Hey there...read your post and was really interested to learn of the difficulties you face when trying to talk to your boyfriend. My boyfriend has adhd, and I don't. I've made an effort to understand the issues people face with adhd with research because I love him and I'm able to deflect such actions/thoughts he has because of it. For example, he interrupts or talks over me, doesn't quite retain what I say in a conversation, and tends to think too much about what people think of him. This fasinates me because it's so hard for him to explain what goes on in his own head...and I wish so badly to be in there for a minute to understand...like you say it's hard for you to describe what happens in your head, the "voices". He feels he's unsocial and cannot keep conversations going, therefore dimissing someone that ultimatly meant nothing by not continuing to speak to him. (Some people just run out of topics?) ...he instantly will either like or dislike a person based on his own ideas about how he holds a conversation with him. He often thinks he needs to have a few drinks at a party or wedding, etc so that he can lose the fear of conversing with people. We've discussed how this isn't really a good way to deal since alcohol is not something to "fall back" on. It's hard but when I get frustrated I don't yell at him, or make remarks...I just listen and try to make my points again. I'm not going to lie and say it's easy, but I think if more people researched this, they wouldn't be so quick to get angry or frustrated at the things people with adhd do normally, and they'd be able to just say, "oh well he or she did that because of adhd, they weren't really trying to interrupt, or not talk", etc. What do you think? Any tips for me to help me help him with things that bother him?

Quote

Thanks so much for your input. It's always helpful for me to see things from the other perspective, especially the non-add perspective. Everything that you said about wanting to understand I find is probably the number one struggle that Ray and I face. What I've done (and this is all I can really interject, your boyfriend will need to find what works for him.) is really try and explain to Ray both the outward manifestations AND the internal struggles of ADHD. For me I've really learned to internalize a lot of my symptoms. So when the more obvious ones come out it's very hard for others to understand and they often become frustrated or even angered. It's very good that you can attribute some of his behaviors to ADD rather than him doing it intentionally. A lot of times many things that I find are a dead give away that I'm struggling with my symptoms are facial expressions. These are the most overlooked. When I become frustrated from my brain running on overdrive and I'm having a hard time focusing a lot of times I'll stop right in the middle of a conversation and sit there in silence sometimes as long as several minutes with a frowning face. Ray used to consider this pouting/sulking/not wanting to continue the conversation. When I was able to explain to him that I was having a hard time processing my thoughts in this situation it prompted him to recognize this and verbally recognize that frustration which helped. ex: "You look like you're getting frustrated Christy, just take a deep breath and slow down." Hearing words like this whether I tell myself or someone else tells me can be very helpful because it shifts my focus from the frustration back to the thought process. The other thing that really upsets Ray is repeating himself, which I'm sure you know if often necessary with ADHD! The best remedy that i can suggest is making sure that your boyfriend is paying attention to you before you start speaking. That and if it's going to be an important converation make sure that you tell him so beforehand and make him aware of how important it is that he listens to you. Try and keep it brief because the more times that he has sucess in paying attention to you the easier it will be to do later on. Hope this helps! -Christy

Quote

Christy, I'm glad your trying to communicate with your boyfriend. I read some of the previous replies, and I hope that I have some helpful incites. First, let me say that at 52 years of age, and having only learned of my ADHD a few years ago, I have done many things in my life trying to cope with how much of the world I've known has responded or reacted to me, as the 'weird kid'. I've been living a long time with who I am in my nervous system. I can tell you that since no one caught on that I was having an actual difference in the way that most of the world exists around me, and therefore could not relate very well WITH me, I became somewhat isolated and self-analytical. When I took my intelligence and applied it to my life, and tried to decode my existance as a survival process (especially with other physical disabilities on top of this, since early adulthood), I eventually arrived at a lot of observations as to my differences with my world, mentally and emotionally. At this stage I will combine these last two words into one...my spirit. One thing I found, when I finally realized how much trouble I was having in worldly interactions, as a result of knowing that I had ADHD, amongst other things, I started on a path to understand how to live with myself in a better way. First, my character and my mind are not how my nervous system translates me into the world. So, this means that when other people experience me, they get quite a different impression of me from short contacts with them. When I gave of my experiences and knowledge, I thought I was being helpful, when sometimes I wasn't being helpfully felt. I just blurted things out hoping that my summations of big ideas and experiences would