A Story to Help You Understand ADHD?

This is my story. I have ADHD and would like to share my simple brief experience to give you and idea of what it's like. Let me start by stating, I am not a psychologist, just a normal woman that would like you to understand and be of help to someone reading this.

So, this is what happened to me the other day and may give you an idea of how quickly things can get complicated in the day to day life with ADHD.

My husband was very excited about his plans for the landscaping, and began sharing his dreams with me when I returned from walking the dog. I really was listening, until I suddenly had the thought of just how hot I was, so I simply walked away and into the house to take off my sweater and put on something cooler. Simple right?! No, for one my husband felt frustrated with me for being so rude just walking away while he was excited about his plans. Well, yes I had been rude, but in my mind I simply switched gears from listening to taking care of my immediate need, to cool down! Totally understandable Right?! I was HOT, I needed to take off my sweater so my brain focused on that, so into the house I went.

He followed me and began sharing his feelings, and was very put off to my rudeness by just leaving him standing there talking to the air. I explained, what prompted me to just walk away like that, a sincere "sorry honey just an ADHD moment, please continue to tell me your plans". And the compassionate understanding man that he is took a deep breath and began retelling his ideas.

This demonstrates the major communication upheavel and possible argument may have resulted, but he understands my ADHD. Not always easy to do, but he loves me and has spent time coming to understand my ADHD since I was diagnosed much later in life and we had been married for many years.

This scene can happen in any different forms or fashion. But the point is, we don't mean to be displaying this kind of behavior, it's just the way our brain is wired.

So here are some tips to help keep the peace, and help you to manage and develope better social skills.

* Stop before getting all upset and use discernment as to why they did or said what they did.

*Acknowledge the feelings of each other with compassion not blame.

*Take time to really listen, show respect. That means not talking at the same time.

*Get enough sleep! Believe it or not this has a major impact on your mind health and the ability to cope with stressful situations.

*Realize what you eat can affect your mind and overall brain function. Studies have proven the connection between some preservatives and the reaction your brain has to them making ADHD symptoms worse, if not uncontrolable. (Not good.)

I realize this might be a little too long, and promise future blogs to be shorter. But I wanted to start off readers to a real life not AI generated version of a simple story of what it's like. Thank you for reading!