Submitted by Sueann on 06/23/2011.
I do not think the session today was easy for my husband. Now he's complaining about a headache, so I have to be quiet and take care of him even more than usual. I am more pain than he can even imagine, on a daily basis, but once again, it's all about him.
Is there typically a link between depression, ADHD and/or migraines? Or is it just an excuse to do nothing?
Why do you have to take care
Submitted by SherriW13 on
Why do you have to take care of him? I don't get it. If he's got a headache, yes..being quiet would just be a nice thing to do. Maybe take him some ibuprofen? but why "take care of" him? Can you go back and re-read this post and see where you're enabling this 1000%? If you're in pain daily, it isn't up to him to take care of you either. Should he care? Sure..but if he doesn't, that isn't anything anyone can change. Take care of yourself and assume this is just a headache and nothing more.
So you feel that I should just ignore it?
Submitted by Sueann on
I was just wondering if anyone knew if migraines were more common in depressed/ADD people. I was just looking for information. I didn't mean to offend anyone.
So you feel I should somehow forget that it hurts me to do housework, and doesn't hurt him? He shouldn't have to do more than someone who's married to a "normal" person? Or maybe I should do it all because he's a poor victim with ADD? He knew and agreed to all this when we got married. I didn't agree to be the total support of a family because of his (undisclosed) mental illness.
I don't want to live in that world.
migraines
Submitted by ellamenno on
I have ADHD, and many of my family members have it too, and come to think of it - we all get migraines. I started getting them when I hit puberty. Tylenol and a coke would do the trick then. I had them off an on throughout my teens, then they went away. They started again after I turned 40. They are incapacitating, and I have to take a pill and lie still til it goes away. Sometimes it takes 2 hours. Oddly they were always happening on Sundays this year (with the exception of one on a Tuesday and one today). My husband watches the kids when it happens on sundays (and today) but the tuesday I was teaching and it was awful. I could hardly read what was in front of me and had to leave in the middle of a lesson to vomit. I always feel guilty burdening my husband with the kids when it happens at home, even though he usually just plops them in front of a video or plays a video game on his phone with them.
Sueann I've gotta tell you: you really need to get out of this situation for a while. It's just not healthy. Can a friend take the dog while you stay with your daughter for a while? You can't go on being so angry. Yes, your husband should be doing a lot of things that he's not doing. I am in no way excusing his behavior, but - as someone with ADHD, i can tell you i'd rather be hit by a car than have this disorder. I'd rather be hit by ten cars. I'm not kidding. My whole life has been a fog of wasted opportunities, and MY spouse definitely 'deserves' his 'fair share' and I all but ruined our marriage and now I am making very little money while i stay home with a 2 year old. I am busting my @$$ all day every day and it's not enough. It will never be enough and it is of course all my fault because I have no marketable skills right now. I hope the therapy helps your husband and he gets better. I really do. If he's anything like me (or YYZ, or DF or ADDwife) he'll see what's going on and start making changes. If he won't/can't make changes, it doesn't matter what you deserve or what you are owed: you can't get blood from a stone and you've got to save yourself.
I actually did get hit by a car
Submitted by Sueann on
Trust me, you'd rather have ADD. I'll never physically recover from the effects. There is no medicine to treat the damage it did. You at least have meds for your ADD.
I am more baffled than angry at my husband. He loved his job, he was good at his job. No one worked harder than him. He worked with a bunch of psychiatrists and psychologists who, hopefully, understood his disorder. He got his job because he had a diagnosed mental illness. Then to fire him because he couldn't control the effects of that mental illness perfectly seems strange to me.
I am angry at him for refusing more treatment than he was getting. I asked him to try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, coaching, etc. [all approaches I read about here]. I tried to find it for him but they wouldn't talk to me because I wasn't the patient and he couldn't/wouldn't take time to during the day to make those calls because he was so hyperfocused on his clients and his job.
I am also angry at him for not understanding the effects of the car accident on me. I want him to understand how much it hurts me to walk, to do the dishes, how scared I am of the laundry room (where I've had a couple of bad falls) and of walking our dog (who is a very good dog but can pull hard enough to unbalance me).
Thanks for the response about migraines. I wonder, are Sundays more stressful for you because your husband is home all day? My husband seemed to get his at night after particularly stressful days. Thursday was the first one he's had since he got fired.
Stressful Sundays....?
