I am at my wits end. My ADHD husband spends so much time on youth hockey for our kids that is has impacted the ability for our family to function in a productive manner. This has been going on for almost 25 years. First, we cannot afford it as he has been in and out if work since we married 20 yeArs ago. Second, he refuses to pull our kids out of hockey even though it has push us deeper into debt. Third, i really think it has impacted his ability to keep the jobs he has had since he spends so much time researching youth hockey stats, determining the next teams our kids, going to tournaments, games, etc. Fourth, he insists on doing his own house and car work to save money but ca rarely finish a project because of hockey or he is recovering from hockey games/ tournaments. Fifth, i cant talk to him about any of it anymore. He will blow up. For example, i was trying to confirm Easter dinner with family and he said he had to check the schedule for hockey stuff. This is Easter... A high priority for me. And, he blew up because i said Easter with family should be a priority. He has convinced 2 of our kids that they shoukd try for the NHL. Most parents set a more realistic expectation for their kids with goal of youth sports being to have fun, learn teamwork, etc. He is very critical of the kids and expects perfection every game but yet he has so many bad habits/traits ..eating junk food, playing vudeo games, spending more than he can afford, running late, in and out of jobs, piles of stuff arounf house for years, judgemental, angry outbursts, overreacts, very defensive, always watching shows online, not finsihing projects,etc. He kills me that a lot of his angry out bursts and criticalness has hurt our kids self esteem and confidence. I have asked him to start medication and he has tried off and on. He doesnt trust specislists/ doctors so doesnt like to see someone to talk to. His dad died when he was 10 so i think he missed out on some key development when he was young. So, i see him acting like a kid much of the time... Doing fun stuff. He is very smart but cant apply himself in disciplined manner to non exciting things like work, house projects, planning, finances, maintenance. I work full time, do the finances, handle kids other stuff like doctor appts, school requirements, etc. Because of his obsessiveness with hockey for kids i find i cant always enjoy watching the kids because i know we cant afford it and it keeps us from doing anything else as a family. I dont know how to handle it. He suffers from depression because he knows he is not able to reach his potential but the challenges have forced depression on me.
ADHD husband obsesses with expensive youth sports but unemployed and house projects piled up
Submitted by Sofrustrated01 on 03/28/2015.
Sofrustrated01....I hear you
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Dear So, the unfinished projects around the house is a major issues with most all ADHD spouses. There's even a chapter here on the forum just for that. Melissa and Dr. Hallowell have offered suggestions for this. My ADHD husband and I have been together 32 years next month, with him only diagnosed about 9 years ago. Our house is and has been overwhelmed with unfinished projects and/or ones half done or done improperly to where they have to be finished by a professional. (which made him very angry) If you read enough of these posts, (I hope you do) it sounds like your husband has more issues than just ADHD. (so does my husband, but undiagnosed) They learn many poor coping strategies because of many things: their parents disapproval of them, failures in school or at work, etc., bad relationships, etc.My husband has been doing some wonderful changing the past few months only because he's been accepting his ADHD, taking his meds and working harder to treat us all better. Which in turn brings him better reactions and results from many folks, not just us.
I'm sorry you're going through this....but please just know this.......there are many of us who have lived this life and are currently living it. These board will give you tons of information, comfort, and even just a place to vent. Oh, it also sounds like your husband may doing what's called "hyperfocusing" on the hockey. Read about hyperfocus, if you haven't heard about that. But, him pushing the kids so hard with it, with no BALANCE in their lives with OTHER THINGS is difficult.
Hugs to you today and hope you keep posting.
When I read your story....
Submitted by overwhelmedwife on
When I read your story, I thought you were my sister in law who was changing a few details to stay anonymous. lol
My brother in law is an attorney but refuses to work full time so that he has time to focus on his kids' sports. My sister in law is at her wits end. she has to be the adult, while he gets to do whatever he wants with no regard to how it hurts the family financially.
Is your H being treated for ADHD? If not, can you encourage that?
I see where you are coming
Submitted by Geese on
I Am Familiar with This
Submitted by kellyj on
So I might be able to offer a different perspective......and also trying something new myself at the same time. I said I needed to take a break (from the forum) because of time....but I stopped myself for a moment to take the opportunity to practice switching gears and juggling more balls and keep them all in the air. lol This is an ADHD thing by the way and it does take practice.... being succinct and switching gears! lol So at the risk of appearing wishy washy.... here's what I see.
I've seen this countless times growing up. I was a competitive swimmer from the time I was 6 until my 2nd year in college. I also played little league, Babe Ruth, and prep school ball during those years as well. In my case.....this was my choice. It was one of the few places in my life during that time that did not involve my parents and was not their decision unless they were there to support me which they did as well but not all the time or were involved in what I did, practices or even every game or meet I competed.
But....there were plenty of parents who were not like mine because of the reasons I said and I sat and I watched this play out for years and it was always the same in every case. Your husband is a "stage mom" but instead of kiddy beauty pageants...it's hockey. I could always tell these parents a mile away immediately since they were there at every practice and at every meet and usually....having some job or role in the process...assistant coaching, timers, organizing etc. They had their hands into everything and were extremely involved...to the point that it became clear that the whole thing had more to do with them than it did about their children or their children's best interest.
Everything you said fit this profile to the letter and I saw it all...the criticizing, the unrealistic expectations and goals ( like the NHL), perfectionism. This is one time that I can speak assertively and say this has nothing to do with your kids. This is all about him. Your kids are only a vehicle so he can relive this part of his broken relationship with his father....as you said key development but to be more specific.....he's trying to fill the black hole in his own life that is missing but it will never get filled the way he's doing it and it IS an obsession not like one. It may look like he's being involved in your children's lives for there welfare at first glance...but in reality...he's using your kids as pawns to play out his lost fantasy or dreams about himself to counter his own depression which I suspect...may be directly related to the very part of him he's trying to fix or repair by doing this. That's why he's so protective of it...that's why he's willing to spend all your money on it...and that's why he won't talk about it or go get help for it.....and why he appears like a kid most of the time while he's inside his own hockey fantasy story in his head which is all about going back and somehow trying to fix or fill the space that was missing in his own life.....in essence, he's playing both roles in the play...the father that was missing during this time and himself back then through your kids all rolled into one dysfunction.
This is not specific to ADHD however....it can, and probably is influenced or exacerbated by it ie: hyper focus or singular focus on stimulating activities...saying this only makes the problem worse perhaps but it NOT the problem. The problem is exactly what I said. Even as a kid I felt sorry for the kids I competed with who had these parents. No...they didn't enjoy it and eventually quit one by one. These parents rob their kids of any joy or fun they get out of it and suck every drop of accomplishment right out of their hands as soon as they get it....it is a parasitic relationship not a healthy one for your kids and is ultimately doing damage to them in.
This is all about your husband and his past and not related directly related to his ADHD. He needs help without question but more related to what I am saying and less related specifically to his ADHD....if I'm wrong here in your case specifically I would be surprised...I've just had too much experience in seeing it to think other wise. I hope you can get him in to see someone about this because it will not go away and it will continue to do the same damage to you and your kids if he doesn't. I wish you strength and courage because I see him really resisting you here for all the reason's I said but.....this is going to be a real problem for you and for your kids sake down the road if you can't.
And in keeping with my own goal in juggling more balls....I need to get off my computer and do other things as well. I hope this helps you see the situation better but unfortunately I can't offer you any advise on how to successfully deal with the situation itself. Good luck.
J
I couldn't agree more, J.
Submitted by AlmaVera on
It's quite common for ADHD to get mingled with all kinds of other issues, but they aren't all then 'ADHD.' Perfectionism can be a trait of adults with ADHD, but it can also be a trait of someone who suffered some kind of emotional neglect as a child, or someone who had an addicted parent, etc.. This is a hole that will only be filled when he heals that childhood wound. ADHD may exacerbate things, but it's not the sole cause of why he is this way.
Interesting.....can you share more on the subject?
Submitted by overwhelmedwife on
<<<
Perfectionism can be a trait of adults with ADHD, but it can also be a trait of someone who suffered some kind of emotional neglect as a child, or someone who had an addicted parent, etc.. This is a hole that will only be filled when he heals that childhood wound. ADHD may exacerbate things, but it's not the sole cause of why he is this way.
>>>>
I would love to learn more about what you wrote. I think it applies to my H, who also has some OCD issues. Perfectionism is so strong with him that he's the WORST POOR SPORT ever. He can't even play an innocent board game or cards without getting VERY upset if he loses. When he'd play racquetball with his friend, if he lost, he'd get mad at his friend (who has since died, so that isn't an issue anymore).
H's childhood was very lacking. Both parents ADHD and other issues. His dad was a rager, and his mom was lazy, self-centered, and was not the least bit motherly.
Myself Compared To Others as One Example
Submitted by kellyj on
Hi Overwhelmedwife.
I'm jumping in with AV's comment because I think she's absolutely right here and I have read about perfectionism being associated with other issues including OCD.... but I've also been very curious about this topic myself because of my own contradictions and theories to this saying...I have some elements and not others and my thinking as to why that is. ( and again ) Trying to be succinct! lol
Quoting Joe Montana ( the quarterback ) as saying " the most important lesson I ever learned in becoming a professional athlete in all the years of playing sports is how to lose." I have to agree with him completely. Getting up in front of an audience of your peers, family, fellow competitors and a gallery of complete strangers who are there to witness every mistake you make can be devastating in the moment for everyone. Sayings like "where the rubber meets the road" or "separating the men from the boys" ( not being sexist here ) point to this exact moment when you have to learn how to get past yourself at these times and come back and perform without letting this affect you. These sayings and the lessons you learn from this are what Joe Montana was referring to and with that comes learning how to be a good sport and a gracious loser. I think this has a big part to play with me despite my ADHD, in learning how to control my emotions and work through them with the emphasis on "learning" because no one starts out with this ability at first especially when you are young. You also learn very quickly that not being able to do this and letting your emotions get away from you is more embarrassing and humiliating than making the mistake itself or even losing the game. When you say your H's childhood was lacking. I'm not sure in what context your saying this but...I have seen the proverbial "only child" syndrome appear in many boys and men who also appear to have some of the qualities that you are describing including...being somewhat obsessive and being poor sports in games or in competition.
Needing always to be first, winning at all costs, cheating and being a poor sport seem to all go hand in hand with other issues like Narcissism, OCD (being extremely anal/perfectionism) along anxiety issues and simply being petty, blaming and in a more general description......kind of "spoiled rotten" to put it succinctly. There's simply no room for this behavior if you are going to "play" with other kids like I was saying so I do think that some of this has to do with learned experience and exposure over time.
But in fairness to what AV was saying which I also think is a valid explanation to some of this can come from neglect and abuse growing up.
I had the raging father but not a lazy self centered mother growing up ( self absorbed more in her appearance way yes)..but she definitely had anxiety issues,fear issues, perfectionism issues, poor self esteem issues ( despite being very attractive) and was herself very isolated growing up along with being sexually molested by a family friend in her early teens. But she was extremely hard working and conscientious and responsible as well as for my Dad.
Anyway...I can see myself back then possibly going in other directions due to some of my ADHD tendencies...but as it played out...despite my own abusive environment ie: the raging father and perfectionist mother.....I did become a perfectionist but only in the work I do ( metal arts, vintage car restoration, goldsmithing/diamond setting etc...) which goes completely contrary to anything else I'm like in any other area saying....you'd never know this about me if you were to meet me and see me in just about any other situation. This is one of those strange contradictions about me that I still have not been able to completely figure out but to the point of my comment about being able to see things going differently.
I think part of the reason for this was simply because I had other outlets to redirect these things into more useful ( and acceptable ) productive patterns including the sports thing instead of forming into life long maladaptive ones in their place yet....all the elements and components to my ADHD ( especially in my early childhood ) and anxiety issues were all present without question.
This is the part that is also so confusing to me too. I definitely have the more common ADHD symptoms and attributes ie: clutter, general messiness,communication ( my mild hearing loss since an early child plays heavily into this however...listening skills etc..) time management, general lateness and forgetfulness in short term memory
But....to a far lesser degree than most of the things I've read here in this forum about the male spouses with ADHD like the things your are mentioning ie: being a poor sport....is non existent. I play games for fun and I don't give a rip if I win or lose....it's about the company and enjoying the game. If I go back into competition again as I do occasional ( Adult Masters Swimming or Water Polo )...I'm can be fiercely competitive and I can be as serious and intense as I ever was ...saying, I love to be competitive...love it, love it, love it! ...but at the appropriate time and place this being one for example. Going for a round of golf, bowling or playing Backgammon ( a favorite for my wife and I ) I completely care less if I win, lose or make a fool of myself in the process??? I also don't like gambling or that kind of gaming either as there is nothing in it for me...no reward while I doing it either before or after you lose all your money! ha ha
Anyway.....I don't have the answers to why ADHD is so different for one person to another......but my own speculations seem to coinside with many of the comments that you have made about other disorders ie: cluster "B" personality/character issues if not full blown disorders including anxiety related issues. I have lived with, worked with, and had some past relationship with people like this so I am very familiar with the comments you've made and I have to agree with you too. But I also see isolated elements of these things at me at times or in some places like the contradiction with my perfectionism only in my work that still does not fully answer the difference or it's source as being just ADHD or something else entirely?
