How Your ADHD Affects Your Relationships

the successful strategy is about figuring out how can we capture those moments of productivity and that's where setting expectations is very very important so adhd slash second time being kicked out by partners to find motivation am i a magnet to these situations what can i do my ex kicked me out three separate times saying i need to find my independence and often joked that i was mooching there was quite an age gap i was 17 and they were 25 but i was working full-time and contributing to the house and cleaning regularly he also mentioned he felt he wasn't good enough for me he would say he would also say to me if you don't have anything good to say you shouldn't say it at all and maybe that had something to do with how adhd gets me overwhelmed easily and contributes to my depression i had a lot of difficulty putting my thoughts into words but with him it was easy because he would basically read my mind i liked how he truly understood the great ideas my adhd brain had however he kicked me out but still wanted to stay in a relationship with him but i couldn't handle the back and forth of moving in and out with him so i set boundaries and eventually broke it off good for you i currently have a partner who i believe is more grounded and compassionate however they also want me to move out and stay in a relationship with them because they feel like it's it's what's best for both of us this time around i've practiced self-awareness and setting boundaries i didn't have a job because we were going to renovate a house after moving together across the country he says that in eight months i haven't done enough renovating or cleaning the house has very little storage and i've been very overwhelmed adhd and too much of a perfectionist ocd i did not come up with the proper plan or get enough done he's seen me renovate in the past to see me do great work he says he doesn't feel like i'm the same person he also mentioned he doesn't like my tone when i ask him simple questions and thinks i'm frustrated and passive aggressive which i'm not but i still want to try to use a better tone of voice he also told me if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say it at all i don't quite understand how this line haunts me because i rarely speak without thinking anymore but at times i have difficulty putting thoughts into words for him and sometimes it comes out wrong but that's another story i don't know if it's another story right that may be related even though i feel healthier with this partner i often feel like my great ideas aren't well understood but but it's something i can live with the trauma from being kicked out in my first relationship really stresses me now i found a job already but i still need to find a place to live out here alone with no family or support system in hopes that it'll help me and my current partner the situation has triggered my depression i can totally understand that right like move to a new place living on your own kind of move to this place presumably to be with this person we will get couples counseling and my hopes are that he will understand me better by the end of it i need him to understand what he needs from me is causing me suffering and i don't feel that adding on rent to my bills will help us but i do believe that communicating therapy and coming up with a good plan to continue working on the house will help us both but he disagrees and says it's too late for me to keep working on the house and no matter what i do i definitely still need to find a place to live for six months to one year or so i just can't help but wonder if i'm the magnet for this kind of situation i don't understand how this is happening to me for the second time i feel like i've lost my trust in him as i can't count on him anymore i'm already broke from having him drag me across the country and spending all my savings due to my poor trip planning is he right to kick me out does anyone know what i can do to save this relationship so this is like super challenging okay let's like try to understand what's going on here so the first thing is that adhd has an intersectional relationship with relationships so this is where we've got to take a step back and really understand like what's going on here so like we think about using the medical model right we sort of think about a disease as an isolated thing and that disease causes particular problems and we sort of think about treating that disease in isolation like if i'm adhd and i get on adhd treatment it's sort of fixed and i'm set the problem with adhd is that it's very very intersectional and dominating in terms of shaping our life so it's not just that this person has for example a difficulty with getting overwhelmed easily or maybe it's not easily maybe they you know maybe they don't get overwhelmed easily it's like right renovating a house is like not a small project right this person has moved across the country they're like responsible for renovating a house which is very very challenging in and of itself like even if if you don't have adhd that's like a lot of work and then as we're sort of working through this stuff like you've spent eight months and and he feels like you haven't done enough and so like is that the adhd well then that intersects with the relationship so what we tend to see with a lot of people is that not only do people with adhd sometimes struggle with prioritization and organization but those struggles intersect with the relationship and so because like our partners have particular expectations on us they may not really be understanding what we struggle with or may not kind of give us allowances for it then we run into relationship problems and then what happens is we have like communication difficulties which is a big part of adhd as well so a lot of if you kind of