Submitted by ellamenno on
I dunno why sundays would be worse than saturdays other than it would be the second day in a row of the whole family on top of me. Unlike your husband, I get up at 6:30 (or earlier, depending on when DD#2 wakes up) I cook pancakes and bacon for everybody on Sundays (not an easy thing for someone who got an apron with 'Kiss the Arsonist" on the front for a wedding shower present!). Meanwhile, my husband sleeps in and when he wakes up he will stay in bed and play games on his phone. Not really so stressful, except for the kids can get under my feet, and I have to sometimes put the little one in a playpen so she doesn't get too close to the stove. She hates it and screams the whole time. So maybe this is why I got migraines? I thought maybe the pancakes or bacon were doing it so I stopped eating them but got migraines anyway. By the way, I am in no way trying to say that your injuries don't hurt and haven't made your life difficult and won't continue to do so - I'm just saying if one has a normal brain, he or she has control over every action/decision he/she makes. He or she is in control of him/herself. All my life I have never felt like i was in control of anything. I've wasted so many opportunities and done permanent damage to my marriage. I there is no medication that will fix my past. People get angry at me, hate me, get frustrated with me for things I had no idea I was doing wrong - and for things i've done wrong and have NO idea why i did them and feel intense shame about them. The meds help, yes. But it's always, always there. As you probably know, it takes a lot more effort than just taking a pill. you have to MAKE changes happen. Everything I do or think has to be re-done or re-thought it seems, ten times before it's right. I am always 'wrong' and always lonely even when surrounded by friends/family. I just do my best to pretend to be normal and the adderall helps me fake it better.
Avoiding bacon might be a good idea actually
Submitted by Sueann on
Some people are really sensitive to nitrates, which are used to make bacon and hot dogs. My daughter used to get migraines from eating hot dogs (hard on a young teenager).
I can relate..
Submitted by Learningtolive on
I was searching for the link between adhd and migraines, found this page and read your post. I have ADHD. I don't know if others in my family have ADHD, I suspect that they do, however a large portion of my mom's side of the family are the types of people who never want to admit that something is "different" or "wrong". You are very hard on yourself. I can be too sometimes. I often feel misunderstood, it seems like you do also. I have intense migraines and I have for as long as I can remember, but they seem to peak during certain times (when I feel anxious, get excited, etc). What do you mean when you say that you are always wrong? I am mainly asking because I have began to wonder if all of the things that have gone wrong in my life were my fault. I often feel lonely, and I don't really know why. I have the most amazing husband, who is so wonderful to me. I have so many reasons to not feel that way. the adhd seems to cause trouble though...when I have forgotten to take medication is when we seemed to struggle. I used to take Adderall, but I became pregnant and stopped taking it. I was worried about it having a negative effect on the pregnancy. oddly, it seemed as though my symptoms were dulled out when I was pregnant. No idea why they were, but I was relieved. I am not 7 weeks post partum and feel the symptoms again full-force. I started taking vyvance...and am not sure how I feel about it yet. One thing I am trying to figure out is, do I get migraines because of the ADHD or is it because of something else? I have spent so much time reading about these sorts of things and it just seems to take me in circles.
always wrong...
Submitted by ellamenno on
Well, Learningtolive, what I mean is every life choice I have made and everything I have done in my life has turned out to be a mistake. That's what I mean by 'wrong'. Mostly just wasting opportunities or not even understanding that an opportunity had presented itself. missing very important social cues - cues from people who were trying to help, but i 'ignored' them or SEEMED to ignore them when actually, I didn't have a clue what was going on. Social cues from people who were trying to HURT me, who I believed and whose needs and wants I put before my own and those of anyone who really mattered to me. And also, just feeling like nobody, not even my husband, really 'gets' me. He tolerates me, yes, and I think he loves me on some level, but the frustrations with all my mistakes and confusion and fear from day-to-day make me feel like we can't really fully connect because I've always got something to 'make up' for. (lost something again, forgot something again, didn't take care of something in time...)
I just don't know about the migraine connection - seems like there really is something, but who knows? hope the vyvance starts working better for you or you can try something else.
YES!!! There is a connection!
Submitted by Geoduck on
migraines and ADHD
Submitted by ADHDMomof2 on
Hi Geoduck,
http://www.portraithealthcenters.com/adhd-blog/adhd-and-migraines-may-th...
It mentions Strattera as lowering blood pressure and reducing migraines. Might be worth a look?
Good luck!
ADHDMomof2
P.S. My mother, who has diagnosed ADHD, used to get the WORST migraines.
migraines
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Wow. amazing topic. My ADHD husband ALSO has migraines. He takes Trixamet for them (think I spelled it right? not sure) But, the main ingredient is sumatriptan. He wakes up with a headache almost every morning.