The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off - Gloria Steinem

And yes, this may indeed piss you off if you thought all your problems were because you had a disorder - that there was something wrong with you that needed fixing. You want medication to solve ‘the problem’ and yet it doesn’t or not completely. And here I am, telling you that the ADHD is not the problem.

The same goes for the nonADHD partner in the relationship. Your partner’s ADHD is not the problem. Trying to fix that is not going to help. All that research that you are doing (and your ADHD partner is not) in order to ‘help’ them to ‘manage’ their ADHD? It won’t help them and it won’t manage their ADHD.

You want to know why? Because ADHD is simply the way their brain is, and it influences how they think, how they feel, how they sense the world, and how they experience life. In the same way that someone who was born blind will find it impossible to know what it is like to see, you will find it hard to understand how your ADHD partner thinks and feels. But that does not make it wrong.

Their feelings, their thoughts, their experiences are valid. As are yours. They are both correct, even though they are very different.

‘But there are real struggles in our relationship,’ you may scream. And I get that. But it is not the ADHD itself that causes them.

Imagine growing up when everyone not just tells you the way you are doing things is wrong, but shows you that it is wrong. When all around you do things that don’t seem logical to you, but because you have not yet developed your critical thinking ability and therefore take everything anyone says as truth, you believe them. And assume that the way you want to do things is wrong.

It is bewildering how everyone else seems to have an internal rulebook that you completely lack. So you copy the behaviours or others. You continually scan your environment to check you are doing things ‘right’. It is exhausting but you assume that, as everyone else manages it with ease, you should be able to do it.

This takes its toll on your nervous system and you develop headaches, anxiety, or you crash through overwhelm. Your work, your home life, your friendships, they all seem to take so much energy.

Then you get your diagnosis and you think ‘HURRAY’ and assume that your troubles are over. If you medicate, you think this will solve all as it will ‘fix’ whatever is wrong with you. If you decide not to medicate and go for therapy instead, there is still that thought that it will ‘fix’ you. To your horror you realise that the more you learn about ADHD, the stronger all your symptoms get. That was not the idea!

What if it is not ADHD that is causing problems?

What if the way you experience life is fundamentally different?

And you don’t need to be fixed. Instead you need a guide.

What then?

What if the answers are not there yet because we haven’t asked the right questions?

There is a quote attributed to Gabrielle Roth, which goes like this:

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: “When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?”

Maybe those are the first questions to ponder?