Recent forum posts (all topics)

  • ADD or self-centered? by: MrsADD 6 years 10 months ago

    This was a question I was trying to find out when we were planning to enter marriage counseling but H sabotaged that so now we are no longer going. I did manage to ask before we ended therapy, how do I tell if he is in an ADD moment, selfish bad behavior due to poor upbringing, pain due to past spinal chord injury 25 years ago? So many issues which am I dealing with. The psychiatrist he WAS seeing said it is not my job he needs to express what the problem is. I told him given the fact communication is non existent with him I don't see that happening but ok.

    So this happened last night and I dunno I just think this is a selfish moment. An all about me, which seems to be his personality actually the longer I have known him (almost 8 years, 5 of these married with going on 3 kids).

    ---So last night I am rolled into this chair trying to be comfortable and rest and aching and feeling like crap at 9.5 months pregnant (still working full time and managing kids), while my 2 toddlers play on tablet and Adhd H announces that because I stopped massaging his toe and stretching it for him (as if we had some physical therapy session going on for years?) it has disabled him. I used to roll it around on occasion for him when he came back from a long construction week or hunting etc... and it was all crippled up but stopped over time because caring for kids, myself, house, EVERYTHING and honestly his personality last 3 years has just repulsed me.

    Of course his toe problem (he has severe bunions) is not the fact that 2 doctors now (that I dragged him too b/c he won't go himself)  have told him genetically he has bad feet. I mean his mother wears braces on her feet in order to walk straight and he has same feet! It's me not "attending to him". I thought to myself this dude is a trip!

    I just said well I bought you some toe stretchers and massager's a few months ago and you don't even use them so I at least get points for that. I wanted to say go #$%^ yourself you selfish bastard, I am on kid 3 in 5 years at not a young age and have gotten very little empathy and support from you let alone a single massage! I also wanted to say if it were not for me your double hernia would not be fixed and you would not even know you have genetically bad feet and hips, you would still think it all was a result of your spinal chord injury! I mean the things he has problems with can be fixed. I provide him health insurance through my work. I tell him go get it fixed. Go to therapy we will figure out how to pay for it. Go exercise, sit in hot tub regularly and stretch whatever you need to not be in pain. But he never does it. Seems selfish to me to just bitch and blame someone who has done nothing but support you.

    And he wonders why I am ready for divorce after I have this kid, get healthy and get back to work. Which is a whole other story b/c even though I have told him this plan he seems to act like I have never said a word and we are just golden. Need to get off this crazy train!

  • How To Communicate When Shut Down by: ccarpenter 6 years 10 months ago

    Hello all, 

    I have been here before and looking for some advice if possible. I am the non ADHD partner of an ADHD individual who is untreated (medication, coaching, therapy). My anxiety has gotten the best of me in times of stress and the inability to communicate with my ADHD partner. I am taking responsibility for my part and changing what I need to, to better deal with my anxiety because I am responsible for that. My partner on the other hand has shut down after arguments, asked for space and is no longer staying with me at our house and instead at his parents. It has been almost 2 weeks without any communication on what is happening. How do I better handle this situation without it backfiring? I am definitely one to pursue and try to work on it. I have come to realize that is getting me nowhere. Both of us see things through different lenses, and I need to know how to handle this gingerly without making it worse. When one has ADHD, does the desire exist to want to work on things when there is more space involved? I am currently trying to understand ADHD better and see how it takes effect in everyday life. I went to a support group which helped me better understand that we both see things differently. How do I get back to being shiny again? 

  • Problematic evaluations by: bowlofpetunias 6 years 10 months ago

    So, my wife and two kids were supposed to be evaluated for ADHD on Monday.

    Things started off in a very ADHD manner.  Our son had a concert after the appointment.  Where were his black pants????  This caused delay, discord, and confusion on the way to the appointment.  He never found the pants, so my wife was worried that she had to find time to buy him a new pair before the concert.  (And, of course, he blew off the concert!)

