What is mourning the loss of a loved one like for people who have untreated ADHD?
I ponder this because I believe I suffer from adult ADHD, and I’m mourning the death of a very dear friend of mine, and it is boiling me apart from the inside.
Is this “typical” mourning, or is my ADHD somehow multiplying the symptoms of grief?
I’m sorry for your loss. I can sympathize with you because I lost one of my best friends years ago.
From the years of counseling I’ve participated in, I’ve learned that people experience grief in different ways. There really isn’t a better or right sequence to experience the loss of someone. You’ll go through it as you see the need to or feel.
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance are the most common. Again, these don’t have to happen in this sequence. You might experience that you jump around as time goes on, and that’s perfectly normal.
Now talking about how your possible untreated ADHD symptoms might be negatively affecting you. I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD and have experienced the loss of a best friend to suicide. One of the perks of having a ADHD brain, is that you can think about a large number of things in a given moment. But this can make you feel totally stuck and overwhelmed if you’re going through grief. The best things to do I found during my experience and some advice from trusted people, was to allow for myself to spend time to process what had happened. It’s important to reach out to others to talk about how you feel or how you’re doing. Remember that you’re not alone in experiencing grief of the death of a friend. Reach out to someone that you can trust that is going through the same event as you. This can help you feel like you’re not alone in your experience of grief, struggle(s), loneliness, etc.
It helped me very much to talk to a counselor that I knew and could feel comfortable sharing these deeper feelings and events with. If you can’t find a counselor, seek out someone close to you that would be willing and able to listen, support you and suggest options to help you through the process of going through grief.
Feel free to message me if you have a need to talk. I don’t mind talking about the harder things in life most often. And last but not least… This Too Shall Pass.
Thank you for the kind words and advice. I’ve been muddling through the stages of grief - as you say - bouncing around in no particular order - and I’ve been giving myself time to process, and I’ve reached out to the family of my deceased friend, I’ve been helping them deal with the practical sides of the loss; packing up their house, dealing with their pets, helping their kids with the loss of their mom, and also just supporting and caring and talking.
I’ve always struggled at my job to stay on task - I tend to drift off and get easily distracted, and I’ve always been able to angle that to a benefit- I’ll rapidly jump from task to task, produce results quickly on multiple things. But now this new distraction is my overwhelming sense of loss. I can’t schedule grief, and it bursts into my mind (already churning away on five different projects), and I have to try to suppress it, or step back from my desk and talk myself through it.
But it never seems to ebb completely. Always there, and any single little trigger - seeing anything that reminds me of my friend - puts me back into the misery spiral. I’m sure it’ll pass in time, and since she died (just over a month ago) I did notice things began to get a little less difficult. But then her parents asked me to take her phone and go through it and clean out any photos / references/ etc about what killed her (bad boyfriend, drug overdose) - and that process just re-opened the wound. I feel like I’m going through it all right from the moment it happened. And I find myself starting over on the grief cycle. The inability to shut it out of my mind.
What is mourning the loss of a loved one like for people who have untreated ADHD?
I ponder this because I believe I suffer from adult ADHD, and I’m mourning the death of a very dear friend of mine, and it is boiling me apart from the inside.
Is this “typical” mourning, or is my ADHD somehow multiplying the symptoms of grief?
I’m sorry for your loss. I can sympathize with you because I lost one of my best friends years ago.
From the years of counseling I’ve participated in, I’ve learned that people experience grief in different ways. There really isn’t a better or right sequence to experience the loss of someone. You’ll go through it as you see the need to or feel.
There are 5 Stages of Grief (though some believe that there are a total of 7.)
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance are the most common. Again, these don’t have to happen in this sequence. You might experience that you jump around as time goes on, and that’s perfectly normal.
Now talking about how your possible untreated ADHD symptoms might be negatively affecting you. I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD and have experienced the loss of a best friend to suicide. One of the perks of having a ADHD brain, is that you can think about a large number of things in a given moment. But this can make you feel totally stuck and overwhelmed if you’re going through grief. The best things to do I found during my experience and some advice from trusted people, was to allow for myself to spend time to process what had happened. It’s important to reach out to others to talk about how you feel or how you’re doing. Remember that you’re not alone in experiencing grief of the death of a friend. Reach out to someone that you can trust that is going through the same event as you. This can help you feel like you’re not alone in your experience of grief, struggle(s), loneliness, etc.
It helped me very much to talk to a counselor that I knew and could feel comfortable sharing these deeper feelings and events with. If you can’t find a counselor, seek out someone close to you that would be willing and able to listen, support you and suggest options to help you through the process of going through grief.
Feel free to message me if you have a need to talk. I don’t mind talking about the harder things in life most often. And last but not least… This Too Shall Pass.
Thank you for the kind words and advice. I’ve been muddling through the stages of grief - as you say - bouncing around in no particular order - and I’ve been giving myself time to process, and I’ve reached out to the family of my deceased friend, I’ve been helping them deal with the practical sides of the loss; packing up their house, dealing with their pets, helping their kids with the loss of their mom, and also just supporting and caring and talking.
I’ve always struggled at my job to stay on task - I tend to drift off and get easily distracted, and I’ve always been able to angle that to a benefit- I’ll rapidly jump from task to task, produce results quickly on multiple things. But now this new distraction is my overwhelming sense of loss. I can’t schedule grief, and it bursts into my mind (already churning away on five different projects), and I have to try to suppress it, or step back from my desk and talk myself through it.
But it never seems to ebb completely. Always there, and any single little trigger - seeing anything that reminds me of my friend - puts me back into the misery spiral. I’m sure it’ll pass in time, and since she died (just over a month ago) I did notice things began to get a little less difficult. But then her parents asked me to take her phone and go through it and clean out any photos / references/ etc about what killed her (bad boyfriend, drug overdose) - and that process just re-opened the wound. I feel like I’m going through it all right from the moment it happened. And I find myself starting over on the grief cycle. The inability to shut it out of my mind.