Kadınlarda Dikkat Dağınıklığı (The Queen of Distraction)

The original title is The Queen of Distraction. It came out from New Harbinger in 2014. Its subtitle promises how women with ADHD can conquer chaos, find their focus and get more done.

Terry Matlen is a psychotherapist, consultant and ADHD coach with a master's degree in social work. She herself has ADHD and is the mother of a daughter with ADHD. She is the founder of ADDconsults, a long-running online resource site for women with ADHD. She had earlier written another book on survival tips for women with ADHD.

The foreword was written by Sari Solden.

Its Turkish edition came out from Destek Yayınları in December 2025. Its full title is Kadınlarda Dikkat Dağınıklığı: DEHB'li Kadınlar Kaosu Nasıl Aşar, Odağını Nasıl Bulur ve Daha Fazla İş Bitirir?, translated by Zehra Gül Köroğlu. I saw the details on Kitapyurdu. In the Turkish title the "queen of distraction" joke in the original name is lost, but it says more clearly what the book is.

The titles are playful, the content is housework

The book has eleven chapters. The chapter names are all built on jokes, and this sums up the book's tone well.

Roughly, it goes like this:

1. What ADHD is, how it looks in women and girls
2. Piles of stuff and clutter
3. Grocery shopping, meal planning and the meltdown in the supermarket
4. Time
5. Clothes and getting dressed
6. Motherhood with ADHD
7. Love, relationships and sexuality
8. Sensory and emotional sensitivity
9. Hormones
10. Work life
11. Putting the pieces together

Looking at this list you see at once what the book cares about. No brain imaging, no long history. There is laundry, there is cooking, there is the wardrobe.

This choice is deliberate. What wears down the lives of women with ADHD most is often not big crises. It is the small tasks repeated every day.

Meltdown in the supermarket aisle

The third chapter was the place that showed me the book's real value.

Its title announces, like a newspaper headline, a woman having a nervous breakdown in the frozen food aisle. I laughed, then my laughing stopped.

Because grocery shopping really is a heavy task for someone with ADHD. Hundreds of products, lights, sound, crowds, small decisions that have to be made constantly, and, if the list has been forgotten, the effort of building a menu from memory. On top of that comes the responsibility of feeding a family for the week.

The book calls this load by its name and gives advice to make meal planning easier. Most of the advice is of a familiar kind. The real contribution is separating why this task feels so hard from the guilt it makes a woman feel.

There is a separate article on the site on groceries and shopping in ADHD; after reading the book, it may help to combine it with the methods I describe there.

Quiet ADHD

The book opens by describing how ADHD looks in women and girls, and gives separate weight to the inattentive type.

Instead of the picture of the child who cannot sit still, the portrait that comes forward is of a woman who daydreams, constantly feels overwhelmed, worries and keeps turning over the same thoughts. It is also described that the same person can focus for hours on a subject that interests her. I think this contradiction is one of the main reasons many women doubt their own diagnosis.

One review notes that the book also touches the link between ADHD and compulsive behaviors such as binge eating or excessive exercise. For 2014 this was a little-discussed subject. Today there are far more studies showing the relationship between ADHD and binge eating.

This introduction gives basic information. It may not be enough for someone trying to understand ADHD for the first time, but it prepares the ground for the rest of the book.

Time and clothes

The fourth and fifth chapters are given to the two areas that cost women with ADHD the most time in everyday life.

The title of the time chapter announces the ticking of the clock as a nuisance. Time perception in ADHD really does work differently: estimating how long a task will take, catching the right moment to start, not being late. ADDitude's review notes that the use of a planner comes forward in this chapter.

The clothes chapter hits from a place I did not expect. For me the counterpart of this topic is very clear: not being able to decide what to wear in the morning, clean clothes piling up on a chair, the mountain of laundry waiting to be washed, pieces lost inside the wardrobe. That an ADHD book gave a whole chapter to this made me feel I was not alone.

Reading these two chapters I was reminded once more that the problem is not in my character. The small crisis lived every morning in front of the same wardrobe is a daily exam of executive functions.

Sensitivity and hormones: early for 2014

There are two places where the book goes further than I expected.

The sensitivity chapter. Matlen deals with sensory and emotional sensitivity together. Under this heading are things most of us recognize: fabrics that bother, noisy environments, exhaustion after crowds, intense reactions to criticism.

Sensory oversensitivity is not among the diagnostic criteria of ADHD. But there are studies showing it is reported more often in adults with ADHD, and when this book was written, popular ADHD books almost never mentioned it. I described the details in the article sensory overload in ADHD.

The hormones chapter. How symptoms can change through the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause.

