Tag: neurodivergence

thededfa:

Being an autistic person with an autistic kid be like:

1. “Honey, stop chewing the straws, get your chew dinosaur instead.”

*kid points at my face. I realize I’m chewing a straw too*

“Oh, oops. I’ll go get my chew too.”

2. Hopping and flapping in the kitchen together

3. “Mom, this song makes my teeth hurt!”

“Okay, I’ll change it.”

4. “Good Fuzzy! Try it!” (Sharing Good Textures)

5. “Do you feel like giving nana a hug?”

“No”

“Will you wave to her then?”

“Okay!”

6. Doctor: “How is he at eye contact?”

Me, avoiding eye contact, trying to remember the last time we looked at each other directly: “…uh?”

7. “There’s been lots of noise, do you want my big floppy sweater, or me to rock you?”

“Your sweater!“

I see my husband coming over, “Hey, could I wear your big floppy sweater, there’s been a lot of noise… ”

Do you have any advice on what to do if you can get yourself to write? I keep opening my document and staring at it, telling myself to write but I just cant bring myself to do it???

valenixfix:

ao3commentoftheday:

mrscullensrutherford‌:

ao3commentoftheday:

Writer’s block is an affliction I know well. I’ve answered similar asks about it here and here. I recommend reading through the replies and reblogs if you have the time. 

That said, let’s see what new advice we can get from the blog. Ideas anyone?

Write 500 words a day. Doesn’t matter if it’s crap or even if it is for your story or not. Shoot for content, not quality. Look up prompt lists and write whatever you immediately think of. And good or not, keep doing it. Eventually the creative juices will start flowing. Granted, this is the hard, unpleasant way but it has worked for every writer I know. Hope that helps.

I don’t want to say following the suggestion above is wrong, because for many it’s absolutely solid advice, but I know for sure that it really doesn’t work for everyone. I tried doing it so many times, and every time I did it I ended up giving up on writing for years. It turns out I have ADHD, and committing to a daily word limit simply isn’t something I can do; forcing myself to do so when I can’t concentrate is futile and discouraging and turns something that should be enjoyable into nothing more than a hated chore. I have had to learn to recognise when I have the presence of mind to be able to write and only THEN making myself sit down to do it. I am at the point where I can sprint between 2-6k words in one session, which can happen anywhere from daily to once a month – but I started off with 50 words a week. My regularity and word count are naturally increasing with time.

I suggest you do this: write down every single idea you have, no matter where you are. Text them to yourself if you have to. Compile all these ideas in one place. When you feel like writing, you have a whole bunch of ideas at your disposal – but if you have no ideas, just open a doc and start writing down literally every thought that crosses your mind. Ponder what you should make for dinner, if you have to; talk to yourself about how frustrated you are to be stuck; leave dumb jokes for yourself. Eventually something will come along that you could write about. And, above all, be kind to yourself! Celebrate your successes, even if it’s writing 50 words on an idea. You’ll improve with time. 

You can also adapt junebugging* to help with this!

Get together a mental group of related interests/tasks. I combine academic and fandom interests into one clump in my brain, for example. That group gets your time for a certain amount each week.†

Now focus on one of those tasks.

Not feeling inspired to write fanfic? Focus on a work project, or art you’re doing, or something else that uses similar brain function. Get passionate about it, ignore fic for now. Allow another interest to take over when it’s ready. Don’t force it. If you enjoy (or at some pointed enjoyed) writing, there’s a good chance that you’ll get a mood. When you do, dive in!

Instead of feeling guilty that you’re not doing every one of those things, all the time, this lets you build work ethic without forcing your brain into a box. Doing anything in your mental group counts as accomplishing your goal!

*Junebugging is being used in the neurodivergent-executive-function-aid sense here, not the sex slang. Everything is a sex term, there are no pure words

†Or however scheduling works for you

doomhamster:

grison-in-labs:

snitchanon:

As much as I hate leaning on the ‘but muh autisms’ button, the Internet Justice status quo of “You must follow, to the letter, a bunch of social rules that are never codified, periodically changed with no indication and contradictory. Any deviation from these (completely hidden) rules – along with any requests to explain or other questioning – will get you at best dismissed and mocked as ignorant and at worst harassed perpetually with intent to make you commit suicide” is shockingly ableist and strongly echoes the kinds of bullying autistic kids face in school and other social situations.

And like many examples of Guess Culture (where the rules are unspoken and have to be inferred), it’s terrible for neurotypicals too.

oh hi it’s my entire problem with internet culture

InB4 the first “but it’s simple, you’re just crying ableism because you don’t want to make an effort”: 

I mean, yes, something like “support queer people” looks simple… until you try to figure out what that means in each given situation. With the extra added fun that not all of us queer people agree on what it means! 

