Something's gotta give

[irrationalsense]

Ok. Here's the sitch top level:

I'm a full time working mum. On the outside I've got it all! The career, the husband the house the kids the friends , the dog, and the joy of small pleasures!

But I have ptsd/depression/anxiety from past abusive relationship with child's father. (Under control and managed carefully)
Was single mum to DD so worked hard to afford to give her everything (that you can reasonably buy) and did well (for me based on my low expectations).
Found love, remarried, gained step kids but managed the shit show that initially brings and we all get on.

But then all of a sudden over last month:

• husband went to work overseas on 2/3yr contract (big pic: pay off mortgage, retire early)
• his kids grown up, so still visit me and we have good times but live with their mum round the corner who I also get on with.
• I got diagnosed with adhd because secretly I've struggled my whole life and lived inside a carefully constructed persona that I've refined after several calamities.
• start titrating on adhd meds: feel mixed bag of stuff. Calm and focus for first time. Rage and regret I struggled 41 yrs to get here.
• sudden overload on managing house I hadn't expected cus husband knows I'm a bit... unusual but accommodated me, now not here.
• feminist so refuse to acknowledge I need him and I CAN COPE WITH ANYTHING OK
• my daughter 12yo has complex mental health issues I've struggled to access help for (ex blocking it, then poor CAMHS support, then refusal from private clinic cus it's too complex, generally unhelpful exp with school and CAMHS).
• and discover she self harmed

Suddenly I realise the control and success I thought I had was illusion. In shock.

My DD really wants help and things to change because it's so unbearable.
I'm not in my best most resilient place cus med titrating.
We've done the sensible thing and gone back to CAHMS and will now hopefully get better help.

But. DD needs a present and attentive mum who can actually parent rather than get by (she's not neglected but I realise she needs more support now than her peers same age).

DH says take some unpaid leave to focus on her, maybe go part time, we can manage financially.

My heart says that's sensible but head says "a successful man would never have to give up career for their child!" And "if I give up my financial independence what if he turns out like the last one who coercively controlled me?"....

It's messy and complex and lots of themes so I did not know where to start

• I need to manage my own Adhd and issues
• I need to maybe go big guns and just pay to get DD adhd diagnosis (rule it on our out), therapy etc all separately so no consultation says "too complex back to CAHMS you must go" or stay with CAHMS and school and fight it out
• I really love my job because it makes me feel worthy and confident and independent and it brings me joy but yes that's all selfish if your child needs you
• and I blatantly can't manage house and dog and life admin etc at the moment because I can't think straight and wander about permanently forgetting what I am supposed to do.

I can't see the wood for the trees. I can't think straight. I need to get a grip and deal with this but I'm in shock (maybe edged myself to a burnout) just generally not functioning quite as I need to right now .

So do I have to take a few months unpaid carers leave to sort this? Is that really the only way out of this intense bloody mess that I've seemingly fallen into so slowly and incrementally that I didn't know it was happening.

Ok that was a v long story. I'm feeling like shit. I don't even know if it makes sense or is a fair balanced account. I'm in the pit of the well.

Just want to send you a hug @irrationalsense and hopefully it gives this thread a bump so you get some responses.

Your comment "I got diagnosed with adhd because secretly I've struggled my whole life and lived inside a carefully constructed persona that I've refined after several calamities" really resonates with me.

I'm 53 and was only diagnosed a few weeks ago but OMG it really explains everything. I feel a mix of relief and anger and frustration and just utter sadness about how different my life could have been. I'm struggling to get my head round it and right now I'm on sick leave with "severe depression and severe anxiety" and the ADHD is definitely a contributing factor. I haven't started titration yet.

My advice to you would be don't take leave or go part time as it sounds like your career and independence are important to you - and why should it be the woman who always has to do this? But I'm aware that I'm probably not the best person to give advice as I'm fiercely independent and part of the reason for my current mental health issues is the additional pressure my ADHD is putting on my career.