    Once we got there, they took my wife and our daughter first--at the same time.  I went in with our daughter.  Earlier this year, my wife had told me that a psychiatrist had diagnosed our daughter with ADHD, but then she said that she had not been diagnosed. So I was confused about why we needed to have her diagnosed.  It turns out both kids were seeing someone who DOES NOT DIAGNOSE ADHD!

    When I got out of the appointment with our daughter, my wife said that the nurse practitioner she had seen had asked if I was a psychiatrist--in other words, discounting my concerns about ADHD.  No, I am not, that's why I want a professional evaluation.  BUT this nurse did not have the opportunity to meet me, much less her my concerns.  My wife said she said it "might be some ADD issues" but that the main thing was was previously diagnosed bipolar II.  She added a prescription for bupropion.  (I use that for depression.  I know it is also used for ADHD, so it may help.  But that does not address the behavioral support my wife should get for ADHD even if the medication helps.)

    In terms of our son (15), the same counselor who saw our daughter ran him through an online ADHD evaluation and seemed to take his answers as given--she told us some afterwards, and they were clearly not accurate.

    I later asked my wife what happened in her appointment. She just answered the nurse's questions, but did not offer any additional information.  I specifically asked, for example, if she had mentioned how she becomes overfocused on strangers and I become invisible.  Nope.  She did not think she should bring things up on her own--just answer the questions.

    First question--how do I get this nurse to listen to my experiences that suggest ADHD?  Should I contact her?  If so, how?  I am afraid if I wait until the next appointment that I will not be there and my wife will once again fail to bring up the problematic behavior.

    Second question--how the hell do we get our 15 year old to agree to be evaluated by someone who knows ADHD now that he thinks he has "passed the test"?

  • hero worship by: un12720 6 years 11 months ago

    Greetings:

    am new to this forum and would appreciate any feedback.

    Am a non-ADHD spouse married to an ADHD husband.  Over the years, a certain behavior has repeatedly shown itself.  It seems that H becomes infatuated with certain people without really knowing much about them.  These people are sometimes co-workers, trainers at the gym and other acquaintances.  They may be male or female.  It is not my impression that this behavior is sexual or romantic in nature.  It is more like a unfounded admiration.

    Curious as to whether others have ever encountered this type of behavior.

    Thank you for listening.

  • The Sugar Demon by: phatmama 6 years 11 months ago

    In one ADHD book I read, the author talked about how most ADD'ers crave sugar so much that to try and make them stay away from is virtually impossible.  As soon as I  read that, I felt like he had just explained something that was at the heart of one of the biggest conflicts in our home.  I have always craved sugar so much that for most of my life I have actually essentially lived on it--as in gone days on end eating nothing but candy, cookies, milk/chocolate milk, cereal, Ovaltine, pudding.  Until I had children, I never gave this much thought.  Then, I shot myself in the foot by marrying a vegetarian health nut and having 3 children with him.  Suddenly, I was supposed to be a (GASP!) ROLE MODEL to three children who craved sugar as much as I do, two of whom had sensory issues with food texture, temperature, taste as well.  Because nutrition was extremely important to my husband once the kids were born and I was the stay-at-home parent who fed them, this became a huge issue.  Suddenly, all the things I had eaten my whole life were supposed to be banished.  None of us had any self-control and my husband knew that, so he just wanted it kept out of the house--no exceptions.   To say I was resentful is an understatement.  I wanted my sweets and  I did not want anyone telling me what I could have in the house and what I couldn't.  There were times in the grocery store where he actually removed things from my cart and put them back and then it was ON.  I used to joke that if there were a divorce court at the checkout counter at Kroger, our marriage would have ended before the second year was out.  So, I am wondering if there are any other ADD'ers out there who seem totally fixated on sugar  and have terrible eating habits and how that has affected your ability to teach your own children good eating habits over the years? 