Just look at a question like “should you ask everyone you meet for their pronouns?” Some queer people would unhesitatingly say yes, it normalizes non-binary pronoun use. Some would just as unhesitatingly say no, I don’t want to be put on the spot in public. Some feel it’s really situational. Some – or, well, I, anyway – think that whatever the effect might be for us queer people, it’s really not fair to our straight allies to demand they do this all the time when asking the wrong person could net them a beating.

And that’s just one of a hundred questions! So if you think “support queer people” is simple, it’s because you’ve already got a clear picture of how that’s done. Good for you! But a lot of people, including a lot of queer people, are going to have a very different picture. 

And some people, including some queer people, don’t even come with the mental subroutines needed to hide from ourselves the fact we’re painting that picture – so even when it’s done, we’ll never have the comforting delusion that it’s the only true picture. We’ll always be uncertain. 

Hey everybody! I’m a middle aged ADHD lady and most of my family is autistic. I spend lots of my life explaining stuff and find it fun.

Since this post is incredibly accurate, if anyone ever wants to ask me about internet etiquette, I’d love to attempt to help!

I can’t give rules about how to treat minority communities; but I can help translate unclear messages; explain confusing terms, and give advice about unwritten rules.

In return, I ask for patience for slow answer times. Sometimes I struggle with words.

rehlia:

undertailsoulsex:

cimness:

futureevilscientist:

roane72:

worldwithinworld:

When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene. 

If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.

Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.

In addition to that:

If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.

Furthermore, 

if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.

In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”. 

Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation – it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.

This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit for.  (It doesn’t help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.)  I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.

A good rule of thumb: a character’s familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really don’t need one at all).

Good writing advice.

Remember that this varies by culture and language! In some languages, calling someone by a descriptor is normal and possibly even more respectful.

Also, this can be reversed to effectively show a mentally ill viewpoint, too!

Like, I’m almost always slightly dissociating. I think of myself in the third person and narrate my own life while living it. (Not sure if this is ADHD, anxiety, or loneliness, but I have since I can remember.)

Interesting things I do that could work in a story:

  • Have conversations and arguments between two voices (neither of which is me), usually to problem-solve or quiet intrusive thoughts
  • describe my surroundings, physical appearance and mannerisms to myself
  • get my own name wrong IN MY OWN HEAD (I also get everyone else’s names wrong)
  • call other people by descriptors instead of names – ‘husband,’ ‘cousin,’ ‘person from husband’s work I really like and who plays games with me every month, I’m sorry, names aren’t working today’
  • refer to myself in the third person or using the ‘royal we’
  • narrate my trip to the basement to do the laundry to keep me from forgetting what I’m doing

Writing advice is a great thing to play with when writing neurodivergence and mental illness. It’s often subtle enough not to throw the reader out of the story, and posts like this explain exactly what you’re affecting.

To describe my ADHD, I include a lot of run on sentences, general terms (”this’, ‘them’) instead of specifics, tangents in the middle of descriptions, and acting ‘too’ childish.

My Son’s Autism could be shown by only identifying characters by clothes unless they’re close family, walls of text, and ‘overly’ academic speech.

For my Husband, Autism looks closer to including ‘unnecessary’ details and always choosing the logical option even when emotions would be expected to interfere.

All of our body language doesn’t match the posts going around.

I’m rarely described in these types of posts. You can use that to add diversity to your writing.

Neurodivergent Body Language Cheat Sheet

Has anyone created one of these? I keep seeing cheat sheets popping up for neurotypical body language. They frustrate me, because they’re so inaccurate to me and my family. I know neurodivergent body language varies widely, even just inside one neurodivergency, but are there any summaries out there? 

Any Autistic Body Language Cheat Sheets?

Any ADHD

Body Language Cheat Sheets? 

Any Mentally Ill

Body Language Cheat Sheets? 

I want to raise awareness that body language isn’t universal.

Gecko’s Family!

It’s been a while, and I have new followers. That means I have an excuse to babble about family again!

I love my family so much.

As of 2018, there is:

Me

Gecko: 30 something. White Canadian Christian with ADHD and an Anxiety Disorder. Very, very Aromantic and Asexual. Likes lizards, robots, history (esp. linguistics, fashion, and architecture), X-Men, and the Batfamily. Oh yeah, also female.

Family I Made

The Husband: I married this guy! It was a very good choice. He’s an Autistic Computer Programmer whose current special interest is a business structure called Holacracy. (Which apparently has an ‘a’ in the middle?? I’ve never seen it written down before!) He is the most patient, stable human on the planet. You’ve never met anyone like him. He’s amazing.