think about it if you zone out in conversations for example if you have difficulty like formulating your thoughts in a coherent way because they're all over the place that then negatively impacts the relationship so now what we've got is a situation where there's a problem that needs to be fixed in a relationship right maybe you're not renovating as much as you have or you need to or your partner wants to but then generally speaking like what's our antidote to that that problem the problem like it's one thing for adhd to kind of make it difficult for us in terms of organizing our life prioritizing our life but then like on top of that when that doesn't work out we rely on things like communication to fix things right okay let's get on the same page let's figure this out let's work through it but if your communication is hampered and we sort of see evidence of that right so people are mult multiple times they're complaining of like you know tone and stuff like that so we've had a couple of partners who do that we are also seeing that this person sort of struggles to get thoughts out of their head sometimes which is very common and so that negatively impacts the relationship and then suddenly the thing that was supposed to be an antidote our backup plan our safety net our parachute stops working not only does it stop working it adds additional weight and additional stress and then as we get into negative situations right you kind of get then you get kicked out you come back you get kicked out you come back you get kicked out you're like enough is enough then you get traumatized by it so on top of everything that that's happened and we sort of understand this we'll go into more detail then you sort of like lose trust like you know like like then it's the cycle starts repeating itself and you feel like you're you're you know you're a puppet whose strings are being pulled and then what you have to do is like deal with sort of the the triggering and trauma from all of the above so what happens in adhd is that we get this like weird stacking effect right it's it's the first thing is that my brain doesn't really like organize very easily or sometimes i bite off more than i can chew and this is the other thing about adhd is that there there are times where you know you're capable and we sort of see this in this case as well where there are bursts of like creativity and productivity that are amazing why did you sign up to renovate the house why was your partner okay with you renovating the house because they've seen what you're capable of and with the previous partner they were able to see the brilliance of what your brain can put together so this is the challenge is that it's like it's not all bad right they're like these moments of brilliance moments of productivity and then what we do is we start to build a life expecting those kinds of moments and things don't really work out well because we don't really know how to foster and create those moments and then the communication falls apart and then like like you start to get traumatized a little bit because this has happened before we've been here before now what do we do about it and so everything kind of stacks on top of you and you feel incredibly overwhelmed and then it's like well okay which of these do i fix first do i figure out how to renovate the house do i work on my communication do i try to foster bursts of productivity do i focus on like my ocd and perfectionism and remember that people with adhd struggle with prioritization and so like then what happens is each of these problems stacks up you get overwhelmed by the five different problems that you have to solve and then like you don't know what to do and you kind of get paralyzed right you kind of like pull into your shell and put your head you know put your hood on you know we're gonna like and then we're gonna like try to just chill for a little bit right so what's going on here is is why does this keep happening to this person and what can you do about it can you save the relationship so this is where the good news i know this sounds kind of weird but if you look at like these problems we can look at this and we can see five problems we can say okay there's problems with organization problems with prioritization problems with communication problems with like stuff kind of getting triggered and being traumatized and like the stress of all that sort of stuff and like the problem of like okay which of these problems do we tackle first so you can look at these things and you can think that these are five independent problems and if they're five independent problems they have five independent solutions and like you can kind of like work through them but the good news and this is sort of what we understand from medicine is if i've got like a headache a stomach ache and a rash what's more likely that i've got one thing that's causing all three of these or i've got three separate illnesses i've got like migraines i've got crohn's disease and i've got like eczema like it's possible that it's all three but it's much more likely that there's like one problem and this is actually what we see in adhd and this is why there's actually like a lot of hope here so the good news is that there's a fundamental problem which is creating each of these symptoms and how do we understand that okay so let's kind of go through that a little bit so the biggest thing that i would say in a situation like this and just as a caveat each of these has things that you can absolutely do in adhd but i'd say the biggest problem with all of these things is setting expectations it's like setting expectations is the biggest thing setting expectations for yourself setting expectations for your partner sort of like really understanding what the deliverable is so i'll give you all an example so you know when you say