  • Feeling Guilty by: phatmama 6 years 11 months ago

     I am wondering if anyone else feels guilty about your ADHD marriage and its effect on your children?  I know I do.  My husband and I have been married 21 years, and almost certainly should not have had children at all. But, because I was too disorganized to make sure I didn't run out of birth control, our daughter was conceived before we really knew each other well enough for such a commitment and the rest is history.  21 years and three children later, I am struggling with feelings of guilt and shame for all the fighting, the constant chaos, the mess, the drama, the numerous moves, the constant school changes.  I feel like we were like children trying to raise children and even though they seem mostly ok, as a social worker, I know that children need stability and constancy to thrive and that is something we could never manage to pull off.  My oldest daughter still walks out of the store when I get to the checkout counter if I am using a debit because my card has been denied for no funds so many times in her life that she is embarrassed to be seen with me (and we make plenty of money--just zero money management skills). She has actually developed a phobia about this and won't go anywhere without hundreds of extra dollars in her own bank account so she is never caught without funds at the checkout counter.  But the worst thing is the constant fighting between my husband and me--it has worn us all down and I feel so ashamed of not being able to be a better role model to my children.  I know what a healthy marriage involves, but was never able to pull it off.  Both my husband and myself are VERY impulsive, have no filter, are extremely impatient and almost instantly frustrated, and get very worked up very fast.  My kids have NEVER seen us work as a team, or use healthy communication skills to resolve conflict, or develop a plan and stick to it.  In our house, it is always "every man for himself" because we are five ADD'ers who are very poor team players with short attention spans, poor coping skills, and and behavioral "tone deafness" (being oblivious to how annoying our behavior is to each other--for example--my husband can';t stand noise and both me and our oldest daughter are naturally LOUD.  We walk loud, talk loud, make noise just about constantly but are not aware of it until my husband is losing his mind)  Although there is tremendous love in our home, there is also so much that is just exhausting and dysfunctional and draining.  I know I  have been a terrible role model and that I have failed my children in this way.  When I was younger, I always thought  I had time to fix it and things would get better, but now our two oldest are grown and we have run out of time. I feel like a total failure because my ADHD marriage hurt them as collateral damage and they didn't ask to be born into this mess.  I hate ADHD and how it has crippled my family life for over two decades now with no end in sight. I feel like we have been robbed of any semblance of normalcy by this disorder and I am ANGRY as well as guilty and ashamed for not being able to do better.

  • fully present vs. checked out by: dvance 6 years 11 months ago

    So I have a question.  Can the non-ADHD partners among us tell when our ADHD person is fully present vs. when they are checked out?  Here's what I mean: there are stretches of time where DH is in a normal mood, not prickly or sullen, acting normally, retaining things I say and then for no reason I can point to there will be periods of time where he is just out to lunch.  Right now he is out to lunch and has been for a few weeks.  The inconsistency of his moods is for me one of the hardest parts of living with an unmedicated ADHD adult.  I can tell when he asks me things I already told him or that he asked me recently and didn't remember that I told him before.  I can tell when I ask his opinion on something and I get either silence or "I don't know".  I can tell he is checked out when I get one word answers to texts or no answer at all.  I can tell when I text him three questions in one text and he only answers one so I have to retext the other two separately and even then may not get an answer.  I can tell when I ask him to clarify something he says that is close to undecipherable and the second answer is worse than the first and I have no idea what he is talking about AND he doesn't notice that I don't get it.  I can tell when he is especially surly or belligerent about things I ask of him.  When he is checked out he will either not do them at all or do them with maximum huffing and puffing and sarcasm or backhanded comments.  He is currently living in Houston for business, comes home every other weekend, so I put his mail on his desk.  While it's true that most of it is junk and I could probably throw it out, he often does not go through it.  If he is fully present (not out to lunch) he will. Ditto with messages on his work phone (which is in our house).  The message light can be blinking for weeks and he does not check the messages.  Now, granted, he may have heard from the people who left messages some other way, but wouldn't you want to make the phone stop blinking??  Instead he puts a towel over it.