be well appreciated and received. Unfortunately, it took until just a few years ago that I started interpreting the responses that I got in the light that people didn't know me well enough...not just because they hadn't had time to get to know me, but also because I had not introduced myself, and who I was, to them in a way that they were ready to appreciate me. Unfortunately, too, the rest of the linear world around us is quite self-aborbed in their own lives, individually. Having a relationship with someone requires a lot of exchange of ideas, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and history, in a framework of patience, a desire to understand one another fully, a willingness to accept faults that are not too big to live with, and a willingness and passion to stick things out, with each other, in all of these. It may be that you haven't had the time to form enough history with each other; but, it could also be that you both are acting with a different idea on what your relationship is, and is going to be. Here, I would ask you both, if you were in a counseling, and I were a counselor, about the many facets of each of your ideas about life, and each of your perceptions of the other, and I would also want to know more about how your lives were growing up. Our perceptions are interpreted through what we have heard, felt, touched, learned academically or otherwise, how much we caught of what we learned, and our the feedback we got from our world as we walk through our lives...all the way back to our birth. Many interactions have caused to form ideas about people and things that are frequently prejudicial, bigotting, or unbalanced. You'll hopefully have to take life a little at a time with your boyfriend, and this would be true of any relationship, because you both are willing to grow closer and closer together...this will be entirely dependent on the levels of your respective commitments to each other. You can help him to take you a little at a time by taking interest in him, and asking questions about everything. Don't try to TELL him everything. This can lead to scaring people off before they've had a chance to get to know your spirit more intimately. Make your experience with him that of your very BEST friendship, and more than that if this is a love interest. My wife and I were high school sweethearts. Then, we were apart from each other in separate lives, after 3.5 years, for 26 years. A lot of things contributed to this fact, but one thing is sure--that we had enough in common, and I had enough understanding about love to demonstrate to her that she was my everything back in those days--this, enough, to help her to know that I would never hurt or forsake her, no matter what, and that the quality of my love was better than anything else she had found in all those years. She went through a lot of things, as I, during our separation, and when we both had failed to have a better relationship others over the years, we ended up back together when she knew a way to find out where I was living. I didn' t have the same ability to reach her. She had married and was living with a different name. I was long enough disabled (and, this later included knowledge of my ADHD with depression arising out of my poor health, too) that my weak economic condition that went with all of this kept me from finding her what ever way I could...just to say, "HI, and how are you doing in YOUR life--I hope better than I", and secretly hoping that she was miserable, too, and maybe we could be there for each other, and be with each other, too! All of this is to finalize and sum up the relationship impact thing with my life as a tool to consider for yourselves. And, what my experiences has produced is a marriage that though my wife doesn't quite get what it is like to be me 'in my head', she had the love, patience, caring commitment, and unwillingness to give up too easily, allowing us both to treat our relationship as a shifting, changing and growth oriented thing. That, when life takes a rough path, or causes a bump in our lives and the one life called "Our Marriage", we cannot lose our marriage because we were unwilling to be WITH each other in every respect, by all those vows, and what they really mean in the long-term. Is your relationship able to whether storms, bumps, and rocky paths without being thrown away? Do you both, as individuals, have experiences in your life, enough, to hang in with each other, even when we, either of us, is screwed up, or screwing up, or screwing it up? You cannot change the way your boyfriend interacts or regards you. You can only make changes in yourself...and, that only to the extent of what you know of yourself, and what you have come to understand by the perceptions of others, and by the feedback of your experiences with life, animate and inanimate. It helps both of us, in our marriage, to have a very high moral standard about what a relationship really is, and about what love really is, too. A marriage involves a lot of give, and a willingness to take, short of abuse of either individual, in any form. Start with the Ten Commandments, and Biblical standards of marriage, as a guide. The Bible is the human instruction manual, and the Almanac of the entire universe, and more. It is a PERFECT psychology manual. Modern science is starting to find more and more that The Bible has spoken of what the scientific disciplines have just begun to understand...and, more and more, scientists who didn't want to believe that there is The Creator are changing their positions because of the perfect order that can be found in intelligently designed merely-human invention. Makes sense if you consider that we only uncover what has been in the universe--FOREVER? before we came around