Being Diagnosed And How It Manifests In Relationships
Part 1 of 2 (maybe more)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNGOkzEgMu4/?igsh=eGlqOWE1OG5ybmgy
Dr. Georgia Ede from Diary of a CEO podcast: People with ADHD are at much higher risk for suicidal ideation, substance abuse (especially alcohol). Higher risk for accidents. Higher risk for depression and anxiety. When undiagnosed, twice the rate of divorce.
First, my emotional rant, in this Part 1.
In another post (Part 2), a more rational breakdown of all the things I’ve been learning about how ADHD affects me and trying to relate within the context of a relationship.
(add link here)
Part 3 is a more direct look at specific moments that are likely related or can be attributed to ADHD, specifically not having or being aware of coping strategies that work for me.
It’s why I kept saying over and over again “something is wrong with me and I don’t know what it is.” Now I understand this was peak ADHD burnout, multiple degrees hotter than ever before in my life, including the previous winter.
Highs and Lows
Imagine one day you’re thriving, full of passion for your ideas and future. You’re empathetic and listen with an open heart. You’re filled with love and giving as much as you can. Creative thinking feels unlimited. You can build, solve and fix anything.
Then… the next you’re scattered and forgetful, bed-bound, and drowning in emotions you can’t control. Overwhelmed, worried and scared about the future. Scared to tell the person beside you about your dark thoughts. You’re unsure if the weight you feel is real because you’re told you’re overreacting and “complaining too much”.
So you just lay awake with tears rolling silently, worrying while the person next to you sleeps. They don’t see the tears. You’re afraid they’ll say you’re “overreacting” again. Afraid they won’t care.
That’s the reality of living with this brain. When it’s regulated, it feels like a superpower: curiosity, passion, intuition, innovation, empathetic with a deep sense of others emotions. But when it’s dysregulated, the same brain flips into chaos: anxiety, oversharing, over explaining, overwhelmed, irregular eating, irregular and abrupt shifts in irritation, unable to sleep or rest in anyway. Sometimes even sudden anger.
It’s not that I’m two different people. I am my authentic self…until I’m in an environment/situation where I’m scared to express myself. It’s that your nervous system can’t always keep up with how often I was shifting when things got bad, especially since you don’t understand….especially especially because I was undiagnosed…. and I was slowly drowning myself with alcohol in silence.
If you’ve ever wondered what daily existence is like for me, this is it.
When Love Meets ADHD Burnout
These differences in mental state are incredibly difficult to navigate pre-diagnosis, without understanding what is happening. Things that work for most typical people don’t for us that experience this. There were too many things creating an storm I never experienced before. Work issues, tenants, winter on a boat, house breaking, project planning for future, new born baby coming as my “roommate”, impossible to create a daily routine from bouncing around 3 places and many other things that were deemed “complaints” when I mentioned them.
The biggest weight that felt like the world to me, was obsessing about making life perfect for my life partner. The first step was to clean up my life (my therapist agreed), to allow me the mental space to focus on mental health, relationship building and serving my partner. With all my efforts to simplify my life, I was simultaneously witnessing everything in my life fall apart and feeling like I cannot do anything about it.
It’s why I kept saying over and over again “something is wrong with me and I don’t know what it is.” Now I understand this was extreme peak ADHD burnout, multiple degrees hotter than ever before including the previous winter.
The Silence That Broke Us
In my internal reality, I often felt misunderstood and I saw signals that my struggles weren’t fully seen or acknowledged with any compassion or empathy. It felt like you didn’t want to reach out after I told you I was struggling. It didn’t feel like you cared how I was really doing, just the polite Canadian thing asking because you’re supposed to. You never sat in the dark moments with me. You stopped celebrating or acknowledge the bright ones. Even something as difficult as not drinking alcohol for almost 3 months was met with “I don’t see any improvement”….later upgraded to “a little improvement” when I reminded you how much I struggled with alcohol at times, through out my 26 year relationship with it.
To me, it felt like sometimes the smallest act of sitting with me, when you have the ability to work anywhere, meant the difference between deep love and cruel selfishness. It was the difference between saying “I’m your partner that will battle this with you, for US to win together.” and “I will only help if it’s easy and convenient”. I didn’t realize how important it was for me to hear you say you’re fighting WITH me and acknowledge my internal reality…..instead, you perceived me as fighting against you.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me last fall/winter. They were all similar feelings as things I’ve experienced before, even as recent as the previous winter (or “cycle” as you called it). But the intensity, starting in late August/early September 2024 leading up to my 40th birthday, was cranked up to %1,000.