Thank you @HundredMilesAnHour I often say I want to send people hugs and I always feel useless doing so or not sure how it is received. I can confirm I received the hug and it was nice and in that moment make me feel less alone and connected to humanity

@HundredMilesAnHour I'm new on these chat things. You mention about engaging to boost the post. Maybe it's the wrong forum or too long or not specific enough as well.

It would be nice to get ppls thoughts or find anyone who's been through similar. But I'm not bothered about views and impressions etc. I work in digital marketing and it sickens me the way ppl game social media algorithms to get attention. I don't want to be that person...

@irrationalsense I don't think the Neurodiverse board gets lots of traffic (relative to some of the other boards). You could ask the moderators to move this to Chat or General Health? The downside is that you may potentially get lots of comments from people who don't know much (if anything) about ADHD and sometimes that can be very frustrating / upsetting (at some of the ignorance or stigma around ADHD).

Thank you, that's the risk isn't it. I don't think I can actually take that right now. Maybe the right question is to be more specific. That was an emotional brain dump.

A disabled working man, newly-diagnosed and struggling to adjust to medication to the extent that it affected his ability to parent his own child, would go on sick leave. I've seen it happen.

You would not be a bad feminist for letting your husband support you for a short while, nor for cutting back on work for a while whilst you adjust to your medication and come to terms with your recent diagnosis. Model to your daughter that "strong woman" doesn't mean "superhuman". Model to your daughter that it's OK to put your health ahead of your career.

You are not just a woman, you are also a disabled person. Accept help as the disabled person who needs it right now that you are. Frame time off, shorter hours, whatever you need as a reasonable adjustment for your disability, not as a weakness.

1980s "power suit feminism" has a lot to answer for.

Model to your daughter that it's OK to put your health ahead of your career.

I'm going to disagree with this. The OP has clearly stated how much she enjoys her job and how it boosts her confidence and makes her feel worthy and confident. It's the one area that she's getting dopamine from! Take this away and the OP is left with all the stresses, with the overseas DH not there to support her, and this could quickly turn into a crumbling House of Cards and have a significant impact on the OP's mental health.

@irrationalsense I'd suggest you go down the private route with your DD, and/or consider getting yourself a psychotherapist who has experience of ADHD who can give YOU some support. I had 6 sessions with a psychotherapist who's a coach for people with ADHD and our weekly sessions helped me immensely. It made a big difference to me when I was going through a very tough time (struggling with cognitive issues caused by long Covid, plus peri-sodding menopause as well as going through a private ADHD assessment while my ADHD was the worst it's ever been while trying to hang on to a 'big job' with no support from family or friends)

Sorry to hear this, OP. Have been in similar position but wth a slightly older DC.

My thoughts would be:

Supporting a child with serious issue like self-harm is possibly one of the hardest and most painful situations to be in in life. Really it is. Be kind to yourself - it's very stressful and you are doing well. It takes huge amounts of personal resources to support a child in this state and at the same time navigate school and health services to try and get their needs met. The energy required, and stress involved, are really considerable and lead to many parents struggling with their own mental health. So objectively, these are circumstances that any parent would find hard - and you are doing really well.

Unfortunately, even if you throw money at private assessment/treatment (which may be a good idea) I am guessing this is likely to be something you are dealing with in the medium - long term?

So whilst it could make sense to take some time off during titration, you are unlikely to shift the dial significantly with DC in the short term.

So the question probably is, what do you most need to nurture your own sense of resilience to cope with this? If work is your happy place, stay there. Have you got income to throw at a cleaner/dog walking service, to ease some of the household pressure? Are there any local support groups for parents supporting children with similar issues - it can be very helpful to understand you are not alone and that other people, ND and NT, are finding things very challenging. Do you have any counselling or therapy, or access to a listening service, just to help cope with the distress of parenting a child who is self harming?

Very best wishes

No. Men who don't pully their weight have a lot to answer for.

*pull

Thank you @VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia @coldcouture and @HundredMilesAnHour for all being so gentle on me. I just read another thread which was a bit more controversial in another part of the site and the woman got torn to shreds, way beyond what she deserves. Terrifying.

