HealthyGamerGG - How ADHD affects your Relationships and Depression

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Dr. K talks about ADHD it's interactions with relationships & depression, how it's not all bad, what you can do about it, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The successful strategy is about figuring out how can we capture those moments of productivity. And that's where setting expectations is very, very important. So ADHD slash second time being kicked out by partners to find a motivation. Am I a magnet to these situations? What can I do? My ex kicked me out three separate times saying I need to find my independence and often joked that I was mooching. There was quite an age gap. I was 17 and they were 25, but I was working full time and control. to the house and cleaning regularly. He also mentioned he felt he wasn't good enough for me. He would say to me, if you don't have anything good to say, you shouldn't say it at all. And maybe that had something to do with how ADHD gets me overwhelmed easily and contributes to my depression. I had a lot of difficulty putting my thoughts into words, but with him it was easy because he would

basically read my mind. I liked how he truly understood the great ideas my ADHD brain had. However, he kicked me out but still wanted to stay in a relationship with him, but I couldn't handle the back and forth of moving in and out with him, so I set boundaries and eventually broke it off. Good for you. I currently have a partner who I believe is more grounded and compassionate. However, they also want me to move out and stay in a relationship with them because they feel like it's what's best for both of us. This time around, I've practiced self-awareness and setting boundaries.

I didn't have a job because we were going to renovate a house after moving together across the country. He says that in eight months, I haven't done enough renovating or cleaning. The house has very little storage and I've been very overwhelmed, ADHD, and too much of a perfectionist, OCD. I did not come up with the proper plan or get enough done. He's seen me renovate in the past to see me do great work. He says he doesn't feel like I'm the same person. He also mentioned he doesn't like my tone when I ask him simple questions and thinks I'm frustrated and passive aggressive, which I am not, but I still want to try to use a better tone of voice. He also told me if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it at all.

I don't quite understand how this line haunts me because I rarely speak without thinking anymore, but at times I have difficulty putting thoughts into words for him, and sometimes it comes out wrong, but that's another story. I don't know if it's another story, right? That may be related. Even though I feel healthier with this partner, I often feel like my great ideas aren't well understood, but it's something I can live with. The trauma from being kicked out in my first relationship really stresses me now.

I found a job already, but I still need to find a place to live out here alone with no family or support system in hopes that it'll help me in my current partner. The situation has triggered my depression. I can totally understand that, right? Like move to a new place, living on your own, kind of move to this place, presumably to be with this person. We will get couples counseling, and my hopes are that he will understand me better by the end of it. I need him to understand what he needs from me is causing me suffering, and I don't feel

that adding on rent to my bills will help us. But I do believe that communicating therapy and coming up with a good plan to continue working on the house will help us both. But he disagrees and says it's too late for me to keep working on the house, and no matter what I do, I definitely still need to find a place to live for six months to one year or so. I just can't help but wonder if I'm the magnet for this kind of situation. I don't understand how this is happening to me. I don't understand how this is happening to me for the second time. I feel like I've lost my trust in him as I can't count on him anymore. I'm already broke from having him drag me across the country and spending all my savings due to my poor trip planning. Is he right to kick me out? Does anyone

know what I can do to save this relationship? So this is like super challenging. Okay, let's like try to understand what's going on here. So the first thing is that ADHD has an intersectional relationship with relationships. So this is where we've got to take a step back and really understand what's going on here. So like we think about using the medical model, right, we sort of think about a disease is an isolated thing. And that disease causes particular problems. And we sort of think about treating that disease in isolation. Like if I'm ADHD and I get on ADHD treatment, it's sort of fixed and I'm set. The problem with ADHD is that it's very, very intersection and dominating in terms of shaping our life.

So it's not just that this person has, for example, a difficulty with getting overwhelmed easily, or maybe it's not easily. Maybe they, you know, maybe they don't get overwhelmed easily. It's like, renovating a house is like not a small project, right? So this person has moved across the country. They're like responsible for renovating a house, which is very, very challenging in and of itself. Like even if you don't have ADHD, that's like a lot of work.