Eldest: 8 year old boy with giant hair. Hair can only be tamed with lots of gel, which I am afraid of. I do not like things with scents. He’s Autistic AND has ADHD. Current interests – Minecraft, black holes, advanced math, and environmentalism. Also loves the colour pink, romance, destroying all the kleenex in my house, and drawing on the whiteboard. Awesome kid.

Tiny: 5 year old boy who likes to cuddle. Likes video games, youtube videos, Paw Patrol, and playing with bubbles. Doesn’t like eating. Only member of family with people skills – bribes people with cuteness and the promise of kisses. Spends a lot of time on my lap, making it impossible for me to make Tumblr posts. Such a great kid.

Family That Made Me

Papa: Bible Camp director who is frustratingly smarter than me. I’ve spent my entire life trying to catch up, while he was bewilderedly telling me I was perfect as I was. Designs his own board games. Very ADHD. Got a Computer Science degree, realized that it involved ZERO (0) at risk or mentally disabled kids, and chose a life of poverty and children. Has been a daycare worker, an educational assistant, a missionary, a camp directer, and a variety of volunteer positions, as well as other jobs to make enough money to support us. My role model and one of my favourite people.

Mama: One of 8 children who taught herself how to parent so she could raise us right. She did wonderfully, and was wise enough to tell us when she did it wrong. I’ve learned so much from her, and she’s still the first person I turn to for support.

The Sister Who Lets Me Be Eldest: We unofficially adopted her when she was 18. She’s SUPER ADHD, and super fun. Mature in ways I’ll never be. Childlike in ways I’ll never tire of. Now in a happy relationship, to my neverending joy. Also, I spent 17 years as the eldest and had a hard time adjusting, so she graciously allowed me to keep my title.

The Little Brother: The most loving child I ever met, he’s now a pretty content adult. Loves movies and music and his favourite doll. He has Down Syndrome (and probably Autism). Still gives the best hugs, even if he finds my kids a bit overwhelming and tends to hide from them.

The Very Little Sister: Now in her mid-twenties, but she is 7 years younger than me and will always be very little. My closest friend. An Autistic lifeguard and swim instructor. She’s only an inch taller than me, but her ridiculous amount of muscle dwarfs me. She partially raised my Little Brother, is far too responsible and reliable under pressure, and just blows me away. How can she be this amazing, guys?

Other Important Family

The Aunties: My mama has 4 sisters, all of whom have helped raise me. Best support network a person could ask for.

The Favouritest Cousins: One of The Aunties had 4 kids. The first was a bit too old for me to bond with, but the other three ended up as my best friends. (Before The Littlest Sister was old enough.) Which one is my favourite varies based on who I’m interacting with.

  • Weirdest Cousin: Now in Army School. Very, very weird. Brilliant. Baffling. One of the few people I can talk to about my obscure interests. Made the entire reception laugh at my wedding just by walking towards the mike normally. So great.
  • Husband’s Best Friend: Possibly likes my husband more than he likes me, which is very annoying. Designs video games and works as a butcher. Cooks the best meat dishes in the world as a hobby. His apartment is the only place i LIKE leaving my house to visit, other than the library.
  • The Not Quite As Little Cousin: 2 years older than The Very Little Sister, she grew up as another younger sibling. Then I lived at my Auntie’s for a few years and she became 100% my younger sister. She’s a musician, but I still love her. She recently got married, moved close by, and never, ever visits me. Grrr.

The In-Laws: The Husband came with a family. They’re great, but both sides have been dealing with culture shock for the last 10 years. They’re very quiet, reserved, affluent Mennonites who find appearances important. I’m a loud, neurodivergent, poor kid who only cares about people’s hearts. I think we both like each other, but struggle to show it in ways the other can recognize. They are very good grandparents, though. Also, my Sister-in-Law gave me my first niece last year and I will love her forever for that.

You don’t have a bad kid.

Neither do I.

Does/did your kid:

  • Attack teachers and throw things in class?
  • When invited to a party, punch a kid and then run into the
    establishment’s kitchen and start attacking stuff?
  • Refuse to listen to the bus driver?
  • Run away from school and scream any time an adult came near?
    (Many, many times?)
  • Scare the other kids to the point that they are out of class
    more than they aren’t?
  • Hit other kids for no reason they can explain?
  • Do complex math at home but refuse to do any school work at
    school?
  • Require a full time EA, their teacher, the resource teacher,
    and sometimes even the principal working together to calm them down about
    perceived injustices?

That’s what the last two years have been like for my wonderful
son and I.

That’s what the next decade might have been like if the
school or my husband and I had decided he was a bad kid. My son was definitely
starting to think he was.

I’m not going to go in to everything we tried over the last
two years. My husband and I got parent coaching. The school requested every
specialist they had access to, and tried dozens of strategies. My son watched
social skills videos, and walked through how to respond to different situations
with every adult available. We changed doctors.