I'm still wondering and scratching at times myself??
Sooooooooo...this wasn't succinct I know! ha ha I haven't learned the art of succinctness/hyperfocus and written hypothesizng sans "word pictures" as a means to communicate yet....still working on it. lol
But I would love more input from you or others into this topic since I am obviously interested and invested in it too.
J
Some causes of perfectionism
Submitted by AlmaVera on
OW-
You didn't mention if either of your H's parents were alcoholics, but perfectionism is one of the main traits of an adult child of an alcoholic. One thing I learned when investigating myself --- these traits can also be passed down to additional generations. For example, my dad was not an alcoholic, but his dad was. In fact, he died from a drinking-induced head injury when my dad was still a child. His family never dealt with any of that. I realized that I had every one of the traits of an ACOA myself. I read that these can be passed down because one generation is still acting out some of the things s/he learned from her/his dysfunctional childhood and then passing them on. They never learned anything different.
Here's a link to traits of ACOAs.
One thing that was surprising to me about that list was how many of the things on it also sounded like symptoms of ADHD!
Another thing that I discovered (and I may have posted this elsewhere in the forum) is the effects of childhood emotional neglect (CEN). I stumbled on this person's article when it was one of those 'related posts' on my FB page. It was like a "WHOA" moment for me. I even got this her book, which was very good.
This is a post contrasting the effects of CEN in women and men (generally speaking).
Here is the list of her blog posts on CEN on the PsychCentral website. I first discovered them last summer, and it looks like she's added some new posts in the last couple of months.
One of them, on personality disorders, actually segues nicely into another cause of perfectionism: being raised by a personality disordered parent. My mother had some seriously disordered traits, and I never realized how much they impacted me until I read this book. It's written specifically for daughters of narcissistic mothers, but it might be a general topic to look into for your H, too, since you mentioned that his mother was self-centered and not motherly.
Here's a little article on the differences between perfectionists and high achievers. At the end there is a link to a study on the link between perfectionism and ... cortisol!! (Subject of another forum thread here, lol)
Hope these help!
AV
These Articles Just Described Was My Father
Submitted by kellyj on
This might add to what you were saying as useful information for OW and Sofrustrated AV. I've suspected for years now that my grandfather who I never met, was a heavy drinker and an alcoholic by today's standards for sure. (we talking the 20's ) I know this from piecing together what few stories I heard about him that were passed on to me by my mother and filling in the blanks that my father did not tell or omitted/lied to her about. My father hit all 13 traits in the first article to the letter which now confirms my own suspicions and explains my own feelings about this as well. If there was any doubt in my mind before....there is none now. This includes the description between perfectionism and high achiever putting my father solidly in the perfectionism category as linked to his alcoholic Dad ( my grandfather ) His father was also severely neglected and traumatized as a child, being abandoned by his mother at an early age..
First I want to thank you Alma Vera for this information as it is invaluable to me personally.....and like you were also saying, I have some of the similar traits passed along in me even though my father was not a drinker and only drank on occasion that I ever saw and never to what I would call drunkenness. This is all extremely fascinating to me for obvious reasons.
Interesting side note on the perfectionism vs high achiever article where I fit the high achiever description distinctly in contrast to my fathers perfectionists. Something that I come to see very clearly is how I have contrasted from my father distinctly in temperament and irritability (the raging for him) but yet.....in some ways paralleled him at the same time. Paralleling him but not walking in his footsteps. I think this article showing the difference is a perfect example of this. Both articles suggest two possible ways these things can manifest in someone like this ie: over- responsible/super responsible behavior or going the opposite was being under-responsible....my father going the over-responsible route. With me it appears to have been passed on but modified or shifted to over achiever instead of perfectionism saying... perfectionism appears actually to be more of a maladapted or "shadow" of being a high achiever but not without some parallels or propensity for maladapted in it's own different or separate directions?
Reading this really helps clarify this for me....but now even more..... back to my original comments made in this thread to Sofrustrated01 reconfirming what I said about the effects of this on her children especially her son. The fact that I had such strong feelings or opinions is really telling and can be explained by the direct effect it had on me during my childhood from the resulting negative repercussions it had on me.
I also suspect even more than ever that my fathers behavior has more to do with this than it did from Narcissism or at least a combination of the two???... which does appear to share a lot in common on the surface but with some distinct differences. I was guessing more along the lines of PTSD ) + narcissism from some of his stories ( which might still be true )...but my PTSD speculations might be better explained by ACOA instead? I don't know if there is a correlation with narcissism and ACOA but I'm now curios. I'm sure I will be looking into this too.
The connection to Cortisol is also a fascinating relationship....and to what I was saying due to fathers irritable temperament and critical nature including panic like attacks ( raging and highly reactive/over reacting eruptive emotions) his body weight ( heavy set) and chronic health issues which all coin side with a classic "type A" personality.
In contrast....me being more classic "type B" temperament with "type A" drives ...... "type B" + ADHD/hyperactive? thin/slender, more satisfied with my achievements, less serious, less fear driven and more fun loving, less reactive, less anxious on the surface, lower Cortisol??...... sounding closer all the time!
Great stuff AV.
Sofrustated01......like I was saying to AV.....the 13 list of items fit my Dad so well (adding in everything else I know).....I wondering the same thing about your H's family history?.....two things on the list were about lying or hiding their parents drinking as an ACOA which was now exactly what I understand my own father was doing and why I was left in the dark so many times with things that just didn't make sense or fit completely in the stories I was told. This now fits and all the pieces fall neatly into place. It's hard not to jump to conclusions but it also sound so familiar too.
And to the point....alcoholism or drinking was never discussed or mentioned ever by either of my parents including the lack of it on my fathers part ( my mom was a tea total-er) and I never saw my dad truly "drunk" even once. I don't have any doubt that this was the case for him since their are no other red flags to indicate otherwise.
J
My Wife and Perfectionism
Submitted by kellyj on
This morning...I had a long conversation with my wife about perfectionism. She read the article and agreed...it fit her quite well. Not so much the ACOE which is the glass slipper for my dad...a perfect fit! The source for my wife is still up for debate, but here's the point where it really doesn't matter. ...at least for me. What matter's is that we have finally found the source to the thing that I could not get her to see and to which I had no name for. I now know this to an even finer degree and why I have reacted to her in the past with my anger. Her comment about the artice was " what a stupid thing to call Perfectionism....I can't do anything perfectly!"...which is quite telling and to the point. lol
And...like back then in my past....it was something that I recognized by how I felt but couldn't actually explain it. And like then when I was confronted with this group of traits once again.....the old feelings of helplessness to make it stop ... resultied in the same kind of anger and fear I had of something that I just simply did not understand. Fear of the unknown in part. And the fear and anger of it happening again repeatedly. All things considered it still felt pretty much the same. You might say I had become sensitized to this but that would be somewhat of an understatement.
When I first came here to this forum...I was looking for ways to manage this very specific anger without knowing what it was all about. The reasons why were less important then ...than just arresting the behavior which I did manage to do. Being sick with a chronic infection did not help the matter much at the time (which I was also unaware of)...but I still needed to do this anyway because I could see that my marriage was in jeopardy if I didn't.
But after reading the article on perfectionism that you provided.....I made the connection to my wife which has now given me everything I need to know in being more understanding and more compassionate with her.... now it has a name to go with the face. I'm hoping for my wife's sake that she will keep working on it from her end which I suspect from her response to me this morning...will be something that she will do. It is one of her best qualities....that is, her willingness to do this very thing.
For me it just completes the picture and helps me see things for what they are instead of still having to wonder? It also helps me stay on track with what I've been doing and working on myself..... not letting this or anything that she does affect me to the point that I would lose my temper over it. What was really difficult for me to understand before was why I would even get that angry in the first place? It really was a very specific anger for a very specific reason but I simply could not identify why I felt so strongly about something like this because I have never reacted to her like this over anything else. The two of us have gotten into a number of disagreements about other things that did not have this one specific over reaction.
It certainly was never resolved back then so I suspect that had a lot to do with it...and I had it coming from two different directions for two different reasons. Either way....it never stopped and ultimately...that's all I wanted.
The one thing I do know based on myself is that it's a lot to ask of someone to just simply "stop" being a perfectionist in the same way possibly it would be for someone to just say stop having ADHD. Now that I see it for what it is.....I realize that it's not my issue in this case and it's not about stopping...it's about her feeling better about herself and for me to be considerate and understanding to her. It's also not so scary and mysterious and certainly not to the point of having to lose my temper over it even if it never stops. As long as I can not lose my temper over my wife's perfectionism.....I can be compassionate enough to get by any negative emotions that might still emerge associated with it.
And for the record...we both managed to stop reacting to each other over this which is why we have been getting so much better. We've both agreed to just "stop" and leave it alone when things start going South and this has worked pretty well for us since we started doing this. There's really nothing to discuss when two people's irrational issues start in on each other .....that would be irrational in itself! lol
Thanks again AV for the articles...now I can say for both of us :)
J
I'm so glad that this
Submitted by AlmaVera on
I'm so glad that this resonated with you and your wife! I had a pretty good day today, and reading your post above just gave it a perfect ending. It is quite a huge bit of understanding that you two have reached about the why behind things you are both doing that negatively affect your relationship.
"The one thing I do know based on myself is that it's a lot to ask of someone to just simply "stop" being a perfectionist in the same way possibly it would be for someone to just say stop having ADHD. Now that I see it for what it is.....I realize that it's not my issue in this case and it's not about stopping...it's about her feeling better about herself and for me to be considerate and understanding to her. It's also not so scary and mysterious and certainly not to the point of having to lose my temper over it even if it never stops. As long as I can not lose my temper over my wife's perfectionism.....I can be compassionate enough to get by any negative emotions that might still emerge associated with it."
This says a lot about you, J. I will say that reading what you wrote in this post and the one above gives a good insight into how perfectionism is actually a defensive reaction. When you were, in the past, getting angry and using the common defense/deflect of "well you have your things you need to deal with, too" (not an exact quote, I know, lol), this most likely activated an inner shame response inside her. Inside her mind, she already knows she has her own things to deal with -- even better than you do. And often for the perfectionist, their response is to get angry and defensive and try to show you that they don't have problems...by being perfect. Except they're human...so they fail at perfection...and the shame cycle continues. But it is something that can change -- a person doesn't always have to be a perfectionist. That's the hopeful part! :)
"I also suspect even more than ever that my fathers behavior has more to do with this than it did from Narcissism or at least a combination of the two???... which does appear to share a lot in common on the surface but with some distinct differences. I was guessing more along the lines of PTSD ) + narcissism from some of his stories ( which might still be true )...but my PTSD speculations might be better explained by ACOA instead? I don't know if there is a correlation with narcissism and ACOA but I'm now curios. I'm sure I will be looking into this too."
When I was just out of my marriage a few years ago, I started a huge quest to find out who I was, and how I ended up where I was in my life. In learning about emotional abuse, I came across the topic of Complex-PTSD, also known as DESNOS (Disorders of Extreme Stress, Not Otherwise Specified). It had been considered an 'associated disorder' of PTSD in the DSM-IV, and was supposed to be given its own section in the DSM-V, but I don't know if it did. It is a type of PTSD that is more likely to occur after prolonged stress, including emotional abuse in a relationship or as a child. There are standard DSM-style diagnostic criteria, but also some therapeutic work that was developed by a family therapist in California (Pete Walker).
Walker and other writers on the subject, are theorizing that if more attention is paid to the cause of someone's dysfunction, rather than just checking off items on the DSM criteria in order to treat symptoms, we'd find that even some cases of things like borderline or asocial personality disorders can be treated. He and others also think that looking at the backgrounds of patients with many disorders, including ADHD, might show that some symptoms grew out of, or are masking, childhoods with abuse or neglect - a time when vital brain development is occurring. Failing to note and treat the effects of this poor parenting can very well get in the way of treating the disorder itself.
It is all very, very interesting stuff.
There are many ways that C-PTSD can show up in a person's life, and one way is by 'emotional flashbacks.' I had forgotten about what I'd read about c-ptsd for a couple of years, but then thought about it again in relation to someone I knew who was coming out of a bad relationship. I looked up the articles to give her, and found something that stunned me about myself. During that time, I would have pretty regular episodes of absolutely crippling hopelessness and depression. I had had enough therapy to know that they were just something I had to get through, and they would go away, but my doctor and therapist and I had tried all kinds of things and nothing was stopping them. I realized they were actually emotional flashbacks. Walker has a step-by-step process that one can use to help talk yourself through a flashback, and that, along with trying to work on what was triggering them, caused them to end very quickly. When I start to have them again (and they are rare and much, much milder than before), I know I have something inside I need to deal with -- STAT!
