Breaking Generational Patterns: ADHD in Family Dynamics
In this week’s 'Wisdom' episode, we explore the emotional complexity of how ADHD manifests in various nuanced ways in our relationships and family life, and importantly, how we can improve and live better lives with this understanding.
In Chapter 7 of The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, I've written about building a life that works for you, and focusing on the things which make you feel more grounded, fulfilled, authentic and purposeful, leading to us feeling happier and more regulated in our realtionships. On today's episode, we revisit poignant conversations with relationship and family dynamic experts Melissa Orlov, a renowned marriage consultant and author and Tamara Rosier, an ADHD coach and author.
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is out now to order here🌟
What You'll Learn:
- The ADHD brain's need for dopamine and how this need for reward can strain relationships
- How genetics and early attachment shape emotional patterns and coping strategies
- How non-ADHD partners can build awareness and avoid walking on eggshells
- The importance of taking responsibility by owning emotional reactions, learning to self-soothe, and making amends
- Why self-management tools like mindfulness, movement, communication cues, and therapy help rebuild trust and connection
- The power of co-regulation: being the steady, calm presence that helps others feel safe
- Tamara’s pool analogy to explain your responsibility in managing emotions
- The emotional dynamic of overfunctioning and underfunctioning in ADHD
Timestamps:
- 04:02 - Navigating Relationships with ADHD
- 10:08 - Understanding ADHD and Emotional Regulation
- 11:35 - The Power of Co-regulation for Supporting Relationships
- 16:43 - Taking Responsibility for Emotions and Personal Growth
- 20:13 - Understanding Emotional Responsibility in Relationships
This episode offers deep insight into what’s really happening beneath the surface in ADHD-affected relationships, along with the hope, responsibility, and practical tools needed to move forward with self-responsibility, greater awareness, compassion, and emotional balance. By taking responsibility for our emotional responses and learning to communicate more effectively, we can create more compassionate and understanding family environments.
Links and Resources:
- Missed our ADHD Women’s Summer Series? Get the Perfectionism and Procrastination workshop [here].
- Order my book: The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit [here].
- Join the Waitlist for my new ADHD community-first membership launching in September [here].
- Find my popular ADHD webinars and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled women newly diagnosed with ADHD find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity.
Transcript
Hi everyone.
Speaker B:Welcome back to an ADHD Women's Wellbeing Wisdom episode.
Speaker B:And today we are talking about ADHD in relationships, in our family dynamics.
Speaker B:Now this is a conversation that is ongoing.
Speaker B:I've had many different types of conversations on the podcast about this and I'm really happy to bring back a couple of episodes with amazing, amazing experts where we talked about all of this.
Speaker B:And the first expert we have is Melissa Orlov.
Speaker B:Now, Melissa is the founder of ADHD Marriage and she's also the author of award winning books about the impact of ADHD on relationships.
Speaker B:And as a marriage consultant, Melissa helps ADHD affected couples from around the world rebalance their relationships and learn to thrive together with more understanding and compassion.
Speaker B:We talk about, I guess, navigating our relationships and what are these different challenges that we face and how can we work together to create more compassionate, regulated families.
Speaker B:It's really, really important convers.
Speaker B:I touch upon it in my new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit.
Speaker B:It's woven throughout the different chapters that we have to take responsibility for our own regulation because it's very often that many of us will have been parented by undiagnosed, neurodivergent parents who perhaps didn't have the skills and tools and resources to be able to regulate and ground themselves so they can move away from difficult moments, confrontation, rsd, emotional dysregulation and learn how to calm their nervous systems.
Speaker B:And I also talk to an amazing specialist.
Speaker B:She's been on the podcast twice.
Speaker B:It's Tamara Rosier.
Speaker B:She's written brilliant books.
Speaker B:She guides a dedicated team of coaches, therapists and speech pathologists in assisting parents, families and people as they develop a deeper understanding of themselves.
Speaker B:She's acquired these practical skills to navigate life with ADHD herself.
Speaker B:And she's written two brilliant books.
Speaker B:Your Brain's Not Broken and you, Me and Our ADHD Family.