to "discover" it. We simply reach a stage of understanding that we are able to perceive what we've missed about what was all around us, all along! I have been atheist, agnostic, and theosophic at various stages, Always asking myself, and the world around me, WHY? Can I believe what others believe, and is there evidence that supports each viewpoint...and, what holds the greatest preponderance of TRUTH. So, I am presenting this to you, to tell you that you, looking young, as the picture on your ADDitude Identity suggests, have only scratched the surface, both of your relationship, and of your life, and there is a whole lot more a head of you to look in wonder to "discover". Take some helpful guidance along with you and check these things out along YOUR path, realizing THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE that you are struggling to understand. Let your relationships unfold as they will. Seek the most possible information, as you have done at ADDitudes. Expect nothing less of yourself, and others in life who are with you, and forgive everyone along the way, including yourself, for not be able to be perfect, but trying to be. Perfection is not a destination, it is an unfolding process, and it is an infinitely traversed one...it takes your lifetime, and the rest of enternity to unfold it. The Creator is way over our puny heads, and way ahead of us. And, don't look to aliens to be your salvation either. Because, any form of life that might or might not exist in Creation, can't be greater than The Creator. So, look there while you look to other who go before you have done so, and you will get the greatest helps that come to you, as we each are puppets in the hand of The Creation that The Creator created.

OK, so now that I'm back on this world again...and, with you in your difficulty...

I will finish by saying that you will have to have your boyfriends cooperation in everything that is about your relationship for it to be successfully long-enduring--even to a whole life-time, together, if you BOTH are willing to go THERE. He will have to come to ADDitude, or get the magazine, talk with other ADDER's about their experiences for some perspective that he might miss coming from you alone, and maybe a little relationship counseling to help guide a process of developing more quality of life in your relationship through the qualities of improvement in your' individualalies, around each other. Patience is learned, not often enough taught. But, you both will need it, and so with anybodies' relationships, to be successful, and enduring with completely developing trust and forgiveness, very active parts of that process. Trust is acquired. Forgiveness has to be fully understood, and developed, and when given, from a life where it has been experienced fully, it is amazing in it's complexity. Safety is an absolute necessity in this--both physically, for our bodies sake, and in the process of forgiveness of what others did not know, or could not have fully understood. No one can reveal the fullness of this concept without walking in the Footsteps of Jesus, as The New Testament can confoundingly reveal to us, and that The Old Testament testified would become our human experience from LONG AGO. I'm only telling you this, because getting your boyfriend to understand you, or for you to understand yourself, you could go through a heck of a lot of bad life experiences before you might actually look in this direction for answers. Don't take my word for it...I challenge you to never give up on living, and to live proving that The Bible, and Jesus, are not TRUE, and faithful descriptions...a manual for us to understand The Creator, and ourselves, too. You know that YOU are not the creator, and you KNOW that no human being could possibly have all of the answers--simply because we haven't been here as long as The Creation. I have an understanding that rises out of the reach of science alone, and religions alone. No, I am not The Creator, as I am merely no different than you...a mere, mortal bodied spirit with the soul that was given me before birth...that soul that exists in each of our bodies, that is each of us. I knew however, as you did--as we all have done so-- how to use my body and mind well enough to before birth to bring about from our universal physical existance interaction that allows the universe to reveal itself to us, and reveal ourselves to us, in relation to our Creator, so that we can learn to live with our Creator at a future point, not even really time, in our development. When we die, we go before the Creator with an understanding of what we've learned about "Him"...The Creator. In the meantime, you learn about yourself, and this through also learning about others, and if you do so regarding everyone the same as yourself, in that we are all on the same discovery process, not necessarily the True Path through it, then you can with forgiveness accept what others don't know, and move forward when life goes down a road that you choose. Every decision is a part of a path; but, Einstein discovered that our path is in on a universal scale circular...it is hugely so. It comes back to who our origin is...The Creator. It brings us back to a point where we at the final time of our death have to absolutely decide between The Creator's plan in Creation...His Ultimate Design's Goal...or, decide to accept less which is corrupted in inperfection. The only answer to this question that makes sense to me, is that infinity is infinite, that is the design, which Einstein touched on, and still missed of the Bigger picture of the role of Jesus from his instructions in The Old Testament, is The Grand Design of The Creator...to have us perfected enough to again walk with Him as the Lesson of