Hello all, I am a 39M whose wife (42F) was just diagnosed with ADHD. We’ve had a suspicion ever since our 6 year old was diagnosed and we started doing a deep dive into it and realizing a lot of the symptoms fit her. Even some of the memes from this community helped her to start looking into it herself. She is relieved to find out she’s not just ‘a disorganized slob’, that there is a reason for her struggles, but now the real work begins.
My question is: what do you wish your partner would have known/done for you? I want to be as supportive as possible and make sure I’m not contributing to any negative feelings, and help her find ways to build coping mechanisms. Just looking for any advice!
First of all, you’re amazing, and your wife is lucky to have a supportive partner.
It really helps me that my husband understands that I can get overstimulated or overwhelmed and then I’m kind of useless until I recharge. So I can just tell him “I’ve reached my limit” and he knows to take over for a bit. It could be with parenting or cleaning or anything. I’ll go rest and then help out when I’m back to having energy. I know this is just simple communication, but it helps him to understand I’m not just being lazy.
He is also a great sounding board. I can come to him and say “my thoughts are all over the place, and I feel paralyzed” and he will just sit there and listen while I verbally vomit, then he tries to help me organize my thoughts/figure out the next step.
And the last thing is just patience. I get that it can be frustrating when your spouse constantly loses things and needs reminders. He is so patient and helps me all the time. He truly understand it’s a disability for me, and he loves me regardless.
Aw thank you. I am by no means perfect and I make a lot of mistakes and say the wrong thing but I try.
Thank you also for your comments.
It’s funny, when it comes to social situations, this is more me than her. For parenting, we both definitely have our limits and try to give each other time to take a break and recharge, and I try to handle most of the cleaning/straightening up. The problem I often run into is when it comes to her stuff - she is definitely a bit cluttered and once something has just been sitting for a day or two, it is like she gets a blindness towards it, meanwhile it’s driving me crazy that it hasn’t been put away. However, when I try to put her stuff away it never ends well, either I don’t know where to put it (because she doesn’t have a spot for it) or I say the wrong thing in trying to ask her what to do with it. Do you have any suggestions on how to help support her straightening up her items without making her feel judged or pressured?
How does he help you organize your thoughts? Just curious if there is a line of questioning that you find useful or what.
Haha yeah, there is a lot of forgetting stuff and me needing to remind her to do stuff, I don’t mind a ton but it can get frustrating, especially when it feels like I’m supposed to be the one remembering ‘everything’. I feel like we have got a good system down in that I usually try to handle keeping our calendar up-to-date and reminding her of stuff on the calendar.
What helped me was having a designated place for all of the important things and things I tend to displace often, but that’s something I had to initiate on my own. Maybe you can suggest that and help her actually come up with specific places. Like, we had to mount some small shelves and a jewelry organizer and a peg board to organize some things, but it was well worth the effort.
He starts out by just making himself available and listening, which solves the problem for me like 70% of the time because I process things externally aka verbally, so as I talk, I solve my own problems. In the other 30%, he just sort of reflects on what I’m saying, first asking me what solutions I already thought of (this is crucial because then it doesn’t seem patronizing when he offers solutions). And then, he is a quasi-engineer, and he is great at triage and decision-making, so he will throw out ideas but he will never force me to go a specific way, just make suggestions and let me decide.
I hope this helps!