Here are the links:
Pete Walker's webpage (There are a whole list of articles on C-PTSD on the left of the page, including the steps to manage a flashback)
An article about treating ACOAs as having C-PTSD from Social Work Today magazine. This author shows how some of the symptoms from C-PTSD overlap with traits of ACOAs.
Walker breaks out responses to emotional abuse/neglect by the type of primitive response that they are most like: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. The Flight type includes perfectionism, once again showing that perfectionism can be (often is?) a maladaptive response to some type of inner wound.
The 4Fs: A Trauma Typology in Complex PTSD
Again, I'm so glad this is helping you, J, even if it's just to confirm things you already suspected. I hope that sofrustrated might be seeing something that rings a bell for her, too.
Take care!
AV
More Great Stuff AV
Submitted by kellyj on
We were discussing therapists in another thread and what you said here "writers on the subject, are theorizing that if more attention is paid to the cause of someone's dysfunction, rather than just checking off items on the DSM criteria in order to treat symptoms," seems to be my therapist approach too. We talked at length about diagnosing people which he's told me from experience that people will surprise you sometimes. His initial feelings might be exactly out of the book (dmsIV) but people many times don't work the way the book might lead you to believe. It's a helpful starting place though but there are so many other things to consider which makes it more complex than that. I do understand this from my own frustration at times when I read things about ADHD (the process I just went through last week was for that very reason) This is why he shy's away from making exact diagnosis in these neatly categorized forms. He also has said before that this is not exactly how the dmsIV was designed to work even for trained personnel saying....it's more of a useful tool as a guide.
Also...as an FYI...I did the same thing you did when I got divorced and took some time off to figure ME out before launching into a any new relationships. I took 3 years off to just work on me and my stuff which I know is a huge reason why I don't let these things slide with my wife and have fought hard not to let some of the things I recognize now as potential problems later even begin to become a pattern. Part of this was the struggle that my wife and I were having. I became rather insistent that we take care of these things now...or decide if we were not right for each other. After you go through these things once in your past....it's really makes the choice that much easier to make the next time when you think that you are getting stuck or returning to old patterns. This might sound rather defeatist sounding to recommend to anyone else but, there were a couple of times we decided to call it quits in the moment which actually forced us to look at what we really wanted...and what we really wanted was to be together and figure these things out instead....almost simultaneously over night by just sleeping on the idea of leaving which really helped more than it did harm.
I think what you described about your depression and going back to figure out the "emotional flashbacks" is really interesting to me as far as my anger with my wife. A few details to this......despite the fact that my wife and I do share things we like to do together and get along in areas of decision making pretty well. I was having these moments of losing my temper over seeming innocuous reasons saying...not over anything important. This losing my temper out of frustration had more to do with these subtleties in her behavior that were setting me off .......but setting me off in some really specific ways that kept happening with disturbingly consistent regularity from any other time in my life??? I knew enough to know I had to figure out what this was because it was not even normal for me? What I now know from lots of soul searching is that this trigger she kept hitting that I suddenly found very little control over really was directly related to these emotional flashbacks but in this case...was happening in real time with my wife. I had this overwhelming panic in those moments that it wasn't going to stop both...in the moment and in stopping it from happening again. My wife's somewhat involuntary (neurotic) behavior associated with what we now know is being a perfectionist was such a familiar feeling in me linked directly how I felt back with my parents for the same reasons.
And the part in the article about ACOE where they were talking about how if the environment that you grow up is not normal then it messes with your ability to know when things are right and when things are wrong ie; not responding to when things are wrong at the appropriate times when you should. I also know now that this was the case for me at times in my past...but all the things I've discovered about this and time I spent getting myself online in ways where I do know what these things are now even if I didn't back then. Being sort of blissfully ignorant and in denial does have some advantage (even though not recommenced ) and one of them is to keep you from feeling the anger at the time...but never really working through it as you should like you were saying. It doesn't just disappear you know? It has to go somewhere. lol
What was happening to me that was different...and why I kept getting angry in those moments I think....is simply because NOW....after regaining my emotional consciousness so to speak....every time my wife hit those places from my past where before I felt nothing ( as I should have lol) ...now, suddenly, there it was for the exact same reasons it made me angry back when I was growing up....and it didn't stop either!
It really was a new experience for me to react so involuntarily to this one very specific set of behaviors that my wife has that was triggering this to happen. Unfortunately...she was doing this all the time!!! And this time, I felt it like I should in the moment but I couldn't explain it but knew what it felt like because it was so familiar? In wife's case, it felt the same because it was the same...and my behavior to follow was the same as it was when I was still a child...it really was like 1/2 panic attack (emotional flashback) and half temper tantrum ( emotional regression caused by the flashback) ...which admittedly was not only unattractive but embarrassing on top of it. It's amazing that such a specific targeted group of behaviors (the perfectionism) can cause this emotional chain reaction all by itself yet, that is really what my anger was all about and why it was difficult to try and identify and explain this to my wife who of course....was not able to see this in herself either. Double Whammy! lol All that shame, betrayal and irrational emotions were going at it with each other like two kids in a playground brawl...figuratively speaking of course.
I'm sure it's not that hard to understand why perfectionism and ADHD are not a good combination ( and imagine why this might be upsetting for me in those moments )so I will spare you the nitty gritty details but.....I am at the place where I can figure things out enough to do something about it now instead of getting stuck and letting these things fester like they did in the past. I guess all in all.....we're still doing Okay. ha ha
J
You know, I think the trait
Submitted by AlmaVera on
You know, I think the trait of stubbornness is really undervalued at certain times. It is not always a negative. In relationships, I think it can be the deciding factor in whether two people stay together. They can love each other, they can want to be together, they can know what they need to do, they can even want to do those things...but if both people aren't stubborn enough to stick with it, none of that will matter. One person can't do it alone if the other isn't truly committed -- the stubborn person will just burn out and become angry and resentful. If the other person is stubborn in the negative way, well, watch out. Sounds like you and your wife have the right kind of stubbornness. :)
And yes, perfectionism and ADHD together are not good for many reasons -- either in a couple or in the same person. When you add in whatever caused the perfectionism in the first place, then it's easy to see that there's likely a very complex situation that's going to require a lot more than just meds, organizational coaching and behavior therapy. The emotional responses may be so deeply ingrained that they will keep sabotaging any progress that is made. And like you, me, and many others here, the person doing the responding may not have any idea why it's happening. Again, that good stubbornness is necessary in pursuing a solution, or nothing will change.
I've been reading 'Journeys Through ADDulthood" by Sari Solden, and she talks a lot about the stages of grief and how they come into play when someone is diagnosed as an adult. A good part of getting to a place of healthy acceptance is being able to deal with how one has come to see him or her self -- what are those parts of the personality that are actually based on messages we received about our ADHD symptoms? How might that change once we get a diagnosis and then move on to treatment and adjusting how we see life and ourselves? After what I've been reading here and in other places, it seems that the best possible outcome will result from a really holistic treatment plan that includes the person's entire experience up to the present day, not just isolating ADHD symptoms, for example.
Many of us have seen studies that show how common it is for adults with ADHD to have co-morbid mental illness(es), such as depression, anxiety, all the way up to Axis B personality disorders (or traits). I think all of these things are so tightly interwoven, often on a foundation of childhood emotional abuse or neglect.
Think of it like a building. When I was looking to buy my own place after my divorce, I didn't have much money. I knew I'd probably be stuck with a fixer-upper. One that I looked at was in my price range. The location was decent, right size, nice yard. I looked at it with the real estate agent, and it had potential. But then she told me that it had some 'problems.' The previous owners had added on to it, and hadn't done it to code. The addition was sinking and slowly pulling away from the house. In order for it to pass inspection, I'd have to pay to have the entire house lifted and the old foundation removed and a new one put under the house and the addition. Suddenly not such a bargain anymore.
But I think it's a good metaphor. You can do all kinds of things to pretty up the parts that are visible, that people interact with, but if the foundation is unstable, the house won't be, either. Eventually, it's going to fall apart, possibly causing harm to the people in its vicinity.
AV
AV I Want to Tell You a Story
Submitted by kellyj on
Before I continue commenting on just about everything you said in your last response ( which, by the way...are the exact same conclusions that I have come up with only explained in yet a different way describing the same thing...YES..we are on the same page) I thought I would tell you a true life story of me as a kid. You will understand it for exactly the same reason I'm telling you the story without a doubt...so it's not necessary to preface it here for you.
But, I have told this same story at different times to people like my therapist and my wife and for example, as a means to show another person why I'm like the way I am and how I got to be this way saying....I know exactly why and how but another person may not until they hear the story. There is an assumption however, that the things we're talking about and without knowing any better ( and without being able to explain it like we're doing now under the heading of "Perfectionism" which was what was missing in my story before)....that anyone who hears it is going to understand the moral, punch line, message and the intent of the story teller... as means for them to put 2 +2 together to equal 4....that is...in story form.....and with the expectation that at the end...the other person is going to go..."oh, I see now what I wasn't seeing...this makes perfect sense...I wasn't seeing it or understanding it that way but now I do." And then the expected........."oh, I'm sorry" or "oh, now I understand...I will no longer do this ,or say this, or expect this as I did before with this new found understanding." That of course.....is an incorrect assumption on the part of the story teller. That expectation on their part is much too great and over simplified when it comes to anything like this that is not simple and not easy to understand and desribe.
Sooooo...(not for you now) but for everyone else who will read this, this is a story about "perfectionsim" in real time...based on my real life events which helps explain stubbornness, obsessiveness, anger, frustration and "Fuck IT !!" which was very delicately introduced into this discussion by Alma Vera in an another post ( maybe it was this one??)...regardless.......being delicate and having finesse is something that is required to do the work I do and in that context..... I am a "perfectionist " But when it comes to other areas in my life where other peoples emotions come into play.....my tendencies are to be not so delicate. So in order to speak freely about my thoughts as I really say them to myself in an authentic representation of how I talk at times, but especially in my own head in real life ( depending on thr audience and the situation of course...I do have control of my mouth in public and don't have blurting issues....actually, just the opposite. I tend to be silent with my opinions many times when I should but....silence is not always Golden) ...this story will be told in the unabridged and uncensored version as it should be told. In other words...get ready. ha ha
Starting from the time I was very little....a repetitive pattern began to emerge in the relationship with my mother and I. My mother was a perfectionist and this could be easily seen by everyone if you came over to our home. It was spotless neat and orderly. My mother was literally like a 'busy bee" going from flower to flower making corrections to the masterpiece that was her home since she was the mother and home maker....the stereo typical female role. That was her job and there was no doubt that she took that very seriously. If there was ever to be a grade accessed to this masterpiece....on all accounts by anyone who would come over to our house...an overwhelming "A++" would be awarded to her by all concerned because it was perfect. She did everything right. It looked right...she looked right....everything was right....and nothing could ever be viewed as wrong by me or anyone else who would see my mother or her handy work. It truly was the reflection of "perfection" in every way by appearance standards....until one day
When I arrived on the scene.
My mother had been raise by an uber strict puritanical dominatrix named "Nonnie" who was my grandmother. I didn't even know that this was not her real name until I was about 10 when I saw something on my mom's desk that was addressed from Susan. My mother explained that this was my grandmother's real name. I remember thinking.."that is the stupidest Fucking thing I've ever heard! First..you fucking lied to me about her real name by telling me it's Nonnie. Second...who the Fuck calls themselves Nonnie....that's the stupidest fucking name I've ever heard ? And third.....you Fucking lied to me!!!!! Fuck me!!!!!!!" I thought to myself. This was the second major lie that my mother had tried to pull on me. The first one was Santa Clause which I had still not gotten over. I was 4 (about to turn 5) when I figured that one out...and where I had promptly proceeded to tell all the kids in the neighborhood in order to set the record straight. This was preceded with my mother getting a couple of phone calls from some irate mothers who called to tell her... to tell me... to knock it off when their kids came home crying in disbelief. "why not?" I said..."I'm only telling the truth" I also got kicked out of "Sunday School" permanently for being a subversive disruptive influence...and was banished to my mother's house arrest while at church having to sit in the entire formal service with her and my sisters which was like the most supreme torture I could think of at the time. Sitting still, having to pay attention and keeping my mouth shut. It just doesn't get any worse than that!!
But there again...all I was doing in Sunday School was asking legitimate questions like " how did Noah get the Tigers from India and all the other animals from all over the world all to come to Mount Ararat (?? is that right..I don't remember) so they could be saved during the flood? I was genuinely concerned about this. And... "how did Jonah breathe under water when he was inside the whale?" Again..I was concerned about breathing under water. And... "how come there aren't any Giants like Golaith any more. Where did all the Giants go?" Again..being concerned about Giants hiding out somewhere in my neighborhood ...just in case I might come across one?" " These are all really good questions" I thought to myself. "What the Fuck is wrong with you people ! " thinking in terms of the disgruntled mothers who ran the Sunday School who appeared to me as being highly suspicious and evasive at the time. "God Damn You ... you Fucking bitches! Fuck you if you can't take a joke. But I'm not joking!! I really want to know!! Fuck IT! Something is rotten in Denmark and now I'm the one being punished for it." This is setting the stage and one of my first experiences as a fore shadowing of things to come......