This subject is discussed much more today. The consensus statement by Young and colleagues published in BMC Psychiatry in 2020 also says that hormonal transition periods in women can affect ADHD symptoms and should be taken into account in clinical assessment.

Still, you need to read carefully. Research in this area still consists mostly of small studies. You need to read the hormones chapter in the book as an awareness text and not expect firm recommendations. Matters like adjusting medication to the cycle are things to be decided only by talking with a doctor.

I looked at the current picture in the article ADHD, hormones and the menstrual cycle.

Being a mother with ADHD

That Matlen both has ADHD herself and is the mother of a child with ADHD gives weight to the motherhood chapter.

A mother with ADHD, while dealing with her own executive function difficulties, also manages a child's school calendar, appointments, nutrition and emotional needs. If the child has ADHD too, the work doubles.

This chapter touches shame about motherhood directly. The things mothers with ADHD tell most often are here: comparing yourself with other mothers, being late to a school meeting, remembering something the child needs on the last night. The book handles loads of this kind without belittling them, in a language that lightens guilt.

Relationships and work

The seventh chapter is on love, relationships and sexuality. The tenth chapter is work life.

The relationships chapter takes up the effect of ADHD on a couple's life. Under this heading go things everyone who lives with someone with ADHD recognizes: forgotten promises, attention scattering during a conversation, the unequal sharing of the household load and the resentments this accumulates. That sexuality is spoken about openly in an ADHD book is also valuable for those years.

The work chapter is given to the difficulties that come with ADHD in working life. Interruptions, distracting environments, unclear instructions, keeping up a success that looks good from outside with great effort.

These two subjects, in keeping with the book as a whole, stay within a practical frame. Someone looking for a more comprehensive source on relationships should look at books written with couples in focus. On legal rights and accommodations at the workplace, the book stays in a US context and so does not directly guide the reader in Turkey.

The format, built for the reader with ADHD

One of the things that distinguishes this book is the page layout.

The chapters are divided into short subheadings. Bulleted and numbered lists are plentiful. There is white space on the pages. You can open a chapter, read a piece of it in five minutes and close it.

It is around two hundred pages. The bibliography is about four pages.

An ADHD book being this easy to read felt like respect to me. After struggling with dense, long, footnoted books in the same field it is impossible not to notice.

The book's strength is also its limit

This ease has a cost.

Most of the advice is general. Keep a list, use a planner, break the task up, ask for help. All of it is right, and some of it is in other sources too. The book does not really explain why a piece of advice works or for whom it may not.

The sourcing is weak. Most of the advice rests on Matlen's clinical and personal experience. This experience is valuable and long. But you cannot tell which suggestion rests on research and which on observation. On the cover there are endorsements from well-known names in the field such as Barkley, Hallowell, Ramsay and Quinn; this shows the book is respected in the field but does not stand in for evidence.

Suggestions that assume money. Advice like getting help with cleaning is not realistic for some readers. I saw this criticism in other reviews too. For the reader in Turkey this distance can widen even more.

Written for American everyday life. The school system, workplaces, shopping habits. Some examples you have to translate into your own life.

The humor may not do everyone good. For someone in a hard period the lightness of the headings can at times come across as too cheerful.

No superpower tone

I want to say this separately, because most books of this kind have that tone.

Matlen does not present ADHD as an advantage. The queen comparison is ironic; being the queen of distraction is not counted as praise. The book describes the difficulties and tries to make living with them easier, and when it speaks of strengths it does not do so to cover up the difficulties.

This protects the book's language that makes asking for support legitimate.

For whom, at what stage

Women who know their diagnosis and are drowning in everyday life. Especially those who carry most of the household load.

Mothers with ADHD. The motherhood chapter is worth reading even on its own.

Those who have never connected their sensory and emotional sensitivity with ADHD. That chapter may put many things in place.

Those who cannot read long books. The book's format is exactly for them.

Whom I would not recommend it to: someone trying to understand ADHD for the first time; for that, Solden's book is a better start. Someone looking for an evidence-based, step-by-step program. Someone who wants to work on shame over the long run; for that, the guide by Solden and Frank is more suitable.

How to read it

You do not have to read it from start to finish, and I think you should not.

After reading the first chapter, go back to the table of contents and choose the subject that tires you most. If your wardrobe is a battle every morning, the fifth chapter. If the grocery store drains you, the third. If you struggle at work, the tenth.

Pick one or two pieces of advice from each chapter and try them for a week. Throw away what does not work. The book seems to have been written to be used just this way.

The last chapter is on putting the pieces together. If you used the book in stretches, it would be good to read it at the very end.