldn't quite work out why everything felt harder than it seemed to for everyone else. I tried for years to get answers through the healthcare system. Closed door after closed door.

Then I finally understood what was actually going on, ADHD, and later perimenopause on top of it, and everything made sense. This wasn't something wrong with me. It was never my fault.

I've spent nearly two years trying to get senior people across the NHS to listen, pushing for better training so ADHD and perimenopause in women get recognised rather than missed. One small cog in a very big machine, and machines that size move too slowly for the women who need this now.

I'm a nurse, and nurses are problem solvers. You see something that isn't working and the first thing you ask is 'What can I do about this?'

So I decided to start running face to face talks on ADHD and perimenopause, because women need the right information. What ADHD actually looks like in women and girls, how hormones affect a neurodivergent brain, why so many of us are only realising this now.

That night in Exeter, women learned not just from me but from each other. Tears from finally being seen, heard and understood by people who get it. Many swapped numbers and emails before they went home, and by the end of the evening, women were already talking about starting a monthly support group in Exeter.

My younger self, who stayed off every social media platform for years, wouldn't recognise the woman whose passion to help and support other women was bigger than her fear of speaking to a room full of strangers.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right?

I've already been asked to bring this to more places across the UK, so I might be coming to speak near you before long.

What would it have meant to you to be in a room like that, years ago?

I was sitting in my kitchen, too exhausted to even move. I couldn't think straight enough to know where to start, or wha...
13/09/2026

I was sitting in my kitchen, too exhausted to even move. I couldn't think straight enough to know where to start, or what to do next. All I wanted was to run away from my own life.

I had nothing left. Not because of one thing, but because of everything, all at once.

That week alone I was emailing teachers most nights about lessons my daughter was struggling with, chasing CAMHS for my other daughter's place on a waiting list nobody could explain, and still getting dinner on, doing the shopping, keeping the house running. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I was clearing my late relative's house too, because grief doesn't wait for a better time.

I sat there thinking I couldn't cope with any of it anymore. My imposter syndrome and RSD at work had been spiralling for months, and my confidence and self-worth had completely disappeared.

I remember thinking I'd probably be better off walking away from everything, because I just couldn't carry on. I didn't feel good enough, and I was too anxious to leave the house.

I was newly diagnosed with ADHD, but I didn't yet know how much hormones can affect it too, emotional regulation, task initiation, working memory, time management, organisation, not because of anything I was doing wrong, but because of what was happening with my hormones underneath it all. I wish I'd known that years earlier, it might have changed how I got to that point in my kitchen.

What I actually needed was somebody who properly understood both ADHD and hormones together, and the right support to start rebuilding from there.

That's why I do what I do now, so more women understand their own brain, hormones and body, and get the support they need and deserve. If I can help even one person get there, that's enough.

What would change for you if a clinician you saw understood both ADHD and hormones, rather than only one, or neither?

Over the years I’ve been given quite an impressive variation of anti anxiety and antidepressant medications. None of the...
08/09/2026

Over the years I’ve been given quite an impressive variation of anti anxiety and antidepressant medications. None of them ever really helped.

It felt like a revolving door. I’d sit opposite my GP and try to explain what was happening, exhausted all the time but somehow unable to sleep, my head full of a hundred different thoughts from the moment I woke up, always worrying and overthinking about everything.

I’d be told it was anxiety and depression and leave with yet another prescription.

The medication never really helped, and I didn’t know why.

I told myself it was my fault. That I was somehow failing, and that I was wasting everyone’s time. So I’d leave it for months, sometimes years, before going back and asking for help again.

Then perimenopause came along and turned the volume up on all of it. My anxiety increased, my confidence plummeted, my memory got worse, and my emotional regulation, my imposter syndrome, my rejection sensitivity, all felt magnified.

Hormones affect the brain, and research is increasingly showing that hormonal changes can influence ADHD symptoms in women, with oestrogen in particular playing an important role in the brain’s dopamine system, including dopamine production (Kooij et al., 2025).

Perimenopause can mean years of fluctuating and falling hormones. For women with ADHD, these hormonal changes can have a significant impact on the things that already take more effort, like focus, motivation, memory, organisation and getting things started or finished.

I thought I just needed to try harder. What I really needed was someone to understand the bigger picture.