    I am not explaining this very well, just that as soon as I see that he is not really HERE I have to kind of shut down my expectations because they just aren't going to be met.  I suspect the checked out-ness happens when there are too many demands on his time and too much being asked of him (in his opinion, not in reality).  Last time he was home over Thanksgiving, he didn't come to bed before midnight once in the 6 days he was here and was still up around 5am every single day.  I am a sleeper-inner so by the time I got up he had been on his iPad for several hours already, playing solitaire, online poker, watching you tube--not stuff I would think a man of 49 would be interested in.  I know enough about the ADHD brain to know that 4 hours on a screen is probably NOT the best start to a day and is probably contributing to the checked-outness but there is nothing I can do about that.  What's funny to me is I wonder what all is in his head that makes it so hard for him to pay attention to his actual life.  It's not our finances because I handle those.  It's not discipline because he is not here most of the time and I handle that even when he is.  It's not the fact that we have to move by June because I am already making those arrangements.  It's not how the 16 year old is doing in high school because he doesn't know or check.  The things I just listed-those are the things that swirl around in my head and literally wake me at 4:30am.  For two weeks at a time, he literally only has to worry about himself, living in a one bedroom apartment paid for by his company in another state.  I know his job is stressful; all grown ups have job stress so that is a wash.  Take that off the table and I really cannot figure out what else he has to worry about.

    I don't think I was very clear in this post.  It is on my mind a lot with him.  Being fully present is something that is important and I work on it a lot.  I teach 6th grade and 8th grade and I am the Assistant Principal of my school and BE HERE NOW is one of the norms we use in every staff meeting and we have introduced it to the junior high students as well, the idea that you will retain more and be more efficient and effective if you are fully present.  That does not apply to ADHD people I know, but it's on my mind.

    anyway...sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense...

  • Learning to be un-stuck by: jennalemone 6 years 11 months ago

    Yesterday, I was outdoors on our yard at the home I am fortunate enough to live in.   I asked myself, "Why have you not been happy here?"  I am ashamed of myself for not being able to be happy and more appreciative all these years.  

    For one thing, I was a slave to my own feelings and emotions.  I flowed with emotions and thought it was a good thing like a dancer, an artiste, a poetess a song-writer.  I am artistic and that is part of art....expressing the feelings good and bad.  But that perspective of life coupled with any outside force that is negative (ah...I just wrote naggative...another perspective) makes for some real "Town without Pity, Cryin' in the Rain, Stop in the Name of Love" kind of isolated "soul stuck".   Even outside of my life/marriage, I would have "felt" the barbs (imagined or real) that would bring me down. 

    I am so old to learn this so late.  -   It is part of maturity/growing up that brings a person to the ability and habit of stepping outside of the feelings and looking at yourself and letting the feelings come and wash over and asking yourself, "What am I feeling? Why am I feeling like that? What do I want to do about it, if anything? How can I look at this without losing myself?"   

    This process is helping me a great deal.  Like this:

    What am I feeling?  Outrage, resentment, worry, fear, disgust.

    Why am I feeling that way? There is something in my life that is not OK with who I am, who I want to be. I am afraid for the loss of my heart, my identity, my financial future, my integrity to myself.

    What are you afraid of? That I am not loved. That I am not beloved. That I am not loveable.

    What do you want to do about it?  I want to be loved.  

    How can you do that - be loved - be beloved?  I can't make DH love me...too late....too much water of that dam (damn).  But I can find places where I AM appreciated, where I am seen and heard, where I can love the things I do and say, find situations where I can still excel, where I can still appreciate beauty and art..... on and on.  Look for it where it may appear and stop expecting it where it will not appear.

     - Just sharing some of the growth I have done since the first days I signed up on the board and was crying every day, feeling stuck and pitiful and paralyzed.

