![]() ![]() For the cost of one cup of coffee, you can help keep this site unbiased and ad-free.īelow you will find two buttons. I also value my integrity and my readers' trust above all, which means I accept very few sponsorships/partnerships. I don't want to sell your attention to an advertising service run by the world's biggest data mining company. Hey there! Are you enjoying The ADHD Homestead? Wait for us to come back first, or better yet, try to help find us. We may literally not be able to comprehend the fact that you still love us. How hysterical we get over stuff that’s not a big deal. I want to help you understand how hard this is. Think of this as an ask, of those of you who love someone with ADHD. I don’t intend this as a how-to, even though I’d love to imagine my words helping someone. To my surprise, I resurfaced on my own this time. I walked my brain over to a different corner, forced my mental eyes to refocus, and suddenly I could see the real world again.ĭropping it with my husband took me to the bottom of the emotional abyss. I suppose I forced my brain to do this in a more figurative sense. Turning off a light, touching someone on the arm, or forcing them to get up and get a drink of water can help break the spell of hyperfocus. I felt the negative emotions dissipate, like a fog lifting. ![]() I was at the island, preparing food, surrounded by friends and family. I pictured myself standing in our yet-to-be-constructed new kitchen. Swimming to the bottom of the emotional eddy.ĭon’t ask me how I thought of this in my state of hysteria, but imagined my future self. There I was, on the couch, gasping for air as those toxic emotions pulled me under. If you let it overwhelm you, you’ll drown. Once you’re in the spiral, it’s like an eddy: it sucks you down. It’s easy to sink into a spiral of self-loathing, anger, hopelessness, worthlessness. Just like time disappears with task hyperfocus, the spectrum of our emotions disappears with emotional hyperfocus. The feeling magnifies itself until it’s overwhelming, even frightening. People with ADHD can get stuck on an emotion. I knew I had to drop it, and I knew bothering my husband with drama while he was trying to sleep would make things worse. This is why I insist on talking through everything immediately, and why I never, ever want to go to bed angry. That’s all great, except I don’t know how to let things go. “Forget it” and “drop it” don’t really work with ADHD. ![]() I got out of bed and removed myself to another room to settle down. Let’s just say I wanted to jump on the opportunity to avoid it this time. Have you ever kept your spouse up for hours with a bizarre, melodramatic Whole Big Thing whose significance you couldn’t even explain the next day? I have. He wasn’t worried about it, and he wanted to go to sleep. I decided - for once! - not to force my husband through a conversation about why he was or wasn’t annoyed with me, and how we could fix it. It’s exhausting.įortunately, I recognized this. Poorly managed ADHD blows Normal Marriage Things into Whole Big Things on the regular. Here’s the problem for many adults with ADHD: we tend to latch onto things, and we have a lot of trouble letting go. ![]() I forget how, and it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t a big deal. One evening, just before bed, I annoyed my husband somehow. That I observed and identified this situation - you know, as one of those life circumstances that’ll give a neurotypical person ADHD-like symptoms - was perhaps my only saving grace. All the mess and disruption did a number on my mental health. My ADHD symptoms got worse during our kitchen renovation. You do it by swimming straight down to the bottom, then downstream a ways, and then you try to reach the surface. They’re powerful and disorienting, and no human can overcome the force of that much water.īut you can get out. Growing up alongside a big, gorgeous river, I learned about eddies. Feelings that come and go quickly for others can suck us in, kind of like an emotional eddy. ADHD can make our emotions big and scary and maybe even dangerous. Most people don’t realize, ADHD is way more than forgetfulness and distractability and poor impulse control. ![]()
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