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Help With Wife's ADD
This looked like it was an old post so I don't know if you're still looking for advice on your wife's ADD. I'll reply anyhow because sometimes other people with the same questions may also find this thread.
In the first post, you never mentioned how old you and your wife are. Age might be one reason it seems that her symptoms are getting worse. As women approach menopause, their ADD symptoms tend to get worse. I know they have for me. Women approaching menopause tend to be more forgetful and have more definite mood swings. As ADD types, we tend to have problems with these as well, so it only seems to get worse as we approach menopause. Medication helps, but sometimes it seems like I'm the way I was before I started on medication because the hormonal changes I'm experiencing seem like they make the medication less effective. It's not so much the medication is less effective but more that if I weren't on medication, I'd be twice as forgetful and twice as moody. I've heard that taking hormone replacement therapy will help, but I have mixed feelings on trying that.
You also asked when will it be that your wife finally 'grows up' and starts taking on more responsibility for her share of tasks. What you have to understand is that ADD isn't something that can be cured (at least not right now) and it isn't something that just goes away, either. Your wife feels overwhelmed by things that would most likely not overwhelm you. The more overwhelmed she feels, the more frozen to action she probably feels. In her mind there is just so much to do that she can't figure out where to begin. You end up picking up her slack so it probably looks like she is using ADD as an excuse so she doesn't have to do as much. If she is using ADD as an excuse, I doubt she is consciously doing it. She might be acting like the ostrich, and just hoping the problem will go away or fix itself. Of course, if you are taking care of everything, then the problem does end up going away or fixing itself in her mind. But I doubt she is purposely doing that so you will take care of everything and she won't have to do anything. Most women with ADD want to be useful and needed, to contribute, and not to be causing problems. We tend to have very low self esteem, especially if we were diagnosed later in life.
I know I tend to be instantly defensive when someone around me comments that something wasn't done right, put back in the right place, or forgotten. Many times I'll even blurt something out just to get the blame off of me when it isn't anything anyone is blaming on me in the first place. That comes from years of having people look in your direction when something went wrong or was forgotten. I thrive on hearing praise from others so I always want to do things right and to be exceptional enough to be noticed. Sometimes in my striving for that, I will inadvertently miss some details that I didn't catch or didn't seem important, and instead of praise, I get to hear about how I don't pay attention enough to details. I just lose sight sometime because I will hyperfocus on one aspect and evidently not focus enough on the aspects that seem mundane, boring or routine. Yet many times those things are very important. I hate being bored and I think that's a common theme among people with ADD.
It also gets very frustrating for us because there is no way for us to show someone who doesn't have ADD what it's like to live in our bodies. My husband got a taste of it one day. He couldn't find his wallet. He spent half an hour looking for his wallet, trying to remember where he had it, etc. He was getting very upset, frustrated and stressed. He even put himself down because he felt stupid not knowing where he had put his wallet. Meanwhile, I was blocking out some of his loud complaining and thinking through what he had done and what parts of the house he'd been in. I often have to do this when I misplace something. I realized he had changed clothes twice, only wearing one pair of shorts for about an hour and then changing to jeans. I went to his closet where he had put the shorts back up on the shelf and found his wallet. He was so thankful. By that time he had wasted almost an hour looking for it.
Thankfully, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often to him. It happens every once in a while to everybody. Just think if you had to deal with this type of frustration on a daily basis and often at least 2 or 3 times a day? You'd start second guessing yourself and feeling like there was something majorly wrong with your brain that you're forgetting stuff that much. Not to mention all the time that is wasted looking for things. As I approach menopause, I have many days that I get far less done than most people would because of misplacing something and looking for it. And it's not always because of clutter. Sometimes it is as simple as taking an object from the place where it lives with the intention of using it and then getting distracted by something else, like maybe the phone ringing, and then being unable to find where you placed the object while you had to answer the phone. Many times if I get distracted from something, it's very difficult to get back on track where you left off. A lot of times I will totally space and forget to finish those things I was doing before I got distracted.
