Good morning @Former-Member (and @Shaz51! Thanks for tagging me in that caters thread last night - how are you today?)
You don’t have to be sorry at all (I feel like my posts have been just about essay length!) and I just want to say how much I appreciate the time and thought you are putting in to respond to my queries and empathise with me while I’m going through a rough patch. You can write as much as you like and I will hang off every word ☺️ and this is also quite long (sorry!)
I also really appreciate your thoughtful comments about my kindness as a partner. I feel it’s taken a long time to get here. We were together in our early 20’s and I knew nothing about adhd - and thus was not empathetic or understanding of many things (i.e., the zoning out of our conversations, the emotional shut off, the distraction, the perceived “laziness” that I now know is more like an exhausted analysis paralysis), and we ended the relationship at one point because I took it all incredibly personally. I studied counselling for a year while we were apart and actually looked into adhd a lot more, and now that we are back together I’m so much more mindful of my approach, which has made a huge difference, but still doesn’t quell those feelings of isolation for me. And you can’t talk to your friends about it, lest they say, “dump him, girl!”
Absolutely love your self care menu and it sounds like you have an incredibly supportive partner who loves you very much, and how wonderful you’ve been able to work together to come up with such a thing! Would LOVE to know more about how you are limiting micro decision making! Were you wondering for a long time before your diagnosis whether you might have adhd?
To answer your questions - I usually wait until he has brought up a symptom before I start the therapy conversation (e.g., “I’m so exhausted all the time, I hate “xyz” about myself, I wish I could do “x””), to which I respond with, have you thought any more about going to talk to someone? His answer changes - sometimes it’s yes I will go I just need to motivate myself to do it, sometimes it’s no therapy is not something that’s going to help me because I’m not a talker. I try to encourage him by letting him know my own experience with therapy but his response is often “I’m not like you, it’s not as easy for me to talk to people about my problems” to which I respond therapy is not always about talking about why you’re sad, it can be about solutions and strategies for managing symptoms, or even just talking to someone who works with and understands adhd might help. He just says yep, ok, I’ll go. And doesn’t make the call. I tried the daily reminder thing once which only irritated him - though he ended up finally calling a GP and then they didn’t answer the phone……meaning, he gave up!
I have only recently started to remind him that the things he is feeling are often symptoms of ADHD and NOT personality traits for him to beat himself up about. For example, “I’m so tired and always napping. I’m so lazy, I’m the worst” is always met with a “hey, you’re not lazy. It takes about 99x the energy for a person with adhd just to get through the morning - you have a thousand things on your mind, it’s no wonder you’re exhausted”. So I feel like I can manage the empathy side and be on his team - but he’s the only one who can actually make the jump and address the root cause.
We did have a discussion once about how it also impacts me as the other 50% in our partnership - that didn’t go down well. Something along the lines of “my mental health is my issue and whether I go to therapy or not shouldn’t have anything to do with you”!
I see his biggest challenge as motivation and self worth. He is naturally such a smart and hard working person - so to have his mind fighting against him and not allowing him to exercise daily or study consistently or go out and socialise or do the things he feels he needs to do just makes him beat himself up. And then he withdraws. It’s really hard - I don’t think he’s actually asked me to leave the house and do something together in over a year.
Boy that’s a lot to read- maybe I do need a counsellor! Thank you so much for sharing those articles. I’ll give them all a read.
Hope everyone has a wonderful day.
