Hi all! I have ADHD and have never asked for help online.
I’ll try to be as concise as possible.
Current situation: My wife and I are going through a rough patch in our marriage. We spend all of our time together (more context below). We get into arguments because I have frequent mood swings and become easily irritated. More specifically, I am very harsh and impulsive with my words and usually say things that I come to regret after I have had some time to decompress. I have made numerous attempts (at therapy) and promises to modify my behavior and have been unsuccessful. The situation has become unsustainable because my wife has little faith that I will be able to change and does not take me seriously anymore. We have not tried marriage counseling but I am very much open to it. I believe that my ADHD and upbringing have a lot to do with how I regulate my emotions and why I have such a hard time at making improvements in my behavior. My wife does not see a link between my ADHD and lack of ability to change. I also think that there is a fine line between using ADHD as an excuse for not changing one’s behavior versus taking responsibility for our actions and seeking meaningful change.
Context: After having our first child about a year ago, my wife developed a debilitating pain condition that forced her to take a leave of absence from her job which meant that I had to quit my job to take care of her and our child full time. My wife’s medical condition has show significant improvements but there have also been minor set backs along the way which have introduced periods of depression. All this to say that we find ourselves in a very privileged situation of being able to raise our child together with the major caveat that I can be a very annoying person to live with when I don’t have the space/time/willingness to manage my ADHD symptoms (mainly my irritability).
Please feel free to share any thoughts, resources and/or advice.
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joe3737
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I'm a father of 4, was married for 20 years, and I have only been treated for ADHD for the last few years. Based on my own experience, I'll try to break down a number of likely contributing factors.
1- You have ADHD. In addition to issues with attention, hyperactivity and/or impulsivity, ADHD is also known to cause emotional disregulation.
2- You and your wife have a new baby. With a new baby comes a lot of change within your relationship, your household, requirements of your time and attention, shortage of sleep, and unanticipated costs. All of that adds up to stress and strain and uncertainty. Just the lack of sleep and sleep disruption can cause even the most balanced neurotypical people to become irritable and more impulsive with their words...it has a compounding effect with ADHD.
3- Your wife's health challenges (especially right after having a baby) are also going to be a stresser and an emotional drag on you. The fact that you are so emotionally affected by her going through these health issues likely indicates how deeply you care about her. It certainly proves that you're not one of those soulless, apathetic kinds of people.
4- Men often derive some of their self-esteem from what they do for work and from their ability to provide for their family. When a man takes an extended time off of work (even if it's to care for his loved ones), it can sometimes cause him to have a bit of an identity crisis (for lack of a better term).
5- If you lean towards being extroverted, you might be feeling a lack of social stimulation, which can also cause emotions to be more negative.
So, what can you do about it?
1- For ADHD, medication is usually the most effective treatment. Some ADHDers experience mood improvements with just a stimulant medication. Others (like myself) find a non-stimulant ADHD medication to help more with emotional regulation.
•Some research has found that adding one of certain other non-ADHD medications can actually help a lot with the emotional aspects of ADHD; these medications are guanfacine or clonidine (both are actually of a certain class of blood pressure medication).
Non-medication treatments for ADHD which might help with emotional regulation can include:
• exercise (especially regular exercise),
• meditation,
• mindfulness,
• therapy/counseling (most notably CBT or DBT),
• getting out into nature (sometimes referred to as "green-space therapy"),
• socializing with family or friends (if they have a positive effect on you, not if they have a negative effect on you)
• journaling
2- Make a point to get good rest, be well hydrated, eat a balanced diet, manage stress, and when you are worried about anything with the baby it doesn't hurt to ask the doctor (or many hospitals have a 24 hour nurse line that you can call, for basic health questions)... taking good care of yourself is essential to weathering life with a baby. --- Oh, and play with your little one. Play will help you bond, and it will also relieve stress.
3- Talk openly with your wife about what you are feeling, but whenever you aren't in a good mood, pause first and ask yourself if what you're going to say sounds like what you mean. It can be hard to do this when you're wired to just blurt out whatever comes to mind...it takes a lot of practice to build a pause-and-reflect into your speaking habits. Focus on why you love her, what you love about her...and make sure that you tell her this every now and again. Also, think about your wants, needs and expectations; share these with your wife as appropriate, and be genuinely curious about her in the same way.
4- Depending on the kind of work you do, consider working from home, or start back to work part-time. Even if you don't need the income, the effects that it might have on how manly you feel might make a big difference.
5- You and your wife each might need some time socializing with others... together, individually, with the baby along, or with someone else watching the baby for a while. Humans are social creatures. Very few of us can go for much time without socializing the way that we're used to. (Keep in mind, you might need to make some changes to how you socialize, now that you're parents.)
