Jennifer & Mike

Jennifer (non-ADHD) and Mike (ADHD)

Jennifer was very frustrated with Mike for his compulsive spending habits. He would regularly have parcels arrive at their home from online retailers, sometimes for items they already had. Mike would go through cycles of being obsessively interested in a topic or hobby, purchase equipment or tools relating to that interest, and later pack it away in a box in their garage, or simply discard it. Mike would become defensive about the behaviour and often sought to hide what he was doing, and the two were regularly in conflict about it.

In sessions, we worked with Jennifer and Mike to help re-frame their understanding of the behaviour and made changes which helped reduce their conflict. By the conclusion of our work, what Jennifer previously viewed as impulsive, inconsiderate and ignoring of her frustration, was better understood more as a symptom of Mike’s impulsive ADHD. Mike was more able to see his behaviour not only, as he had said during our sessions as “I’m someone with a lot of interests”, but rather as a series of impulses for which the cumulative effect of Jennifer’s frustrations, and the boxes of various items in their garage, was the net result.

Through their adjusted understanding of the other’s experience, they were able to mutually support each other as we sought to use a tool to help curtail Mike’s impulsive spending. Jennifer later commented that while frustrations sometimes flared up, she better understood the context of Mike’s behaviour, and understood he was well-intentioned, not setting out to upset her, and as we had talked about in our sessions, that Mike’s attempts at change were likely to have at least some hiccups along the way. This new openness helped them work with a particular tool suggested in the sessions, which had significantly reduced Mike’s spending and attempts to hide the behaviour.