Adam and Eve introduces to us. We are where we are because of the original error that cast them away from The Perfect Instructor, The Perfect Parent, who is The Creator. Understand that we've been sent to our room to think about what we've collectively done, by not knowing what was perfect because OUR instruction comes out of imperfection, since Adam and Eve was sent out of Eden to THEIR new Room...our present existance. Then you can develop the patience and understanding of both yourself, and all your other relationships, too, to endure some trouble when it arises. You, here, are getting a chance to leave the experience you know, and go into a new one that will be amazing! "God" it is written, "will make a way" out of our troubles. Your first step will always be to put yourself out there to find out what the way out is, no matter what you experience in life. Your boyfriend could find himself going along for a wonderfully beautiful (sometimes very troubled) experience. But, your troubles will expand your understanding of yourselves, and you lives, and the Universe of The Creator, as you will find if you look for all of this dilligently. And, don't forget...The Bible will tell you all of this and more than I can address in so small a space and time. You feel something much bigger than you, in a unique way because of your ADD/ADHD (used on the ADDitude website, and others similar to it, interchangeably, for quickness, or expedience). I'm giving a leg up, here. I've been from Atomic Science and Biological Science through every religion on the planet, and more, and The Bible pulls all of it together in one place, and by far MORE than these seperately. Everyone has something missing in their reasoning processes, and due to our tendancy to be egotistical and selfish as a Species, we tend to hold back from others what we know because we are afraid to find out or reveal that none of us REALLY knows as much as what is in The Creation. And, our spirits, and our sciences, touch only modestly on the things that exist even beyond these...but, with atomic science, we know that annihilation, and appearance, are two sides of the same fine edged sword. There are atomic "particles" that disappear, and appear in ways that tell us that what we cannot see or feel is some THING beyond our ability to experience directly, or fully understand without many lifetimes as individuals. If we were truly of multiple lifetimes as some religions try to teach and then fall short of logically enough to destroy their own propositions internally, then we would come back with the knowledge that we had the last lifetime, and learn further in our present lifetime. This is not logical, in any sense. You have to through out what can be logically proven otherwise, in so many different things. Atomic particles that spin into non-presence, in our ability to observe them scientifically, and appear out of seemingly know-where (intentional) is an important scientific discovery that quantum physics and mathematics have been able to test for and understand to be TRUELY REAL. Mathematically, there are scientists that have been able to detect that there are other dimensions of presence as well...check out PBS.org for some materials on this concept, and check out ExplorationFilms.com for still others. Go see the movie Expelled, too. Don't take on faith what people who stop questioning and following where the answers lead take on faith to be true, as many scientists want to still promote. Even Charles Darwin, knew enough about his Theory to state that if a particular set of observations could be made, they would prove his theory to be aboslutely wrong altogether--and, scientists have proven that those observations actually could not arise out of what he had proposed without at the very least, and enternity to have passed, according to modern widely promulgated views on natural time. IN FACT, these scientists have had to accept that because the planet Earth has not existed, neither our understanding of the age of the Universe, too, long enough to have all the things necessary at one time to make Darwin's idea of life arising out of the Evolution of Natural existance in the time frame we know of our existance at this time...so FAR!. That's not going to get better either. Because natural laws do tell us that certain thing have to have existed simulaneously, and in the right proportions, and in the right circumstances, to have life arise from ROCKS. Science knows this Already.

Sorry, I had so much to say...but, this all is relevant to your question. Practically? Learn from each other everything you can, learn to be trusting of each other, implicitly, as time goes by working trust forming acts with each other, and earning each others trust of the other. Go forward, together learning from those that go before you have, and do it cautiously, learning to trust what and who is reliable and TRUE, one step at a time. Give of each others' love to each other, as you do this, sacrificially accepting when each of you make a mistake along the way that causes your trust of one another to suffer. Be REAL with each other, and you have to be absolutely honest with each other as your only fully trustworthy confessors. If you find others along the way who understand what I'm saying, fully, then they will be your best outside-the-intimate-relationship friends, co-travelers in the same understanding, if you will understand this. Out of that experience in it's full measure, you find your whole family...your full but limited by time and space worldly extended family, who will respect you as individuals, know you as intimate friends, and experience like you will, with everyone individually a great big TRUTH that individually we cannot find and be alone, too.