And then as well, we're sort of working through this stuff, like you've spent eight months and he feels like you haven't done enough. And so, like, is that the ADHD? Well, then that intersects with the relationship. So what we tend to see with a lot of people is that not only do people with ADHD sometimes struggle with prioritization and organization, but those struggles intersect with the relationship. And so because, like, our partners have particular expectations on us, they may not really be understanding what we struggle with or may not kind of give us allowances for it. Then we run into relationship problems. And then what happens is we have like communication

difficulties, which is a big part of ADHD as well. So a lot of if you kind of think about it, if you zone out in conversations, for example, if you have difficulty like formulating your thoughts in a coherent way, because they're all over the place, that then negatively impacts the relationship. So now what we've got is a situation where there's a problem that needs to be fixed in a relationship, right? Maybe you're not renovating as much as you have or you need to or you're partner wants to. But then generally speaking, like, what's our antidote to that problem? The problem, like, it's one thing for ADHD to kind of make it difficult for us in terms of organizing our life, prioritizing our life. But then, like, on top of that, when that doesn't

work out, we rely on things like communication to fix things, right? Okay, let's get on the same page. Let's figure this out. Let's work through it. But if your communication is hampered, and we sort of see evidence of that, right? So people are multiple times that are complaining of like, you know, tone and stuff like that. So we've had a couple of partners who do that. We are also seeing that this person sort of struggles to get thoughts out of their head sometimes, which is very common. And so that negatively impacts the relationship.

And then suddenly, the thing that was supposed to be an antidote, our backup plan, our safety net, our parachute stops working. Not only does it stop working, it adds additional weight and additional stress. And then as we get into negative situations, right, you kind of get, then you get kicked out, you come back, you get kicked out, you come back, you get kicked out, and you're like, enough is enough. Then you get traumatized by it. So on top of everything that's happened, and we sort of understand this, we'll go into more detail, then you sort of like lose trust. Like, you know, like, then it's, the cycle starts repeating itself and you feel like you're,

you're a puppet whose strings are being pulled. And then what you have to do is like deal with sort of the triggering and trauma from all of the above. So what happens in ADHD is that we get this weird stacking effect, right? It's the first thing is that my brain doesn't really like organize very easily or sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. And this is the other thing about ADHD is that there are times where you know you're capable. And we sort of see this in this case as well where there are bursts of like creativity and productivity that are amazing.

Why did you sign up to renovate the house? Why was your partner okay with you renovating the house? because they've seen what you're capable of. And with the previous partner, they were able to see the brilliance of what your brain can put together. So this is the challenge is that it's like, it's not all bad, right?

They're like these moments of brilliance, moments of productivity. And then what we do is we start to build a life expecting those kinds of moments and things don't really work out well because we don't really know how to foster and create those moments. And then the communication falls apart.

And then like, like you start to get traumatized a little bit because this has happened before. We've been here before. Now, what do we do about it? And so everything kind of stacks on top of you and you feel incredibly overwhelmed. And then it's like, well, okay, which of these do I fix first? Do I figure out how to renovate the house? Do I work on my communication? Do I try to foster bursts of productivity? Do I focus on like my OCD and perfectionism? And remember that people with ADHD struggle with prioritization. And so like then what happens is each of these problems stacks up. You get overwhelmed by the five different that you have to solve. And then, like, you don't know what to do and you kind of get paralyzed,

right? You kind of, like, pull into your shell and put your head, you know, put your hood on. You know, we're going to like, and then we're going to like try to just chill for a little bit, right? So, what's going on here? Why does this keep happening to this person? And what can you do about it? Can you save the relationship? So this is where the good news, I know the same sounds kind of weird, but if you look at like these problems, we can look at this and we can see five problems. We can say, okay, there's problems with organization, problems with prioritization, problems with communication, problems with like stuff kind of getting triggered and being traumatized and like the stress of all that sort of stuff. And like the problem of like, okay, which of these

problems do we tackle first? So you can look at these things and you can think that these are five independent problems. And if they're five independent problems, they have five independent solutions and like you can kind of like work through them. But the good news, and this is sort of what we understand from medicine, is if I've got like a headache, a stomach ache, and a rash, what's more likely that I've got one thing that's causing all three of these, or I've got three separate illnesses? I've got migraines. I've got Crohn's disease, and I've got like eczema. Like it's possible that it's all three, but it's much more likely that there's like one problem. And this is actually what we see in ADHD, and this is why there's actually like a lot of hope. here. So the good news is that there's a fundamental problem which is creating each of these symptoms. And how do we understand that? Okay. So let's kind of go through that a little bit. So the biggest thing that I would say in a situation like this, and just as a caveat,