Speaker B:So here is the, the first clip.
Speaker C:One of the myths that needs to be dispelled actually is that it's all about the adhd, because the ADHD symptoms are specific.
Speaker C:In order to have adhd, you have specific symptoms like chronic distractibility and difficulty organizing and things like that.
Speaker C:Also emotional dysregulation, often.
Speaker C:And what you also have in a relationship is the sort of human nature responses to those symptoms.
Speaker C:And so it's not just the adhd, it's also the responses to the symptoms.
Speaker C:And for example, if you misinterpret distractibility and the net result of chronic distractibility is that a person with ADHD may have a lot of difficulty actually paying attention to their partner.
Speaker C:The human response to that is to think, well, because my partner doesn't pay very much attention to me, they must not care about me, particularly if you're in, you know, any kind of conflict.
Speaker C:And that's a misinterpretation.
Speaker C:But when you have that response to it, well, my partner doesn't care about me, then there are certain behaviors that you do.
Speaker C:You might become resentful, you might try to chase after or pursue that person to pay more attention or whatever.
Speaker C:And so those responses also matter as well.
Speaker C:And so that's a really important thing for couples to understand.
Speaker C:It's about learning how to correctly interpret the adhd.
Speaker C:It's learning how to manage the ADHD so that you can be a dependable enough partner in that relationship as is, you know, as both people define it.
Speaker C:But it's also about the non ADHD partners, male or female, learning about what the symptoms mean, how they manifest, and how to respond.
Speaker C:So in the situation I just gave, if you respond to your partner by chasing after them or being angry with them or whatever, you're going to have a certain kind of struggle.
Speaker C:If you instead respond to them and say, gee, you seem particularly distracted this week and I'm feeling a little bit lonely as a result, let's go on a date.
Speaker C:That's a very different interaction and a very different outcome.
Speaker C:So some of this is having more nuance in terms of how both of you respond to it.
Speaker C:And that includes things you mentioned finding out about ADHD as an adult.
Speaker C:It includes things like grieving together over the fact that you've just spent 15 or 20 years in a situation where you didn't know any better than to respond in those very kludgy, sort of very human nature ways and that you've lost a lot of time.
Speaker C:Maybe you've, you know, most of your kids childhoods where you were fighting or something when you could have had a much more harmonious relationship.
Speaker C:Being able to grieve together about that is one part of the healing process.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's so powerful, isn't it?
Speaker B:To be able to do that together.
Speaker B:And for them to be able to.
Speaker D:Acknowledge, you know, there's other big challenges.
Speaker B:That can have huge impacts on a.
Speaker D:Relationship, such as addiction, eating, disordered eating.
Speaker B:You know, impulsive behavior, rsd, you know, rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria.
Speaker D:I think for me is quite a big one because I can see something, I look, I can look into something and really kind of like, oh my goodness, like, why has he done that?
Speaker D:Or why is he spoken to me like that?
Speaker D:Or why is he reacted like that?
Speaker D:And he's just like, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Speaker D:And even with all the awareness that I have, and I work on this like every day, I now can spot the rsd, so it's sort of like more distanced, but it doesn't take away that pain I feel at that time when I think he's not treated me nicely or spoken to me nicely or, or he's walked out the room while I'm still talking, which has a tendency to do.
Speaker D:And so it's interesting that I think awareness is so key and so helpful.
Speaker B:But we also have to give ourselves.
Speaker D:Compassion, that we still will have these tendencies.
Speaker D:And again, you know, addiction is something that I've seen in my family that's ADHD related.
Speaker D:And I, I know the impact that.
Speaker B:Can have on families and relationships.
Speaker D:And to live with that as someone.
Speaker B:That doesn't have adhd, you know, is very hard.
Speaker D:But I wonder, as people are listening to this, if they can give themselves that compassion and family members, because we see generational patterns emerging, don't we?
Speaker D:I think when we get our ADHD diagnosis and all of a sudden we realize it's genetic and maybe we've seen a parent or a grandparents or a, you know, sibling, and all of a sudden we, we piece together all the things.