I know this was a lot...and it will probably draw some disrespectful comments...when it is viewed by others who don't get what I'm saying here. That's OK. I understand them, too. And, even you, too, can choose for a time, at least, to not believe any part of what I've said here. God, let's us do that, too. It's called free-will. You exercise free-will, every day. You make choices every day. Sometimes, you choose poorly...it happens with everyone. Your own experience gives you feedback when you find yourself down a poorly understood pathway. That's what we do, US living things!

But, The Creator, made Creation, with rules, we sometimes discover are laws (science term), and then we have to learn to live with an understanding of those laws. If we choose to declare that God is NOT, to ourselves, and even try to promulgate it amongst others...life has a way of bonkin' us on the noggin', getting our atttention on the fact that we don't know everything, YET. Start over from the point of your understanding, keeping what is right and true, and discarding what is not (this, too, is a paraphrase of The Bible's Scriptures). Don't delay in deciding to prove me wrong in this...Biblical prophecy is being revealed more quickly then ever, now. Your time to make a commitment to Truth is at stake here, because of your eternal life. If you think separation is hard to take now, in this life, you don't want to mistake choosing rightly about how to be together, better, for your eternal future...and this is relevant to now, because the life skills you need for good relationships, will be found ultimately also work to find yourself in your greatest relationship, ever, and ever, and ever. This does come from 52 years of logical analysis, testing, scientifically, trusting only what was found to be true, and right for everyone, and helping others heal from poor choices made, including self-healing processes for almost as long. I learned the essentials of this process by the time I was about ten years old. Then, I made a lot of mistakes testing to know for sure what I could find when nobody knew that I was so alone, as having ADHD helped to make me, with the ways of people who weren't, who I lived around me in such great numbers, everywhere, to find myself finally realizing that its not me, necessarily. That it is also not them, quite, either. We have our roles in our differences. We have our functions, in our differences. We have our purpose in our differences; and, also our gifts, to give of them, when we know how to give them to those who can receive them, well. You keep finding your way, and we who understand more about you than many, can give helps like this (only not so long next time I hope)... Think of this as a small self-help booklet on relationships, ADD/ADHD and depression, life from the perspective of one who has been scraping along through physical illness and worldly 'de-capacitization' (I coin a word structure for a concept that I experienced as a result of being made to believe by the world's trouble with understanding me, that I had some weird or WRONG with me). I was made incapable by a world of standard that inadvertently stepped on who I am. I am different. That's all that I am. I am human. I am a facet of human-ness. There is a institutionalized tendency to cast off, throw away, or try to ignore that which doesn't go away; and, which you can't get rid of quite easily. This has happened with social and econonic reasonings to dis-enfranchise people because they were different then the way we perceived ourselves in some larger group. Mind you...there is Right and Wrong. There is Truth and Fallacy. What is wrong for everyone, is also truly fallaciouos. What is REALLY and FULLY TRUTH is Truth, and is Right, for everyone. ANY exeception to this rule, although appearing to look true, will ultimately be found out to be a TRUE fallacy when the bigger picture is viewed eventually. We are seeing an example of this in the poorly applied knowledge of our physical world and our existance, and as a result, we are all experiencing the short-comings of shorter-range views which we humans have brought about in our world. We may not be able to overcome the worst of these, in a timely enough manner to stave off our self-destruction as a species, and a planetary life existance on Earth. So, God, reveals that he will bring our experience to an abrupt and massive change before we will do that to ourselves on our own. This is what you are wrestling with in your whole life. Your boyfriend is a cog in that wheel of life that you are in, and your ultimately solution to your relationship issues, all of them can be answered with knowledge for your whole life. Don't just look at solving the problem with your boyfriend as being a simple small matter. It is about how you exist, at all, that is going to help you in relationships, including within yourself. Learn to be OK with yourself, even if your boyfriend can't figure you out enough to stay together with you. Be YOURSELF, in all of your expression, the best way you know how, communicate who you are, as you get to know yourself better, and let others learn to appreciate who YOU are, the way that you are...You just need to know how to communicate