My husband is very selfish, often misreads my actions/words, doesn't ever have empathy or sympathy for other people. Put it this way...someone dies...he'll laugh. He also is highly defensive and always looking to argue. He likes it...I think he's comfortable being angry. He's very disrespectful to me...not sure why I still stay. Do people with ADHD have low Emotional IQ?
He seems to have difficulty building depth and truth in relationships...he often thinks I'm the enemy. I'm often told I'm weak, too sensitive...its always something and never calm and miscommunication is at the 90% level. Even when we try to talk something out, he can't control himself from being angry, mean and blaming me. No matter how nice I try to speak and all the apologies I utter (to the point I don't even know why I'm sorry)...there is no stepping outside himself.
Is there something wrong with my emotions or is it him? Someone keeps attacking you and its kind of hard not to believe whats said...I'm smarter then that but I can't help but question myself anymore. I've taken EQ tests and have scored very high...do ADHD people have lower EQ and are they able to improve on it? Is there any hope for someone that grew up in a pretty unstable, emotionless, abusive environment to ever really feel? Why does it take extremes to change and why do people with ADHD forget so soon about things that they may have improved on?
Maybe I I'm searching for hope that it can get a little bit better. I'm probably at the lowest point I've ever been...self esteem and confidence crushed. I know the answers...why am I choosing to suffer and live this life? I guess no one can answer that myself but I hope I figure it out soon.
emotion quotient, change, forgetting
Submitted by arwen on
Hope, you ask some complicated questions, but I will do my best to address them.
First, it's important to understand certain things about the ADD brain. The synaptic activity works differently than in a normal brain, and different portions of the brain may be used in specific kinds of circumstances than would be used in a normal brain. These brain differences have an implications for conscious thought, unconscious thought, and memory storage, organization and retrieval. These can in turn lead to many problems with learning, either academically or interpersonally, or both. They can also contribute to the development of a hyperfocus capability.
do ADHD people have lower EQ and are they able to improve on it?
As far as I can tell, people with ADD/ADHD experience emotions much like anyone else. Where they tend to differ from non-ADDers is that they may have more trouble thinking about their feelings on a conscious basis, which in turns makes it difficult for them to analyze their feelings or learn anything from them. I used to tell my husband that his "gut" (feelings) didn't communicate with his brain (conscious thought), and we've worked very hard over a long time to improve on that. He now can think about his feelings in a useful way, but it still takes him much much longer than it takes me to examine them and try to understand anything about them.
People with ADD also tend to have trouble noticing other people's feelings, just as they have trouble noticing all kinds of other things -- their minds are typically off thinking about something else because of these brain differences I've described. You and I notice things without really thinking much about it -- someone with ADD typically has to deliberately work at devoting their conscious thoughts on something. That's a lot of work to have to be engaged in every time they interact with another person. When the other person has a strong emotion, of course, the person with ADD does notice because they punch through the distractions. In the case of less extreme emotion, that doesn't happen. Unless they actively practice noticing feelings (or happen to be the kind of person who finds people's feelings fascinating, so they can hyperfocus on them!), people with ADD are going to tend to be poor evaluators of people's feelings. This can also be changed, but again it takes a lot of time and effort -- basically, they have to actively practice it until they get better at it over time. Think of it as being something like an average person trying to learn to read and understand something really challenging, like maybe engineering manuals or medical study papers. They could probably do it, but they probably would not like it very much, so they don't do it unless they absolutely have to. It doesn't mean they're dumb, it just means it's a skill that doesn't come naturally to them.
Having trouble understanding one's own feelings, and having trouble noticing other people's feelings make it difficult to understand other people's feelings. It doesn't mean they don't have the aptitude for it -- what they mostly don't have is the tools.
Why does it take extremes to change and why do people with ADHD forget so soon about things that they may have improved on?
