Alysa Liu Is the ADHD Position Mannequin We Wanted
Like many others, I learned that Alysa Liu had ADHD after her captivating, joyful free skate performance at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics that earned her gold.
Better yet, I learned that she’s really open about her diagnosis. She told ESPN: “I have ADHD, and I love situations that I’m not expecting. It gives me a dopamine rush.”
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 camera after her win. (It has since become a meme). She cheers for her fellow skaters.
In short, Liu is everything I was told NOT to be as a neurodivergent athlete myself.
Like Liu, 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.)
[Read: Olympians, Professional Athletes, and Sports Legends with ADHD]
But like Liu, I also had an interesting journey to understanding my ADHD.
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 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 path so many women with ADHD walk).
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.
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 more than 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.
There’s also a prevailing narrative in sport that struggle equals growth. That discipline is the price of success. It looks like 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. Though I returned to the sport, like Liu, and saw moments when I stopped performing neurotypically, I still burned out — a decision my body made for me.
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.
Alysa Liu Is the Role Model I Didn’t Know I Needed
To be fair, Alysa isn’t the only athlete to open up about their mental health. But the way she talks about ADHD — openly celebrating it — is refreshing.
In a sport that has historically 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.
ADHD brains like ours 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, with burnout at the summit.
This is almost certainly where Liu ended up before her retirement. So she left. And when she came back, she made sure joy came first.
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.
The biggest lessons 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.
Christie Sausa, MS, is a dual-sport neurodivergent athlete who writes the Not Your Average Athlete blog.
Athletes with ADHD: More from ADDitude
SUPPORT ADDITUDE
Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.
