Episode 71 – 7 Brutally Honest Reasons ADHD Mums Stay Silent About the Mental Load [Part 2]

Jane McFadden:

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Grab your copy now at adhdmums.com.au and all of the links will be in the show notes.

Hello and welcome to the next episode of ADHD Mums. Today’s episode is on the unspoken gendered mental load in partnerships and why it feels impossible to make change.

We bring light to it, we talk about it, but yet it’s still there. But there’s reasons why I think as women or as mums, we have stopped mentioning, we have stopped speaking about it, we stopped addressing it. And what are the reasons behind neurodivergent women taking on this load and continuing to burn out over and over again? Why do we do this?

In this episode, I am going to talk about stereotypical relationships with a heterosexual couple. I’m doing that out of ease because it would make the episode really difficult and long-winded if I talked about every single different type of relationship. If I’m saying dad and mum, I’m just trying to differentiate between dad and mum and I’m talking more about stereotypical that dad’s working, the mum’s working part-time or full-time and she has more of a load.

So when I’m talking about mum and dad, I’m absolutely aware that there is more than one way to have a family in this country and there should be. But you can interchange dad and mum to mum and mum or however your relationship looks.

What are some reasons that neurodivergent mums don’t say anything about the unspoken gendered mental load?

First one is fear of dismissal or defensiveness. When ADHD mums avoid speaking up, there’s often a past interaction where their concerns were met with defensiveness or maybe they were invalidated. But why does defensiveness occur?

I see this in the Facebook group all the time. Women talk about this where partners might feel attacked because the discussion kind of triggers off their own insecurities perhaps. If the ADHD mum waits until they’re quite resentful or angry and blows up and says, “I do everything around here,” this can then be interpreted as an accusation even if it’s not the intent and the delivery of that can be quite angry.

And if you fire off in anger, you probably will get not as good a result from a partner. So if you’ve blown up and they’ve blown up and it’s been a huge argument, you may be less likely to bring that up again. So you might be fearful of dismissal, fear of defensiveness from your partner and fear of conflict.

So I wanted to make sure that if this is you and you’re thinking, “Oh, that’s what I do,” quick one from me is to shift the framing of the way that you’re delivering that. So instead of saying “You don’t help enough,” you might want to look at saying “I feel overwhelmed and I’d love to find ways that we can share the load.”

This subtle shift lowers the defensiveness and invites collaboration rather than criticism. So we want to look at “we” language—how can we make it work better for us—as opposed to “I,” “you,” and blame. That’s just a quick one from me there, but we can go into the strategies in the next episode.

Second one is avoiding conflict or emotional overwhelm. Sometimes emotional regulation can be an issue for ADHD mums and their partners. The emotional intensity of a conversation can feel really unmanageable. It’s not just a bit of discomfort, it can be really quite jarring.

So emotional dysregulation, which is common in ADHD, can make the conflict feel even bigger and even a minor disagreement can feel really catastrophic. And it can be hard to come back from that. Emotional regulation can really be off-putting as opposed to bringing up a conversation. It can feel like an argument, particularly if you both get quite emotional quite quickly.

So if that’s the case for you, you might want to have a look at some grounding techniques like a body scan. You might want to say, “Hey, I just need a break for 10 minutes, we’ll come back.” You might want to have a look at using some techniques around emotional regulation if that’s you.

Number three is people-pleasing tendencies. There are so many ADHD women that are chronic people-pleasers and it can be a trauma response too. A lot of ADHD mums can develop people-pleasing tendencies as a survival mechanism.

So if you’ve faced repeated rejection or criticism in the past, it can lead you to self-silence in a partnership and where you basically take one for the team all the time because you just primarily just want to maintain harmony and you prefer to sacrifice your own needs than to have any conflict.

So this is where people just do everything, just do everything, just do everything. They don’t ask for help and they burn out because they don’t know how to have those conversations or it feels easier. They would prefer to do it all themselves and completely at their own detriment than to ask anybody for help.

If that’s you, you should go back to my people-pleasing episode that I put out just before Christmas in December. There’s so many scripts around that. I’ll put that episode in the show notes.

A quick one from me on it though is have a look at that people-pleasing episode and put some phrases in there to break the silence. So you might want to look at practicing some scripts so you know what to say or even reframe the conflict as growth.

So have a look at, okay, short term, it can feel like it’s a win to just do it, but long term, how is that serving me? So check out that episode for your people-pleaser.