If clinicians don’t understand how ADHD can present in women, or how hormonal changes can affect a neurodivergent brain, they may continue treating the symptoms they can see without recognising what else could be contributing to them.

How many women are repeatedly being treated for anxiety and depression, without anyone asking what else might be going on?

Reference in comments

I failed all my GCSEs at school. I went on to become a senior nurse. Then at 51, I started again.I’ve had quite a few ne...
01/09/2026

I failed all my GCSEs at school. I went on to become a senior nurse. Then at 51, I started again.

I’ve had quite a few new people follow me recently, so I thought it was probably time for a slightly awkward introduction.

I’m late diagnosed AuDHD, incredibly curious and apparently ask too many questions. I’ve never really understood why that’s a bad thing.

I’ve worked as a senior nurse in emergency surgery, intensive care and respiratory medicine, presented to GPs, appeared on podcasts and now deliver monthly webinars for ADHD UK on ADHD and perimenopause.

At 51, I gave up my NHS career and started my own business from scratch. Probably one of the scariest things I’ve done, but also one of the things I’m most proud of.

A huge part of what I do now is challenging clickbait and misinformation around ADHD and perimenopause. I care deeply about improving healthcare for people with ADHD, particularly when it comes to hormones, because we still have so much work to do.

Away from that, I cut the labels out of my clothes because the scratchiness drives me mad, wooden cutlery makes me feel sick and dresses without pockets are simply wrong.

I hate phone calls and would much rather send a voice note. I love chocolate, hate liquorice and I genuinely cannot sit through an entire film.

I studied photography at art school, I forget the rest of the world exists when I’m gardening and some of my best thinking happens while walking my two Golden Retrievers.

I grew up in North Cornwall, lived and worked in Oxfordshire for twenty years and now live in Devon. I also love wild swimming and have swum competitively in the sea along the North Cornwall coast and in the River Dart in South Devon.

Life has thrown some pretty big things at me too. I’ve had six rounds of IVF, I have two children who come before everything else and I had a severe eating disorder for 15 years from the age of 18.

I first called an ambulance when I was seven after my mum had an epileptic seizure while cooking chips (yes, those lovely 1970’s chip pans), and I’ve since had to perform CPR on two people in the street. I’m not entirely sure why emergency situations seem to keep finding me!

I buy cheap second hand phones because I drop and break far too many of them, I always read the personal information section of Wikipedia first and washing must be hung with tops by their bottoms and bottoms by their tops, or it makes my eye twitch.

I’ve never understood why people ask for your opinion if they don’t actually want an honest answer, so you’ll probably always get that from me too.

If you’ve been here for ages, thank you. If you’re new, hello 👋🏻

I’m really glad you’re here.

I used to get told off constantly at school for talking too much.Now I do it for a living.Caring for people has always b...
30/08/2026

I used to get told off constantly at school for talking too much.

Now I do it for a living.

Caring for people has always been hardwired into me. I’ve been a registered nurse for over 20 years, and now, as an ADHD coach, I combine my nursing background with my own lived experience to talk about how perimenopause and hormones can affect those with ADHD.

I’m late diagnosed AuDHD myself and mum to two AuDHD teenagers, so my work is informed by both my professional background and my own lived experience.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and not nearly enough reliable information reaching the people who need it. I always make sure the information I share is backed up by current, up-to-date evidence, because people deserve accurate information they can trust.

I want people to leave my talks with something they can actually use:

• A better understanding of ADHD and how hormonal changes during perimenopause can affect symptoms

• An explanation for symptoms they may have been struggling to make sense of

• More confidence to advocate for themselves, whether that’s with their GP, at work or at home

• A clearer idea of what support is available and where to go next

This week I’m bringing all of this together in a face to face talk at The Exeter Phoenix.

I’ll be talking about why ADHD can present differently in women and girls, and why so many first recognise it during perimenopause.

We’ll look at what we currently know about hormonal changes and ADHD, and why so many of us were told it was anxiety, stress or simply getting older.

There’ll be plenty of time for questions at the end.

There are just three tickets left.

📅 Thursday 3rd September
🕡 6.30pm to 8pm
📍 Exeter Phoenix
🔗 Link to book your space in the comments

What's the question about ADHD, perimenopause or hormones that you've never had the chance to ask?

For years, I thought I had bipolar disorder.What other explanation was there?I didn't know I had ADHD. Neither did anyon...
28/08/2026

For years, I thought I had bipolar disorder.