As a 58 year old woman who is the mother of two grown children, a whole bunch of the stuff that you said is in my head and life experience but I couldn't get it out when I made my comment.
My kids are spread out. There's an 8½ year gap, then a 10¼ year gap, then a 2½ year gap.
So, I had time and a lot of reason to give a lot of thought to my parenting experience.
As I'm sure all parents do, I learned the most while raising the first. (I'm her stepdad, as in "the dad who stepped in", since she was 7. So, I missed a lot of her early years.)
Because of the gap and the fact that I felt I "missed out" on my eldest's early life, I was very attentive to the whole parenting process with my second oldest.
I made a lot of mistakes. Learned from most of them. So, I'm now making new mistakes and learning new lessons with my youngest two. 😅
Thank you for such a thoughtful response, honestly. It really helped to write things down and see that there are folks out here with similar life experiences (and lots of resources).
In response to some of the points you make above: I was not aware of dialectical behavior therapy and will seriously look into it. I’ve tried cognitive behavioral therapy and saw some benefits with regulating my reactions/outbursts. That said, I was also taking stimulant medication at the time (which improved my focus and productivity) but I think that the medication exacerbated my irritability. Maybe other factors could have contributed to the increase in irritability from stimulant medication: high caffeine intake, not ideal sleep higiene, unbalanced diet, etc. Also, I’ve not been able to stick with any exercise routine. That’s something that I can (in theory) easily add to my routine but there is some paralysis there that I need to shake off. I am definitely a lot more active now that the little one is involved which is plus.
Excellent advice. I especially agree with the finding social groups to interact with. There is a website/cellular phone application called Meet Up. Download it onto your phone. Go to the search area of the website and type in groups that you might be interested joining that are near where you live. For example: I like boardgames. So, I've joined two different boardgames groups that meet once a month. One of them is at a local game store and the other is at a person's house. Things are going pretty well so far. I really like it. You can also look on line to see if your favorite musical artist has an official fan site that you can join and make tons of friends. I've done that years ago. I'm a hard core fan of Gloria Estefan and her family. I joined (in 2001) a fan-site dedicated to her created by some of her fans around the world. I've met people from China, Spain, Puerto Rico, England, Ireland, etc. They're such nice people. Every few years they have a fan meet up in Miami and get to tour offices/buildings that are owned by the Estefans. I've been to their recording studios a few times. It's really cool. An added bonus..... The Estefans show up to be with their fans. I have a bunch of pics with Gloria, Emilio, their niece Lili, and their daughter Emily. They're such great people. Maybe your favorite musician as a similar site so that you can meet others that are fans of that particular person. I hope that this helps.
I've checked Meetup, but the nearest groups to me (about 30+ miles from my home) don't match my interests, the nearest group they matches any of my interests is over 40 miles away, and the nearest ADHD group is about 80 miles away.
I'm not much of a music fan. I listen to music, but haven't really been the fan of any particular musicians or groups since the early 2000s. (I do live nearby a musician who was a member of one of my brother's favorite bands. I think that my brother and that musician are now friends of a sort, based on how they talk on Facebook. But I haven't really felt like driving up and meeting him personally.)
Maybe I ought to create a local Meetup group for ADHD support, but it seems like most of the people with an ADHD diagnosis in my area are kids, not adults.
The wider region is known as the Southern Tier of New York.
(Ironically, it is north of the Northern Tier region of Pennsylvania. The two together are known as the "Twin Tiers", and have more in common with each other than either has with the rest of their respective states.)
I moved here a couple of years ago from the Idaho "panhandle" (the narrow northern part of the state), which had a similar relationship with eastern Washington State. It was similarly rural, dotted with small towns and a few small-to-medium sized cities.
(I lived in SoCal in the 80s, when Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine first made it big in the music scene. I've never been to Florida, so when I hear her music or the band's music, I think of San Diego. I can smell the salty air of the ocean and hear her voice as I'm writing this.)
I'm sorry to hear that you and your wife are having difficulty.
I commend you for all the things you mentioned you have tried to improve yourself and I also commend you for coming here and being so transparent and asking for help.
I agree with you that there is a difference between having any kind of medical condition that has traits that are problematic, trying to improve and not succeeding and just not trying and using it as an excuse.
I'm sorry that your wife doesn't seem to understand that you are in the former category at least from what you share here in your post and I take it at face value as truth and accurate.
Have you ever tried DBT therapy which specifically is geared to help people with emotional regulation? I first got involved in it I guess 26 years ago when I didn't know that I have ADHD and man has it ever been a game changer.
