ADHD in the Family

What Stayed With Me After Talking with Tamara Rosier

I had a great conversation with Tamara Rosier about her book, You, Me, and Our ADHD Family and I’ve been sitting with it since. What stayed with me is something I often see but don’t think we clearly name enough.

ADHD doesn’t live in isolation.

We are always part of something. A family, a relationship, a workplace, a system.

When individuals with ADHD are singled out as the problem and all the attention goes to “fixing” that one person, something important gets missed.

We stop seeing the whole person.

We stop seeing the system.

We stop seeing how we affect each other. And when that happens, problems don’t get smaller. They get bigger.

One of the things I really appreciated in our conversation is how Tamara talks about ADHD as a family experience.

Not in a blaming way. In a clarifying way.

Because once you shift from “what’s wrong with this person?” to “what’s happening between us?,” the conversation changes.

It doesn’t become easier. But it becomes more accurate.

She uses a metaphor that I loved, and I’ve already started thinking about how I’ll use it with clients.

The idea is that we all have a “pool” of emotions.

Everyone has one.

But for many people with ADHD, there’s no fence around the pool. There’s no lifeguard. And it’s very easy to fall in. And once you’re in, it’s hard to get out.

That part feels very real.

Because what I see is not just big feelings. It’s getting stuck in them.

Staying there longer. Reacting faster. Having a harder time shifting out of that state.

And then, of course, it doesn’t stay contained.

Someone else reacts. Someone tries to fix it. Someone escalates.

And now it’s not one person in the pool. It’s everyone.

What I like about this metaphor is that it gives us language without immediately going to blame. It helps us say, “I think I’m in the pool right now,” instead of, “Why am I like this?”

That’s not a small shift.

I also found myself thinking about how often families try to solve the wrong problem.

We focus on the behavior.

We focus on the reaction.

But we don’t always pause to ask what state the person is in.

Because if someone is in that “pool,” they’re not in a problem-solving state.

And this is true for adults just as much as it is for kids.

There was also something in the conversation about big feelings that I think is worth saying clearly.

Big feelings don’t belong to one person.

They affect everyone in the family.

And if one person is more likely to fall into that emotional intensity, others are going to respond to it, consciously or not. So again, we’re back to the system.

I love metaphors because they give us something we can hold onto in the moment.

Not later. Not when everything is calm.

In the moment when things are starting to escalate.

And this is one I think can work across ages, across families, across different kinds of relationships.

If this resonates, I really recommend listening to the full conversation.

There’s something about hearing it unfold that adds another layer you don’t get from reading.

You can listen on ADHDtime on Air on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you’re not subscribed yet, this is a good time to do it. It helps more people find these conversations, and it helps me keep bringing them to you.