okay like all and this is the thing is this is a skill that you can learn so when you like move in with a partner what are the expectations okay are you going to contribute to rent are are you going to clean how often are you going to clean what are you going to clean when you move across the country to be with someone what's the expectation is the expectation financial support for this amount of time this amount of time if you're renovating the house at what point does like the house need to be done what kind of progress are we talking about in terms of communication like how are we communicating when are we communicating you know how do you have conversations with people and so the biggest thing that i tend to find with people who have adhd is that they don't set good expectations and this is kind of weird but like this is what happens right so if we think about the mind of someone who has adhd we've got like 10 different things that we've got going on and i'll try to illustrate this because i think this is the best way to kind of do this so let's understand this okay because i think there's one thing that you can do here that'll hopefully help a fair amount okay let me just okay all right so let's take a look at this so what we've got here is an issue of expectation setting okay so let's understand so we've got problems with prioritization problems with organization problems with communication problems with being triggered and then the problem of fixing the above four right we've actually like this like problem number five like how do we deal with this this this this and this that's another problem so let's try to understand how adhd works and sort of like why this is difficult and what we can do about it and then we'll start start to see okay like if you find yourself falling into this core problem of okay i have adhd and it negatively impacts my relationships i find myself in the same situation over and over and over again i don't know what to do about it what can i do about it let's understand this okay so the first thing is that when you've got adhd you've got a bunch of different thoughts okay and then what your brain does is a lot of effort you're like okay like this is all the crap i have to deal with let me organize this so you move one over here you move two over here your mind kind of does this okay first i gotta do this and the next is five where are three and four who the hell knows then we've got six then we've got seven so this is what your mind does right so it's like okay i gotta renovate a house let me do all this stuff and then what happens so you you organize your thoughts you organize your mind good job and then your attention wanders so you've spent time organizing let's say you spend one hour of your life organizing this and then your attention wanders and then you get distracted for three hours and when you come back to the task we're back to the jumble right now we've added four so and this is something that you don't have to have adhd to understand like i don't know if any all have done something like start a job application or like start to fill out an application for let's say college and then if time passes between like when you organize things in your head and like let's say like i start filling out an application and then i come back a month later can i pick up where i left off absolutely not and that's why we leave tasks undone because we have to re-do the work you all get that like if i if i procrastinate for two weeks and i can't pick up where i left off i have to redo the work and so now it's like i have to spend one hour again but but now it's like i have to spend more time just to get back to where i was so it's an incredibly inefficient way and this is what happens in people with adhd is that when you've got a lot of stuff in your head you try to organize it you try to prioritize it and then as you get distracted because remember that people with adhd get distracted easily right things get jumbled again and then what happens is you spend a lot of time reorganizing it into one two five seven eight nine and we forgot about four and we forgot about ten she spent two hours doing this and then it gets disorganized again we kind of come back to here and then you go through this process and then nine months go by and you haven't renovated enough and your partner complains you'll see this so what do you do about this so what are like the problems here so like there's one thing that you can do i mean there's a lot of stuff you can do we'll kind of talk about each of these things but the main thing that you've got to learn how to do if you're struggling with relationships in adhd is set expectations so your partner has to know going in what to expect because the other thing is that like the stress from this and the stress from this makes this process way worse it actually makes it more easy for you to get disorganized right because like now here you are trying to organize what you need to do to renovate the house and what is your brain doing your brain is like oh my god i've lost my trust even if i spend three weeks renovating the house and doing perfectly can i count on this person anymore right you all see that like you don't really know what you can do like you don't know who you can count on you don't know what does this mean for me does this mean i have to like find now i have to find a job and move out and find a place and like well now we have to go to therapy so like let's add that back on there right so now it's like there's even more stuff now as we go up here there's like okay now i have to find therapy now i have to find a place to live now i'm stressed about money because i spent all my money moving across the country to be with this person so now you've added more things right so here's number one here's number two here's number three