from who you are, even with ADD/ADHD behaviors and observations. You won't be able to fully change that part of you, and neither will anyone else. So, you are learning to accomodate others; and, you are learning how to help the many others around you to accomdate you, the way that you are, by training them to know who you are. Those that choose not to go along with accomodating you, will not themselves also be able to find a way to be accomodated for things that they aren't, too. You have a great opportunity to bring to others the beauty of who you are, and to learn the many ways to show others how they can be accomodated in their differences, too. Trust this one thing to be true, if you think I'm giving you a line of crock up to this point. Your ADHD is a blessing in disguise, because it helps you to learn so much more about the universe we're in, than you could imagine possible right now. Einstein was an example to follow, here. He probably had ADHD, too. His best wife had to help him remember to put on matching colored socks, if he had both socks on to begin with. He always was described as being off in another world, inattentive, lackadaisical, undisciplined, stupid, incapable. He arrived at the theory of relativity, which could only be proven with calculus, and quantum physics, and math, and he originally failed algebra. Scientists are still unraveling the many aspects of relativity. It did lead to humans making evil use of its qualities. Einstein was very upset with this possiblity, and tried not to reveal his knowledge about it. But, Evil had its way, in people like Hitler, as with other's susceptible to Evil like him, and the knowledge would have been used by Evil much more than it ultimately has been, thus far. But, the controls that we humans think we have on the destructive power revealed by Einstein's uncovering in the theory lead to the very destructive cat that was let out of the bag...unfortunately, humanity, will lose its grip on this destructive release, and almost destroy itself in the process. Many will die, from this world when this happens. We are even closer than we were just yesterday, let along when the bomb was discovered over 60 years ago. But, I digress, again (darned ADHD tendencies, and my desire to love everyone equally). So take that one challenge, and evolve your understanding by the renewing of your mind, through knowledge, and a gathering of True Wisdom. Watch out for counterfeits...there are many, many, many. I hope I've witnessed to something that you needed. I hope you found all of this useful, and clarifying. If you did, you'll find the right steps to take on the path you choose. You choose, God responds or not according to your choices. God does tickle us to ask a smart question, at the right time, in the right place, when we are ready for the answer He always intends us to find through the deep workings of the laws of His Design. Read this outloud to yourself, so that your ears can hear your voice. Then, learn everything else the same way. Faith (aka Trust in something way beyond worldly knowledge) is by hearing, and hearing by The Word of God. All knowledge and wisdom is of God. Look for that relationship. The rest will come in the right time. And, God will meet you when you are truly ready, at the appropriate time. Your boyfriend has to learn who you are, then build you up in who you are, by encourage the best expression of who you are with him, and others, and by this you will experience what it is to be accepted. If you can't bring you to him...then, you can let him see if he wants to come to who YOU are. He has to meet you in a special place between who he is, and who you are. This makes a lasting relationship happen. The relationship is not in how he does you, nor how you do him. It is how you put together something that is the two of you, joined together, in the same understanding place between you, with full acceptance of who each of you are in that process. You also have to both be TRUELY moral with one another. There is no middle ground between what we want to believe, and what is TRUE. The universe is of the greater truth. What our physical and spiritual existance is, is of that universe, but, not exactly the universe. The universe is a place for us to excercise our spirits in a limited by physical realm set of restricted offense of Creation. This God set us up in, when we, as a species, erred, and then passed on those willful errorings through our independent thinking processes, actions, and decisions born out of the first wrong decision. So, we are in a limited-effect existance within the bounds of all of Heaven, in a separate realm from Heaven, where God is, and maintains Perfection, absolutely, without chance of corruption, because God is the source of all that is. If God is corrupted, then Creation will be absolutely corrupted. Evil is the expression of the corruption. God's definition of Evil is the description of how corrupt corrupt can be. God will do away with un-necessary corruption, when we are ready to leave it behind, part by part, and piece by piece; because that is the way we learn of it, while corruption continues to make more corrupt over 'time'. So, count your disability as a way to find the