There’s also that belief that maybe your partner doesn’t want to know. I have noticed in the Facebook group that some ADHD mothers will post about the partners appearing disinterested and that they lack care and that they don’t want to grasp the concepts of ADHD in women.

They don’t want to talk about the invisible labor that ADHD mums carry. They don’t want to talk about masking and burnout and that the partner maybe has selective attention.

So, you know, they prioritize a visible task like mowing the lawn over an invisible task like coordinating a doctor’s appointment or meal planning. So they’ll go out and get the whippersnapper out when, you know, really you’re asking them to help you with the groceries or something else, but they don’t see it visibly.

So if you have a partner that you feel like is disinterested, can’t grasp the concepts or doesn’t want to know, what I would ask you to do is possibly make it visible. When we talk about an invisible load, okay, let’s just make it visible.

And I’m going to go through this more in the strategies episode that’s going to come out next week, but have a look at what you can do with the invisible load and how you can make it visible.

And again, I’m going to go through that next week, but that would be the flip side if that’s you and you’re like, “He doesn’t get it, she doesn’t get it, all the stuff that I do.” Let’s just make it visible, right?

The next reason why women or ADHD mums don’t say anything is because you can feel like there’s just no solution. Sometimes people who are neurodivergent—ADHD, autistic, PTSD, whatever it is—you can be a bit prone to what are called cognitive distortions if you want to Google it. I love cognitive distortions.

An example of that is black and white thinking, which really can be quite anxiety-producing. So, for example, you can start to feel quite hopeless in some of these situations if you just go to black and white thinking. For example, nothing will change. There’s no point. You know, that person is bad.

So they can get quite rules-based around “This is bad.” “Nothing will change.” “There’s no point saying anything.” “Nothing works.” “I will do this forever.” “I never have any time and I never will.” “There’s no point.”

All of this negative black and white thinking can create a real sense of hopelessness. And I don’t think it helps anybody who suffers from depression.

And I’ve noticed a lot of women who go through PMDD, which is like PMS times about seven—right before the period, you can experience PMDD. Now, if you want to know more about PMDD, I’ve got an episode on that.

You can put that in the show notes, but PMDD is quite a distorted way of thinking and black and white thinking comes in there. And when I experienced PMDD, I started to think things like “Nothing will ever change.” “This is my life forever.” “Oh my God, this is so depressing.” “I just wake up and have the same day every day.”

And I’m so depressed and I have no support and I can’t do this. And it’s just like overwhelming, depressive thoughts. And it doesn’t matter what you do for me.

So if my partner tries to talk to me about it and tries to offer up a few suggestions, nothing—I’m willing to try nothing. I will give him no inch. And all I will do is talk about how awful it is when I’m experiencing PMDD.

But we can experience this black and white thinking at other times. If you’ve brought this up with your partner before and they have not been open to it, if you go back to black and white thinking, you will think to yourself, “Nothing changes. There’s no solution. There’s no point. I won’t bother.”

And that can be detrimental to actually making change. Because sometimes when you want to make change in a big area, it’s not just one conversation, is it? It takes a long time sometimes.

So if that’s you, try to break down the problem into manageable parts. Instead of tackling the entire mental load imbalance, you might want to just start with one task. “Can you take over school drop-offs on Monday?” Be specific and get a couple of small wins.

We’ll go through this more in the episode next week. I just wanted to give a couple of things now because I didn’t want to leave everybody in the episode like, “That was a really depressing episode. I don’t know what to do.”

The next reason that ADHD mums don’t say anything or we’ve given up is because sometimes we’re exhausted from trying to explain. There is an emotional labour to advocacy. We have to advocate for our kids all the time.

And it’s not just at school. It can be in the family. It can be if your child has got sensory issues—they need particular things, they don’t eat certain foods. You’ve got get-togethers that you thought everyone would really enjoy—they’re not enjoying it.

Your children have got PDA, for example. There are certain ways that you parent that other people don’t understand. There is an emotional labour of advocacy that is draining.

I did a couple of episodes for this in the lead-up to Christmas, if you want to go through the show notes, where it’s this constant education that’s draining. And we have to do it all the time with our children.

But if we add in a partner here and we constantly have to educate our partner about our experience or their experience or the children, it’s exhausting.

And this dynamic can be also on top of a partner’s possible lack of initiative to learn independently. And by that, I mean they may not be listening to the podcast. You might send them episodes they don’t listen. You might send them links. You might tag them in things—they don’t read it. They may not do their own learning.