This was not a “cycle”. It was the next level of my internal chaos. The stakes and risk was higher than any other period in my life. Relationship, job and house were on the line – The Triangle. I was mentally consumed with and obsessively worried about what I can lose. Losing the person I wanted to live with and serve every day. Finally, my one person and centre of my universe where your dreams became and blended with mine. I even grew to adored the idea of being a parent with you, if you decided you truly want that, either adopted or biological. I was petrified of destroying us…petrified of my internal struggles preventing me from serving our relationship.
But last fall, I felt frozen before the winter came. Unable to express, explain or help you understand. We wanted the same thing! We truly did!!!! We wanted the exact same thing from each other. Deeper connection. More openness. Fighting on the same team. Working towards a life together. Even though we wanted the same thing together, I just approach things differently and beginning to understand why I do (or did).
The saddest part for me, is that even if I understood this part of myself and went through this process a year earlier, I’m not sure if it would have saved our relationship. Relationships take two people. Often, you were too quick to blame me and never slowed down enough to hear me when I pointed to your wrong doings. You didn’t understand the depth of how much it hurt when you stonewall me. I sometimes struggled to fully communicate my thoughts, and small things like way you would interrupt me, made it harder for me to feel you understand what I see you’re doing.
The few times you did accept fault, you still blamed my actions for your reaction. Like when I fell asleep and missed picking you up ONE time at the train station. Instead of going to the boat where there was a %99.2 chance I would be, you decided that it was a better idea and fair to punish me and shut me out for THREE FULL DAYS completely ignoring me.
In therapy, I was told to stop minimizing what that did to me. To stop making excuses and defending you. The silence, the shutdown, the refusal to answer, the walking away — those things left me hurting in ways I didn’t know how to carry.
Yes, I was bad at expressing my struggles and what I needed help with to overcome them. I’m learning how to improve that. But you telling me after I broke up with you that “we never went to therapy so we didn’t have the tools” is a perfect example of how you never accepted responsibility and constantly shifted blame elsewhere (usually blaming me).
People don’t need therapy to understand something as basic as me saying “I can’t keep bouncing between place to place sleeping in different places for 7-8-9 days in a row. We need to find a solution.” This is just one small example. But I said this many times (probably poorly or erratically or overly emotional or bad timing). You flat out told me that I’m fighting against you. I sometimes felt that my requests for support were misunderstood, which left me feeling frustrated and disconnected. Yes, I suck at expressing myself when things feel like a crisis to me (hello ADHD emotional dysregulation problems). There were times I felt my messages weren’t fully received, which intensified my sense of urgency and vulnerability.
Maybe I did come off like I was arguing, but I felt like I was advocating for my daily survival and basic life needs by having SOME level of routine/consistency. Simple things like finding my glasses and car keys in the morning were sending me in to literal tears and what I now know from therapy were anxiety/panic attacks. Many times, I sat in my car outside your apartment and cried…..shaking…. as I started to drive to Hamilton in crazy morning traffic.
So when you refused to talk to me for zero rational reason, on the morning before I exploded January 25th, I was left in the dark to make assumptions on how you felt about me and your reasons for being in a relationship with me, which added to my anxiety.
I tried to defend you inside my internal dialog…but I had been doing that for months. Every time you excluded me or stonewalled/shut me out completely, it felt like you were hiding a dagger under your pillow waiting to strike when it would hurt most (your November dance event, basketball game, visiting family in Florida to name a few times). At the time, I couldn’t articulate why this felt like physical pain to me.
I was begging you the morning of January 25th, to sit and talk the next day. For months, you kept asking me for closeness. But when I tried, you pushed me away. When I was most desperate to connect with you, you built an even bigger wall.
When I said I’m at my mental/emotional capacity and need you to help me create this closeness by doing something as simple as working from the boat for a few days during the week, you fought me over it and made excuses like “the internet”. You said you want “the weekend with your boyfriend“, forgetting there are 5 other days in the week. Conveniently forgetting you filled your time with 4 evenings of french lessons and a Wednesday dance class. French lessons you wouldn’t need if we worked on our relationship during the week, because we would have been married.
Weeks before that in early January, you told me “you’re being the good responsible guy right now. But when is the next “cycle” going to begin?”. They were not cycles….I just didn’t understand that your personal emotional wounds and problems surface in ways that are major triggers for me.
My therapist told me that some people have the ability to bring out both the best and worst in us. That doesn’t mean they’re not good for each other. A successful relationship is still very very possible. It just means you need to figure out how to navigate each others issues together and use that as a process to strengthen bonds, not push each other apart.