Another problem that I think happens is that whatever work there is or however many chores there are, it will always fill up the time alloted to do them, even if it should take much less time. My husband complains a lot about this one. If one day I have two things that must get done that day, chances are those two things will get done, but not much of anything else. If there are five things that must get done that day, then those 5 things will get done. What he complains about is that if I could do 5 things in 5 hours, then even though I got the 2 things done that needed to be done on the other day, then why wasn't more stuff done on the day I only did 2 things? I think it's because of the sense of urgency and has to do with why we tend to procrastinate and wait until the last minute to do anything. That's when it is most urgent. If only 2 things were urgent, then those things got done, but other things that were not urgent didn't get done, even though I could have fit in 3 more things but they just weren't urgent. Yet when I had 5 urgent things to get done, all 5 got done.
I don't know exactly why people with ADD seem to wait until the last minute to do anything, but it is a very common problem. It's very often why we are late to everything. We tend to work better under pressure because it creates that sense of urgency for us. Unfortunately it often bites us in the rear end, too. It really tends to cause problems in the area of time management. Under a sense of urgency, we feel that we can complete a task in less time than it normally takes.
I think also what people who do not have ADD don't understand is that many times we are working as hard as we can, as quickly as we can, and overall trying as hard as we can try, yet because of the difficulties we have, we still fall far short of what is expected. When we begin to feel that we are doing the best we can and it's just not enough, that's when we may throw up our hands and just give up totally. I'm sure most everyone has felt the frustration of trying to do something and giving it everything you have, and it not being enough. Unfortunately we feel that way more often than people who don't have ADD.
I think if you want to help your wife, you should try to put yourself in her shoes and think about how you would feel if you were trying to go through your day like you'd only had four hours of sleep the previous two nights. Think about a time when you felt like you were in a fog or haze and just trying to survive on autopilot. Think about trying as hard as you can and always falling short. Think about those times when you've misplaced things and how frustrated you felt trying to find what you misplaced. Then think about going through most of your days like that, but with having a few days here and there where everything worked perfectly, you didn't misplace anything, you had tons of energy, were extremely productive, and were able to surpass expectations of others blindfolded with your arms tied behind your back. Now think about how someone else would perceive you if one day you were able to do everything right and the next day you couldn't do anything right at all, were forgetful, tired, and frustrated. You see, it's the inconsistency that I think people who don't have ADD don't understand. If we're able to be super productive one day, then why is it we have several unproductive days afterwards? People think we don't care, or that we're lazy. It's as frustrating as having a car that runs perfect, but yet has several days a week that you can't get it started, it won't stay running, or leaves you stranded somewhere and you can't figure out or fix the problem so that the car runs perfect all the time. After a while, you'll just want to junk the car if you can't diagnose the problem or fix it.
The thing is that your wife is frustrated because she also doesn't know why sometimes her 'motor' runs perfect and other times leaves people stranded. And she doesn't know how to fix it. What may work one time may not work the next time.
You also may have to not always rush to her rescue and let her feel some of the consequences of her actions. That would help if she is acting like the ostrich and avoiding things in hopes they will go away or be fixed. You might need to relax your expectations or standards some. Figure out what you can get by with or what will be 'good enough'. It may not be exactly the way you'd like it, but if it's liveable, then it may lessen your stress considerably when she is unable to meet your ideal expectations.
And like the others said, counseling couldn't hurt. She probably could use some counseling or maybe even working with a coach to help her with her ADD and help her learn ways to cope. If she is getting near menopause, then you might suggest having her look into hormone replacement therapy or suggesting she talk to her doctor about her symptoms. If she is on medication, it may need to be adjusted or changed. My doctor put me on Prozac in addition to Adderall because of the mood swings I was having with menopause. It helps. I still have a lot of forgetfulness, but I'm already on a fairly high dose of Adderall. I just try to write things down as much as possible and I have tons of reminders on my PDA. My husband says it goes off constantly. Some days I need more reminders than other days and I have 2-3 alarms that go off in the morning to get me going. I'm learning what I need to do to cope with my symptoms, but it's a trial and error process.
Sorry for such a long winded reply, by the way. I tend to be long winded at times. I guess that's part of the ADD, as well. Good luck and I hope things work out for both of you.
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