Husband with ADHD and my feeling of neglect

Dearest Flow Coaches,

I need some guidance around how to stay in an empathetic, peaceful, and understanding space during discussions with my husband who has ADHD.

I feel to explain a bit about me for context… pardon the hot waffle that follows..

Growing up, I was an undiagnosed dyslexic child. At my London, private “high achieving” school this was not recognised and I was made to feel stupid, ridiculed and different from my peers by the teachers and staff.

My only survival during those 13 years, was to put on a brave face, hide my feelings (even though I am INCREDIBLY sensitive) be loud and proud and prioritise friendship over everything else!!

I found myself shouldering all my friends problems and putting my feelings and needs on the back burner. Often friends were bitchy towards me and each other which deeply upset me …but I would hide it. When I would get home from school I would feel run down, exhausted, sad and afraid. I felt stupid, different and trampled on by friends. I would cry a lot.

When I would try and express myself to my mum, who is super lovely, she would just tell me that “I was being silly and over sensitive”. I therefore felt very alone and trapped inside and thought my feelings were bad.

As an adult I continued the same behaviour. I was bossed around by mates and spoken to rudely yet loved by them in a really clingy, deep weird way at the same time. Confusing.

However, no one would ask me how I was, only talk about there problems. I became their therapists. It was of course my fault that it was this way and I blamed myself for it everyday.

From the age of 18 I started down an 11 year relationship with a dude that was born on the same day and year as me!

In that relationship I learnt how to express myself a bit. Mainly negatively. My partner was quite volatile and I occasionally also let my rage and frustration out to. I felt so much guilt about this and felt it confirmed that I was a bad person with bad emotions. So again, most of the time I put my needs on the back burner. During those 11 years, I ended up shouldering all the utility bills, cleaning and running of the household. I was doing this whilst also working as a professional carer and studying for a degree at university. My partner of the time, stayed at home, barely worked, made music and smoked a hell of a lot of weed. If I asked him to help in anyway I would get shouted at abs it would turn into an argument. I felt resentment towards him and anger. However, Most of time i just blamed myself and thought he behaviour was my fault for being so lax on him. I became anorexic during this time I think to gain some control back in my life.

I sought therapy and recovered over 5 years from my eating disorder. Toward “the end” part of recovery, aged 30, I ended that relationship. I felt a lot of guilt for leaving him. He had been my best friend and I felt that I had let him down by breaking up with him after 11 years. It felt like I’d turned someone out on the street or something (he actually moved back in with his parents.. not the street). At the same time I felt taken advantage of by him and very neglected and a bit abused.

I distracted myself from that pain by landing straight into another relationship for 6 months. Oh dear me.

I was with quite a moody, fiery man for those 6 months which I found difficult. During that time I had this thought that it was probably best to completely hide any feelings of upset, stress, annoyance and pain from my then boyfriend. It was a harder then ever. I was grieving my relationship and struggling with the new one.

It all got too much for me and I ended up getting very Ill with a chronic uti. I bounced from one doc to another to try and get answers. I was in so much pain and finally ended up being diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. This pain and a fight to get better encompassed everything but I still had to work and go to university. I felt like I was drowning and on fire at the same time. It was so challenging and I new something had to give. I eventually decided to end that relationship thank god. Since then I have slowly recovered from that chronic disease and I am better.

I worked out along the way through mega research, that I believe the disease was down to my underlying stress of holding in all of what I perceived to be “negative” about myself. My feelings and emotions had to come out sooner or later and they did…eventually finding their way out through the expression of pain in my body.

Cut to 5 years ago and during this recovery time is when I met my husband!!

He is a kind, loving, beautiful individual who is full of energy and light. He has adhd and has his own intimacy issues after losing his mother when he was 14. He sometimes struggles to be open and share his feelings due to some shame issues that he carries over his behaviour in the years preceding his mothers death. Issues around being promiscuous and drinking and partying a lot in order to hide from his grief and the situations he found himself in.

On a side note of positivity! We are now both sober and have been for 3 years! Woo woo! It has helped us both and we feel more confident and happy then we ever have. We feel like proper people! We have our own gardening business and we have moved out of London to the Suffolk countryside. We have a doggy and I am now pregnant with our first child.

However…. Naturally I still have many issues that I would like to continue to tackle! I find myself afraid of making new fiends in my new area of Suffolk. I don’t know how to set boundaries and I am worried that they will demand too much from me and I will become ill.

I also refuse to hold anything in anymore around my partner and often feel aggressive when I speak to him about my needs. I find it difficult that he isn’t able to focus/ concentrate on our conversations and when I am expressing myself. It brings up past thoughts and feelings of being ignored and dismissed when I was a child. I also often feel neglected and isolated like when I was a child and I don’t know why. I feel so bad for feeling these emotions and thinking these thoughts. I beat myself up a lot and think of myself as a freak who struggles with the simple things. I berate myself for having no friends in this area (even though it’s been difficult as we moved here just before covid). I feel like a bad wife who doesn’t know how to expresses herself any other way then aggressively.

I really want to be there for my husband and to support his adhd and his needs. I want to keep in mind that he struggles to listen at no fault of his own. However I don’t want to forget myself and what I need like I did in the past as this got me into trouble.

My husband rarely asks me how I am and prefers to keep it on a light happy joking vibe most of the time. I crave deep honest connection.

I have spoken to him about this and I think he feels uncomfortable being open and honest as he carry’s a lot of shame with himself from his past. He feels that if he starts a deep and meaningful conversation with me that he will also be expected to open up. This makes him feel very vulnerable doing so. He can only seem to chat at certain times of the day as when he feels physically tired he can’t cope with talking at all. I want to respect this but when met with this, I feel like if I don’t express what’s going on inside me in that Moment I will burst and get unwell again.

Anyhoo..All this leaves me with thoughts of feeling neglected, sometimes terrified of not being able to express myself and makes me feel like I fighting for my life. This then leads me to expressing myself more aggressively and desperately then I would like. I then hate myself for being angry at him and lacking empathy. The circle of fire and self hate rages on!!!!!

How do I bring peace around expressing my feelings and thoughts and having my needs met, whilst also empathising with his adhd and respecting his boundaries?

Anyways… is that too much info? To much expression? Lol!

Any advice or detangling around this would be most appreciated and cherished.

Big up and massive big love to the fellow flow collectors and amazing coaches.

Xxx

Answer:

Thank you for sharing your story. You have great awareness to what you’re feeling, thinking and doing. 

You mentioned that you desire deep connection with your husband. What does that mean to you? If it involves talking with your husband, why does that feel like deep connection? The answer to that question is your thought. 

Here is an example of how to look at it in a model.

C: Conversation about feelings between my husband and me [This would be the answer to what deep connection is to you.]
T: He is interested in me
F: Connected

It may feel like the conversation is what makes you feel connected. It is not though. It is your thoughts about that conversation that gives you that feeling. In the example, it would be the thought “He is interested in me.” 

Understanding this helps you take your power back. If it were your conversations that made you feel connected, then your feelings would always be at the mercy of whether your husband wants to have a conversation or not. When you realize that you feeling connected is how you think about those things, then you begin to understand how you can choose to feel connected. What other things does he do that creates a thought that has you feel connected? 

This does not mean that you stop trying to have conversations or expressing your feelings. It means that how you feel is not dependent upon having those conversations. 

As for expressing yourself, it is wonderful that you recognize your need to do that. You are focused on expressing your feelings to your husband to get them out. What other ways could you get them out?