BEST STRENGTH that will come when God reveals something to you that is really huge, compared to anything you thought you might learn on your own efforts. "When You are weak, then I am strong", a Biblical New Testament scripture which has it's parallels also in the Old Testament, tells us that when we come to the end of what we can know on our own, or do of our selves, by our own efforts, out of realizing that we don't have what we need to know to continue. Then, "i am" [Here is an aside: which is also an English definition for the original word that we call Jehovah, and is known in English alphabetic characters as YHWH, which is an anglocized version of the name of God that the most ancient of people recorded and carried forward into written history, in Hebrew; and, is described as Yod Heh Vav Heh (an rough English pronunciation of the Hebrew AlephBet characters which even modern Hebrew speakers can't accurately pronounce correctly...it's a lost, due-to-lack-of-use pronunciation that even Hasidim would not attempt to pronounce because of how Holy God's Hebrew name is regarded by them.), who is to be understood of Jesus to mean knowledge of Jesus, and thereby faith in God, and thereby salvation of God, through Jesus, will be our strength. And, in our times of trials, and troubles, we will think of what God has done, call out in prayer to have help from Him, through his Holy Counselor, who is the Holy Spirit, sent through Jesus sitting at God's Right Hand at God's Throneroom, in Heaven, pointing us through still-quiet, softly spoken words that seem to be our own thoughts, but, yet seem so much different than anything we usually would ever think to have of ourselves, answers something you needed to know, at some time, in the past, which may be a moment ago that you wanted to know, or that of years gone by that solves a big problem you've been trying to figure out how to overcome, or solve, even though you forgot about asking how, before...this is how you know the voice of spirit, and Evil can also communicate at this level. So, you have to have a reference point to know what is TRUE, and RIGHT, and that is what God provided to us in His Holy Word inspired into many writers, but, with a definitely consistent, and separated by time telling of the who the whole Bible, such that is only proven to be logical, consistent, and verifiable at many different times in history to be TRUELY a whole that cannot be separated into parts, and fully understood in Its meaning...That God, is the writer, His fingers being the individuals that He told The Holy Message through, and caused through history all the events to be foretold, that have been foretold accurately enough to align with historical events that have been confirmed an uncalculable number of times in science, including psychology, and medicine, to boot, and uncovered by anthropology, and archaeology equally so, and spoken also as confirmation by Jesus, affirmed everything the Old Testament has to say about who He is, and how he came to be, when he came to be, as prophesied. This is no accident that I could speak to your needs in this manner. And, others will be spoken of, too, in these words. Yah, I seem a Little Weird to many. Jesus seemed to in the same way, except He's the original, and I am only a poor mimic, by comparison. Even Jesus didn't place Himself above His Father, The Creator...The "I am that I am", that God gave to Noah, before Abraham was given YHWH, or "I am that I am". This is God full name, by definition only. God doesn't have a name like ours because God Is ONE. God is THE ONLY. There is No Other god before HIM. Jesus was like a living finger of God, to us, who in Spirit was with God in the Beginning...which is to say the before the Garden of Eden and Creation, when God, and The Word, Jesus, were in Heaven, served by the Angels that God had created, similarly to the idea that humans, and earthly life was created. This is ADHD at maximum human capability. You have a gift from God that you don't know how to utilize, well. You are missing important ideas on what it is for. You are out of your purpose...which is to Know God, Love God, that God may Love YOU in ways far beyond our understanding of love. That is the love that will make a relationship with your intended mate, flourish, thrive, be incredible, wonderful, and even when you'll experience troubles. Your true mate will be there with you going though things with you, and you with him, and God will be with you, in between you, that with you, guiding the both of you as one. When you have children, they will learn this from YOU, two, and you will be part of God's Plan to debunk the plans of Evil, who was in Lucifer, and his fallen cohort of angels who were cast out of Heaven from the presence of God, and those who did not fall away. We humans are experiencing the same kind of crucible of testing, the same kind of refining fire of troubles, and problems, that when we overcome them, we become very grateful to having found the answer along the way...but, that is supposed to lead you to rediscover in your spirit the source that exposed you to the essential knowledge you kept missing by yourself, and others around you didn't know either, until one day you