So now fast forward back to my house....the masterpiece of my mother's perfection. And I'm out in the yard getting instruction from my mother on how to rake leaves out her flower beds. She showed me how to rake and put the leaves into the garbage can which I proceeded to do without a problem. When my mother came to see the results of this...it went something like " oh no....here, let me show you how to do it" ( which in my thinking..she had already done )...and then proceeded to do the entire area I had just finished over again...however, she got down on her knees and started to separate all the pine needles and smaller leaves out of the bark dust that I left to remove them from the entire area...while I watched and what I thought at the time....to be a completely stupid and ridiculous thing to do which would have taken me 4 times loner than I already had spent to get it too where I had it already. I would sit there in these moments....looking up at the sky, whistling and tapping my foot while my mom spent the next 10 minutes demonstrating the method of separating pine needles from bark dust which there was no Fucking way I was going to do anyway because that was just "Fucking stupid." Thinking at the time...again in these moments " not only is this a Fucking waste of my time, standing here watching you being stupid....I'm not about to be Fucking stupid along with you since....if any one of my friends that might come by to see me ( which they were likely to do ) who would see me doing this would think I was Fucking stupid along with you which I'm not....so, if you want to be Fucking Stupid you can be Fucking stupid all by yourself because I'm not Fucking Stupid....you stupid Fucking mother of mine." She would many times respond to this by saying something like " hey, kiddo...pay attention...I'm not down here showing you this for nothing...now watch me" That's usually when I would say something out loud like "you know....if you need this done in exactly the way you and the way I'm doing it is not good enough for you, do it yourself ...you do it! especially since I just stood here and watched you do the whole thing over again anyway." "FUCK IT !" I would say to myself. I saw nothing wrong with my logic here....it seemed to be a reasonable and logical conclusion to what I was experiencing.
AlmaVera.....this is why I know that "Fuck It" all too well. I've been doing this version of "Fuck It" since I was probably 5 or 6 years old. It is exactly where the oppositional attitude and behavior comes from. In my case.....I did finally refuse to do outdoor chores if my mother had anything to do with it. It is also a contributing factor to my inability or my messy behaviors now since...at some point in the process when I was young....I just stopped doing it.
Back in my thinking here "there's absolutely no Fucking way I'm going to sit and watch you re-do what I just did again in all the other area's of house chores where I'm going to have to stand there and watch you pretend you are teaching me something while you are actually just being Fucking ridiculous and doing the whole thing yourself anyway...so what's the point? I quit. Fuck it. Punish me or whatever but nothing can be worse than this. I'm drawing a line in the sand that I will not cross and this is one of them....you stupid Fucking mother of mine. Bring it on.....give me your best shot...but I will not do this thing you do one more time ever"
I needed her to stop.
What I needed my Mom to do was stop being obsessive and expecting me to be a perfectionist. I can see now that with no intent on my mother's part and without being conscious of this fact herself...she was attempting to teach me to be a perfectionist like her out of a dysfunction that I clearly felt that something wasn't right about it even back then. I wasn't rebelling or getting angry about doing house chores or yard work....I was rebelling and angry about my Mom for being a functionally dysfunctional person and I knew even then I wanted nothing to do with that....not my Mom ( her dysfunction ) I really loved her and she was a very caring and kind person and was not abusive in the more overt, aggressive and angry way. ( my father had that role by the way...a different kind of perfectionism that came out through anger) She was never that.....but I did need her to be normal...to be Okay...to be a functional human being because I had no where to go to learn these things if it wasn't from her.
But to the point....I could see there was something wrong with all of this even as far back as then. Which is why I spent so much time and effort trying to learn and figure things out on my own. I couldn't trust my mother to teach me the things I needed to learn and so I was on my own....
This exactly how it played out. And now.......with my wife when she starts down this same familiar path with me....I start to get that same dark, creepy and undeniable resistance to her in the same way for the same reasons. But now.....my voice back then in my head comes straight out my mouth load and clear for my wife to here in those moments. many times (but not recently).....she got my middle finger or "FUCK You" as my only response from me at the time. This is where the asshole label comes from but ....I'm really not an asshole at all and don't behave like this in virtually any other moment aside from some real life dramatic situations or incidents where some stranger of street person is becoming overtly threatening to me. I can be an a "real asshole" as needed.... but it's reserved for those few moments when it might be viewed as an appropriate defense against a hostile interloper. lol With my wife however ...there is no appropriate time to be this way and yet...the behavior emerged none the less as I explained earlier.
This is where it comes from....just so you know. I think this is really great to be able to see these things so clearly. It makes it easy to understand and I can forgive everyone involved now including myself. What was irrational and unexplainable is rather simple and easy to understand, and even if my wife or anyone for that matter doesn't....I do now and that's what's most important since it is my responses and behaviors that are always to be questioned...by me not anyone else. This is how I figured out where my anger came from and how I understand it for exactly what it is.
And the result is that I'm no longer angry about it anymore because I understand it. That's all that counts. If it rises up again out of habit or the like..it's not hard to see it and turn it back off as needed. That's the part that takes a little practice. Like I said. I failed a couple of times to dial this in but now it's not that hard to stop and keep in check. The most difficult part for me has to do with my own "stopping' on my part and where it's hard not to say "Fuck it" once again when I see my wife's perfectionism getting out of control and I'm not even allowed to say anything. that's where you begin to feel the self righteous indignation that comes from someone who...for lack of a better word...is being a hypocrite. Getting past the anger in connection to hypocrisy and self righteous indignation is a bit harder to overcome. That's when I have to "Shut the Fuck UP!". coming out of my head again and to myself. This is also the point where I have to pull all my resources together from everything I've learned and remind myself...."don't make anything I do contingent on my wife's behavior." It's an unresolved feeling that I have to get past in those moments and livd with for a time or else I have no reason not to be angry. The reason now is for that reason. To have the self control that I have in every other way that is consistent with who I am instead of becoming "who I am not". That's where the bad feelings and self betrayal come from because I'm really "not that person" and even my wife will admit this too. The hypocrisy or contradictions in peoples behavior can only be rationalized for me by explaining it in terms of some kind of dysfunction other wise.....it does seem and feel hypocritical for someone to criticize you for having ADHD and not be willing to admit their own dysfunction at the same time. Not necessarily in the moment..but by their own irrational and unexplainable contradictions in connection to the words coming out of their mouth in the face of them getting angry at you for it and in their own denial of it.
AV.....what you said about a perfectionist personality in light of being overly defensive and combative when criticized really made sense to me. This is the paradox of this way of thinking. You can never give this thinking any constructive criticism or rebut since everything you do in this direction is going to be seen as a threat itself to not being perfect. It also makes sense that with perfection...there can only be right and wrong. And if you only have two options to work from ( black/white...right/wrong) then one means you are good and perfect....the other means you are wrong and bad.
Despite my mother's attempts to get me thinking in that direction. I managed to stay seeing things as always shades of grey....no right or wrong....just different. With different, there is no implied judgment...only a differentiation of facts. This is also why it is so hard for me to see things from this way of thinking. There are always options, choices and variations and opportunity to change with being different. I think this has a lot to do with a persons ability to adapt, cope and stay out of being depressed. If you can only be either good or bad.....that doesn't leave much room for choice or options. Being a perfectionist is really a mental prison I think and I do feel sorry for my mother and now at times with my wife more and more. I don't understand as they experience it...but I do understand it enough from my own areas of perfectionism to understand how this feels. I have felt this way with my work at times...but that's much easier to deal with especially since I work with inanimate objects that have no emotions. I never have to hurt anyones feelings in those instances and I also have to make money too soo it's easy to say "when" if I start to become obsessive with my work. People on the other hand are much more difficult and complicated to deal with if they are being obsessive since it is something that is not rational or easy to control. I can see this and know it from my own experiences with my ADHD in terms of stopping and in terms of being contradictory in fear of being a hypocrite .
And with this thinking...I no longer see my wife as being a hypocrite in those moments so therefore....there is no cause for me to be angry at that either.
Sorry for all the profanity. I really don't swear much out loud except with certain old friends but it really is how I talk to myself so it is authentic in that way. In this case for this reason...I thought it to be appropriate...I can switch that back off too.....switching off. lol
end of story
J
Both of my H's parents were Adult Children of Alcoholics
Submitted by overwhelmedwife on
However, neither parent was a perfectionist at all, atho H can certainly be.
H was seriously neglected, but he was a needy baby (colicky, etc).
H's mom "loved" her kids, but did NOT do any typical mother things. She didn't cook, help her kids, teach her kids, etc. her idea of parenting was: 1) give birth, 2) hold babies, 3) spend the rest of her time chatting with neighbors while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
She was extremely permissive and never told her kids "no". The dad was a control freak.
Even tho she was a so-called Sahm, she did none of the "mom things." She never helped at school, never made her kids lunches (they all bought lunch everyday), never made anything, but she was very charming and that somehow was a smoke&mirrors act to fool people.
This is Very Interesting OW
Submitted by kellyj on
I'm picturing myself in your H's situation which sounds almost the extreme opposite of my own (mom) except for the SAHM part. I think there is a whole psychology of the effect on someone who becomes limited in scope of their world , but it is interesting how many different directions that this can go? What struck me though, thinking about the article that AV introduced about ACOE and the net effect that it has on kids of alcoholic parents...there still seems like there is a correlation in how I ended up despite no alcoholism. I think it's fair to point out that there is a sub group of alcoholism that primarily exist underground meaning....they keep it hidden and never appear drunk ( maintenance drinking vs binging in the extreme sense?)
Anyway....what seemed similar in effect despite my mother's over responsible or extreme behavior in that direction, which may not look negative at all from on lookers....the result was still similar with me in one respect....I still knew something was wrong and sensed that I could not trust what I was being told compared to my feelings and what I saw. I think this aspect of a parent having some kind of extreme condition no matter what it is will have this effect on their child. I'm even taking into consideration the fact that I was extreme in a much different way (ADHD) which brought this behavior out in my Mom.....at this point I do know more about my mothers issues than just being a perfectionist/obsessive because my sisters have some different issues based more around being female (mother daughter stuff) that I didn't get. In other words...my sisters ended up sharing some of my mothers issues directly passed down which play out in much different ways than with me simply because of gender differences in things that do not apply to me or that I was even interested in because I was a boy. It seems I went the opposite direction instead of the same one.
What AV was saying about good stubbornness is very accurate. We use words to describe meaning to things that can get attached to either negative or positive connotations but in reality.....emotions and behaviors are neither always bad or good. Like I was saying too....sometimes they just are what they are, but that's not saying there isn't a reason for them either....in fact, there are usually reasons for everything like this. The problem comes in when we ascribe our own negative feelings or emotions based on someone else's behavior that we don't like because it brings these emotions out in us.....and then start forming opinions about the reasons why that person is doing what they are doing to be negative or bad or with ill intent as it effects us. If that makes sense? I can't tell you how many times I do...or have done this myself but I'm trying hard to pay attention to my thinking long enough to realize that I do this in the first place. Now....I'm trying hard to stop that too....one on the list of things. lol
But continuing with my train of thought.....like I mentioned, my mother had no ill intent nor was she irresponsible..yet her extreme behavior whether I brought this out in her or not still had the same or very similar net effect on me in a number of similar ways that the other extreme seems to have like being irresponsible and alcoholic. I think the bottom line here has to do more with anyones innate survival instincts and fear of not getting their emotional or internal needs met. Adding on not getting your external needs met like food, clothing, safe harbor and shelter is going to make these things even worse. I also think just the inconsistency of a parents providing any of these things can snow ball into all kinds of personal issues even when they might appear more subtle and not so obvious. In fact...I think any chronic deficiency in parenting is possibly even worse than just being inconsistent and it doesn't have to be horribly traumatic either but just on going with no change.
This is what I experienced and what I was saying about wanting it to stop and it never did. I had this feeling from a pretty young age that my mother seemed clueless to herself and how she was compared to the rest of the world which might be explained by being a Sahm but only in part. I knew lots of other parents of friends and in my neighborhood alone who were not like her and they were Sahm's too. That had a lot do with my own feelings simply by comparison..but there was still that weird but undeniable feeling that something just wasn't right on top of it.
Regardless....I think if you're a kid and you sense you aren't getting your needs met in some way either physically or emotionally...it going to have a similar effect on you and your reactions and responses in your behavior no matter what the circumstance are. In my own family despite the gender differences.....under the same set extremes in our circumstance ie: my mother and father.....my sisters went in one direction and I went in another but not without some shared behavior in common as well.