Yes all good points. Food for thoughts. I'm not going to make any rash decisions. I've been in therapy most of my life grappling with the pain of humanity and it's given me a good tool box to manage my emotions. I think based on that I need to do some yoga and meditation and still my mind and mitigate the anxiety in my chest.

I feel more positive today. I think a holistic approach is required. Both medical stuff and changes at home etc. there is no silver bullet.

It does surprise me how reluctant schools and NHS are to help
With adhd though. Do you think it's just that if they label it they got to have the funds to invest in it. So cheaper to make it really bloody hard and delay so long that you give up and go away? Also the waitlist doesn't help. Article in the news today about adults waiting 5 years to see someone about adhd.

I will keep on keeping on. I love her, she's worth it

They both have a lot to answer for.

Both the "power suit feminists" and the lazy men undervalue housework and childcare, but for different reasons. The end result is the same: exhausted mothers doing a second unpaid shift at home after their paid shift at work ends.

What are you going to cut back on?
Something has to give, and it had better not be your health or your daughter's health nor your relationship because they are important. What are your priorities?

So:
job (cut back on hours or take leave?)
House? (Get cleaner, gardener, lower standards a bit,etc)
Cooking?(buy in food that is ready to go either those recipe boxes or ready chopped veg or those trays of veg you just bung in the oven etc)
Dog? Dog walker, temporary foster care for dog? (Getting out walking does often help with mental health so keep some of that)

If you keep going until you burn out it is going to take longer to recover.

Some personal thoughts:
Your value does not lie in your work nor what you get done. You are intrinsically valuable because you are human. You don't have to do it all. You can't. No-one can.

You probably need time to adjust to your diagnosis. Post diagnosis support may be helpful.

Marriage is a partnership. If he has to carry the financial load for a bit, that's ok. It doesn't make you less of a person or a failed feminist.
Feminism isn't there to make women do it all... it's there to make women equal to men (women are equal to men already but are not treated as such) and give them choices. Who benefits from women doing it all? It ain't going to be the women that's for sure!

Be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up for not being perfect. No-one is.

Maybe shift your mindset to think more in terms of practicality than the modern brand of feminism that says you must always be independent in all things?

I've long considered that a well-functioning marriage means that being dependent on each other isn't necessarily a bad thing - in fact, it's part of the point...two people coming together to be more than the sum of the parts. Certainly my other half and I wouldn't be able to cope with life nearly as well without the other, and we're absolutely happy this way. We lean on each other, we fill in the gaps the other can't, and the standard joke is that between us we make a whole, functioning person. It's not far from the truth.

The way I read your account is...you're at breaking point trying to do it all and have it all, and your personal circumstances and history are mounting up to dictate that - at some point - you won't be able to, if you don't make a positive decision fairly quickly.

At this point, the choice would appear to be:

• Husband ditches the lucrative contract and comes home to help, with the cost being to write off the big-picture chance to pay off the mortgage.
• You take some unpaid leave not just to get DD on the right track, but also to get your own "self" in order in the context of your new world view, the cost being a) it conflicts with your ideology, and b) potential issues on return to work.

I'm obviously not counting "carry on and try to muddle through", because that doesn't seem like a remotely safe option for anybody involved.

Personally, seeing it from the outside, it seems to me that as long as you can have some semblance of a guarantee that your job is safe and your return to work would be as smooth as it can be, the second option is by far the more attractive one. Not least because even if you went for the first option, you would still have the issues of integrating your self-discovery, getting used to the meds etc while trying to manage work (which is not the easiest thing to do) and appear to the world like everything's tickety-boo.

Your husband's happy to support you financially while you're resetting your world too, which is no small thing; removing the stress of needing to earn is huge. Few people have the option of dropping an income for this, and I would certainly have jumped at the chance when I went on the autism discovery journey.

I'm sure you can see which option I'd be leaning towards, in what I know of your position ;)

@BlackeyedSusan and @ntmdino why do I have enormous affection for everyone who has replied?! The time, honesty and absolute purity of the content - so selfless and honest.