Speaker D:And I wonder now that more adults are getting diagnoses later on in life, if this is our opportunity to break these patterns, these cycles that we've seen over and over in our families.
Speaker B:Is that something that you ever talk about or see in your practice?
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, it is hereditary.
Speaker C:In fact, it's more hereditary than people realize.
Speaker C:It's sort of along the same dimensions as hair color hereditary.
Speaker C:You know, when I, when I run into a couple, I say, okay, so whose parents?
Speaker C:You know, and they, because the parents almost always had undiagnosed ADHD issues.
Speaker C:They had the classic.
Speaker C:Often had the classic struggles or they had a very disorganized life, including often low levels of attachment because of the distractibility.
Speaker C:And so there's not this role model of sort of what a healthy relationship looks like, that that the partner brings in, which doesn't mean the non ADHD partner doesn't have similar issues.
Speaker C:You have to have ADHD to have an alcoholic in the family or something else like that.
Speaker C:But yeah, they, There are these generational things.
Speaker C:You do have the opportunity to change the way things go.
Speaker C:I would say one of the most important thing.
Speaker C:There are a couple of different patterns that are particularly important.
Speaker C:One of them is dealing with the dysregulation that you're talking about.
Speaker C:So if you think of the ADHD brain as a reward focused brain, in other words, the chemistry of that brain seeks satisfaction for things that feel rewarding.
Speaker C:And that's one of the reasons why you have addiction issues and compulsive disorders and things like that.
Speaker C:It's also extremely highly emotional.
Speaker C:And as I went to a conference at one point, the keynote speaker was talking about how the ADHD brain is wired to create huge amounts of emotional content and has very weak breaks on that content.
Speaker C:Ned Hallowell talks about it as a race car brain and bicycle brakes.
Speaker C:It's very much like that.
Speaker C:That can be extremely destabilizing for both partners.
Speaker C:You bring up how painful it is for you to have these feelings when you're in those highly charged emotional moments and you go to them.
Speaker C:If you're like most other people with adhd, very, very quickly and intensely, you feel those things that pain intensely.
Speaker C:And if you associate that with your partner, then things can go south pretty, pretty fast.
Speaker C:You start to want to avoid your partner because as a reward focused brain, you avoid things that don't feel good and so that people can run into that.
Speaker C:The other thing that I see a lot is a quick move to rage.
Speaker C:So this is another part of rage or defensiveness.
Speaker C:This is another part of that emotional dysregulation.
Speaker C:And so the non ADHD partner ends up sort of walking on eggshells all the time because they don't know what's going to set you off.
Speaker C:And so they self edit.
Speaker C:They end up sort of saying, well, okay, if I talk about this, my partner's maybe going to get enraged, so I'm not going to talk about that.
Speaker C:But then they don't end up getting out of the relationship what they want to get.
Speaker C:And so the relationship, it all contributes to this struggle.
Speaker C:So one of the things that it's really important for a person with ADHD to do is really work on the emotional management, the management of the anger, the quick ramp up any kind of rage they might feel.
Speaker C:Your partner doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of that.
Speaker C:Even if you have trouble managing it, there are ways to do it.
Speaker C:You can go work with a therapist.
Speaker C:The cognitive behavioral therapy or sometimes the therapies that work with trauma can be very useful for that.
Speaker C:Self management through, say, mindfulness work.
Speaker C:Exercise is a great mood stabilizer.
Speaker C:You can set up Verbal cues with your partner on.
Speaker C:If you start to look as if you're about to get enraged, like if you start to get really irritable or something and you're starting your voice is changing tenor and you're getting really agitated, you can have a verbal cue in place which allows the two of you to get s separated from each other in terms of distance, physical distance, so that you don't say things that you regret or get any further revved up.
Speaker C:There are lots of things you can do and it's a huge priority for couples to start to manage the emotional extremities of the relationship for both partners.
Speaker B:Thank you so much to Melissa Orlov.
Speaker D:For that great clip.
Speaker B:And now here's some more wisdom.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker B:On ADHD relationships with my previous guest, Tamra Rosier.