Do you suspect that your H's mom might be suffering from BPD or something similar? The self medicating , refusing to take responsibility, focused self interest and indifference to her kids plus the smoke and mirrors thing seem to point in that direction or something similar? That's a tough one for a kid. I thought I would mention also......I really believe that despite my own parent failings that they certainly made up for them in enough ways to minimize the overall effect of the negative parts on me while I was young. I think this is where the matter of degree comes into this: level or degree of abuse = level or degree of damage done. Thinking that this can go in different directions to depending on each person. I tended to counter or compensate the negatives with mostly positives without knowing better in a lot of ways. I know I became pretty resilient overall which has a lot to do with my ability to take a hit and get back up and keep going in the right direction. I think this can really make the difference sometimes as it has for me with fighting off depression and maintaining a positive attitude despite getting stuck in negative thinking patterns.
The one thing that AV mentioned that I really strongly agree with has to do with the grieving process she mentioned. I can really see this in myself as a repetitive pattern in how I process negative emotions and events in this kind of linear progression getting to acceptance saying....it's the same process I go through even with smaller less tragic or traumatic events too. Even simply having a fight with my wife seems to go through a similar process that may only take a few minutes or a few hours. It really seems the same to me but more importantly.....I see a process and the time it takes to get through it and that is something that I have really noticed in my ability to change and shorten over time with awareness.
This aspect of things taking time is really what I'm noticing in connection to my own ability to process and work through things. I think when people can't do this is where they get stuck. I have no idea if people with ADHD have more trouble doing this than average but it does appear that many of the spouses here are stuck in their thinking (as I was that's how I know this) but once I basically got "un-stuck" in my thinking is when things started happening and changing at a much accelerated rate in more positive ways......
and still accelerating.................................................................O---O lol
J
J and Alma Vera, interesting posts
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Thank you for the very interesting posts. They are quite telling in how you guys process information, the thoughts you think, the reasons behind them, the perceived hypocrisy, and then the changes as you got older and wiser. All amazing.
J, I especially liked the story you told about your childhood and the way your mother "taught" you to do the yard work. (very interesting) My mother was OCD, and a child of an alcoholic mother. I moved back in to live with my mother when I was 16, after she abandoned me and my siblings when we were very young. She did some of the same things your mother did. Also,.. I would get SCREAMED at for not folding the towels correctly, placing them in the closet in order, according to the colors, where the folds meet, with TYPE of towel according to shape and size. I couldn't watch the movie starring Julia Roberts (Sleeping with the Enemy?) who was married to the abusive husband who made her do everything in the house correctly or he would beat her, so she ran away and started a new life with a new name. Well, that husband reminded me so much of my mother that I couldn't watch that particular movie. (still can't)
I would have to put the food cans in the cupboard....all in order, according to size, shape, labels all facing the front, and all in ORDER. Plus, the refrigerator the same, as well as the dishes, glasses, silverware, EVERYTHING.......was to be done the same. Plus, when I had to vacuum the carpeting, she made me vacuum the carpeting while backing up so that there were NO vacuuming streaks, or footprints left in the carpet when I was finished. Also, had to clean the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush and comet...each tile, each grout with A TOOTHBRUSH....or a violent barrage of screaming would commence. Anyway, that isn't why I'm writing. It's about my ADHD husband and his mother and father. (sorry, got off on a tangent there)
My ADHD husband would ask questions (in his head) much like you did, as a child. His father was a stoic, Italian, old school father and military man who did things "just so". He was like most military men, meaning that there was a place for everything, and everything in it's place. My husband's mother was either bi-polar or had ADHD, or both, but was undiagnosed. was not overly messy, but was not CLEAN either. She also had a terrible time raising her kids, and spent most of her time drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and "off in another world of anxiety and depression", where it was hard to talk to her, or reach her. It was a toxic mix for my husband and his 2 siblings to grow up in. ESPECIALLY since all three siblings had bi-polar, ADHD, severe drug and alcohol addictions and/or co-morbid conditions with them.
Again, anyway......My husband's father (my FIL), had a tool bench in the basement with a pegboard on the top, that had pegs in it with drawings of each tool on it, so that each tool had it's place on the pegboard. It was neat as a pin......always. My very ADHD husband, growing up, would borrow a tool (the hammer) and would NEVER put the tool back in it's original spot. He would put it BESIDE the spot, or in FRONT of the spot, or to the SIDE of the spot, but NEVER, EVER would he put it back in the correct place of origin. He'd put the tool just 1 inch away from it's ORIGINAL place. This would drive my FIL....CRAZY. "Why CAN'T YOU put the hammer BACK in it's original place?"...."There is a drawing of it RIGHT THERE, and you put it 1 inch away from it....but you never, EVER PUT IT BACK"? "WHY"...."WHY?" This was a constant bone of contention in the house, on top of many other issues, but it was my husband's answer that was a classic ADHD moment. My husband would say, "I don't see what the difference is, if I put it back CLOSE ENOUGH to where it's supposed to go". Well, close enough just didn't CUT IT with his father, and my husband got in trouble a LOT for not putting things back, AND also for forgetting EVERYTHING. He was also a musician who had a wedding band that worked every weekend, booked a year in advance for 10 years. It never failed that EVERY single job that that my husband did, he FORGOT something important, that without, wasn't able to do the job. He would forget the music, his drums, his drum sticks, the microphones, the speakers,...........you get it. And, his father would have to get in his car and drive the item or items to the gig to deliver the forgotten items. THIS CAUSED A LOT OF ARGUEMENTS. Sometimes the jobs were an hour or more away, and THAT REALLY got his father boiling mad. And it happened almost every weekend until my husband and I got married, and then I took over as the driver of the forgotten "ITEMS".
The thing about the "close enough" aspect of my husband's childhood "hammer" episodes, is an interesting one, because it's one he's carried all his life. If something is "close enough".....it's "good enough". Well, you and I both know that while sometimes this holds true, OTHER TIMES, it can be disastrous. You mentioned the fact that you were a goldsmith, and I did that for many years in my parents custom goldsmithing business. (we talked about this a while back, and I didn't get back to you on that) (would like to continue to talk further about it) You can make a bracelet in wax first (lost wax method), and make the hinges for it, but if the hinges are "close enough" but not "perfect", you will have an unworkable bracelet, and a VERY unsatisfied customer. "Close enough" can TOTALLY disastrous if you take it further, (a bracelet isn't life threatening) but you know what I mean. It was just an example.
But, he has done MOST things in his life with a "close enough" attitude. It's cost him big time in his music career, business, socially and with relationships. I have never criticized him for this, and it makes me sad that you've been criticized in your life for so many things that you can't control. It has been frustrating, and it's cost us TOGETHER as a couple, but we're still here and plugging away at life.
Anyway.....ALSO.....to Alma Vera.....something you said as well. Your husbands mother called herself SAHM? ( I think it was?) My mother-in-law called herself (Billy). I just found that to be interesting also.
I've been enjoying reading the posts from the two of you......THANK YOU....for sharing.
My husband lives with his
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
My husband lives with his parents, for whom he provides care giving services. His father is obsessive-compulsive (according to me, not an official diagnosis). His mother has Alzheimer's disease, now late stage. An example of his father's OCD-ness: For years, father has had a routine of hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs a plastic bag, into which he puts items for recycling. For quite a while, he refused to stop doing so, even though mother, because of the Alzheimer's disease, would root around in the plastic bag and pull out tin can lids and cans (with sharp edges). Similarly, father would not put locks on the drawers or alter his organizing at all, despite the dangers this posed to mother.
My husband chose to work for his parents, despite being a very disorganized, sloppy person. Apparently, they're more tolerable than I am. I like being able to find things (so have a reputation in my family of being an uptight b##ch) but I'm also very concerned about my mother-in-law's welfare.
I don't think that your H
Submitted by AlmaVera on
I don't think that your H finds your in-laws to be more tolerable than you. From reading your posts in other threads, my impression of him is that he knows his parents are in such poor health that they either don't know how badly he's taking care of them, or they don't have the ability to affect what he's doing. He's choosing to retreat to a situation where he's the strongest. He doesn't have to change or answer to anyone. It's cowardly. He's not even doing it because he really cares about his parents, or else he'd actually take care of them as he's supposed to.
What he's doing is not your fault.
Dedelight4..... Returning to Oz
Submitted by kellyj on
Your stories made me laugh and cry all at the same time! I can't tell you how fascinating it is to hear all the similarities and common experiences that people share together and I really appreciate you sharing yours with me about yourself and your husbands past. It really does help shed even more light on my own past memories about my childhood experience.
The very real downside to becoming too aware at an early age comes when you lift the curtain, only to find Professor Marvel standing there instead of the Great and Powerful Oz.... and you aren't quite ready to leave there just yet. It's can be a really sobering feeling when you begin to believe that you are smarter than the person who you still need to be more Omnipotent than you are so to speak. The one that you still desperately need for survival and nurturing and still in many ways it seemed for me, that I became the teacher and my mother became the student or at least..... that is what it felt like at the time. I really think this can set a person up for a lifetime of suspicion and mistrust ......and not being able to truly trust the one person that you love more than anything on one hand....and on the other hand, don't believe that they love you in the same way because they consistently prove to you that this is true by the very behavior that they exhibit to the contrary. And still, you need to hold on to the fantasy that you were living while you were still in Oz before you looked behind the curtain.
How can it be possible to love someone that you fear ......and who screams at you with anger instead... yet has no accountability for their own unexplained ( and unacceptable child like behavior ) for which....the answer to this never comes?
As I just wrote this.....I couldn't help but see the correlation to the descriptions of so many of the spouses on both sides of the fence here in this forum.... as well as with myself many times as an adult especially when I look at my own behavior in the past and go.... "shit......who's the hypocrite now?" I honestly just wrote this last passage coming straight from my heart to my own thinking about my parents and myself back then.....with no intent to send a message to you or anyone who might read this as a means to site the similarities. If you haven't already jumped to the same conclusion at least....I thought I would mention it. Interesting huh?
And it probably won't surprise you in the least when I say I feel the same way about God and religion....or at least the version that was presented to me. Going back to the same time I was kicked out of Sunday School all the way to this day.....I feel the same way. How are supposed to love someone you fear. How do you account for this contradiction and what is the answer to this? Until that day comes for me......I will always feel I've been lied to and it's a crock of BS because I believe that it is not possible. That's the answer to both questions.......this is NOT love and never will be.......period. It wasn't then and it isn't now. My gut was not wrong and it's still not wrong today. What's wrong is the contradictions and the insecurity that comes from those feelings when you are trying to rationalize something that simply isn't true to begin with. All the mental torture that you are subjected too in trying to rationalize this out in your head.... and the denial that comes from believing what is not real or true is the best indicator to validate what I'm saying. The problem isn't your feelings and what your gut is trying to tell you...the problem is that it sometimes it's just too painful to actually let go and see the truth.
No wonder people get so depressed!!! Like I was saying.....there is always a good reason for emotions ( the problem is just figuring out what that is lol )
For me....I had to pull that curtain back again to take a second look at Professor Marvel to see if I wasn't imagining things the first time and see if he was still there....almost hoping that I was wrong and Oz would still be there waiting for me to return to. But this time however......what I saw instead of seeing my mother or father standing behind the curtain..... it was me! And while I stood there stunned with my mouth open (metaphorically speaking).... I realized that all my memories were slowly dissolving away which once again....is a sobering and depressing feeling. It was the same feeling that prevented me from going back and looking again in the first place in fear of having the exact same experience which was a good call on my part because it was for good reason..... NOT FUN to say the least!
But what I discovered instead after a while were new memories to replace the old ones which in itself takes time and is a process unto itself. However....the benefit to doing this in now overwhelmingly undeniable. I'm still going through this process as I can manage it because at times....I still get depressed after the hurt I feel when saying good bye to my old memories. But now without question.....living in the real world is far better than the cartoon fantasy one that I created to fill in the space that was left from the false stories and misrepresentations that had been given to me to believe when I was a kid growing up.....and that I new even then...were not right in the first place. What I didn't or couldn't know back then was...... what was right? I just couldn't believe at the time that my own parents would do, say or tell me these things and they could not be true since...... my parents loved me and of course.....would never lie.
This is why it's so great to hear the stories of other peoples adventures like yourself....dedelight4. They help me recreate my memories in a different way to replace what I lost when this experienced happened to me again. I can't help but think that my experience ( maybe told differently lol) is unique in any way.
My current thinking is....not so much! ha ha
On a far less serious and emotional note (gulp).....I'll come back and exchange gold smithing stories with you.....I've been doing that for 35 years so I have a few. lol
J
Dedelight4 You Did It ...The Lightbulb Went On.....