We even wrote in our “relationship book” about shutting me out and leaving me in the dark, because I have a tendency to mentally and emotional spiral when I’m alone with no information (I’m working on this a lot!!). It would have been easy to say “Hey, I’m spending time with Diana right now. Can we talk about this tomorrow morning? I love you and want to figure this out. But right now, I’m focusing on my time with my best friend, because I love her too.”
Instead, you chose to punish me by shutting me out and accuse me of being mad IN THE FUTURE for driving in the future. That’s not showing compassion, empathy and love. That level of silence feels like torture, especially for someone like me.
Learning Who I Am
I have learned how intense I feel emotions compared to others. It’s why I (and others with ADHD) have this relentless pursuit of justice that often feels visceral. It’s the source of my deep empathy, which is often a hallmark of ADHD – not the figgity/restlessness/constant moving that people assume it’s about (I don’t experience those symptoms outwardly).
It’s why I opened my doors to Ukrainians fleeing war. It’s why I now ignore any news about Palistine/Isreal, because of how emotionally draining it was constantly reading about Ukraine/Russia and knowing my news friends have their friends and family still there – people I have never met but seriously considered going there to do something more.
It’s why I made decisions that, if I’m being truly honest, set my life back 3-5 years regarding my goals around owning properties for retirement. I put another families needs ahead of my own…only so they could fuck me out of +$4,000 in real money plus the unexpected expenses and opportunity lost. I had compassion and empathy for their situation, and chose to live in a basement construction zone for 2 years only for them to tell me “That was your choice”. I should have trusted my instincts and finished my basement project to sell the house at prices $200k+ more than what they are now on my street.
It’s why I’ve rebuilt my relationship with my father for a THIRD time after he’s caused me serious emotional damage in my youth and adult life. Thankfully, his experiment with cannabis has helped opened his eyes to how terrifyingly difficult life has been at times, because of him.
It’s why my chest tightens and I can’t breath when I think of the story you told me about the guilt and regret you felt for not visiting your father, with your sisters, in hospital when he was sick and passed away. And I think about that often because it’s obvious that experience affects you in some way.
These intense emotions are why I cried at every concert we went to, even the very first concert at History seeing Bonobo. I remember dancing closely with you, standing behind, listening to “No Reason” (video below) and tearing up. That was the night I decided I wanted to explore having you in my life forever and it was only weeks after our first date.
Even Mark Anthony, I hid a few overly emotional tears. They were not sadness. It’s usually not sadness that brings tears. That time, it was just being overwhelmed with feel good chemicals. Usually at concerts or listening to music alone, the strong emotions come from latching on to the sorrow and melancholy of the music. Even at the Billy Talent concert, I teared up listening to music from my teen years and how the lyrics of one specific song hit me harder now than ever (video below).
Why Fairness and Closure Matter to Me
It’s why after I broke up with you, I’m stuck with this almost insane desire for fairness and real closure, while you simply packed up and moved onward within days…distracting yourself with a new person. You brush it off as “it’s over” and not obligated to talk to me, but someone with ADHD relentlessly seeks closure and fairness.
It’s not because I want to be difficult, but because I literally can’t un-feel the wrongness of things that happened, both things I did (there were many) and especially things you did that I kept silent about or I wrongly defended/justified your actions. I can not let go knowing how things ended. For two people that loved eachother as much as we did, having the last spoken words over the phone with you saying “I don’t want to talk to you” is not honouring who we are as people. It’s not honouring our relationship (even if it needs to end).
You have said literally FOUR spoken words to me since the morning of January 25th. It was at the airport. I asked “when did this happen?” regarding your new and shockingly quick relationship that %99 of people say it looks like you were cheating on me (I believe in your strong morals and value system that you wouldn’t do that – but only you know if you were mentally/emotionally cheating on me by developing that relationship before I ended things).
You replied in the airport, “Why does it matter?” and wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.
Well, this is why it matters. Because to me it’s not just a break up. Your boyfriend belittled me and told me on the phone “people break up all the time. Why are you doing this? She’s never getting back with you, even if we weren’t in love (meaning you and him)”.
But to me, our relationship affected my entire existence and was literally and life and death situation. There were many sources for my internal chaos, but I could always draw a line back to our relationship. For months, I had feelings that I had enough with struggling and didn’t want to live anymore. I wanted to give up. There were many nights I layed in bed wishing I didn’t wake up. I almost acted on those feelings in a disaster of a drunken mess on January 25th.