Speaker D:When I recognized, I understood co regulation, which means that, and forgive me if I'm sort of like, you know, simplifying it too much, but it's when an adult is the calm, the safe, the capable kind of reliable one, bringing sort of like an energy to the family.
Speaker D:So the family and the children then kind of feed off that energy.
Speaker B:Whereas if I, we were the parent.
Speaker D:That just brings shouting and, you know, all sorts of other chaotic emotions and behaviors and up and down moods and all of that, then that's going to have an impact on all the nervous systems in the house.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Can I share the metaphor that I use in the book about this?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because this is exactly so, you know, you said, I apologize if I've oversimplify this.
Speaker A:I'm like, well, wait till she hears this metaphor.
Speaker A:This oversimplifies it.
Speaker A:But I wanted to give my readers an idea in a metaphor for this.
Speaker A:It's a metaphor that they could work with in their family.
Speaker A:So I said, imagine a pool.
Speaker A:And the pool is where all your big emotions are.
Speaker A:Your deep emotions are in this pool.
Speaker A:Joy, deep joy, deep sadness, deep anger.
Speaker A:They're all in this pool.
Speaker A:Now, the pool is not a bad place, but it's intense emotion.
Speaker A:Do we want to go in there all the time for that?
Speaker A:Is that good?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Those of us with, with adhd, and I love how you talk about your adhd, we don't have a lifeguard on duty and we don't have a fence around our pool.
Speaker A:So we go through our day, la la la la la.
Speaker A:And sometimes we're like, whoa, we fall into our pool.
Speaker A:And then what happens next is very important.
Speaker A:Am I going to splash other people, pull other people into my pool?
Speaker A:In families, sometimes there's that brother who will walk by his sister and just push her in the pool.
Speaker A:Metaphorically or physically, sometimes even.
Speaker A:And so it's a way to look at ourselves and what we're doing now.
Speaker A:Once you're in the pool, I teach families it is your responsibility and your responsibility alone to get out of the pool.
Speaker A:And so really, if you can't say so and so push me in the pool.
Speaker A:Well, honey, why were you so close to the pool?
Speaker A:Of course he's going to try to push you in the pool.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:And you know, I'll deal with brother, but I don't want you to not take responsibility.
Speaker A:Like, you fell into the pool.
Speaker A:And so falling into the pool is our responsibility.
Speaker A:And then we need to learn what to do.
Speaker A:We need to learn to swim to the side.
Speaker A:Do we need to get, like, a flotation device?
Speaker A:We call them noodles.
Speaker A:You know, those.
Speaker A:I don't know if you guys have those foam noodles.
Speaker A:Do you need to get a noodle to float on for a second and just feel the emotion?
Speaker A:You need to swim to the other side.
Speaker A:And then when you get out, that's when you do the debrief.
Speaker A:That's when you make amends.
Speaker A:So if it's a parent with a child, you would help the child understand the pool story.
Speaker A:Like, hey, we gotta walk through the pool story.
Speaker A:What happened?
Speaker A:How did.
Speaker A:How did you get into that pool?
Speaker A:Not why, how.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:What happened?
Speaker A:What could have happened?
Speaker A:Instead, how'd you get yourself out of the pool?
Speaker A:Because that's good.
Speaker A:That's worth talking about.
Speaker A:Well, now, what do we know about the pool that we didn't know before?
Speaker A:And so that's the pool.
Speaker A:And so with adults, you're saying, like, listen, I'm already metaphorically in the pool.
Speaker A:I'm picking up my kids, they're talking, and I'm just, like, doing the backstroke in my own pool right now.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Or maybe you're saying my toes are just curled over the edge because I could fall in any second.
Speaker A:And so knowing our proximity to the pool is very important for families.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think it's a brilliant analogy.
Speaker D:And I. I love all your analogies.
Speaker D:That's like, for me, simplification is my kind of go to.
Speaker D:Because I'm not a scientist and I'm.
Speaker B:Not a doctor and I'm not a therapist.
Speaker D:I just like to be able to understand everything in the most practical way, to apply it to daily situations, because that's all we're doing.
Speaker D:We're just literally, it's like we're trying to get through the day.