Submitted by kellyj on
Dedelight4, Thank You So Much for "Close Enough"
Sometimes all it takes is a person to say one simple thing that sticks.......and you did this for me. I've said repeatedly on this forum that ADHD does not cause thinking and this is true. Thinking can be changed once that person finds a reason to do so. The attitudes and opinions we have are formed and developed are for many reasons, and given the right reason.....they can be changed and altered simply by being able to see the reason for it. Having ADHD is a reason in itself to see things differently that everyone else....but I firmly believe that our hard wiring itself is the source for our very thinking in itself. We can't help that part and this is a fact...but it doesn't mean we can't change the end result of the thinking that comes from it. This is the concept that those who don't have it seem to have a hard time understanding for all good reasons....but the best and most obvious one is that there is no need to do this. For us....we have a reason to our thinking and that is the very thing that causes us the problem. This is where the conflict comes in between us and everyone else. Who needs to change, us or you? There's no easy answer to this question but the struggles that are created by the question itself are CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL CONCERNED. I myself have taken this stance all too often that it's you who needs to change your thinking about us and not the other way around. Even if you aren't feeling victimized by having ADHD which in itself is another problem unto itself........the thinking that "we can't help it" ......so therefore there is nothing you can do about it, is the very thinking that will keep you stuck and prevent you from doing anything about it.
Being self righteous is never a good strategy for getting along with other people. Telling yourself that it's "hard" or "difficult" only comes when you are first learning to do anything starting from when we first learn to walk which most of us don't remember anyway. Yet walking for most us is not something we have to think about anymore because it's so easy to do ( with all do respect to those who have challenges ).
So why is it such a challenge for us to do some of the things that seem so easy to everyone else for example? Because we don't want to go through relearning to do things differently because at first.....it can be hard and challenging. I'd say this has more to do with most things whether we want to admit it or not. And again...not being simply aware of this fact will be the very thing to make you say.....forget it. And then nothing will happen....your stuck.
I've been following AV around with her comments about the concept of perfectionism because that really did register with me. All my stories and remembrances of my youth in connection to my mother or father being perfectionist and the problem that it caused me was the very clue that my gut was telling me where to look for an answer that I was struggling to find ...but as I do in most things. I work backwards from the problem to find the answer and in this case it was no different.
I hope I can word this in a way that anyone reading this will be able to see what I see as at the very core of so many issues that a person with ADHD faces in trying to "fit" or just get along with others no matter where we go or who we are with. At it's very core, no one will argue or deny that we see things differently in specific ways that can create conflict between us and everyone else...that is, for those of you who don't have ADHD and don't see things the same as us.
If you can let go of your own preconceived ideas for a moment about what I'm about to say and look at it simply ( for face value) without doing what I do in respect to going into multiple directions and possibilities for everything (oh yes...without a doubt this is what I do ... ha ha) I'm going to hand you one of the keys to how we think and how we see things on a global level....in everything, all the time and in everyway possible. I'm so sure of this now.....I'm including myself and everyone else with ADHD in that last statement because I suddenly saw it and the light bulb went on yet....once again.
The story of your husband and his father was such a familiar one, even if not exactly the same as it was for me.....it immediately registered with me which is how I arrived at my own thinking to be able to see it on a global level. A quote taken out of one of my favorite songs goes " I want the most....but I'll take the least " pretty much sums this philosophy up perfectly. And it really is a philosophy in a way of seeing the world. It comes directly from a lifetime of experiences of not being able to do things as well and the struggle that we have had to face that are probably different than most other people especially in the areas where we struggle most.....that's with trying to fit in with other people who don't struggle with the same areas. duh......KISS keep it simple stupid. lol
This philosophy is screaming at everyone "hey, it's good enough, it's close enough, why does it have to be so perfect, why do I have to be so perfect?" When in reality, and at it's core it's saying "am I not good enough for you? I thought you said you loved me for who I was and how I am...and now your saying it's not good enough for you. Why can't you understand how much this hurts to find out that now that you see I'm not what you thought I was.....you've changed your mind. That was your choice and your decision not mine. You chose to over look at these things about me (my ADHD) in the beginning and only saw what you wanted to see....but all the other parts of my ADHD were always there. Where's the betrayal? Who's the hypocrite? Who's fault is that? I never promised to be like you or anyone else...I just promised to love you and do my best. I never said I could do all these things that you are now complaining about......I was never given that choice in the first place. But yet...you expecting me to follow the same rules that I have no choice in the matter. In many respects......I couldn't even if I tried. I know this for sure because I have...this is a fact. I did them to my satisfaction but they aren't to yours. I'm Okay with close....that's good enough for me. What's the matter with close enough? What's the matter with almost perfect? And why do you care so much if it is? I don't have a problem with the way I am. I don't define myself by how perfectly I do things. I define myself by being able to do them at all and doing my best. As long as I doing that.....am I not good enough? And who decided how well something is to be done in the first place? It certainly wasn't me."
This is where it comes from. It takes a life time to learn to think this way if you don't understand the source of the problem since you have no reference or context in knowing why you are different than anyone else? It can seem like a galaxy of endless reasons or possibilities to understand why without having any one place to start in finding find the answer.
And trying to see an entire philosophy in your own thinking is not any easier to see. The years of learning to establish it can be a long convoluted road to get back to find it's source. It's a major pain in the ass I'm telling you! lol
Why? Because we have no point of reference....nothing to compare or contrast ourselves too in how we think and how we process things. But then again...neither do you. All anyone has to go on is how they think and that's a fact.
m=mc2(squared) seems like a simply enough equation if you plug in the numbers to arrive at a solution. Getting to this equation was a little more complicated (picturing Einstein in front of a chalk board filled with calculations and proofs) And possibly in the same way Einstein arrived at his equation for relativity.......he didn't have many points of reference either which took a bit of time to establish in the first place....he did however have an idea and was able to be creative in his thinking. Didn't he have ADHD? ha ha Please!!...I'm not inferring any comparison to me...hell no!!
So Dede, back to you now...sorry for my inability to express myself in a shorter manner. ( I do well in research papers though! lol) I know, I'm a Geek sometimes. Anyway, this is what I've been doing whether I could explain it to anyone or not (including myself) Just simply trying to understand how my wife see's things because so many times I am not being able to see it from her point of view. I have already adopted a different point of view that is different from this philosophy I described, as I suspect...most people with ADHD have too. But even so....I think what I said is probably pretty accurate somewhere in our thinking....that's still swimming around in there even if we aren't aware of it....... and it's really good to route this shit out of there so it doesn't pull us back into our old thoughts (perhaps the same ones we had when we were children ) saying.....these comments and battles that come out at times do have an explainable source..... and I think this is certainly one of them. It's why the "close enough" resonated with me as I was laughing at the same time when I read the story of your husband.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have these same ones are coming from the source of the things you said to me..... My husband would say, "I don't see what the difference is, if I put it back CLOSE ENOUGH to where it's supposed to go". As you said...it's a pervasive way of thinking and at it's core....it's saying can't you look past you're own perfectionism enough to see that i'm not like you? Can't you love me anyway? And it comes out everyway, all the time even now with you or people that your husband needs desperately to hear is "Yes I do." Feeling "un-lovable" is a tough pill to swallow. It's even tougher to swallow in the face of hearing everything that is wrong with you. It's not hard to understand the feeling of low self worth and self esteem when you are constantly being reminded of the fact that the person that you need to love you doesn't. But that's the problem......that may or not be true...but that's what we hear or at least......the philosophy or thinking and beliefs that come from it. If you can understand this much....it will explain the behavior that comes from it whether it is accurate, true or not.
I've had to do the same thing with my wife and her perfectionist issues. They appear bizarre to me in the same way? She reads things into some of what I say and accuses me of things or thoughts that have never occurred to me.....WTF? "Quit accusing me of things I didn't say or do. How did you arrive at this thinking? Help me understand this ? How could I possibly come up with that conclusion on my own? I'm missing some extremely pertinent information like....what is the problem in the first place? Why are you mad? You are assuming that I even now that I'm not supposed to do something? Why are you offended? What did I say? How can I know what to do...if you can even tell me yourself? Give me the answer to these question and I'm more than happy to accommodate you but don't accuse me of wrong doing if I don't even know what the rules are?" grrrrrrrrrrrr Which is when she just gets defensive or combative with me for asking her. No answer...just angry accusing and blaming. Sometimes saying "I don't understand" itself sends her spinning and even more crazy stuff comes out of her mouth. Many times...comparing apples to oranges instead of answers? And this is why. Here behavior is extreme in areas that seem out of the norm for most other people in certain things and not in others. But I also realize that I am the source for her reactions at the same time. Without being able to see my own ADHD behaviors and compare them to the norm. Her own extreme or out of the norm behavior just appears crazy and strange. I've been able to account for my behavior most of the time without making excuses for them so I try and point out what is what to her. On the other hand......she can't account for anything she does within her own dysfunctions or out of the norm behavior and then gets angry for asking for the same answers that I give her. Yet...she will come an apologize for being angry. BUT WHY WERE YOU ANGRY IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!! ERRRRRRRRRRR Draw me a road map.....hit me over the head with a hammer...do anything but please, EXPLAIN YOUR BEHAVIOR!!! I do not understand it and it makes no sense to me.
PLUG IN....PERFECTIONISM ahhhhhhhhhh Thank you....was that so hard???
This little dramatization is exactly the same thing I'm talking about but only in reverse for us who have ADHD looking from the outside. Her over reaction to me ( saying I understand my own ADHD annoyances ) do not fit or are completely out of scale to anything I am familiar with. Her strange and seemingly peculiar proclivities do match up with most people I know..or have known in my past? So how am I to know or understand why she is reacting the way she is to seemingly innocuous situations. I have nothing to draw from in either knowledge or experience to guide me to these answers?
To put it simply now...she is anxiety driven and there is no rhyme or reason to this and is why she has no answers. It's all about her anxiety in the moment and what is causing it. I see it. I understand it. But there is no way for someone else to predict this or know what is causing that person to react unless they themselves can tell you exactly what that is? And so you don't think it's all about her......I'm still left wondering for example in many situations....exactly which one of my own ADHD symptoms are actually causing her to react this time? So often.....I haven't a clue? I know it's me ...but which one now? If you aren't driven by anxiety....there's no way to know this. There is an assumption somewhere in her head that is telling her that I should know this too. But there is no way that I can. We do not share the same experiences for the same reasons and she has to be able to at least tell me or this will just repeat itself again?
I can't tell you how many times I've read the posts to this forum and the descriptions of the spouse with ADHD and go..."wait a minute, you're preaching to the choir?" And I fully suspect that there anxiety issues surrounding these very same exact behaviors. The ones that I DON'T have but my wife does. This perfectionist thing whether it be a full blown disorder ( which wife does not have ) still shows up in lesser ways that appear unexplainable enough to me that I simply could not put my finger on it. Is someone with ADHD a good fit with a person like my wife? The answer is no....not necessarily. But she on the other hand is not having any fun with being this way either and wishes she wasn't like this. So together.....we're the perfect litmus test for each other and it has forced us to sink or swim and learn better ways to be as individuals whether we were together or not. Where there's a will...there's a way. In a very weird way because of this......she tells me she loves me everyday whether she says it or not and I rarely need her to say it in order know that she does. She tells me the same thing when she see's me trying so hard with my own ADHD shit. lol
That is at the core of all of this stuff. All we want from you is to say those words and everything will be Okay. At least that is what the feeling inside that we carry around is needing to hear even if we don't recognize where this is coming from. All the other gyrations and arguing about the details and the denial is in the face of this one simple fact. At least this is one source in me that I understand in the same way as your husband....now. lol
And sorry for the rest of my posts and my back tracking.....that's all just processing which is a little different from why other people are here at times I think. I guess it's not important to how you got there...just that you get there. LOL! I think sometimes it's not enough just to understand things to be able to actually do something about it too and right now...I'm the one having to do something about it. I'm really good at the "how too" for many things and I have learned for me do to something well....I have dissect all the parts and lay them out in front of me to see them before that can happen.....just like with Goldsmithing. Thanks again for the insight, it really helped.
J
Wow.
Submitted by AlmaVera on
"This philosophy is screaming at everyone "hey, it's good enough, it's close enough, why does it have to be so perfect, why do I have to be so perfect?" When in reality, and at it's core it's saying "am I not good enough for you? I thought you said you loved me for who I was and how I am...and now your saying it's not good enough for you. Why can't you understand how much this hurts to find out that now that you see I'm not what you thought I was.....you've changed your mind. That was your choice and your decision not mine. You chose to over look at these things about me (my ADHD) in the beginning and only saw what you wanted to see....but all the other parts of my ADHD were always there. Where's the betrayal? Who's the hypocrite? Who's fault is that? I never promised to be like you or anyone else...I just promised to love you and do my best. I never said I could do all these things that you are now complaining about......I was never given that choice in the first place. But yet...you expecting me to follow the same rules that I have no choice in the matter. In many respects......I couldn't even if I tried. I know this for sure because I have...this is a fact. I did them to my satisfaction but they aren't to yours. I'm Okay with close....that's good enough for me. What's the matter with close enough? What's the matter with almost perfect? And why do you care so much if it is? I don't have a problem with the way I am. I don't define myself by how perfectly I do things. I define myself by being able to do them at all and doing my best. As long as I doing that.....am I not good enough? And who decided how well something is to be done in the first place? It certainly wasn't me.""
