What Sandhya Menon Taught Me About The Hidden Shame Of ADHD

Sandhya Menon opened the 2026 Victorian ADHD Conference with a keynote called "Going There: Uncovering the Hidden Shame of ADHD." She went there. The whole room went with her.

Sandhya is a psychologist from Onwards and Upwards Psychology, an AUDHDer, and the author of The Brain Forest, The Rainbow Brain, and several other books many of us in the room knew well. Her focus was on how information lands in our nervous systems and what happens when shame gets stuck there.

I want to share what I took away, because I think every parent, teacher, therapist and person who loves a neurodivergent kid needs to hear it.

"Yeah, Me Too"

Sandhya shared, "If you've sat with shame yourself, the most powerful thing you can hear is someone say 'yeah, me too.'"

That sentence sat in my chest for the rest of the day. So much of shame's power comes from isolation and the belief that you're the only one who feels this way. Hearing "me too" doesn't fix the shame, but it breaks the spell of aloneness.

Guilt vs Shame

She drew a clear line between guilt and shame. Guilt says, "I made a mistake." Shame says, "I am the mistake."

For ADHDers, the path from guilt to shame often starts young. The "if only they applied themselves" school reports. The quiet exclusion. The sense of being "too much" that gets internalised over time. What begins as feedback about behaviour becomes a belief about identity.

Slide Content Credit: Sandhya Menon

The Shame Pile-Up

Sandhya introduced a layered model of how shame builds:

1. A trigger happens

2. The body responds first (physiological reactions)

3. A flood of negative feelings hits

4. Negative self-talk kicks in

5. Behavioural reactions follow

6. Compounding shame, aka shame about the shame

   
   

By the time you reach layer six, you're not dealing with the original trigger anymore. You're buried under the whole pile. Each layer stacks on the last one, and the weight becomes the thing you carry, not the moment that started it.

Where The Hidden Shame Of ADHD Pushes Us

She shared a model showing four directions shame can push us:

1. Attack others = aggression

2. Attack self = depression, perfectionism

3. Hide from others = isolation

4. Hide from self = denial, self-destructive behaviour, distraction

Slide Content Credit: Sandhya Menon

I looked at that model and recognised all four. Not just in the kids I advocate for, but in myself.

Not All Shame Is Bad

This was an important nuance. Sandhya was clear that not all shame is toxic, and honestly? I'd never thought of it that way. Helpful shame gives us the space to show up. It can teach us empathy and acknowledgement.

Layers 1–3 of the pile-up with the trigger, the body's response and the flood of feelings, are our body doing its thing. The tipping point comes when shame shifts from being about something we did to something we are. When it stops being about an action and becomes about identity, and when it hinders or destroys growth rather than supports it.

Moving Through It

Sandhya talked about resourcing and strategies for keeping the nervous system's pendulation going instead of getting stuck in freeze:

1. Moving or repositioning your body

2. Breathing

3. Texting a trusted friend

4. Grounding strategies

5. Knowing you're not alone (this corrects the distortions shame creates)

6. Balancing it with lightness and humour

   
   

She encouraged returning to your shame story in tolerable amounts. Noticing how it's changed. Rewriting it with kindness and compassion. Asking: What was shame trying to tell me or teach me?

The Part That Made Me Cry

The next generation, our children, have words we never did. It's up to us to turn those words into belief. She followed it with this: "We are teaching our children self-kindness without ever having been taught it ourselves."

I felt that in my whole body. This is the work so many of us are doing — passing on something we're still learning, building something we never received. It's beautiful and exhausting and important, all at once.

Meh, Good Enough

Sandhya was diagnosed as ADHD five years ago. Her mantra now is "meh, good enough." She has it displayed as a quote in her office.

Stop living by neuronormative rules, she said. There is beauty in the mess. Lean into the kids and people who surprise us when we lean into the mess.

I'm taking that with me. Not as a throwaway line, but as permission. Permission to stop measuring myself and my kid against a ruler that was never built for us.

If you or someone you love is navigating ADHD and shame, Sandhya's books The Brain Forest and The Rainbow Brain are a great place to start. You can find Onwards and Upwards Psychology at @onwardsandupwardspsych