This involves both memory issues and attention issues. Because people with ADD often have problems with storing, organizing and retrieving information from memory, the only way to develop a reliable memory about anything is to deliberately and consciously brand it powerfully and/or repeatedly in a uniform way into memory. Typically, in order for a positive change to "stick", it has to either have the associated memories stored many times over a long period of time so that the memory connections build up to something solid (sort of like adding strands to a thin rope to strengthen it) -- or it has to be powerfully stored through the use of extreme, shocking emotion (which is where the attention issues come in -- ordinary emotions often don't get noticed, as I explained earlier, and if you don't notice in the first place, you can't remember!). To extend the rope analogy, it's sort of like the non-ADD brain is issued with various different strengths of rope for different memory connection needs, whereas the ADD brain is only issued with thin rope strands that can either be used sequentially (i.e. through repeated practice) to build up a thicker, stronger memory connection or if enough power is supplied (i.e. extreme emotion) it can sometimes shoot out a bunch of strands at once to create a thicker, stronger memory connection. Furthermore, if the memory connections aren't organized in a useful way, the brain may end up with a rat's nest of connections that may intefere with each other! As a result, people with ADD tend not to utilize memory functions any more than they really have to -- they often streamline it as much as possible in an attempt to keep it organized, and may be limited to a very small number of items in short-term memory -- the rest they ignore and cope by "winging it" if they can.
I don't know if this sheds any light on your questions -- if you feel this isn't very clear, let me know and I'll try again.
Thank you, this is VERY
Submitted by hope09 on
Thank you, this is VERY helpful.
I was wondering if you could expound a bit
Submitted by Aspen on
...on your technique for doing the following
[quote] I used to tell my husband that his "gut" (feelings) didn't communicate with his brain (conscious thought), and we've worked very hard over a long time to improve on that. [/quote]
My husband and I are currently working on improving this with varying levels of success. Fortunately his *gut* when dealing with ppl is pretty good, but what we are working on is understanding his resistance to doing things that involve consistency and also understanding where deeply supressed feelings are affecting his behavior--ie his parents did not deal well with him at all when his ADD began to manifest itself and treated him as if he is lazy.
He wants to think that he's "fine" and that his suppression has been successful whereas it's clear to me those emotions are coming out in other ways as resistance and resentment.
How did you address digging into the *whys* of the feelings to change the behavior that results. It seems to be hard for a person with a poor memory...he knows his feelings were hurt and that he feels resentful but it is hard to discuss why because he's already stuffed that down. Sometimes we dig something out only to find it was a misunderstanding & better communication could have prevented the whole thing!
bring gut feelings to consciousness (long, sorry)
Submitted by arwen on
When I would observe that his mouth was saying one thing but his face and/or behavior seemed to be saying something else, I would initially accept what his mouth was saying at face value, act upon it in good faith and see what ensued. Usually some problem would erupt, and I would use that opportunity to discuss the apparent discrepancy between "gut" and "brain". I'd outline what had happened (including the initial discrepancy between mouth and face/behavior that I had observed), so his memory would be refreshed as much as possible, and then ask him why he'd done whatever had resulted in the problem. Usually he'd have some explanation of his behavior that seemed rational to him because he was only thinking about the situation in a very limited context. I would point out exactly how it seemed to me that his behavior/face was in conflict with his words, and ask him if he could explain this. Typically, he would recognize intellectually that there was indeed a conflict, but wouldn't have a clue why he was behaving contrary to his words/beliefs, so I usually ended up suggesting possible underlying feelings/motives, and asking him whether any of them "felt" like a likely explanation. Even if I didn't "hit the nail on the head", just talking about why he thought it *wasn't* what I suggested often brought out some helpful information. I'd think about what we'd discussed, try to observe again from this slightly different perspective, and when the problem sprang up again, we'd try again. Sometimes it took many wearying iterations to finally get down to the nitty-gritty.
