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?
It certainly matches up with my ADHD experiences including a past relationship. First diagnosed at 24 or maybe it was 25 and being rather sociable I met people through whatever my particular interest was at the time. Tennis, ju jitsu, volleyball at the park, biking, frequent gym routine, hanging out at a local bar. Most of these were pretty active things until a jackass in a blue gi messed up my knee and slowed my physical activity down considerably for a while.
Girls I met who were really into one active thing were usually also on board with trying another active thing even if it didn’t stick for them but I started to notice a difference between our philosophies on hobbies and interests.
A byproduct of ADHD for many is the ability to learn and acclimate to a new interest really fast and it wasn’t long after my diagnosis that I came to understand my frequently changing interests were replacements more often than they were additions.
When my knee became an issue I got really into cooking, then magic the gathering, then D&D and other table top games, and pc gaming in general. The girl I was dating at the time helped by being a really good point of reflection as I jumped from interest to interest and she was struggling to follow despite still enjoying each other’s company. She liked that I was enthusiastic about things and loved that energy but since she wasn’t able to share my new interests as well it strained our relationship a bit.
I was in therapy with a great doctor regarding my adhd diagnosis still at the time and she helped me through the stages of grief that often comes with ADHD diagnosis. Realizing that despite my efforts I will not always be able to control the way it changes me, my perception, and expectations of others I came to this understanding of self made rules when interacting with partners who do not have ADHD:
I must be clear about my opinion on tasks and topics early. I must make sure they understand my experience through the lens of ADHD is likely very different from theirs. I must communicate how a thing feels calmly when the context is still fresh in their mind. I must work with them to establish a fair system of equal compromises because neither of our own ways is more “right” than the others in most circumstances. I must try to recognize when I am facing a task or responsibility that my disorder will make me resent completing and I should share that feeling and explanation with my partner whenever I can.
Keep in mind these are some psychotic “I must always obey these internal rules!” kind of things but rather they are helpful reminders that I am not the imagined high energy, happy go lucky person I sometimes come off as and being up front about my quirks helps set the right expectations in a relationship. Not everyone can deal with an ADHD partner and it’s shameful as well as harmful to yourself to try and trick them otherwise even if you do it with good intentions.
You do not need to feel ashamed of false advertising because with ADHD, it was never really your choice. Even in this post you still wish you could enjoy that interest but the fact is, you don’t and that really sucks because it’s one of the things ADHD has robbed you of.
If you are just about to get your diagnosis then make sure to get into some therapy too along with medication if you go that route as you will likely start learning a lot about yourself now that the mystery of your nature is made more clear.
Its like putting on glasses for the first time if you grew up with bad vision. You never knew how many details there were in some things ubtill you could see them through new eyes and once you start to learn more about ADHD and you can recognize things in your life enough to ask “is this a me thing? Or is this an ADHD thing?” you will gain a much broader perspective.
Oh and to answer your final questions, yes this sounds a great deal like ADHD to me with a healthy dose of strong introspection and unfortunately medication does not treat this part of the disorder. The meds are a crutch to help you focus on things you don’t want to focus on naturally. Everything else will need to be treated by you learning about what makes your particular brain tick the way it does.