here's number four here's number five here's number six here's number seven here's number eight and so we get overwhelmed and so what happens is like task upon task upon task we get over like the more tasks there are the more we're overwhelmed the more we're overwhelmed the more we start to do work we start to organize it and the more we end up disorganizing ourselves because there's a lot of stuff to do then we've got even more numbers to sort out so now it takes longer to sort them out now we're adding 11 12 21 28 right so okay now we have to do this and this and this and then this and then like now it's even more to hold in our heads and so it becomes this vicious cycle it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy this relationship could fall apart you go into the next relationship now you have the burden of this happening twice and so what do you do about this gotta learn to set expectations gotta learn to organize okay so this is where especially when it comes to relationships i think it starts with understanding what you're capable of and understanding what kind of support you need it also involves like very clear expectations around things like communication right so i'll give you guys like sort of an example so this is the this is what i would advise someone who's sort of in this situation if you're moving across the country with someone it's like thinking through some of these things okay so like okay here's my savings you want to move across the country and renovate a house i'm artistic i'm creative that's fantastic what is our timeline what is our budget how are we going to pay expenses right this is what i'm putting in i'm going to spend my savings to move across the country to be with you and so like what's what's the expectation here like you know how long do you think this is going to take how much progress do you want to make like you know what's your understanding like these are all the kinds of things that need to be kind of laid out and this is what's actually hard for people with adhd is they they don't think about this stuff sort of ahead of time right because and this is the really interesting thing is that if you've got adhd you're so good at this kind of crap that you don't like you've adapted to to be able to juggle a bunch of things at the same time since you're sort of like in a state of last-minute panic and things are on fire you've actually managed to figure out like how to manage how to deal with fires pretty well and so interestingly enough instead of sitting down and organizing things from the get-go and setting expectations what people with adhd learn how to do is basically pull a rabbit out of a hat dig super deep go the extra mile and like patch things up in a crisis situation people with adhd are so good at dealing with crises because they're in them all the time so you level up your crisis management skill but the problem is that like even if you're really good at crisis management it's a stressful way to live right it's like and it's really difficult for partners because if your partner recognizes that your strength is in crisis management and you can let things fall apart for a long time and then like patch them back up like that's super stressful for them and then we see these kinds of patterns where people are kind of you know they're they're like getting you know like look at this this is insane kicked me out three separate times because i need to find independence right so what's going on here like how do you manage this kind of stuff so set expectations right so like what does that mean set expectations that means who what when where how start defining all these things so that both of y'all can get on the same page the cool thing is as you start defining these different things for yourself okay like what does this relationship look like in terms of financial stuff in terms of budgeting in terms of like okay where are we going to be a year from now what it does is it it externalizes things right so it's almost like you're sort of building a priority list you're organizing your life a little bit that way if you sort of like you know whether you're on track or not on track because the other thing that's really confusing is that if you've been with this person for nine months and they pop it on you after nine months they're like hey you haven't done enough it's like okay well like what about you know like why are you springing this on me now like how did you feel about it six months ago how did you feel about three months ago because this is what works with people with adhds you have to see what's coming so if you see what's coming right and you're over here you sort of like it'll keep you i don't know how to say this but it'll like kind of keep you in track so there's a technique that works for example with kids with adhd is you have to like tell them ahead of time what's coming so if a kid is playing with their legos you can't say oh hey like by the way it's time to go to school put away your legos and then like they're absorbed in the legos and then what happens you like say hey it's time for school it's time for school and then you start yelling because you get frustrated because they're not paying attention and then they get upset because they're like they were completely absorbed in the legos so there's actually i don't know if you all remember this but we did a lecture about parenting styles in adhd where adhd actually increases toxic authoritarian and empathic parenting it's uh that's like literally it does that so it shifts the way that people parent adhd also increases stress and worsens depression in the parents so it can be very very stressful for people to be in relationships with people with adhd now does that mean you're screwed no there's a lot you can do about it and that's where like setting expectations is the