I could almost hear that in the voice of the guy I'd been involved with for over a year. I couldn't get him to believe me that I did know in the beginning. I didn't think his symptoms or quirkiness were a betrayal or a disappointment. The disappointment and betrayal were from what felt like a 'bait and switch' after hyperfocus suddenly ended. I felt that he didn't show the real him in the beginning. I didn't ever expect perfection or no symptoms or no issues. How could I? I'm only human, too. We knew from the beginning we each had battles to fight. But one of the things that I found immensely attractive about him was that he was fighting them. There's a huge difference between asking for someone to assist you as you're fighting your battle, and asking someone to just do the fighting for you because you "can't." My ex-husband was the latter.
Especially towards the end, I heard this guy saying things that were way different from what he was saying much earlier in our relationship. He was no longer talking about working on learning how to communicate better, in other words, to continue the self-improvement he started before we met (he'd already done a lot of work on tasks and organization). Instead, he was saying that [his symptoms] were part of what made him 'him' and to change them would take too much time and work -- and I guess saying he didn't think the 'payoff' would be worth it. He was always bringing up the idea of 'acceptance' of who he is, and that I didn't accept him when I asked him to treat me differently -- to treat me as he actually did at one time, during hyperfocus. He saw that as me asking him to change who he was. I know others here have talked about the same thing -- I'm not sure if dede experienced that in the beginning, too.
This is an issue that I see written about over and over in general relationship advice, too. "Don't ask someone to change." If someone is doing something to hurt me, or our kids, or him-/herself, yes, I'm going to ask that person to change! I'm going to ask them to change that behavior. And I don't think that is wrong; it's not asking someone to change fundamentally who they are. And as I've said previously on the subject of hyperfocus, if we've seen that a person with ADHD can be and has been different (in a good way) in the past, why wouldn't we want to have things that way again? How are you supposed to feel when someone knows they are hurting you, but just says "I can't do anything about it"? It feels like they are saying "You are not worth the effort it would take for me to treat you differently." If someone says they are desperately hurting, that's not a time for 'close enough,' especially if that wasn't the attitude from the start. I wonder if a person who has deep hyperfocus at the beginning of a relationship really understands how dramatically different they are before and after -- almost like two different people! It's not a judgment on their ADHD -- it's trying to deal with something that you really can't anticipate, even if you've heard about it or read about it. One feels betrayed because it seems they're being asked to not have ADHD anymore, and the other feels betrayed because it seems they were 'hooked' in by someone who wasn't as they portrayed themselves. I personally don't think this is an insurmountable problem, provided that both parties are equally invested in the relationship and doing what it takes to make it healthy. Melissa and her husband have proved that.
Again, I'm talking from both sides of the fence here, as someone once in a relationship with a partner with more pronounced symptoms, and also as someone with it myself. I do not think there's much about me that is unchangeable. As J said, some things just take a whole lot more time and work and will. That's most often the deciding factor -- not whether it actually can be done or not.
I don't know if that's perfectionism. I think it's fear of failure, at some level. But it's a no-win situation when the choices are either "If you ask me to change something, you don't love me" or we just keep being hurt to prove our love to them. :(
Exactly To the Point
Submitted by kellyj on
What a perfect compliment to the things I said. It's a trap! One we put ourselves into all by ourselves and leaves the other person feeling exactly the way you described. It is a no win situation until you can stop or change your own thinking. I said all of that from not actually thinking those thoughts or believing them in reality....but that's not saying that they aren't there somewhere and don't come out from our sub conscious.
There's the problem because it does whether we are willing to admit it or not. My thoughts about this are only in speculation to my own feelings at different times taken out of context and put together in one easy to see package that is pretty clear to see in the way I did it. You presented the compliment to these thought very articulately done in a way to see exactly what happens from the other side ( or both sides of the fence as you said) I really had to dig deep to find this in me as much as I don't agree with these statements myself. I think if a person cannot question themselves, they will never find the answers to their own behaviors and are doomed to repeat their own mistakes. That's true for all of us. I know I did the same thing you're doing now in finding your own answers which is why we both are coming up with the same conclusions ourselves. I commend you for doing it because it's not easy. What's easy is to do nothing but it's the worse thing you can do. I been there too but I'm not anymore. This is better by leaps and bounds but it does take an effort.
I'm thinking now that this is not necessarily a guarantee that someone with ADHD is going to feel this way....but as you said....anyone with some kind of malfunction either in the experience or home life and/or with them is going to have a higher propensity to forming maladaptive strategies to cope. I see myself as someone who ground enough healthy ways to get by for all reasons to need some fine tuning more than a major overhaul but that's not to say I haven't had my share of problems associated with even that level of being dysfunction. From the sound of it...I did a good enough job of recreating these feelings in a way that you recognized in the same way I could piece it together into one attitude (or philosophy)
And for the record too.....the idea or perfectionism is just possibly a pervasive way of thinking about things that is not unhealthy or uncommon in the least. I read and example saying "Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan have devoted their lives to striving for perfection in what they do....but they also have not become dysfunctional or that has caused them the anxiety that comes from being a perfectionist in an unhealthy way" My therapist has said to me before....."are you going towards something...or are you going away from it?" A simple and easy concept to determine if something is healthy or not.
It also makes it easy to see the same thing and in other people. Being driven is a good thing if it's your choice but usually is not so good if you are being forced, pushed and controlled by the very same thing in an unhealthy way. Who wouldn't feel anxious and fearfully if they felt out of control of something that was causing them to do things that they could clearly see are causing them problems without the ability to stop it.
Simply put........is it a want and therefore something you desire to have by choice.....or is it a need that you have no choice in or possibly might prefer not to have. These are all just different ways to say the same thing but doing things because you are afraid is generally not a good motivator and usually narrows down your options when it comes down to choice.
J
FYI: That thing your said about your ex later in your relationship at the time of your divorce? That's just end of relationship bullshit rationalizing in order to get over guilt or something like it. Those comments are the one's that can stay with you for a long time but I've found they are usually most unreliable and ones to try and forget...saying, the ones that come out in the moment but unfortunately sometimes are the most painful. fa gat a bout it !
When I see how differently we
Submitted by AlmaVera on
When I see how differently we've reacted to our various childhood situations, I wonder about the mysterious force of 'temperament.' If there wasn't such a thing, we'd have all dealt with our...less-than-stellar parents (ha) in the same way, and come out the same way. But we didn't. I didn't have the same anger in my head that you wrote about, J. I felt fear most of the time. I used to hear some friends talk about knowing their parents would always be there for them, even if they did something really stupid. They just felt really secure in their parents' unconditional love. I never felt that. I was the goodiest-goody-two-shoes, but I knew that if I did anything major, my parents would disown me. I remember my mom, who had hypoglycemia and was on a special diet, threatening to not eat and just let herself go into an insulin reaction to 'get out of our way' -- basically threatening suicide. Why? Because I was not down in the kitchen getting potatoes peeled for dinner quickly enough. I remember just retreating into myself when she would spend time each and every day recounting every moment of her day and how nobody had it as bad as she did. I guess it was sort of dissociating. I reached a period about a week before I turned 16 where I was having difficulty in school -- meaning I wasn't getting all A's -- and I knew that meant I wouldn't get a scholarship and I wouldn't be able to leave home (my parents had no college fund, and I wasn't allowed to get a job). I attempted suicide by taking a full bottle of a drug my brother was taking. Neither parent noticed.
I sometimes wonder how I kept bouncing back, no matter how many things kept happening in my life. That's certainly not the example I had growing up. Depression has been a problem, but I never attempted suicide again. As I wrote earlier in this thread, Pete Walker looks at people's reactions to emotional trauma according to whether they use flight, fight, freeze, fawn or a combination. I think flight and fawn were mine. I tried to be perfect and perform to earn their love. I never could as far as things like cleaning my room, doing chores the 'right' way, or being organized, but I was a super-achiever in school. I never dared 'pull' anything when I was a kid. As I got older and was my mom's caretaker, I 'flew' into my head when things got too bad, and 'fawned' by just trying to be the best daughter I could so that she'd finally be happy. Those were my survival mechanisms, and oddly, the very strict structure helped keep my symptoms at bay, too.
But those mechanisms haven't been effective since I left her. I ended up marrying someone who was a great deal like her, though I didn't see it at first -- very needy and very narcissistic. The other guy I fell in love with more recently seemed unlike either of them, but then I realized he was, in fact, also like my mom in that he was emotionally unavailable, and when hyperfocus ended, I was again fawning to try to get him to treat me better. But it was more of an internal conflict this time, because I had been doing work on myself after my marriage ended. I did see the aftereffects of my parents' treatment, and I was more open about knowing that it was OK for me to speak up and have needs. But when this guy was turning his problems back onto me, I am sad to say, I eventually fell back into the same patterns and left my boundaries behind. I should have done what I couldn't do with my mom and ex-husband: leave when it was obvious that I was not being treated as I should have been. I was, as J would say, stuck in a pattern of thinking.
That's why I've mentioned in other posts here that there is something that has made us -- those with ADHD and those without -- stay despite untenable treatment. There is something in our pasts that trained us to stay. It's not just that we believed in our love, or that we were loyal. In many of the cases here, and I think by their nature, forums draw people with the hardest situations, other people would have left. I'm not talking about cases where there would be financial ruin, or fear for childrens' safety if left with a severely symptomatic ex-spouse -- cases where the spouse would leave. I think in some cases, we stayed in situations where we were treated poorly because that's what we felt we deserved, or because it was familiar -- even if we hated it.
Some philosophers and meme-writers say we should not spend too much time in the past, because we're not there anymore. I disagree -- I think as we grow and learn, we can use our new 'lenses' to go back and see things we didn't have the wisdom to see before. And if we truly do learn from it, we gain even more wisdom.
And really, if it helps us to have better lives, why wouldn't we want to? That's what I don't get.
"we stayed in situations
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
"we stayed in situations where we were treated poorly because that's what we felt we deserved"
This is me. My husband and his family treat me like crud, and right now, instead of trying to deny this, my attitude is that they treat me that way because I AM crud.
No, no, no!! You are most
Submitted by AlmaVera on
No, no, no!! You are most definitely not crud, Rosered!! I have read your posts on here, and you have worked and tried very hard for a long, long time. On top of his ADHD, he is a product of his family and their dysfunction. They don't have any right to judge you, because they were not in your house to witness your marriage, and they were not in your role as his wife.
Please don't give up and believe them. As the old saying goes, "Consider the source." *hugs*
I Agree AV
Submitted by kellyj on
You are not crud Rosered. But that doesn't mean you don't feel like crud. There's a big difference. Try and remember this and remember that for many poeple ( disorders not mentioned or implied ) projecting their crud onto you is how they get rid of these feelings themselves even if they are not aware of this themselves ( usually not ) It's why so many times people say here that "my xxx seems just fine". Whcih is probably true because they are...they just got rid of their crud and gave it to YOU!
I remember working as a crowd control/security in college for rock concerts at the indoor sports arena in our city. Fun job by the way in college.....Anyway...we had to report to work well before the show and usually the bands were doing sound checks so we would just go and sit an listen to them while they warmed up ( which was petty cool to sit front row center up at the stage and watch all these musicians that everyone knows. Occasionally....the bands would interact with us or joke around with us which was also pretty cool.
But the one I really remember was Billy Joel. He not only sat at his piano and cracked jokes with us....he invited us up on stage and began to"shoot the shit" as he said with us too. I think he was a little liquored up as well....but that was irrelevant because he was a really great guy...unassuming, friendly and open which came through whether he had a drink or two or not. ( he was not the only one by any means....let me tell you. I knew the liaison for the catering company who attended to the bands requests before the shows. Did she have stories to tell!! ha ha ) yet I digress.......lol
Anyway......when it was time to get ready for the show and Mr Joel was finished warming up and cracking jokes he stopped and turned to all of us ( about 10 ) and looked at us very seriously now to each one us, like a father would to their son and said " just remember....each one of you ( looking each one of us individually in the eye very intense and serious now in his tone )
"Don't take any Shit from anyone...you hear me." with his finger moving it from one person to the other. And then he smiled and went back stage.
I'm pretty sure now if I wasn't then Rosered.....that this is exactly what he meant.
J
AV Maam...Your Break'in My Heart
Submitted by kellyj on
But I do know what you are saying and to the point I wanted to make after reading this. Yes...this is so interesting how people respond differently. I don't know if this is temperament? I'm not really sure why this is? What I do know is how I responded to similar events when you go down as low as you can go. I'd take any amount of physical pain over the kind of emotional pain that I have experienced when you hit the bottom. I've been there several times (or more?) and it is really different in one respect in comparison. My wife gets mad at me sometimes when I make comparisons like this so I'm going to preface it by saying...it is not my intention to sine myself in a better light than you. There....no implied meaning or reading into things. I like to make comparisons as way for creating feedback between myself and others. My wife as one being a person who doesn't like this or tends to take things personally ( no loop...just the feed ha ) What usually comes back is her taking offense so...there you go.