Speaker D:And we're also, we're also now being, you know, I specifically deal with women who are mostly been diagnosed later on in life who are gaining this understanding finally of their brains and who are finally understanding that they're not broken and they are wanting to be able to make amends and also break family cycles and look back at the way they were parented and how maybe they were treated and spoke to themselves and all these different kind of like mixes of lots of emotions and sadness and all of that.
Speaker D:And they are wanting to make big changes so they can live and thrive and actually sort of work with their brain and no longer be kind of totally derailed by it.
Speaker D:So I think that this, this pool analogy is fantastic.
Speaker D:I also wanted to ask you what you said earlier on about the beginning of your book.
Speaker D:And it has to be about we have to take responsibility for ourselves, we have to work on ourselves.
Speaker D:And actually it's a bit of a. I mean, I wouldn't know if it's a taboo subject, but I really believe in this.
Speaker D:I think we have to take responsibility.
Speaker D:I think that, yes, we can discover we've got ADHD and we can be like, oh my goodness, why?
Speaker D:You know, how did I get through life?
Speaker D:And no one, you know, told me about it.
Speaker D:I've been misdiagnosed.
Speaker D:I've all this awful internal dialogue and I've had the external criticism and all of this.
Speaker D:And they can be very much a woe is me victim like mentality, which I think is okay for a little while to sit in.
Speaker D:But I am a big believer that we do have to take responsibility and we have to make changes and work on self development, evolution and have a growth mindset.
Speaker D:Because I also know a lot of people who sadly just have this very rigid stuck mindset and go, oh, you're reading another self development book.
Speaker D:Oh, you're doing another course.
Speaker D:Just, just get over it type thing.
Speaker D:And I wondered what you thought about that.
Speaker D:Like when we find out we've got adhd.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker D:Working on us, about working on ourselves.
Speaker A:So there's a process.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I love the work you do with women because, you know, there a lot of the women come to you go, what could I have done in my life had I known this?
Speaker A:So we have to give them that grieving period.
Speaker A:They're grieving and I love that you give that space for them.
Speaker A:That's okay.
Speaker A:And then there's also time to go, all right, I'm going to own my space.
Speaker A:And by the way, guys, I'm late to this game.
Speaker A:I am 56 years old at the time of this recording, and I'm still learning all this.
Speaker A:So when you talk, please don't think.
Speaker A:Please don't think I have anything together.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker D:Likewise.
Speaker A:Yeah, this book was challenging for me to write and convicting for me to write.
Speaker A:But I. I do want to be the kind of person who owns her own energy.
Speaker A:And whether I like it or not, if I walk into the room and I have a sour attitude that will rub off on other people, now I can go, well, it shouldn't.
Speaker A:Well, too bad.
Speaker A:That's how humans are made.
Speaker A:So I need to take responsibility.
Speaker A:A lot of ADHD people, we have emotional dysregulation, and so sometimes we can sour on a day.
Speaker A:We're like, this day just is horrible.
Speaker A:Well, okay, but part taking responsibility is that will affect people around me, and that's okay.
Speaker A:You know, that doesn't mean you have to pretend to be happy.
Speaker A:That's not, I'm not talking about inauthenticity.
Speaker A:I'm saying, put yourself in time out, then do something to help you.
Speaker A:I think you use emotional freedom tapping, too.
Speaker A:I'll do that.
Speaker A:I'll do other things because I know sometimes I'm not good for people and sometimes I'll just say, hey, I'm in a hard space right now.
Speaker C:I don't.
Speaker D:I.
Speaker A:This is kind of your warning and not warning like, I'm gonna hurt you, but just, I want you to understand where I am.
Speaker A:I'm kind of not great right now, but that's still me taking responsibility.
Speaker D:So.
Speaker B:I hope you enjoyed listening to this shorter episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.
Speaker B:I've called it the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Wisdom.
Speaker B:Because I believe there's so much wisdom in the guests that I have on and their insights.
Speaker B:So sometimes we just need that little bit of a reminder.
Speaker B:And I hope that has helped you today and look forward to seeing you back on the brand new episode on Thursday.
Speaker B:Have a good rest of your week.