I’m sorry that my intent wasn’t clear with my overwhelming messages and attempts at communication. I have never been trying to “get back together” since January 25th. I’m just struggling with the unjust situation where you get to walk around pretending like everything is my fault, when through therapy, it’s clear that your silence and refusal to talk to me was more damaging than any of my emotional outbursts. I struggled alone for a long time, and past misunderstandings and labels made it hard to feel seen and supported because of barriers created…beginning with calling me a narcissist.
I have walked away easily from other relationships, because I identified the “why” and understood what happened. I also never felt the deep desire to serve them, to wake up beside them every day and ask them “what do you need me to do today and tomorrow to make your life easy and fulfilling?” like I did with you…no where near the same intensity.
Conversations That Still Matter
In true ADHD fashion, I have clearly been over explaining and over sharing in this journal entry, bouncing between many topics and moments that were critical to me.
My stream of consciousness has lost focus on the original intent of this journal entry. But it has felt good getting it out. Even with struggling to balance fairness and accusations. Even with the frequent pauses to wipe my eyes and adjust my vision.
Maybe I’ll end this emotional rant with this: I still believe our conversations matter. You told me “I believe” in our relationship and I hang on to that moment. I still believe we can have a positive impact on each others lives, even apart, simply through remembering what we wanted together. I’m still heading in the direction we set out in our relationship book, growing wildly inside.
This direction honours my personal values as well as honouring a person that unintentionally sent me on a path to a wild level of self understanding through diagnosis of neurodivergence. I often expressed to you that I felt misunderstood most of my life. Well, this process finally brought answers to why that might have been.
The End and Moving Forward
I decided on January 25th that I needed to stop the pain that your silence and withdrawal was causing me. I wanted you as my life partner so so so much but I felt like I had no choice but to ended our relationship. The “triangle of death” was real. If things didn’t change quickly, I was going to lose something (My house in St. Catharines, my job in Hamilton or my relationship in Toronto). I was burning out and felt like my entire life was on fire already.
I have regrets about my approach and the harm I did. But I realized that you just don’t have the willingness or patients or capacity to learn how to love me properly. I know you could have learned….but there was something preventing you from listening and getting deeper with me in my darkness. I don’t fault you for that – how can I fully blame you for not being patient with me when I didn’t have those answers myself?
But I am finding those answers now, and I’m not sure that if I had these answers back then, if it would have changed your approach. I might never know that….because you simply refuse to talk to me, even though I just want you to understand me and where things truly went wrong for us.
I still want you and your boyfriend to have the life you deserve. Admittedly, I still think about that almost everyday. Every day, I wish and hope you get your citizenship. I even get emotional thinking of what you will have to go through if you have to leave the life you’re trying to build here.
I’m surrounded by reminders of that dream and what I dreamed for us. Things like building this apartment I’m working on, that I envisions would free us financially to bring your mother to live close to you/us here. Or making a dedicated office space for you on the boat.
People always say the cliche “Time heals all wounds”. Well, I have accepted that time will not heal my wounds from our relationship, especially with your choice to be silent. But I will gain more understanding of my struggles and myself over time. When the time comes for me to love the next person, they will feel the greatness and love you did with me….except they will feel it every day and not have to experience the chaos I created for myself in the past.
I am learning to be me %100 of the time.
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I've never thought I'm "special" but people always tell me I'm different, interesting, weird, strange, unique or one-of-a-kind. Every social group or different circle of friends, they would always say the same. I have always chalked it up to having a diverse collection of interests and a diverse collection of friends, where these different experiences would rub off on me.
But I've recently learned that the source of this difference with social norms and thought processes is more likely to do with my brain itself and the way it functions. Being diagnosed with ADHD/nerodivergence, albeit on the milder end of the spectrum, has been eye opening and provided a lot of answers to things I always thought of as personality quirks. Although they may be quirks, there is a deeper reason for many of them.
But with every wonderful thing that I'm capable of, there have always been things I struggle with that seem so easy or effortless for other people. Like how easy it is for me to get stuck in prolonged periods of alcohol use (an easy hit of dopamine), or simply talking on the phone when I don't understand the point or purpose of the conversation, especially when I can visually see a dozen things that need to be addressed or are more interesting.
unfinished draft....work on post later.
-list of symptoms
-how/if they affect me daily and longer term
- how they changes relationships
-things I was asking for that were "soothing" or helpful to me before knowing they were common coping mechanism for others with adhd
- advocating for myself. My poor way of asking for help/change. Now understanding there are real reasons for these requests
-changes with new coping strategies
-changes with new medication
-affects of alcohol and why it was difficult to quit...but extremely easy once I understood why i subconsciously drink excessively to "self-medicate"