  • Opportunity Cost by: vabeachgal 6 years 11 months ago

    What would it be like to not have to read, research, make adjustments, soul search and the like?  How would it be without having to figure out your last straw or how to live peaceably in such a difficult situation.  We talk all the time about self-care.  It's very important that we exercise self-care. It also seems like we, collectively, spend an inordinate amount of time on the aforementioned activities, in an effort to understand ADHD and react to situations beyond our control. To learn, to try to control the uncontrollable.  Lately, I've been struck by how much brain space all of this takes.  It's probably not healthy, but I find I think about all of this often - too much.  I wake up and during my commute, I'm thinking about how to resolve everything financially, how to keep my husband on track, how to get him moving so the house can sell, how to find some peace during this awful transition time. I have to spend time actively working on my and actively finding ways to communicate with my husband because the way I communicate with the rest of the world doesn't work.  I've read and researched exhaustively.  I've thought and pondered and analyzed.  I've looked inside and I've looked outside. My husband?  Not so much.  Really, not AT ALL.  I'm not the only one with a partner who finds something as simple as keeping up with a prescription to be too difficult.  It's all the little things and all the big things that add up.  Checking and re-checking.  Figuring out work arounds and solutions.  Taking on too much because... well we all know why.  

     

    How would it be if I didn't have all of this cramming my brain?  What else could I accomplish with all of this time?  What would real peace with my own thoughts, and not someone's elses problems, in my brain feel like?  The closest I've come is a 7 day vacation last year.  It took 2 days to relax (seriously).  I still had intrusive thoughts during my vacation (because I could see my H draining his bank account while I was gone).... but, when I returned home, I realized how relaxed and calm I was because I was only in my own life and my own thoughts.  And thoughts of people I love and who love me and make me happy to spend time with. It's not like thoughts of my H are good ones - or routine ones I should say.  I'm not thinking about nice things and how much I enjoy his company and (at this point) not looking to plan activities or do nice things for him.  How would that feel?  It would have to feel great to be in a partnership like that.  A friend of mine said recently, that she won't accept anyone in her life who doesn't make her break out into a big smile when he walks up.  Good words.  What would that life look like?  Can I even do it?  Do I even know how anymore?

  • GF broke up with me on Thanksgiving by: kevkenobi 6 years 11 months ago

    Hey my fellow ADHD'ers,

    My very supportive girlfriend of three to four years dating broke up with me on the day before Thanksgiving. To be honest, I really really let her down and I am so down on myself. She was always there to nudge me in the right direction so I could continue my education and find something I was passionate about. We moved in together two years ago because she needed a roommate during her marriage and family college courses. Being the caring and supportive person that I am, I jumped at the opportunity to finally take our relationship to the next level. My overly optimistic approach to life and constant internal self-reflection that lead to no follow through were few of the many weaknesses that slowly made me lose myself in the process. I started to stop going to my community college courses, jumped from one job to another job to another job, and lacked the self-confidence to even do anything from all of her friend's and family constantly asking what I was doing with my life. She gave me so many opportunities for us to work it out, but I did not have the time-sensitive urgency and follow through to make it happen. My (ex) girlfriend broke up with me for this following reasons:

    • I was not financially stable and jumped from job to job to another job while we lived together.
    • The relationship dynamic somehow shifted from partners to a mother/son duo
    • Being hyperfocused on the "we", I lost who I was in the process. She something along the lines of "Kevin, I know who I am without you, but who are you without me?" when we broke up. 
    • Shifting interests and constantly overpromising and underdelivering
    • This was the last straw for her the weekend before Thanksgiving, she didn't talk about me passionately or proudly about me when people ask who I am or what I do. She would just give a generic response like "Oh Kevin is a barista now at Starbucks and he's gonna be an Organizational Leadership major at Arizona State University through the Starbucks College Achievement Program
    • I am back to square one and writing this from my bedroom at my parent's house. I have asked a few mutual friends how she is doing and I know that she's both mad and sad at me. I did not want to see that this relationship was falling apart and pushed it back to my mind. To be honest, I am both heartbroken and hurt but I am more upset at myself for letting this happen. I always said to her that I did not want a breakup to help motivate me to become a better version of myself.  I am so confused and lost right now. I loved her and our dog that we adopted together so much but I cannot even make a damn thought into an action. I don't know if I am even ready for another relationship and I will be honest that I am not sure we will ever get back together. I can only control myself going forward from now on and building myself into a better financial and passionate individual. Whatever happens, will happen. 

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