each of these has things that you can absolutely do in ADHD. But I'd say the biggest problem with all of these things is setting expectations. It's like setting expectations is that the biggest thing. Setting expectations for yourself, setting expectations for your partner, sort of like really understanding what the deliverable is. So I'll give you all an example. So, you know, when you say, okay, like, all, and this is the thing is, this is a skill that you can learn. So when you, like, move in with a partner, what are the expectations? Okay, are you going to contribute to rent? Are you going to clean? How often are you going to clean? What are you going to clean. When you move across the country to be with someone, what's the expectation? Is the expectation

financial support for this amount of time, this amount of time? If you're renovating the house, at what point does the house need to be done? What kind of progress are we talking about? In terms of communication, like, how are we communicating? When are we communicating? How do you have conversations with people? And so the biggest thing that I tend to find with people who have ADHD is that they don't set good expectations. And this is kind of weird, but like, this is what happens, right? So if we think about the mind of someone who has ADHD, we've got, we've got, like, 10 different things that we've got going on. And I'll try to illustrate this because I think this is the best way to kind of do this. So let's understand this, okay?

Because I think there's one thing that you can do here that'll hopefully help a fair amount. Okay? Let me just, all right. So let's take a look at this. So what we've got here is an issue of expectation setting. Okay, so let's understand. So we've got problems with prioritization, problems with organization, problems with communication, problems with communication, problems with being triggered. And then the problem of fixing the above four, right? We've actually like, this is like problem number five. Like how do we deal with this, this, this, this, and this.

That's another problem. So let's try to understand how ADHD works and sort of like why this is difficult and what we can do about it. And then we'll start to see, okay, like if you find yourself falling into this core problem of, okay, I have ADHD and it negatively impacts my relationships, I find myself in the same situation over and over and over again. I don't know what to do about it. What can I do about it? Let's understand this, okay? So the first thing is that when you've got ADHD, you've got, you've got, a bunch of different thoughts.

Okay? And then what your brain does, is with a lot of effort. You're like, okay, like, there's all the crap I have to deal with. Let me organize this. So you move one over here. You move two over here.

Your mind kind of does this. Okay, first I got to do this. And the next is five. Where three and four? Who the hell knows? Then we've got six. And we've got seven. So this is what your mind does, right?

So it's like, okay, I got to renovate a house. Let me do all this stuff. And then what happens? So you organize your thoughts. You organize your mind. Good job. And then your attention wanders. So you've spent time organizing.

Let's say you spend one hour of your life organizing this. And then your attention wanders. And then you get distracted for three hours. And when you come back to the task, we're back to the jumble. Right? now we've added four. So, and this is something that you don't have to have ADHD to understand. Like, I don't know if any all have done something, like start a job application or like start

to fill out an application for, let's say, college. And then if time passes between like when you organize things in your head and like, let's say like I start filling out an application and then I come back a month later, can I pick up where I left off? Absolutely not. And that's why we leave tasks undone because we have to redo the work. You all get that? Like, if I, if I procrastinate for two weeks and I can't pick up where I left off, I have to redo the work.

And so now it's like I have to spend one hour again. But now it's like I have to spend more time just to get back to where I was. So it's an incredibly inefficient way. And this is what happens in people with ADHD is that when you've got a lot of stuff in your head, you try to organize it, you try to prioritize it. And then as you get distracted, because remember that people with ADHD get distracted easily, right? things get jumbled again. And then what happens is you spend a lot of time reorganizing it into one, two, five, seven, eight, nine, and we forgot about four and we forgot about ten.

So, spend two hours doing this. And then it gets disorganized again. We kind of come back to here. And then you go through this process and then nine months go by and you haven't renovated enough and your partner complaints. They'll see this. So what do you do about this? So what are like the problems here? So like there's one thing that you can do. I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do. We'll kind of talk about each of these things. But the main thing that you've got to learn how to do if you're struggling with relationships in ADHD is set expectations.

So your partner has to know going in what to expect. Because the other thing is that like the stress from this and the story. and the stress from this makes this process way worse. It actually makes it more easy for you to get disorganized, right? Because like now here you are trying to organize what you need to do to renovate the house and what is your brain doing. Your brain is like, oh my God, I've lost my trust. Even if I spend three weeks renovating the house and doing perfectly,

can I count on this person anymore? Right? You all see that? like you don't really know what you can do. Like you don't know who you can count on. You don't know what does this mean for me? Does this mean I have to like find, now I have to find a job and move out and find a place? And like, now we have to go to therapy.

