Recent forum posts (all topics)

This first year after ADD divorce is almost over. Thank you friends on the forum for supporting me through it. 

To all who consider divorce, here's some hope from this perspective. It's like I recently told a longtime friend who's reappeared: I rise like a bubble now.

After having felt for many years a constant tug downward, into depression and burnout, and an all-encompassing pessimism, this bubble quality is almost to good to be true.

I had a flashback to a story I was told in therapy years ago and it suddenly made perfect sense to me now.

Vent of exhaustion by a non-ADHD partner

This won't be a long post. I finally dug down deep enough to find what's been truly affecting me ( the most ). It is, the underlying cause for the RSD I've been experiencing.

"Taking away sex from a man can make him feel a range of emotions including unwanted, rejected, unloved, frustrated, resentful, and insecure; essentially, a lack of physical intimacy can significantly impact a man's self-esteem and emotional well-being, especially if it's a consistent pattern within a relationship.  

Key points to consider:  

Emotional connection:

Just a quick post about treatment. The Wellbutrin I'm on ( 150mg ) was working for a while but seemed lose effectiveness.  Going down the depression checklist, I have all the symptoms ( literally all ) except suicidal thoughts which I've never had. I tried upping my dose to the maximum  ( 300mg ) but that only seemed to produce side effects of ramping up irritability and insomnia which is actually making things worse. What keyed me in were the feelings of hopelessness. That's when I double checked the depression checklist and realized there's been a change. This has been especially apparent since I've been on vacation so work stress was no longer the reason. Going back to work today feeling much the same as I did when I started. I have an appointment next week with my doctor and going to request a visit with a psychiatrist for a full evaluation and recommendation for a different medication or combination of meds: thinking, possibly Zoloft and Wellbutrin combined as Zoloft has worked great in the past.

Anyway, depression is a sneaky thing and can creep up on you if you aren't paying attention to it.

"Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is a condition that causes people to experience extreme emotional pain when they feel rejected, criticized, or fail. It's characterized by exaggerated reactions to rejection, such as:  

Having negative self-talk  

Having difficulty managing reactions  

Having a constant need for validation  

Adopting perfectionistic tendencies  

Feeling embarrassed or self-conscious  

Having low self-esteem and self-doubt  

Having sudden outbursts of emotions like anger, tears, and sadness  

Trigger warning: I'm in a lot of pain and seething in anger. I'm looking for a vent and hopefully if someone can share their experience and I can feel less alone. That's all - this is not an attack on all ADHDers or even just one (like my spouse) but I am really done with what ADHD symptoms have done to my life in all its many shapes and forms. 

This is something I wonder about. Doesn't an often distracted person somehow need to be extra affirmative of others? At work I'm constantly approached by coworkers and have to produce decisions for them in the middle of doing something else. I feel since I act confused and indecisive when my thoughts are interrupted, make mistakes and then change my mind that I need to be extra kind to the people who put up with it. 

ADHD people close to me are naturally even more distracted. I find I quickly lose patience with them since they don't really try to compensate for it.

and ask the horse.....

We had an incident happen the other day that really broke things open ( again ). This time, I was totally winging it and probably did a whole bunch of things wrong. The end result however,  was creating an open conversation and dialogue about multiple topic including: sex ( or lack of ), belittling and crticizing, control issues, backseat driving, and creating a couple of hand signals and cue words all at one time.

Been quiet on here lately as I have found myself in the void. That void of not wanting to 'rock the boat' by bringing up issues and trying to solve them... but knowing deep down that I'm living in a way that I don't want to. Today was a bad day for my spouse - mentally.