"Sorry, me again."
"Sorry, me again."
That's the text before the text. The one where you re-read your question three times, add an apology, delete it, add it back — because you've already emailed your solicitor twice this week and not only can you hear the meter running but you can also feel the frustration from your solicitor. You don't want to be 'that' client, the one your solicitor dreads and moans about to colleagues. But you also need a question (or two) answered.
It's not that you don't understand your solicitor's letter, or that you weren't listening in the meeting. It's that between the spiderweb of analysis going on in the background, processing speed differences, masking, and fighting against emotional shut down, you're also trying to decode the words your solicitor actually said into what they actually mean for you in the grand scheme of things.
So you weren't able to ask all the questions you wanted, or you ended up in a loop — asking the same question, getting the same answer, and it still not really answering what you actually wanted to know. The shame made you stop asking and just sit in the confusion, until you were behind the safety of your keyboard and had no option but to ask, because deadlines were looming.
This is a familiar conundrum for a lot of ADHDers. I know it — not just from my own clients, but because it's a pattern that happens in many situations, and one I've experienced plenty of times myself (just ask my accountant).
At the end of the day, you've hired a professional because they know things you don't. If you don't understand how they're explaining things to you, then it's not being explained in a way that suits your brain.
You should never have to apologise for that.
This is a lot of what I do as an ADHD divorce coach — not replacing your solicitor, but sitting alongside the process so the confusion has somewhere safe to go that isn't your inbox or your own head. Somewhere you can ask the same question four times without flinching, because you need what you need and there is nothing wrong with that.
If you've ever drafted an apology before a question — you're not the problem. The process was never built for how your brain works.
