Last night, I found out Alysa Liu had ADHD. Better yet, she’s really open about it.

She told ESPN:

“I have ADHD, and I love situations that I’m not expecting. It gives me a dopamine rush.”

I really feel like I should have clocked this.1

Alysa Liu does have a slightly chaotic ADHD vibe. She’s rarely sitting still. She can appear charmingly clueless — like after her win, when she wandered off, just to be reminded that she needed to go get her medal. She says and does what she wants, even when it seems unexpected or a little silly. She cracks jokes at press conferences. She screamed, “Now that’s what I’m f*ckin ’ talking about!” into the NBC camera after her win (it has since become a meme). She cheers for her fellow skaters.

In short, Alysa is everything I was told NOT to be.

Many ADHD women slip under the radar because we often don’t unmask. We’re told it’s “not ladylike.” So instead of bouncing around and letting out energy, we internalize it — resulting in overthinking and anxiety. To everyone else, our chaotic mind is invisible. We just seem quiet, shy, or anxious.

Like Alysa, I have ADHD and am a figure skater. Unlike her, I am not an Olympic champion, have never done a quadruple lutz (although I have done a double), and don’t have the guts to color my hair or pierce my frenulum (I cried when I got my ears pierced).

But I have spent the last several years since my diagnosis writing about my own ADHD (my first post about it went semi-viral on Medium), helping others with my coping strategies, and generally telling everyone online about my neurodivergence.

Liu got evaluated for ADHD when she realized she had 145 unfinished homework assignments in her final year of high school. She struggled with procrastination, and like many of us, needs novelty and challenge to focus.

I also had an interesting journey to understanding my ADHD.

I was diagnosed at 11, promptly forgot (I didn’t take meds, for various reasons), and was re-diagnosed 20 years later when I erroneously sought diagnosis and treatment for OCD (a story for another day).

Like everyone else, I felt the joy when Liu skated at the Olympics. I was perhaps more invested because I’d interviewed her when she first burst on the Junior scene — a tiny 13-year-old who had the hopes and dreams of the skating community resting on her petite shoulders.

I was there when she became the first American woman to land a quadruple axel in competition, as well as the first to land a quad AND triple axel in the same program.

And I even interviewed her during the pandemic (over the phone, of course)— she’s since said that was when she realized she didn’t want the rinks to open again. She seemed lighter then, even if neither of us knew why yet.

Her Olympic win is even more impressive when you learn her backstory: she retired at 16 after a disappointing sixth-place finish at the 2022 Olympics, took two years off, climbed Mount Everest, and still came back to claim not only Olympic gold but also the World title in 2025.

She quit because she couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. She didn’t like feeling like a “puppet”. And she really didn’t like not making her own choices about not just her skating, but her life.

Liu came back because she missed the adrenaline rush, and skating again was fun. But with one caveat: everything — music, costumes, diet, training — would be on her terms.

And that turned out to be the missing link. By giving herself accommodations and taking control of her life, Liu showed us all what can happen when we choose to do things our way (not the neurotypical way).

What Alysa Liu’s burnout can teach high-functioning ADHD women

Many high-functioning ADHD girls and women (perhaps including Liu) never get diagnosed or get diagnosed later in life because they appear to be doing fine.

They excel in academics. They dominate in sports. They pour themselves into whatever captures their hyperfocus. From the outside, everything looks great.

But inside? They’re floundering.

In highly controlled environments — like elite figure skating — this can feel even more suffocating. The constant pressure to perform, conform, and comply collides with a brain that craves autonomy and novelty.

Coupled with demand avoidance, a pattern that commonly co-exists with ADHD, it can feel like screaming into a void. Nobody hears because you’re still showing up. Still producing. Still “doing well.”

But you’re hating every second of it.

There’s also a prevailing narrative in sport that struggle equals growth. That discipline is the price of success.

But discipline is often self-abandonment that looks virtuous.

It’s logging hours on the ice while your mind is quietly collapsing. It’s denying your own wants and needs so you don’t let anyone down.

I lived this. I wasn’t an Olympian, but I was a competitive figure skater for over 20 years. I was surrounded by Olympians who coached and trained alongside me, and I spent years wondering why I couldn’t just commit, work harder, and do what they did. My perfectionism made me walk away at 18 — but like Alysa, I came back.

And when I finally stopped performing neurotypically on the ice and distracted my ADHD brain enough to stop overthinking, I won my own gold.

But by 2020, I was burned out too. Skating wasn’t just something I did — it was everything I was. I skated, sold equipment, wrote about it, and built my entire identity around it. When I couldn’t skate anymore, I felt free at first. Then I tried to force myself back into the old molds. Until my body made the decision for me in 2023.

Sometimes our bodies stop us when our minds can’t.

What I admire most about Liu is that she didn’t wait for that. She chose to walk away before it broke her — and chose to come back only when she could do it on her own terms. She didn’t try to fit back into the old system. She built a new one.

That’s not just an athletic achievement. For those of us with ADHD, that’s a blueprint.

Alysa Liu is a role model for chaotic, high-functioning ADHD girls and women everywhere

To be fair, Alysa isn’t the only ADHD Olympic figure skater who’s been open about her mental health. Amber Glenn, who finished fifth, has also spoken about her struggles with anxiety and ADHD.

But Liu is the first women’s Olympic figure skating champion to openly celebrate her ADHD.

In a sport that previously prized tight control over bodies, speech, and appearance, that’s revelatory.

It makes her a figure skating icon for a whole new generation — one that makes its own rules and celebrates its own individuality.

And that should feel familiar to every high-functioning ADHD woman who has ever burned out and wondered why.

Be proficient in one or many things. Do them at a high level. Become known for those skills. Burnout. Do it all over again.

Liu interrupted that last part. She didn’t do it the same way twice. She changed.

ADHD brains aren’t wired for obligation. We need careers and pursuits that are novel, that bring new challenges, that keep us guessing. That’s why so many athletes, entrepreneurs, and creatives are neurodivergent — we thrive on the unknown.

But when those pursuits become routine, we lose interest fast. It starts feeling like slogging uphill. The dopamine dries up. Burnout sets in.

This is almost certainly where Liu ended up before her retirement (and where I was in 2020 also). At the elite level, skating isn’t a hobby — it’s a job. It’s life. She spoke of spending all day, every day at the rink, with no social life to speak of. That’s isolating.

And for an ADHD brain that needs novelty and connection to thrive, it can quickly become suffocating.

So she left. And when she came back, she made sure joy came first.

If she didn’t want to do something, she didn’t. If practice interfered with a social outing, she prioritized the social outing. She dresses and styles herself however she wants — not according to anyone’s expectations of how a figure skater should look.

This seems wildly counterintuitive, especially to those of us who grew up in sport. We’re taught that success only comes through pain and sacrifice. That “dedicated” and “disciplined” are virtues — when really they’re often code for “sacrifice everything else to be great.”

At least, that’s how it used to be.

But Liu did it differently—and more importantly, gave permission to others to do things differently too.

And while most of us will never win an Olympic medal, we can learn from how she got there. We can find ways to accommodate ourselves. We can be honest and authentic instead of performing what we think people want. We can ask for help. We can honor our own process — the wandering attention, the scattered practices, the FaceTime calls mid-warmup — and trust that when our energy is ready, it will show up.

We can be okay with being a little chaotic.

Because that chaos? It’s not the problem. It never was.

The biggest lesson we can learn from Liu? Be yourself. Do what you need to do for you. Follow your interests, because that’s where your success lies.

Maybe the only thing we need to change is what we lead with.

Alysa led with joy. And she won.