Emotional Intensity in Relationships and ADHD: Feeling a Lot

One of the comments most often made to me was: "You blow everything out of proportion."

For a long time I did not object. Maybe I really was blowing things up. When I was happy I was very happy, when I was hurt I was very hurt, when I got excited about something my whole day was painted in the color of that excitement. Whatever the emotion was, it came one size bigger inside me.

Then I noticed this: those things really did feel big to me. Deliberately blowing something up and feeling something as big look the same from outside, and completely different from inside.

First, what is known

There are no emotions in the ADHD diagnostic criteria. There is attention, activity, impulsivity. Even so, research has long argued that the emotional side sits somewhere inside this picture. The review by Shaw and colleagues shows that difficulty regulating emotions is present in a significant share of children and adults with ADHD and contributes markedly to loss of functioning (Shaw et al., 2014).

A meta-analysis focused on adults reaches a similar place. In the analysis that brought together 13 studies, the largest difference between adults with ADHD and healthy controls was in emotional lability; as the severity of ADHD symptoms rose, so did the difficulty regulating emotions (Beheshti et al., 2020).

One question always comes to mind: does this lability come from ADHD itself, or from accompanying anxiety or depression? A small study of adult men with ADHD who had no other psychiatric diagnosis and used no medication found that emotional lability was most closely related to hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms and contributed to everyday difficulty independently of the classic ADHD symptoms (Skirrow and Asherson, 2013). The sample is small and made up only of men; still, it suggests that the lability cannot be explained only by accompanying diagnoses.

I described the general mechanism of emotion regulation and the individual tools for it in the article emotion regulation difficulty in ADHD. In this article I look at the place where those emotions step in between two people.

In a relationship the intensity flows in both directions

When we say emotional intensity, a fight always comes to mind. But there is another side to it.

Love comes loud too. When I feel interest in someone, this interest becomes very visible. Enthusiastic messages, long conversations, the feeling of "I have to tell you this." For the other person this can be very lovely, and sometimes it can also feel like too much.

Hurt comes loud too. A tone of voice, a late reply, a sentence left half finished. The trigger is small, the reaction inside is big. This extreme sensitivity to rejection has a name within the community; it is not counted as an official diagnosis, but it describes the experience well. I discussed the state of the evidence in the article rejection sensitive dysphoria.

It takes a long time to come down. The argument ends, the other person relaxes, and I am still inside it. An hour later they ask "are we okay?" and I honestly say "not yet." In the glossary this is called emotional inertia.

Feeling an emotion strongly does not show that the emotion is justified. It does not show that it is unjustified either. It only shows that it is felt strongly.

What the research shows on the relationship side

A study with young adults asked this question directly. Among 189 university students, those who reported clinical-level combined ADHD symptoms had lower relationship quality. Two things mediated the link between ADHD symptoms and relationship quality: difficulty regulating emotions and hostile conflict in the relationship (Bruner et al., 2015).

This finding is cross-sectional. It cannot say anything definite about cause and effect. But it tells me something important: the mark ADHD leaves on a relationship is not limited to forgotten appointments and a messy home. How the emotion rises and how the argument grows are also at the center of it.

I covered the side of forgotten promises and invisible labor in the article ADHD and relationships. This article is its emotional side.

How an argument grows

There is a sequence I observe from inside myself. Maybe it sounds familiar to you too.

1. A small trigger arrives.
2. Within a few seconds the reaction inside climbs to a high place.
3. A sentence comes out from that height. The sentence is bigger than the trigger.
4. The other person answers not the trigger but that big sentence.
5. Now the real subject is lost; two people are answering each other's tone.

The gap between the third step and the fourth is, I think, the key point. The other person says "why did you get so angry," I say "don't talk to me in that tone either." Both of us are right from where we stand, and the conversation is no longer about the question we began with.

Striving so that this sequence never happens does not seem realistic to me. What I find worth trying is putting a small wedge between each of the steps.

Wedges worth trying

Saying the intensity apart from the content

"Right now I am in a very high place. What I am about to say may be a small thing, and I am feeling it as big right now."

When I first said this sentence it felt very strange. But it gives the other person two pieces of information at once: there is an emotion, and the intensity of that emotion may not fully reflect the situation itself. The other person can wait instead of moving into defense.

Some couples do this with a number too: "Right now I am at an eight." The number is a short way to measure the emotion without arguing about it. In the glossary this way of putting emotion into words appears as affect labeling.

Setting the break rule at a calm time

Saying "stop for a moment" in the middle of an argument is often perceived as running away. If the same sentence has been agreed on beforehand, it carries a different meaning.

On an evening when you are both calm, it can help to talk about these three things:

• Which sentence will the person who wants a break use? ("Let's take a twenty-minute break, I am coming back.")
• What will not be done during the break? (Continuing the argument by message, telling the subject to a third person.)
• Who will return to the subject, and when?

The last item is the most important. If the promise "I am coming back" is not kept, the break becomes a polite name for leaving the argument half finished.

Counting the recovery time

When the argument ends, the other person can return to normal right away and may expect the same from me. For me it takes a bit longer. Saying this beforehand prevents a second argument that the question "are you still angry?" would create: "I am not angry, my body just hasn't come down yet. I will be here in an hour."

Keeping the repair sentence short

When apologizing for a sentence built from a high place, giving a long explanation often slides back into defense. A short sentence does the job better: "You did not deserve that sentence in the tone I said it. What I really wanted to say was this."

An apology does not deny the intensity. It takes responsibility for what the intensity caused.

Three questions for a calm evening. On an ordinary day, without an argument, ask each other this: When I rise, what do you feel inside? Which of my sentences calms you most? Which of my sentences feeds the fire? The answers will be in both your hands in the next argument.

From the partner's side

For the other person too this intensity can be tiring, and they have every right to say so. Explaining emotional intensity does not mean expecting the other person to silently carry everything.

The sentence "calm down" almost never works; someone who has risen often hears this sentence as criticism. The sentence "I hear you, shall we continue in a little while?" often does the same job at a lower cost. What is expected of the partner is to slow the conversation down a little together at the moment of rising.

A limit

Emotional intensity does not explain shouting, threatening, breaking things or frightening the other person. If arguments take a frightening form, safety comes before the sentence patterns in this article. In such a situation professional support is needed. In an emergency you can call 112 (the emergency line in Türkiye), and for social support ALO 183 (the social support line).

For situations where anger reaches the point of exploding, the article anger outbursts in ADHD is a more suitable starting point.

What I think today

I do not want to give up feeling a lot. The same intensity is what ties me so strongly to the people I love.

What I want is more modest: to be able to say so at the moment when I feel a lot, to carry the weight of that feeling without laying it on the other person's shoulder, and to give myself a little time when the argument is over.

Maybe the counterpart of emotional intensity in a relationship is not feeling less. Maybe it is having talked beforehand about what to do together.