I have done a lot of thinking and processing since I posted this. At the time I was frankly in denial. I honestly don't know what I thought. But since then I have presented as someone with burnout. I've been signed off work sick for a month minimum. I can think straight but I am forgetting everything, having periods of sitting and staring into space off with all my thoughts with no concept of time. Can't relax enough to pass urine. Panic attacks. Flashbacks to my childhood, things I had forgotten and didn't want to remember. Overthinking. I wouldn't say paranoia but intense mistrust of everyone.

I feel like I'm intelligent yet so naïve and sometimes absolutely idiotic. My whole life people have tricked and manipulated me because I was always trusting. My whole life I thought that if things were hard, then it's me that's the problem so I would just struggle on with the impossible. And now I feel like all I can see is people and their agendas. People talk utter crap and project and lie and allow their own insecurities dictate their actions and i'm sick of it. Friends I thought were great I now see them saying unhelpful things projecting things on me that don't fit me. I hear my husband on the phone pretending he's not panicking but he'll pick up on one small think I say and take that as confirmation I'm totally incapable of looking after myself. Colleagues as I tell them I'm hanging to take some sick leave plotting and calculating how they can use this to their advantage.

I think the stuff around not wanting to leave work was me in a blind panic. In my last relationship I was coercively controlled, financially and physically abused. And isolated by him. I've clearly equated my financial independence with healthy boundaries in my relationship. If I don't earn they I feel like he owns me, I owe him, that it makes me his house slave. There is no evidence to suggest my husband is anything but a good man, but then I go "a ha! But you've only known him while you've been financially independent...this is where coercion starts". All very irrational and a bit mad yet only based on real things that happened. I also grew up in a poor one parent home so the first 30 yrs of my life I was permanently broke. Lots of stuff there which says to me "back to therapy you must go".

I need to process. Look after me and my girl. And sort shit out. This is my draft plan:

1. Sick leave for as long as I am feeling this level of internal unrest. I am protected and work for a big multi national and have the support to take it. Then as much unpaid leave as possible. This could cover a max period of 9 months if I use up full 6 month sick policy. (Not sure I dare)
2. Immediate help for DD: go big on research, stick with CAMHS for now while also exploring what's available privately.
3. Focusing on my health and well-being so I can role model - think someone said this earlier. But I can't expect DD to do anything I'm not doing for me.
4. Mental health support/adhd coaching, therapy for me to come to terms with all the buried horrors.
5. Come sept go all guns blazing in terms of getting the school to step up and help DD.

And that's my time accounted for. Work has simply got to go for a while. I'm going to have to just trust my husband, trust I will have time for all the work again soon enough; and take that leap into the unknown.

And who knows what's next. Maybe this is just the start of a new chapter. I'm no longer afraid and ready to face the demons, uphold my own integrity, work on my trust, and trust that my husband is the man he seems and stop being so bloody mal-adapted.

Full of typos. I'm not good at doing this typing on phone. Hope you get the gist. I am normally able to string complex sentences together using grammar and punctuation and everything! Just not right now.

I hope I don't sound like a spoiled brat. I'm incredibly lucky to be able to take this time out. I'm sure from the outside it was a no brainer that work has to go for a short while. But I was unable to see the wood for the trees.

You don't. You're just taking advantage of the opportunities you have; yes, you're in a relatively privileged position as regards finances and work, but to my mind (as someone who doesn't have that privilege) squandering it by not using the opportunity would be far worse.

Look after yourself, and don't pre-judge anything in terms of how long you need to take doing it :)

@irrationalsense This is the company who I used for my ADHD coaching - they were fantastic. I was actually referred to them as I had cognitive issues (brain fog & memory loss) due to long Covid and they assessed what adjustments could help me back at work and during the assessment, their psychologist picked up that I might also have ADHD. I've since had a formal diagnosis confirmed but it impressed me how quickly Lexxic picked it up. Their coaching has been a huge help. Absolutely fantastic (and I'm not easily impressed).

https://lexxic.com/

@ntmdino thank you. That actually helps me see it differently.

@HundredMilesAnHour omg thank you fantastic. I will get on to them pronto.