They may be relying on you for initiative, particularly if you have an autistic partner. And it reinforces the imbalance that you feel—constantly like you are directing play, explaining, breaking things down and helping.

That constant education can be draining. And if you’re doing that a lot with your kids and with your partner around parenting the kids, you may just not have the capacity to do that for yourself. You may not even bother to explain about how it feels for you because you’re prioritising what your kids need first.

If that’s you, I just want to say that I do this too. And it’s tough.

When I was doing the Autism Workbook—and God, I can’t wait for that to come out—I looked so deeply around how we can be more proactive as mums because it’s so easy to take the stuff from the book that I’m writing and put it into play for kids.

I think a lot of us would do that naturally. Like, my child’s sensory environment is this, this is what they need. And you advocate for it at school, at home. But yet, what about our sensory profile if you’re autistic or ADHD? What about what we need?

Because we don’t advocate like that. So there’s an emotional labour around advocacy where I just think by the time we finish advocating for everyone else, we just can’t be bothered about ourselves, even though it would help us.

Or maybe we don’t trust that it’s received by our partner, so we just don’t bother having that conversation, or we will feel let down.

If that’s you, I feel you, hey. And if you are at that level of self-sacrifice where you don’t even mention it, you are silenced, I would imagine you’re in the people-pleasing phase and you should go back to the show notes.

But I just want to say, you know what? You are appreciated. And you are a great mum.

Because if that’s you and you’re listening, do you know who will remember that? Your kids. Your kids will remember what you do.

I was so lucky to be raised by the most beautiful parents. I love them both deeply. And sadly, they passed away too early for me, my mid-twenties. Nothing that they did was lost on me, and is not lost on my brothers either.

We continue to worship and protect their memory like nothing else. I would never say anything negative about my parents to my brothers, and they would never do the same back because honestly, they were amazing.

Maybe we’ve romanced it too much because they passed. But what I’m saying is, if you’re doing this for your kids, and they’re not in a position—like they’re too young or they’re teenagers—and you’re not getting that gratitude, they are grateful.

And as they become older, they remember, they know, and it is worth it. So we’re doing this for our kids.

And if this is you where you’re exhausted from advocating, and you cannot even be bothered explaining anymore, I see you and you are doing an amazing job.

If you feel like you have a little bit of room emotionally that you could advocate a little bit for yourself, what you could do is you could provide your partner with books or podcasts. You’ve done that, they haven’t read them, they haven’t listened, it’s become frustrating.

You could agree on one day a week for half an hour—they will listen to the podcast of your choice for half an hour. That might be all you can get.

If that’s your partner or your family member, I have got an episode—I’ll put that in the show notes. That episode is number 58. It is Struggling to Understand ADHD: Here’s What Your Partner Needs You to Know.

That’s a 37-minute episode—maybe cut it down and say it’s 30 because it’s in the 30s—and say, “Just listen to that.” Pick out your top three and agree that they will listen to one thing a week.

Sometimes we may get too big and your intervention partner can get overwhelmed. Make it easy and pick one place to get started.

One thing that I really love to do in relationships—and this may be polarizing, and this is of course from a point of view that you are in a loving relationship. This would not work if you’ve got trauma from relationships, if you’re in a DV relationship. This is not for that; this is for a healthy relationship.

If you are in a healthy relationship and you are feeling unheard, the first thing I would do is ask your partner to explain their perspective. So what that does is that opens up them to talk about how it feels for them.

Now, human nature in a healthy relationship is they will do it back. If I’m feeling unappreciated, I will appreciate my partner. And it doesn’t happen straight away, but give him a few days—he comes back and acknowledges me.

As soon as you make someone feel seen, they will do it back if you’re in a healthy relationship. I have found that when I feel unappreciated, often he does too. So acknowledge him, he does it back, we’re both happy.

So if you are feeling unheard, ask your partner to explain how they feel. Open up the conversation and highlight the gaps in understanding without direct confrontation.

So you might find that maybe they are being defensive to you or they’re not wanting to hear because they have got no capacity left. They are exhausted, they feel like they’re burning out.

Now ADHD mums, I just want to like frame up right now that you may be thinking right now, “They have like nothing on compared to me, how can they be burnt out?” I know, I know.

I think that partners, particularly men, have not got the same capacity. Neurodivergent men—there are studies on this—do not have the same capacity as women. Now maybe that’s because we forced ourselves to and we self-sacrificed more, whatever the reasons are, I don’t know, the study didn’t say, but we do have more capacity.

