By Jeff Copper, MBA, PCC, PCAC, CPCC, ACG – July 3, 2023
ADHD relationships can spiral out of control and end up in hurtful conversations. Is that an outcome you will really want? How do you stop these interactions that only end up damaging your relationships? Once the damage is done, how do you repair or rebuild the trust? It’s not just by saying you’ll do better or you’ll try harder. You really have to get at the dynamics of the relationship and then work to understand each other. That’s what you need to develop conflict intimacy.
Conflict intimacy is the skill set that partners use to talk with each other non-aggressively and to listen to each other non-defensively. Conflict Intimacy can be learned and it can lead you into affection, closeness, and intimacy. But it’s not an easy process; it takes effort, patience, and a willingness to make it work.
If you want to save or simply improve your relationships, watch my video with ADHD marriage consultant Melissa Orlov, titled “ADHD Relationships: Hurtful Conversations.” Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/2eTJXrV8I6c
TRANSCRIPT:
Jeff Copper: Welcome everybody to this edition of Attention Talk Video. I’m your host, attention and ADHD coach, Jeff Copper. And we’re here today with Melissa Orlov, an ADHD marriage consultant. Melissa, welcome to the show.
Melissa Orlov: Thanks so much. I’m happy to be talking to you.
Jeff Copper: Melissa’s by far my favorite person to talk on this particular topic. We’ve done lots of videos on ADHD, marriage and relationships. And today we want to talk about hurtful conversations?
Melissa Orlov: Yep.
Jeff Copper: Tell me about that a little bit. What is a hurtful conversation?
Melissa Orlov: Well probably, for the people who are watching this, I actually don’t need to define that.
Jeff Copper: Okay. All right, all right, all right.
Melissa Orlov: There are lots of them. But so for example, not feeling like your partner’s listening to you or being dismissed or perhaps having a person that’s getting into a rage or is being completely overcome by emotion, is not really working on the issues. It becomes very personal.
Jeff Copper: You’re so articulate when you describe that. I’m like, why did I ask that question? So if you’re watching, we’re speaking to you. So from your perspective and working with people, tell me about how you deal with that or how you work with couples on it.
Melissa Orlov: Well, I mean, first of all, you have to understand that a lot of times these very hurtful conversations are covering up something that’s underneath that is a much bigger issue. For example, not feeling respected or not feeling as if your partner is really accepting some of the issues that you have and not knowing how to get around those things.
But then the question is, okay, so you have these huge hurtful conversations. What do you do about them in order to be able to heal again? And that process is really one of going through and starting to, first of all, you have to identify what some of the key issues are. Lots of times in ADHD impacted relationships, it has to do with ADHD symptoms that are there and then responses to those symptoms. So both partners are implicated in the hurt.
Jeff Copper: Yes, yes.
Melissa Orlov: So if I were feeling hurt, for example, I would still have to look at myself and say, how am I contributing to that interaction that’s creating that?
Jeff Copper: Yeah.
Melissa Orlov: But in any event, then you go, so you start to look at, okay, how do we manage the ADHD better? How do we manage the responses to those symptoms better to calm the relationship down? And there are also other things that you can do to sort of interrupt some of these hurtful episodes.
Jeff Copper: Yep.
Melissa Orlov: You and I have talked before about flooding, for example.
Jeff Copper: Yep, yep, yep.
Melissa Orlov: And that’s one where your brain, you get into a rage. You get completely emotionally overwhelmed. The way to interrupt that so that you don’t cause the hurt in the first place is to use a verbal cue to stop that. As soon as you start to feel yourself ramping up, you stop it before you get into it. There are a lot of tactics that are just like that.
Jeff Copper: You said something that I just want to go back and highlight a little bit. And you said it’s a process. And I think that it’s not an outcome, it’s not a snapshot, it’s like a moving picture. It takes a period of time to work through this. And I know you do a lot of work with couples to help them through this process and you’ve got a lot of tools. And to me, I want to emphasize that a little bit because you don’t walk in. It is a process and you need to be patient. Is that accurate?
Melissa Orlov: It is accurate. I mean, hurt takes a long time to overcome among other things. You stop trusting your partner if you have been hurt by that partner a lot. And trust takes a long time to rebuild, but you don’t rebuild it by just saying, okay, I’m going to try harder. You really have to get at what are the dynamics of the ADHD relationship or the ADHD impacted relationship, and then start to smooth it out and understand each other. I’ve been doing a lot of work lately with talking to people about what I call, well, it’s not what I call, what’s called conflict intimacy.
Jeff Copper: Okay.
Melissa Orlov: And conflict intimacy is developing the skillset so that partners will talk with each other non aggressively and listen to each other non defensively. And part of the reason I focus on that so much is that once you develop that skill, and literally it is a skillset so you can learn it, that then leads you into affection and closeness and intimacy. And those are the kinds of things that you need in your relationship to get past the hurt.
Jeff Copper: One of the reasons I’m such a fan of Melissa is embedded in this. So I’ve talked so much ADHD as a self-regulation issue and being able to pause and stop and override this and do this is a process. And I love the tools and stuff that you talk about to do that because it’s really, it’s important and I love you always have a path and you have some tools to kind of lead them through it.
Melissa Orlov: Thank you. I do. And there’s one more thing. Can I add one more thing? It’s okay?
Jeff Copper: Yeah, please.
Melissa Orlov: So there’s also a lot of work that John Gottman has done on how to have good fights and also very importantly, how to repair from fights. And I would urge people to look into that work as well because his research shows that is not the number of fights that you have. It’s how you repair from those fights that helps you start to heal. So there are lots of different strategies that he offers too.
Jeff Copper: Back to process is how you heal from that process, which is really important.
Melissa Orlov: Right.
Jeff Copper: So Melissa, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Melissa Orlov: You’re welcome.
Jeff Copper: We hope you enjoyed this edition. If you’ve enjoyed this and others, please subscribe to our channel. We’ll release a new tip each week. Take care.