So like let's add that back on there. Right. So now it's like there's even more stuff. Now as we go up here, there's like, okay, now I have to find therapy. Now I have to find a place to live. Now I'm stressed about money because I spent all my money moving across the country to be with this person. So now you've added more things, right? So here's number one, here's number two, here's number three, here's number four, here's number five, here's number six, here's number seven,

here's number eight. And so we get overwhelmed. And so what happens is like task upon task upon we get over like the more tasks there are, the more we're overwhelmed. The more we're overwhelmed, the more we start to do work, we start to organize it. And the more we end up disorganizing ourselves because there's a lot of stuff to do. Then we've got even more. numbers to sort out. So now it takes longer to sort them out. Now we're adding 11, 12, 21, 28. Right? So, okay, now we have to do this and this and this and then this. And then like now it's even more to hold in our heads. And so it becomes this vicious cycle. It becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. This relationship could fall apart. You go into the next relationship. Now you have the

burden of this happening twice. And so what do you do about this? Got to learn to say. expectations. Got to learn to organize. Okay. So this is where, especially when it comes to relationships, I think it starts with understanding what you're capable of and understanding what kind of support you need. It also involves like very clear expectations around things like communication, right? So I'll give you guys like sort of an example. So this is what I would advise someone who's sort of in this situation. If you're moving across the country, with someone. It's like thinking through some of these things. Okay. So like, okay, here's my savings. You want to move across the country and renovate a house. I'm artistic. I'm creative. That's fantastic.

What is our timeline? What is our budget? How are we going to pay expenses? Right? This is what I'm putting in. I'm going to spend my savings to move across the country to be with you. And so like what's the expectation here? Like, you know, how long do you think this is going to take? How much progress do you want to make? Like, you know, what's your understanding. Like, these are all the kinds of things that need to be kind of laid out. And this is what's actually hard for people with ADHD is they don't think about this stuff sort of ahead of time, right? Because this is the really interesting thing is that if you've got ADHD, you're so good

at this kind of crap that you don't, like, you've adapted to be able to juggle a bunch of things at the same time. Since you're sort of like in a state of last minute panic and things are on fire, you've actually managed to figure out how to deal with fires pretty well. And so interestingly enough, instead of sitting down and organizing things from the get-go and setting expectations,

what people with ADHD learn how to do is basically pull a rabbit out of a hat, dig super deep, go the extra mile, and like patch things up in a crisis situation. People with ADHD are so good at dealing with crises because they're in them all the time. So you level up your crisis management skill, but the problem is that like,

even if you're really good at crisis management, it's a stressful way to live. Right? It's like, and it's really difficult for partners because if your partner recognizes that your strength is in crisis management and you can let things fall apart for a long time and then like patch them back up, like that's super stressful for them. And then we see these kinds of patterns where people are kind of, you know, they're like getting, you know, like, look at this. This is insane.

Kicked me out three separate times. because I need to find independence. Right? So what's going on here? Like, how do you manage this kind of stuff? So, set expectations. Right? So, like, what does that mean set expectations?

That means who, what, when, where, how. Start defining all these things so that both you all can get on the same page. The cool thing is as you start defining these different things for yourself, okay, like, what does this relationship look like in terms of financial stuff, in terms of budgeting, in terms of like, where are we going to be a year from now? What it does is it externalizes things, right? So it's almost like you're sort of building a priority list, you're organizing your life a little bit that way if you sort of like you know whether you're on track or not on track.

Because the other thing that's really confusing is that if you've been with this person for nine months and they pop it on you after nine months, they're like, hey, you haven't done enough. It's like, okay, well, like, what about, you know, like, why? are you springing this on me now? Like, how did you feel about it six months ago? How did you feel about three months ago? Because this is what works with people with ADHD is you have to see what's coming. So if you see what's coming, right, and you're over here, you sort of like, it'll keep you, I don't know how to say this, but it'll like kind of keep you in track. So there's a technique that works, for example, with kids with ADHD, is you have to like tell them ahead of time what's coming.

So if a kid is playing with their Legos, you can't say, oh, hey, like, by the way, it's time to go to school. Put away your Legos. And then, like, they're absorbed in the Legos. And then what happens? You, like, say, hey, it's time for school. It's time for school. And then you start yelling because you get frustrated because they're not paying attention. And then they get upset because they're like, they were completely absorbed in the Legos.

