Hi friends, I’m 36 and recently just discovered what ADHD actually is, and am waiting for a consultation/diagnosis from a psychologist (a few more weeks on the wait list I think).
Apologies for the long post, but I’m working through some shit and feel the need to share here.
Anyways, as Ive been processing what having ADHD might mean for my life, Ive been having some incredible “aha!” moments about areas of my life where I feel significant amounts of shame for coming up short.
The one that I’m having now, which I’m very curious to know if anyone has also experienced, is an extreme amount of frustration and stress when my spouse starts “task stacking” with me. She’ll ask me to do something around the house, or with our kiddo, and then while I’m in the middle of doing that thing, she’ll ask me to do another second thing, and then a third, and so on until either all of the tasks are finished or I politely ask her to stop piling work onto my plate.
Relatedly, when we were dating we would spend a lot of time hiking together and its where we got to know each other a lot. However once we got married I began to really dread the days when we went hiking together. My thoughts on this now are that, we would have to wake up super early (which sucks but isnt a deal breaker in itself), but my wife would spend the entire morning in a whirlwind of task stacking, talking to fast to understand, and then have an unbreakable rigid “get out the door” time. Once we were in the cat to go hiking, I was a complete wreck of feeling exhausted and beaten down. I never had any of these frustrations or dread of hiking before we lived together.
This ended up in me coming to the conclusion that maybe I really don’t like hiking at all (which I’m starting to suspect is not actually true), and then fighting back on planning days to go hiking (planning is another massively shameful kryptonite of mine, but that’s another story). She’s also silently blamed me quite a lot for taking away something that she really loved doing together, and I’ve felt this existentially deep shame about “false advertising” for myself while dating as an adventurous spirit, only to turn into a massive homebody once we got married.
Essentially, I’m starting to realize that many of the things that have caused me deep shame and cost me insane amounts of relational capital in my marriage might actually just be symptoms of ADHD.
Can anyone else here validate whether or not these sound like ADHD symptoms you’ve experienced and, if so, whether or not those symptoms have been helped by medication?
When people start stacking tasks on me, I tell them not to because I’m not going to remember them (my short term memory is terrible, plus it’s stressful). If they ask me to do something later (and start giving me instructions to memorize), I ask them to telephone me at the time they want it done and walk me through it. Plan your life with the assumption that you are dumb so that it takes up as little cognitive bandwidth as possible.
This. You have to accept your shortcomings and tell people the best way to interact with you. My boss at work is also very ADHD and about a decade older than me, but a very smart guy. So I was able to learn a lot from him. One of the first things I caught on to was when someone asked him to do something in-person he would flat out tell them that he would forget and to please send him an email so he could review later. Then he could see that in his inbox as a reminder and would keep that email maked unread until he could get to it, depending on priority level. That was when I realized that is a thing you can do and people appreciate it. It shows that you really do care and you’re commited to doing whatever it is, you just need a little help. Thing is, when people are asking for help they’re not necessarily asking for you to do everything on your own.
When my SO has tasks for me to do, they know not to interrupt me during other tasks and to make a list for me, usually through just a text message.
What I’ve noticed is with the ADHD brain, it is hard to strike a focus. But when you can it is a powerful thing and you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. When someone interrupts that, for me, it can be very frustrating. Who knows when I’ll be able to strike gold again and get all this shit done?
Be honest with your partner and try to find the best way you can to explain your feelings. Ask for help, as people are more receptive to addressing interpersonal issues when you frame it as something you need as opposed to something that the other is doing wrong.
Make lists. Write everything down. If you are hiking the next morning, come up with a plan together to prep as much as you can the day before. Make a list of things you need to do in the morning before leaving, and mutually agree on a departure time in advance. That last part is hard for me, but I promise you it is better than the alternative (leaving it up to fate).
When you have ADHD, planning is both your greatest enemy and your best ally. Enemy because it is hard to make yourself do it, but your ally because if you do it, you can get some initial stress out of the way and when the time comes to do the thing you can spend more time thinking about the thing; or, living in the moment, as they say.