Re: How To Accept This As a Severe Mental Disorder (in an adult)?

[Anonymous]

I borrowed the book ADHD and its Effects on Marriage from our local library, and that’s what got me started investigating this wholeheartedly. My husband has ADHD but doesn’t take his meds. I did the online test here, and it seems I have it too, big-time.

The book was revealing to me, it explained why the usual reactions don’t work (I have to get really angry to get him to do anything around the house). There are a lot of real-life examples in the book and many of them resonated with me. So I realized that doing the same old things would only result in the same old problems and that I had to start to deal with both of our situations.

The author says that it’s important to get the medication sorted out first. But that’s not the only part of the solution, that the meds and behaviour go together. So for my husband and I, we had to get agreement about what the problems were, how it felt for each of us, and what we were going to do about it going forward. The decision was to do a one-week trial where he takes his meds (and I’m doing a trial taking his too) and see how we fare after a week.

The first step for us was talking about it. The book would be useful in helping you understand why he says and does the things he does, and what doesn’t work in an ADHD/non-ADHD relationship.

I haven’t finished the book yet, only halfway through, but I can say it’s probably the most important book I have read at a critical point in my life when my symptoms are starting to get a lot worse.

It also helps for us that we are both seeing a psychologist (for meditation/therapy) and are working on our patterns. As far as I can tell, there’s never one side to a problem, we both contribute, although it takes effort to see that and even more effort to work through it.

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