So there's actually, I don't know if you all remember this, but we did a lecture about parenting styles in ADHD where ADHD actually increased. It increases toxic, authoritarian, and unempathic parenting. It's, that's like literally it does that. So it shifts the way that people parent. ADHD also increases stress and worsens depression in the parents. So it can be very, very stressful for people to be in relationships with people with ADHD. Now, does that mean you're screwed? No.

there's a lot you can do about it. And that's where like setting expectations is the first thing. So you've got to like map stuff out for yourself. And the good thing is once you put it on paper, if you lose it all in your head, then you've got the paper. Right. So like this is the thing about ADHD is you've got bursts of creativity where you can get a lot of renovation done. So if you know where you're supposed to be one month, where you're supposed to be two months, I wouldn't sort of like focus too much about, you know, where you want to be six months from now, I'd really sort of like think a little bit about what's the first thing that you've got to do and really focus on that. And then recognize that it's going to be bumpy, right? You're going to have weeks of time

where you don't get any work done. The problem is that without this external structure that's based on mutual expectations, when you lose track, there's nothing angering you to come back when you could be productive. So let's say like, you know, you screw up for a week or you're like, you're not able to focus for a week, but then week two comes around. And unless you've got something anchoring you, pulling you back, you're going to spend time like doing something else. So you're, losing these windows of productivity. And you can still do it because people with ADHD can be, there's sort of this idea of hyperfocus, right, where there's like absurd amounts of productivity for some people. And so that's the kind of thing where it's like the successful strategy is about

figuring out how can we capture those moments of productivity. And that's where setting expectations is very, very important. So this is where, like, let's start with the relationship, right? So, like, this is another kind of thing, which it's kind of interesting. But so, like, what are the expectations in the relationship? Who's going to contribute what? And, like, what, you know, what's the standard here? So, like, who's going to contribute financially? Who's going to take care of cleaning? Even in terms of cleaning, like, what does that mean? You can't use a vague term. You have to define it. What does cleaning mean? I'm supposed to keep the place clean. Well, let's think about that. Does that mean, like, sweeping every day? Does that mean mopping every day? Does that mean cleaning

the toilets every day? Like, what is like the clean, like, let's organize it. Who, what, when, where, how? What are the expectations financially? Like, okay, like, how long are we going to try this renovation stuff? What kind of progress do we want to make? Like, what are the steps of renovation? Like, let's set expectations. Because what happens in relationships is when you don't set expectations, especially if you're with someone who's neurotypical, they may not need to set out these explicit expectations because they can hold stuff in their head better. Does that make sense? So the key thing here is that you've got to put it on a piece of paper or you have to put it out in some kind of external structure. Because if you lose track of it in your mind, which happens very quickly, you've got to start over from scratch and you'll make no progress in nine months. So the expectation setting is very, very important. It's also very, very important from a relationship standpoint, right? So now you're partner knows that you may struggle. Hey, by the way, so I'm very confident that I can renovate this house, but there are going to be periods of time where it's very, very overwhelming in periods of time where I'm going to be really, really productive. Here's what I'd like to get done in the first month.

Here's what I'd like to get done in the second month, the third month, the fourth month, the fifth month, the sixth month. I'm not saying that I can necessarily stick to this, but this is where, you know, like generally speaking, it takes me one and a half times longer than what I set out to do. So this is a six-month plan that may take nine months. And let's check in regularly. Right. So then there's also an expectation around communication. This is really important if you've got ADHD or you're dating someone with ADHD.

You must set a schedule of communication. You can't just talk about things when they're a problem, which is usually how relationships work. Right? We don't talk about stuff unless it's a problem. That absolutely needs to change. You need to be so much more proactive. So, hey, can we check in once a month and see, like, how things are going? So here's why we moved across the country.

How do you think that's going? Here's where we are with renovation. Here's where we are with our relationship. Here's where we are with, like, communication. You mentioned, you know, that you don't like my tone sometimes. You know, like, so this is where expectations become very, very important. And so if we kind of go back to this for a moment, you know, I would sort of say like, okay, what are the expectations around organization?