What other explanation was there?

I didn't know I had ADHD. Neither did anyone treating me.

My emotional regulation was all over the place, good for a stretch, then unable to cope, then back again, over and over. I felt like a complete freak who didn't fit in anywhere.

Every time I raised it, I was told it was anxiety. Or depression. New medication, more therapy, and still nothing changed.

Then perimenopause arrived, and it got even harder to ignore.

Nobody was looking for the pattern, because nobody knew what they were looking for.

It was like taking your car to the garage every month because the engine kept cutting out, and having someone replace the tyres, change the oil and check the brakes, without ever looking at the engine.

The problem wasn't that nothing was being done.

The problem was that nobody knew what the actual problem was.

I now know what was happening. ADHD, PMDD, RSD and hormones, all connected, and nobody, including me, ever knew to look for the pattern.

If you've been told it's anxiety, depression, or your hormones, and none of it has ever made sense, you are not imagining it.

How many of your own dots have never been joined up?

When perimenopause hit my ADHD brain, everything I'd always managed to keep together fell apart. I no longer recognised ...
27/08/2026

When perimenopause hit my ADHD brain, everything I'd always managed to keep together fell apart. I no longer recognised myself.

Since then, I've supported hundreds of women who've told me almost exactly the same story.

Is this ADHD? Is this perimenopause? Is it both? Why has everything suddenly become so much harder?

That's exactly why I'm so pleased to be speaking at this face to face event at The Exeter Phoenix this September.

It brings together my work as an ADHD coach, my background as a nurse, and my own lived experience of ADHD and perimenopause.

If you're able to get to Exeter on Thursday 3rd September at 6.30pm, I'd love to see you there.

I'll be covering:

-Why ADHD often presents differently in women,
-Why so many first recognise it during perimenopause
-What hormonal changes are actually doing to the ADHD brain.
-Why so many of us were told it was just anxiety, stress or getting older
-How it affects work and relationships
-How to access the right support
-What changes we can make in our lives to improve symptoms

More than anything, you'll leave with answers: a better understanding of what's happening in your own brain, knowing where to go next, and more confidence advocating for yourself, whether that's with your GP, at work or with the people around you.

Answers that many women spend years trying to find on their own.

📅 Thursday 3rd September
🕡 6.30pm
📍 Exeter Phoenix
🔗 Link to sign up in the comments

There'll be plenty of time for questions if you have them.

So if there's something you've always wanted to ask about ADHD, perimenopause, hormones, assessments or ADHD support, then grab your spot here.

Book your place soon as only a handful of spaces left.

Women shouldn't have to become experts in their own health just to be heard.This was one of the things I talked about in...
25/08/2026

Women shouldn't have to become experts in their own health just to be heard.

This was one of the things I talked about in my ADHD and perimenopause talk at Beautiful Days Festival last week, and it’s something I hear about frequently in my work.

Women regularly tell me what GPs have said to them:

“It’s anxiety.”

“That’s just your hormones.”

“You can’t have ADHD because you’ve held down a job.”

Nearly two thousand women have downloaded my free ADHD and perimenopause guides from my website, because they are struggling to find this information or need help understanding and explaining the difference to a healthcare professional.

I want to be very clear, I am most definitely not saying that healthcare professionals are rubbish.

There are many, many brilliant clinicians working incredibly hard to support women, and I know from my own experience in healthcare how stretched the system is.

But if clinicians haven't been given the training or information to understand both ADHD, perimenopause and how they can overlap, how can they be expected to recognise what's happening and effectively support the woman sitting in front of them?

Unfortunately, clinicians who understand both are still in the minority.

I don't blame individual healthcare professionals. The system hasn't given them the knowledge and training they need, but women are paying the price.

Women regularly tell me they haven't felt listened to, seen or understood, that their concerns have been dismissed, they've been given incorrect information, or had to research everything themselves before going to an appointment.

The consequences can be huge, affecting women's mental health, confidence, relationships, careers, physical health and quality of life.

Earlier recognition and understanding of ADHD and perimenopause could prevent so much of the unnecessary distress, disruption and impact on women’s lives.

We need a healthcare system that gives clinicians the knowledge and information they need, so women can get the right support without having to become their own specialists first.

Women deserve better. And this needs to change.

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