first thing so you've got to like map stuff out for yourself and the good thing is once you put it on paper if you lose it all in your head then you've got the paper right so like this is the thing about adhd is you've got bursts of creativity where you can get a lot of renovation done so if you know where you're supposed to be one month where you're supposed to be two months i wouldn't sort of like focus too much about you know where you want to be six months from now i'd really sort of like think a little bit about what's the first thing that you've got to do and really focus on that and then recognize that it's going to be bumpy right you're going to have weeks of time where you don't get any work done the problem is that without this external structure that's based on mutual expectations when you lose track there's nothing anchoring you to come back when you when you could be productive so let's say like you know you screw up for a week or like you're not able to focus for a week but then week two comes around and unless you've got something anchoring you pulling you back you're gonna spend time like doing something else so you're you're losing these windows of productivity and you can still do it because people with adhd can be so they're sort of this idea of hyper focus right where there's like ext absurd amounts of productivity for some people and so that's the kind of thing where it's like the successful strategy is about figuring out how can we capture those moments of productivity and that's where setting expectations is very very important so this is where like let's start with the relationship right so like this is another kind of thing which it's kind of interesting but so like what is the what are the expectations in the relationship who's going to contribute what and like what you know what's the standard here so like who's going to contribute financially who's going to take care of cleaning even in terms of cleaning like what does that mean you can't use a vague term you have to define it what does cleaning mean i'm supposed to keep the place clean well let's think about that does that mean like sweeping every day does that mean mopping every day does that mean cleaning the toilets every day like what is like the clean like let's organize it who what when where how what are the expectations financially like okay like how long are we going to try this renovation stuff what kind of progress do we want to make like what are the steps of renovation like let's set expectations because what happens in relationships is when you don't set expectations especially if you're with someone who's neurotypical they may not need to set out these explicit expectations because they can hold stuff in their head better does that make sense so the key thing here is that like you've got to put it on a piece of paper or you have to put it out in some kind of external structure because if you lose track of it in your mind which happens very quickly you've got to start over from scratch and you'll make no progress in nine months so the expectation setting is very very important it's also very very important from a relationship standpoint right so now your partner knows that you may struggle hey by the way so i'm very confident that i can renovate this house but there are going to be periods of time where it's very very overwhelming in periods of time where i'm going to be really really productive here's what i'd like to get done in the first month here's what i like to get done in the second month the third month the fourth month the fifth month the sixth month i'm not saying that i can necessarily stick to this but this is where you know like generally speaking it takes me one and a half times longer than what i set out to do so this this is a six month plan that may take nine months and let's check in regularly right so then there's also an expectation around communication this is really important if you've got adhd or you're dating someone with adhd you must set a schedule of communication you can't just talk about things when they're a problem which is usually how relationships work right we don't talk about stuff unless it's a problem that absolutely needs to change you need to be so much more proactive so hey can we check in once a month and see like how things are going so here's why we moved across the country how do you think that's going here's where we are with renovation here's where we are with our relationship here's where we are with like communication you mentioned you know that you don't like my tone sometimes you know like so so this is where expectations become very very important and so if we kind of go back to this for a moment you know i would sort of say like okay what are the expectations around organization what are the expectations around communication what are the expectations around therapy so if things aren't working out in six months like what do you think about starting to see a therapist what are the expectations around money so if i'm moving across the country i don't have a job and i'm focused on renovating are you comfortable financially supporting me for what period of time are you comfortable financially supporting me you should know this right so i think what's happening in in a lot of this this situation is i do think there are some things that you should really be careful about so this happens a lot with people who have adhd which is that they need help sometimes and people want to help them especially if you're in a relationship so getting kicked out three separate times saying i need to find my independence so sometimes you'll find this is much somewhat of an age gap here too there's probably also a maturity gap so what's the expectation there right if i'm a 25 year old and i'm dating a 17 year old and they're moving in with me what how are they