I also recently purchased a workbook with the title something like neurodivergent friendly DBT.
I'm not too far into it but it has been helpful.
(Like in the dictionary next to the word 'useful and helpful' is the word DBT.)
I would like to share another idea to consider which is finding a therapist who specializes in working with people who have ADHD and also can help somebody learn DBT and/or CBT which is cognitive behavioral therapy.
Congratulations on your little one who must be toddling around and exploring things vertically now😁
Thanks for responding. As I just mentioned in my response to STEM_Dad , I have tried CBT but not DBT. I’ll start with familiarizing myself with it before looking up counseling/therapy options but I am very happy to hear that there is something new that I can try. From your response, it sounds like you benefited from it and are continuing to, that makes me hopeful.
Male/husband/father of 2 - 45 - New to this forum, and rather new to being ADHD positive (😁). Piggy backing this post slightly, but also going to share for OP Joe.After some extreme windows of time with our youngest daughter (we noticed since she was a toddler, but progressively worsened as she grew older) we finally learned that she had combined ADHD and GAD (general anxiety disorder). As well as mild to moderate depression.... At 9 yrs old. It was terrifying and painful to see her go through this. Major emotional dysregulation, major, outbursts and breakdowns - to the point of throwing things, hitting her head against a wall, dumping water on the floor, and screaming, most often saying "I wish I was dead, just kill me" - brought me to tears many times. We got the diagnosis through a psycho Ed assessment. We apprehensively started hey on meds, Zoloft, and vyvanse. Wow, what a change! Life altering - literally. At first I was apprehensive because I thought I was being selfish to want her way of being to end.... But I thought about it a different way, 'does she WANT to be like this"? Likely not, so we proceeded. So happy we did, for her and for the rest of the family. Things have been so much better overall. Still some outbursts and bouts of emotional dysregulation, but far fewer and far less intense.
Enter self reflection..... Once I saw the changes in my daughter, I started to see the similarities in my own personality. The outbursts, the emotional dysregulation, mostly, along with other ADHD symptoms. Learning or is hereditary, I decided to take one of her vyvanse - if I'm willing to give it to my 9yo, I should be willing to try it. So I did. Wow. I couldn't believe the difference. Probably the most productive and fluid day of my life. I got stuff done like a machine, I was much less irritable, I was seemingly happier, it was great. So at that point I self diagnosed myself. I did go to at my GP and get officially diagnosed, but I have not been through any other tests to determine and other details about it. I have tried a few different prescriptions, and still working on the right one at the right side. Had to add in an anti anxiety need too, as I did have heightened anxiety, possibly from the ADHD, but likely from the meds.
Now, after all this, everything I was doing was based off of MY knowledge of what ADHD is, which is not very much, just the typical facts that most of the population knows. I've since started reading up on it and it truly has opened my eyes to what it is I've been dealing with practically my whole life! I've always just thought I was different - less educated, lazy, unmotivated, impulsive - but I thought this was a normal way for son some people to be.... Well, so it is, for ADHDr's!
Oddly, it's a great feeling learning this stuff, knowing that it wasn't 'just me' but rather a 'disorder' that I have been trying to cope with my whole life. I just wish I'd have learned this so so so many years ago. It's a shame that, although many good things, there had been so much lost, or endured, or sacrificed over the years of not knowing.
So now it's time to put the pieces of the puzzle together..... properly... The puzzle was going together, but the live pieces just weren't connecting.
Now that I know and better understand, who I am and why - to a degree - it's time to work on myself and see what better life I can build for myself, my wife, my 2 girls, and the rest of my family.
I have faith, but I imagine it will take time.
I am an entrepreneur (surprise) and my business has sacrificed greatly too, so time to put thy proper attention into that as well.
Now to address Joe, if you haven't already... The first books I read on ADHD are "Extra Focus - The associate quick start guide to adult ADHD, but Jesse J Anderson". Gave me an inedible awaking to myself as it practically described ME to the tune of like 98%. The next - and I'm not finished it yet - is "The ADHD affect on marriage - Understand and rebuild your relationship in 6 steps, by Melissa Orlov. Also very eye opening and again, felt like she was describing our relationship to a T! Both very much wish the time, and hopefully it can/will help you. And same for me. We are just starting couples therapy, and I think this will be a BIG part of coming to terms and working through and understanding our differences. Hopefully we can undo the resentment that had been building over the years. And even more hopeful, that we can show a good example for our daughters.
All the best.
Thanks for taking the time to read my tangent... Lol. 😬🫣
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