For example, at one point I took on a management job which was very challenging. Beforehand, I had discussed it with my husband, noting that it was probably going to demand a lot of overtime for maybe as much as a year, but that I thought it was a really good opportunity that would effectively let me leapfrog in my career path. He said that he understood that and supported my career and my taking the job completely. The job *did* take a lot of overtime, so often we ate dinner a little later than we used to, but it didn't have much of an impact on our sex life or social activities. After five or six months, belittling remarks about managers started to creep into his social conversations when I was present. These soon grew into full-blown diatribes about the general stupidity, uselessness and incompetence of all managers everywhere, accompanied by nasty "manager jokes". He would invite our friends to share their experiences with clueless managers. When I noted that I was a manager and that his remarks didn't seem very supportive, his response was that of course he supported me and my career. I pointed out that this new behavior had started just a few months after I'd taken the management job, and asked if anything was bothering him about it, but he insisted his comments had been triggered by the behavior of his own boss (whom he had known for several years and got along great with the whole time, so this didn't make any sense). It seemed pretty clear to me that he was having some kind of issue with my job, but I couldn't get him to see the evidence of it. Then we went to a company dinner with his boss and I watched them interact, and it was clear there was absolutely no tension or negative feeling towards his boss -- in fact, my husband voiced support of his boss's points of view! (and it was clearly genuine, my husband is *very bad* at intentional dissembling). Once again, I tackled the problem, pointing out all the inconsistencies from when his remarks had started, up to that present point (which covered a period of several months). "Look, honey, you said this, this, this and this, but you did that, that, that and that." -- not accusingly, just objectively making a list. I wrapped up with my conclusion that *something* about my job was eating him, whether he admitted it or not, and we'd better find out what it was because it was really having an adverse affect on our relationship. At this point, he could finally intellectually appreciate the disconnects between his behaviors/feelings and his words/brain, so he was willing to investigate it with me, but he could not identify exactly what could be bothering him.
Did I bring my work home too much? No, he didn't think so. Did I talk about work at home too much? Well, maybe some, but sometimes he liked to hear about what I was doing. Did it bother him that I was mostly working with a lot of men? No, not at all. Was the overtime a problem? Well, he didn't really like how much overtime I worked, he didn't think I should still have to be working so many later hours. How did he feel when I was working late? No special way. What did he do when I was working late? Mostly read books or magazines, sometimes when the days were long enough and the weather was nice he'd go for a bike ride. How did he feel when he was on the bike ride? OK, but he felt it would be more fun if I were there. How did he feel when he was reading the books and magazines? OK, but sometimes he wished I was there so he could share something he read that he thought was interesting. It was a lot like doing exploratory surgery. I was careful to always ask the questions as if any answer was fine -- no axe to grind, no hidden agenda on my part, and definitely no getting irritated at any answer. What we were after was the truth, not answers that we might like. After a lot more discussion, what it boiled down to was that he missed having me around to talk to between when he got home from his job and when we ate dinner, and he felt like I should have known that without him having to tell me -- so he was not only lonely and resentful of my job, he felt like I didn't care how he felt. Once we got to this point, he felt more than a little sheepish about the way he had behaved (which had been very hurtful to me), and was able to acknowledge that his feelings had unconsciously overridden his beliefs. We addressed his feelings by changing my work schedule to satisfy both our interests and by my assurances (backed up by consonant actions) that I very much cared about how he felt -- with the additional note that I wasn't a mind reader, so he couldn't expect me to know his feelings without *some* input from him.
Over the years, and many similar repetitions of this kind of scenario, my husband has learned to examine his feelings on his own to some degree (which is really nice, because my trying to figure out what *he* might be feeling and painstakingly conceptualizing and addressing all those questions was pretty mind-numbing), and even when he needs help, he is now much quicker to recognize when I'm "in the ball park" with my questions and when I'm "barking up the wrong tree", so the process takes a great deal less time and effort on my part. And of course, I'm much better at guessing what his feelings are, after all the experience. He still has problems recognizing a disconnect between "gut" and "brain" on his own, but is much more willing listen to what I'm saying when I think I see it happening.
I don't know if this answers your question -- I hope it helps somehow!