thought of an answer that seemed to come from nowhere...Know-where...and, that not strictly of yourself. Or, maybe a fellow sojourner, or even an equipping or assisting angel popped into your life at a key moment when you would have had no other way of surviving your experience on your own, and you knew no one else that could. This is some of what I've experienced, and as, I can verify, a fellow sojourner in similar fashion to you, in ADHD, I can tell you that I have experienced what I'm sure were either fellow sojourners, or even angelic help sent by God. And, Jesus and God both speak to us in the Scriptures, and in our Spirit is we are open to listening when they speak to our thoughts...and, they will always tell you what can be compared to The Bible to verify, as Truth, God's Truth...so this will help you to learn to discern the difference). Our thoughts can seem to be of this Spirit realm. Use the Bible to discern who it is that is speaking to you. God, speaks through Jesus, incarnate, and in Word He spoke in the New Testament teachings; and, through Jesus' Holy Spirit, to our spirit. God, doesn't speak to us as directly as He did in the times of Moses, and the prophets of the Old Testament, Abraham, and Noah before him, and Adam and Eve before us all. These things I say to help you discern between spirit, The Holy Spirit, Evil and demons, physical differences in our bodies, and their effects on our thoughts, and the corruptions that can plague our bodies, and who you are in relation to all of these in God's Eye view of us, as backed up by Jesus himself, when he was in material existance. Get this, and the rest of your life will begin to be understandable, and what you CAN do will fall into your lap...because God wants us to have that experience from Himself. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Yes, we have to deal with corruptions; but , what doesn't kill us, especially that which we seek to avoid killing us, can only make us stronger...this builds patience, and endurance. It also helps us to know that we KNOW, and that we don't need to do some of the things we mistakenly choose to do, or think. We become stronger in that we know how to bring others up, too, when we meet those who are going through where we have already been, and in love, seek to bring up with us, too.

Quote

Wow, after the last post, and I'm afraid I got lost there, this is going to be a little simple. My husband, Jim, and I have been married for 31 years. I've known about my ADHD for the past 5. It's good in a way to understand WHY I've been the way I am, but still after all the history we have together, Jim still doesn't seem to get that I am not purposely trying to hurt him. I try to get him to read about ADHD and he will for a while, but he gets the message that people with ADHD are all super people who ALL overcome their difficulties and become highly sucessful people. I appreciate Jim's wanting me to be happy, but we have such differing ideas of what happiness is all about for me. I like to be comfortable, spend time with my family, and maybe do my artwork when I'm inspired. Jim wants me to sell my artwork, so I can have "validation" that my art is good. I don't want to expose my tender artistic emotions to rejection (it's happened). I am a stone sculptor which also limits the places I can show my work, you can't hang it on the wall in the coffee shop for example. Ther aren't many people in my area who work stone, so there is not a big community of people to connect with that way, I am not a joiner either. I like working alone and there are a couple of shows I enter sculptures in, but selling is not my goal. I guess my point is that with your boyfriend you have to decide if you can deal with him even if he never quite "gets it". Another thing I have learned when I'm on overload, it to just step away until I can process what I managed to take in. If Ray will agree to give you the space for that, you both will have an easier time communicating. Sometimes Jim lets me back off, literally go somewhere else, sometimes not, so I will tell him I am done with the conversation and he knows I am not going to talk about it anymore.

Quote

Wow, I have to admit, I'm not to good with reading so I kinda got lost in the other post, but what I did catch was helpful, especially from yours RJC. It's always nice to hear from someone who's made it further down the road than I have so far. I guess right now I'm getting scared because I'm not on my meds, and I know that I'm frustrating Ray but to what degree, and when it happens I'm not sure. He's already come pretty close to throwing his hands up in the air and saying forget it! But each time he tells me that I freak out and he ends up assuring me with something like: "Christy, I'm still here aren't I?" I told him this morning, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, because I'm certainly glad that you're willing to stick things out with me......but I still can't understand why. We're going on a camping trip this weekend....hopefully that will loosen things up between us and just allow us to have some fun together. Anyway, I'll just keep tryying as much as I can in the mean time. Thanks for everyones help! -Christy

Quote