What are the expectations around communication? What are the expectations around therapy? So if things aren't working out in six months, like what do you think about starting to see a therapist? What are the expectations around money? So if I'm moving across the country, I don't have a job and I'm focused on renovating. Are you comfortable financially supporting me? For what period of time are you comfortable, financially supporting me. You should know this, right? So I think what's happening in a lot of

this situation is I do think there are some things that you should really be careful about. So this happens a lot with people who have ADHD, which is that they need help sometimes and people want to help them, especially if you're in a relationship. So getting kicked out three separate times saying I need to find my independence. So sometimes we'll find this is somewhat of an age gap here too. There's probably a lot of. also a maturity gap. So what's the expectation there? Right. If I'm a 25-year-old and I'm dating a 17-year-old and they're moving in with me, how are they going to find their independence? Like, what's your plan for finding your independence? And why do you keep moving in? If the goal is to be independent,

like, why are we moving in with people very quickly over and over and over again? Getting kicked out is, in it for sure, but I think the other mistake in terms of, am I a magnet for these situations? Why are you moving in in the first place? That's the thing that you need to figure out. Are you a magnet for these situations? 100%. Right? And that's where we've got to be kind of careful here, because we're not sort of saying it's your fault, but you do have a hand in it. So it looks like you're in a relationship with someone who's grouted and compassionate. That's awesome. You're also growing, right? So this is something else.

that we see is like this person is learning and getting better at it, practicing self-awareness, setting boundaries better. But there's also like how are we so quickly moving in with people? And this is the other thing that we tend to see with ADHD is that a lot of times people do need support, right? So you may have difficulty keeping a job. You may need to quote unquote mooch. Where that's where like I don't really view it as mooching as long as everyone is on the same page about what each partner is bringing to the relationship. And that's where expectation setting becomes really, really important. So in terms of how to avoid this situation, I would be really, really careful.

So what we tend to look at is how the situation, so this is the other kind of key tip. When we're trying to figure out, you know, how do I keep on finding myself in this situation? We look at the situation when it starts falling apart. How do I stop getting kicked out? That's the problem. Right? That's not the problem. If you want to fix this situation, how the hell do you keep on moving in?

So, like, we've seen this in other places, too. Like, let's think about the friend zone. How do I keep on getting friends? Like, you know, like, I express my feelings for this person. I confess my love. How do I, like, how do I stay out of the friend zone? And that's sort of where it's like, it's not expressing your feelings. That's the problem.

It's what is the formation of this relationship? looking like, right? Like, how do you start to form these relationships? Do you start these relationships in a platonic way? Do you start these relationships in a professional way? Or do you start these relationships in a romantic way? And for a lot of people who get friends owned, they usually don't start them off romantically, right? They usually start them off platonically. And so you're setting an expectation. So the key thing about all these different things, if there's one thing to take away, if you're struggling with ADHD and you're having in terms of organizing, prioritizing, you know, like, if you're struggling to, like,

communicate with your partner, it comes down to really sitting down and setting good expectations. It's like thinking through stuff ahead of time and trying to externalize as much of it as you can. Because if you try to hold it in your head, that may work for neurotypical people. They may be able to hold a lot of crap in their head. But, like, the second you get distracted, it all gets disorganized. Then you have to start over from square one. And then over time, stuff piles up. The more stuff piles up, the more overwhelming you get.

Now you have to even hold more stuff in your head. So whereas it used to take you one hour to organize your mind, now it's going to take you an hour and a half. Now it's going to take you two hours. And now you've actually spent four hours working on this thing and getting nothing done today. And then it attacks on one more task for you tomorrow because you didn't get anything done today.

So then you go into the next day, and now you have five hours worth of work to do. And so like it becomes this vicious cycle. So the first thing that you've got to, got, got to, got to do is set expectations for yourself. Externalize those expectations. Write them down. Who's going to contribute what?

What are you expecting for me? How are we measuring progress in our relationship? How are we measuring progress in renovation? Because if you really think about it, people with ADHD struggle. But when they have some kind of externalizing, organizing force or structure, it helps them operate way better. Right. So that's what you've got to make for yourself.

So this is the kind of thing where if you're in 80, if you've got ADHD, you've got to be super careful because there's all the problems that you kind of struggle with from sort of a neurodiverse perspective, right? You may have difficulty organizing, prioritizing. But then there's the impact of that kind of stuff on your relationship. And then that which should be your safety net now becomes an additional source of stress. And the more that happens, the more you get traumatized, the more you get overwhelmed, the more it becomes a vicious cycle over and over and over again. And so you've got to start by like setting expectations with your partner, with yourself about what you're capable of, what amount of allowance you have, what progress looks like. And the more that you're able to set that external structure, as soon as you sort of snap back into it and you're able to be productive, if the task is laid out for you, you can actually make progress on it.