So if your partner is burnt out or feeling burnt out and that’s why they’re defensive, it may be unrealistic to expect them to do the same amount. So have a look at exhaustion and advocacy and how that’s playing out for you and whether you feel like you’re just exhausted, you haven’t gotten the wins, you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere.

If that’s you, I would invite you to just get started in one place. As discussed, just pick one thing, ask them how they feel one time, just start somewhere and try to get a quick win.

There is also an element of internalised guilt and shame. ADHD mums often internalise these societal expectations that equate maternal worth with endless self-sacrifice.

I talked in another episode, Episode 5, Workplace Violence and Emotional Abuse, which was out on the 7th of November—it’s part of the DV mini-series. What it actually talked about was how even when you’re finishing up year 11 and 12, the research shows that women and girls are still looking at career paths in terms of flexibility and having a family.

They’re not looking at what they want to do the most and looking at how that would fit with having a family and balance. They’re actually thinking about that like 15, 16 years old, which is kind of depressing because it just shows how early it is internalised.

It’s not like we’ve become mums and then we get pressured at that point. It’s like we go in knowing that that’s what we’re going to have to do.

So you can feel a lot of guilt around asking for more, asking for change. Like, “I want to work late because I’m going for this promotion at work because I really want to get it.” Or, “I really have always wanted to study this and I want to study it and it’s going to involve you, my partner, having the kids on these nights so I can go to do my study at this time.”

There are so many women that backburn all of that until their kids have left home or until they’re in high school or whenever it is because they feel too guilty or they don’t want to ask, so they put what they want on the back burner.

But have a think about what you feel guilty about and what does that tell you about your values. If you’d like to purchase my Values and ADHD Planner, I’ve released that in January 2025.

It is all about what you value and family and kids may not be your number one—and that’s okay—and how can we balance this out so we can actually meet the values and what we care about without feeling guilty because we can’t do it all but we have to just do a couple of things for ourselves and how can you fit that in?

How can you have that conversation? That’s available on my website if that’s of interest.

The last one is a different emotional processing style. You may find that one partner has an emotional and one partner has solutions-based communication.

So partners can often be quite mismatched in the way that they communicate. Typically, if we want to just be a typical heterosexual relationship, an ADHD mum may look to process their emotions verbally.

They may want to talk about how they feel for a period of time before then moving towards a solution, or they may just want to be validated in their discussion. They may not want a solution, whereas a partner, male or female, can rush to solutions and they can dismiss the emotions, dismiss the struggle, dismiss the validation just to get to the part where they go, “We’ll just hire a cleaner.”

Now if you’re the ADHD mum and you’re talking about how you’re feeling and someone’s just going, “We’ll just get a cleaner, just get a cleaner, get that lady back. What are you talking about? Just get the cleaner.” You may not be ready yet, so you might need to talk to your partner about giving you a good five, ten minutes or however long you need, or maybe just letting them know quick up front, “Please don’t rush to solutions. I only want to talk about how I feel now.”

That might be confusing for partners, but they may need to start learning because validating someone’s struggle and how they feel is so important in a relationship. You might need to say clearly, “I’m not looking for a solution right now, I just want to feel heard.”

Just to state what you need explicitly because if you have a neurodivergent partner it may not be clear to them, they may not know. So we have to be clear on what we’re looking for and what we want them to do.

If they don’t know, feed them the scripts, they will start to learn. If you feel like this invalidates it because you’ve told them what to say and then they say it—I do this with my partner—it upskills them. He’s actually pretty good at it now.

It’s taken a long time but you have to feed them what you want them to say so they know what to say. If they don’t know what to say, get them to ask you as opposed to getting up and going to the bathroom for 20 minutes and leaving you there and feeling like they don’t care.

They might care deeply but they may not know what to do.

Thank you so much for listening. This episode was about the gendered load of routine and responsibility in neurodivergent partnerships and why we don’t say anything and some quick ways to improve it and the reasons why we might be silenced and if you are silenced in a particular area, a couple of quick things that you can do to start to move forward today.

It’s not okay that we take on the unspoken gendered load. I’d love you to be able to listen to next week’s episode where I’m going to go through the strategies.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you would like to share how it’s going for you in the Facebook group, I’d love to hear from you. I moderate it myself and I make sure that I read every single post there so please post and share. Love to hear from you.

Thank you so much for listening. The key message here is you are not alone. Thank you for listening.

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