Anyway.....it's really interesting to me when I get confronted with aggression or have to face conflict that my innate first response is to freeze. Which is close to flight (think of a deer). Then I'll fawn just like you. ( like a dog rolling of his back to show you his belly) But if the conflict escalates and the aggression hits that magic point I don't flee.....I fight. And when I do at this point...I come out fighting for my life. (like a cornered badger ) Not like one....just like one. My goal is to stay alive and inflict maximum damage to stop the predator from killing me I think these are perfect metaphors for this kind of behavior in me. And it happens just that fast....boom. From fawn to fight in a blink of an eye. This is extremely rare and I've only done this when I absolutely had to ( thinking of these moments)
In my life I have only acted on this in a physical way three times that I remember and they were all in grade school. Twice was when a bigger kid was picking on me...actually his friend was holding me by my arms and the kid was punching me in the stomach. This kid was sort of a friend but in that moment he was just being a bully. But he was bigger, stronger and could kick my butt any day or the week without question. On those days I would have been too afraid to challenge him because he would have won...easily. But in that moment.....I had totally clarity of mind and had no fear what so ever. The second the other kid release my arm I hit this kid as hard as I could....so hard it knocked his head back into the wall and he stood there stunned. His nose was bleeding and then the bell rang to go in. We all just stood looking at each other because no one expected this from me including myself. But....it stopped right then. It was almost as if something else took control of me and I had no emotion....no anger, no fear...just clarity. The simple path from A to B which was my fist hitting his nose. In a dog they would call this a fear bite and I think that too explains this well. Except...in the moment there is NO fear. Just clarity...no hesitation, no thoughts.....pure and total presence. The moment of life or death? It is pure instinct though none the less.
Like I said....there were only two other times this happened to me and one was with my closest and best friend who at the time was almost 12" taller than I was and weighed over 50 lbs more than me. I was a late bloomer and ended up to be just shy of the same size as he is now. But back then.....he could have sat on me and crushed me without having to lift a finger. It was a similar situation with him and another kid trying to pants me (take my pants)...and were going to throw them out a window so I would have to run through a bunch of people in my underwear to go get them in public. At least they thought this was funny. I however, did not. I gave him one warning 'stop, don't" and then boom. Same thing. I thought he was going to kill me but he just looked at me with this wide eyed blank expression. Again...we just sat there for a moment and stared at each other and then it was over. Nothing else was said.
So now this gets interesting. In those times when I hit rock bottom...I thought about killing myself a couple times. But the exact same clarity came over me in the same way. There was absolutely no way I could have even enacted on killing myself even as much as I wanted to thinking...possibly as bad as you. I was in the deepest darkest hopeless hole you could be in and that where the suicide thoughts came in but only then. Never before of again. And yet...I can't help but see the same things as you with the fight, freeze, fawn and flight. But consistently...in those moments....that fight came in. I can't even describe this feeling well. It really is like Aliens taking control over your body and all thought is erased from you mind. Total and absolute clarity that says....act.....don't die....live....fight....now. And everything changes in a split second and everything you felt and thought only 2 seconds ago is erased and gone. Your just left going..."what happened?"
This is the kind of stuff that gets retold by people who rescue other people from tragic life threatening situations. In combat during war or in a plane crashes and afterwards they say these people are heroes.....and they all say exactly the same thing. " I'm not a hero....I just did what I did in the moment without thinking and just did it"...but I have to assume, without the fear that would stop you normally which is why it looks so brave. But it's not brave at all. It's involuntary. Like I said.....no thoughts, no feeling, no emotions....just clarity in the moment and everything becomes very simple with decisions to make. No decisions because it transcends thinking....like an out of body experience where you are watching yourself from above doing this at the time. weird huh?
In those moments with me....I wanted to die without question...but there was no way I could even if I tried. This thing that comes over me in those moments prevents it and I have literally no control of it. I've wondered about this a lot and the difference in that moment for different people?
This has happened in a different way meaning....when I've hit that rock bottom depression...I go through a similar pattern or process and it always end up with a similar...maybe not as intense and sudden.....clarity and then everything changes and turns on a dime in the other direction...maybe not in the moment but in the same day...and in the same way. I just act almost unconsciously and move in any direction that is away from the one I'm going. Again...weird? I say this because I don't necessarily see this in everyone and now I wonder why? It is the same sense or feeling like I was back on the playground. I didn't even now that existed in me until that moment.
But....I did learn how to make this happen without being depressed or in a situation that requires a fight. This has become a pivotal moment in my life from this time on to this day I learned how to do this. And again...it happened when I least expected it. I don't want to make this about me self ingratiated myself ( back to wifes response at times ) so I will spare all the details in saying....this is something that you can learn and teach yourself to do. I discovered this after years of competing in swimming...being more the middle or upper middle of the pack for many years and never getting to the top until the one day when I surpassed what I thought was even possible and went from the middle to the top all at once in just one race. If you want to see a rare video of this phenomenon in real time...here's the youtube link of one of the most amazing examples of this I've ever seen. You may or may not have seen this in the 2008 Beiing Olympics...but even if you saw this before, most people cannot comprehend the gravity of what they were seeing because this was quite simply impossible. Most people who saw this race were focused on Michael Phelps because of the 9 gold medal thing which was also amazing but.....Jason Leazak harnessed what I am describing and pulled off a miracle. If you decide to watch this relay race....Leazak is the anchor leg (the last swimmer). You need to pay attention the last 50 yards of his swim to see this phenomenon. You can actually see him accelerate from behind to win the race but what most people cannot understand is that to do this is so out of the norm even for these guys that it is truly in the superhuman category and extremely rare. I know this feeling and I know what this is like because it happened to me too. No one noticed aside from my coach or mother but I knew it and I knew it to be the same thing as I was describing before to you. The other thing I forgot to mention about this is...that when it happens you feel no pain. This is why I was bringing this into it. There are ways to train your mind to this place without being an athlete...maybe not to this Zen level (it's rare for anyone) but....close enough. I'm laughing thinking about dedelight4's husband now ( close enough ha ha )....but in this case, close enough is really really good. I watch this video for inspiration when I need to remind myself that I can do this if I actually "put my mind to it." pun intended lol
FYI: Jason Leazak's swim is the fastest recorded time in history for 100 meters and no one has come close yet to beating this time as it still stands. Pretty cool
https://youtu.be/sxy920Nd7yY
J
That was an amazing video --
Submitted by AlmaVera on
That was an amazing video -- I am all the more impressed because I totally suck at sports, lol.
Don't worry about offending me with comparisons. I know nobody handles things the same. I hit points in my life that were actually much more desperate than that point when I tried to end it as a teen. But when it didn't work, I figured there had to be a reason why. So, I never tried it again. That's not to say that there weren't times when I wished something would take care of it for me, like a tornado coming down and sucking me away, or a giant sinkhole opening in the ground and swallowing me, or some other creative disaster, lol. I was in a bad place then, but luckily, it didn't stay that way. I'm not looking for a "Poor me." More like just stating things that happened.
I'm realizing as I type this that when I was growing up, my parents always told me I was a wimp, and that I was weak. I'm not sure exactly why it was so important for me to be She-Ra, but at any rate, I absorbed that and took it in as part of my identity. Maybe that's why I tried to end it -- I felt too weak to handle what I was afraid of. Later, as I kept dealing with things over and over, and coming out the other side, I had to realize that they were wrong from the beginning. No, I wasn't out there hanging off tree limbs and breaking bones as a kid, but that had nothing to do with weakness or strength. That just didn't appeal to me, lol.
It wasn't til I had my son that I had to start realizing that I really was a strong person, and that the message I'd gotten all my life was wrong. That made a huge difference to me. I saw myself differently, and since then, even when i hit my depths, I know that I'll be down for a while, but I will get through it. One of my favorite sayings is something to the effect of "When I'm faced with something and I think I'm not going to make it, I look back at my life, and I realize that so far, my survival rate is 100%" I remember not too long ago, I said to my therapist that when i first started to see her (when my ex announced out of the blue that he wanted to get a divorce), that I was such a mess then. She smiled and said, "No, you have never been a mess. You were in a messed up place, and were reacting in an understandable fashion at the time. But you, yourself, were not and are not a mess."
What I've learned is that: We can change our frame of mind -- or as I actually think, find our real frame of mind and override the false messages we were given. My dad and I have gotten quite close over the last few years. It feels really good when he tells me that he thinks I can do anything I set my mind to -- even now, after my head injury. He also went into really intense therapy after he and my mom split, and I think he came to terms with a lot of his background (mainly his father's alcoholism and abuse).
Today, I saw this article. It's pretty sobering when you consider the massive effect childhood abuse and neglect has on someone. But I think it also underlines the point that it doesn't have to be permanent. Some of us will choose to fight back, and some will just try to survive. And maybe that will change in different situations. Childhood Trauma Can Alter Your DNA
The hopeful thing for me is that we are not forced to stay the way we are. I figure that, if trauma can alter DNA, there's a change we can change it yet again.
And your point about partners off-loading their uncomfortable emotions onto others is absolutely, totally, spot on.
AV
Again...It's Funny How Things Work AV
Submitted by kellyj on
More differences under somewhat similar situations. And before I continue with that last comment. I have to say in comparison to mine...I think you had it worse in many respects. I always used the word "insidious" to describe the under current that was hard to see from the outside, Then again....I've done a little homework on Perfectionism and one of the key elements seems to be hiding it or making appearance. Bingo....that's what was so insidious. I felt like I was in some comedy drama where the straight man is always taking the blame while the perpetrator is causally leaning up against the lamp post saying "who me....I didn't see nuth'in" . lol
Another interesting similar difference (lol).....My mother consistently would say to me "you can't do that". So much so that I started to go "wait a minute, yes I can. And proceeded to do it in almost every case. I finally figured what she was really saying was "I can't do that". Which was absolutely true. She couldn't. I was around 12 when I finally realized that.....by that time I spent most of my time proving she was wrong. After that I just ignored her. lol
And I'm glad you liked the video.....it is amazing what you can do if you put yur mind to it for real. For what ever reason...mostly that I just enjoyed it and I could spend lots of time away from the house, I pursued the swimming thing and it really did save me I think...in the reason I mentioned, and being exposed to a healthy disciplined structure that was fun at the same time. My coach was amazing too. He was more like my father than my father since I spent an average of 14 hours a week with in for 12 years. That was significant too.
side note: Did you know that Michael Phelps has ADHD?....that didn't seem to affect his swimming for sure. lol
I did want to reinforce the purpose of including the video though.....you really don't have to be athletic or know anything about sports to be able to exercise your brain in that way. I can't tell you how I discovered the ability to tap into this clarity thing....not even sure what to call it. But I can do it sitting in a chair. Actually....I would do this before I swam and would walk up to the blocks already in the zone. I know it must be a kind of meditation but it is really useful to me when I have to concentrate and stay clear headed...kind of like erasing all thoughts....for me that's a good thing! lol The video just shows what a person can do when you can tap into head like that. We use to call it "digging down deep"...maybe they still do? or "going through the wall" Lots of jargon to describe the same thing. I'm thinking it must have to do with the ability to release "endorphins" or "adrenalin" pre-event, without actually being frightened or going into fight or flight? Anyway.....I just call it getting in the zone and I suspect that hyper focus has a lot to do with it...Thinking it's more like controlled hyper focus because that's what it feels like.
Maybe that was Michael Phelps's secret? lol
Anyway...it's kind of like learning to ride a bicycle...once you learn you never forget. Also... the reason I told you about this is that it can useful to reduce anxiety...like taking a temporary break from it as needed. It really works and I always feel very present and a sense of being alive. Almost like your floating off the ground...very calming .... while being exhilarated at the same time. If you noticed at all (even though the camera was on Michael Phelps at the very end)...Lezak seemed kind of detached from the excitement and was rather subdued and more relaxed than the guys who had more time to rest. ....my point being the calm and relaxed part despite the exertion and excitement. He definitely brought his mental game that day. I'm convinced that this was what made the difference more than his skill or strength ( he was also 32 compared to just about everyone else who were in their early 20's).......as I was saying;)
J
Most of the things I've been
Submitted by AlmaVera on
Most of the things I've been reading about childhood neglect talk about it as affecting the child's ability to form healthy attachments, and to grow up with a feeling of safety (definitely emotionally, but sometimes physically as well). So, a parent who doesn't do the 'mom' things, and is only concerned with how she appears to outsiders could certainly be harming her children as they are going through important psychological development. Children need to know they are loved as individuals, and the people who are there to raise us from the beginning have a powerful effect on how we come to view ourselves.
The book I linked to above, Running on Empty, by Jonice Webb, has several examples of people who were emotionally neglected as children, and how it affected them. There were parents in the examples who didn't do anything overtly 'abusive:' the children were fed, had clean clothes, a roof over their heads, weren't beaten, etc. But their parents, for whatever reasons, didn't parent them.
Please note that I'm not in any way excusing poor treatment by anyone's spouses or partners here. Just offering up a possible explanation, based on things I've come across while investigating my own past. It's still up to all of us as adults to work on healing the damage done.