going to find their independence like what's your plan for finding your independence and why do you keep moving in if the goal is to be independent like why is why are we moving in with people very quickly over and over and over again getting kicked out is unfortunate for sure but i think the other mistake in terms of how am i a magnet for these situations why are you moving in in the first place that's the thing that you need to figure out are you magnet for these situations 100 right and that's where we've got to be kind of careful here because we're not sort of saying it's your fault but you do have a hand in it so you're it looks like you're in a relationship with who's someone who's grouded and compassionate that's awesome um you're also growing right so this is something else that we see is like this person is learning and getting better at it practicing self-awareness setting boundaries better but there's also like how are we how are we so quickly moving in with people and this is the other thing that we tend to see with adhd is that a lot of times people do need support right so you you may have difficulty keeping a job you may need to quote unquote mooch where that's where like i don't really view it as mooching as long as everyone is on the same page about what each partner is bringing to the relationship and that's where expectation setting becomes really really important so in terms of how to avoid this situation i would be really really careful so what we tend to look at is how the situation so this is like the other kind of key tip when we're trying to figure out you know how do i keep on finding myself in this situation we look at the situation when it starts falling apart how do i stop getting kicked out that's the problem right that's not the problem if you want to fix the situation how the hell do you keep on moving in so like we've seen this in other places too like let's think about the friend zone how do i keep on getting front like you know like i i i express my feelings for this person i confess my love how do i like how do i stay out of the friend zone and that's sort of where it's like it's not expressing your feelings that's the problem it's what is the formation of this relationship looking like right like how do you start to form these relationships do you start these relationships in a platonic way do you start these relationships in a professional way or do you start these relationships in a romantic way and for a lot of people who get friend-zoned they usually don't start them off romantically right they usually start them off platonically and so you're setting an expectation so the key thing about all these different things if there's one thing to take away if you're struggling with adhd and you're having problems in terms of organizing prioritizing you know like if you're struggling to like communicate with your partner it comes down to really sitting down and setting good expectations it's like thinking through stuff ahead of time and trying to externalize as much of it as you can because if you try to hold it in your head that may work for neurotypical people they may be able to hold a lot of crap in their head but like the second you get distracted it all gets disorganized then you have to start over from square one and then over time stuff piles up the more stuff piles up the more overwhelm you get now you have to even hold more stuff in your head so whereas it used to take you one hour to organize your mind now it's going to take you an hour and a half now it's going to take you two hours and now you've actually spent four hours working on this thing and getting nothing done today and then it tacks on one more task for you tomorrow because you didn't get anything done today so then you go into the next day and now you have five hours worth of work to do and so like it becomes this vicious cycle so the first thing that you've gotta gotta gotta gotta do is set expectations for yourself externalize those expectations write them down who's gonna contribute what what are you expecting from me how are we measuring progress in our relationship how are we measuring progress in renovation because if you really think about it people with adhd struggle but when they have some kind of externalizing organizing force or structure it helps them operate way better right so that's what you've got to make for yourself so this is the kind of thing where if you're in 80 if you've got adhd you've got to be super careful because there's all the problems that you kind of struggle with from sort of a neurodiverse perspective right you may have difficulty organizing prioritizing but then there's the impact of that kind of stuff on your relationship and then that which should be your safety net now becomes an additional source of stress and the more that happens the more you get traumatized the more you get overwhelmed the more it becomes a vicious cycle over and over and over again and so you've got to start by like setting expectations with your partner with yourself about what you're capable of what amount of allowance you have what progress looks like and the more that you're able to set that external structure as soon as you sort of snap back into it and you're able to be productive if the task is laid out for you you can actually make progress on it you

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

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Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, adhd relationships, adult adhd, adhd relationships problems, adhd relationships communication, adhd in relationships, depression and adhd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, adhd and depression, symptoms of depression, adult adhd symptoms

Id: xWJEuVt0JRk

Length: 34min 59sec (2099 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022