As I mentioned, it took two years.

Results:

  • Our new doctor finally confirmed EVERYONE’S suspicion that he
    had my ADHD (in addition to the autism we all knew about). She prescribed
    Concerta.
    • Apparently, trying to do school work, getting distracted
      after 10 seconds, refocusing, getting distracted after 10 seconds, and
      repeating for hours a day, every day, is VERY FRUSTRATING. You get nothing
      accomplished. It’s exhausting. Adults keep pushing you. Finally, you get to the
      point where you Can Not repeat the futile cycle. Your EA insists you do. But failing
      again is too awful, and you either scream, or throw things, or run away.
    • Now that he can focus for several MINUTES at a time, he’s a
      lot happier and hardly ever lashes out.
  • We also discovered that he didn’t listen to the bus driver
    because the guy would grab him and try to force him back into his seat. We
    changed busses.
  • We got him a raised garden and let him tend it and play
    outside in the mud all evening. While relaxed and happy, he’s slowly started to
    interact with the next-door kids and get invited over.
  • The school provides fidget toys, headphones for noise,
    rocking/bouncing chairs, a trampoline for when he needs to regulate, and so, so
    much more. He uses them as needed, which is getting to be less and less often.
  • He’s jumped 7 reading levels in a month. He’s still a little
    behind, but we remind him that the other kids have had a lot longer where they
    could concentrate.
  • He’s doing the math work, and then doing actually FUN math
    with his EA during transition times. Exponentials, multi-step algebra, division
    of triple digit numbers – stuff like that. Before, he only did it with US. (He’s
    in grade 1.)
  • When I tell him to have a good morning, he says, “I probably
    will!”

I’m so, so proud of him, you guys. He’s worked so hard, and
finally he doesn’t HAVE to. He doesn’t have to work twice as hard to get one
tenth of the results.

Don’t think the worst of your kids. Believe in them. Figure
out the ‘why.’ As people get older, they can learn that bad behaviour gets them
what they want, and eventually they have to be held accountable. But kids, even
older kids, are almost always doing the best they can with what they got.
FIGURE OUT WHAT’S WRONG. Don’t tell them they’re bad, don’t give up on them or
force them to figure it out on their own.

If they lack empathy, teach them how to work around whatever
aspect of empathy they struggle with. If they’re angry, teach them to channel
it, and try to find and fix things causing that anger. Give them medication,
counselling, allergy-free diets, assistive tech – whatever is in your power.
(And I know that for a lot of people, some of these things aren’t in your
power. That’s not your fault.) Explain the extra challenges they have, so they
don’t blame themselves.

Above all, tell them that they’re good kids.

Hi, hope you’re having a good day! What do I do if I was diagnosed with autism, but my parents say that I no longer have it because I was “cured by God”. I find it all so strange and it makes me wonder if I ever had autism in the first place

candidlyautistic:

Oh gosh. This ask is great in so many ways. Thank you for sending it.

I can understand why your parents might believe that, and I can understand how that might cause some confusion for you. So let’s start with what autism actually is.

Autism is a pervasive developmental delay that you are born with and never goes away. The key here is that it is a delay.

In some people that means that some aspects of typical development never, ever happen. In other people it means that their development is a little bit behind, but not very much. In other people it can be very far behind, and then very quickly and without warning catch up.

I know of autistics that were 100% non-verbal and then started talking in their teens or their twenties, for example.

Autism also has some traits that are very obvious and some that are not so obvious.

For example, if you potty trained as a toddler and then several months later regressed and couldn’t use the restroom any more, it is going to be very obvious to your parents – especially if it takes years for you to learn how to use it again.

But some traits like hypersensitivities to light or sound, or the anxiety of social interaction – those are things that you feel that others can’t see.

Now let’s look at it from your parent’s perspective. Clearly they are devout believers. To them, God is someone who can work miracles. Now let’s pretend that you are that autistic that regressed… and then somewhere around seven or eight years old you suddenly catch up on the things like potty training.

To your parents it is going to look like all your autism traits suddenly vanished, and as devout believers it might even look like the sort of miracle that God would work.

And if your parents do not have a very good understanding of what autism is? Well, that might just make it seem more like a miracle because they wouldn’t even really know what to look for when it came to autism.

Now, obviously I just made some traits up to make an example. But I am guessing that if you were to sit down with a psychologist today and get an autism evaluation, you would still be diagnosed.

They would look at things like obvious autistic traits going away as developmental delays – but they were still there. And they would probably see more autistic traits that your parents don’t know are autistic.

So, are you autistic? I would say yes for two reasons. 1.) You are diagnosed with autism and 2.) as a general rule God doesn’t work like that.

I think the Christian God has made it pretty clear He would rather His followers accept disabled people as they are, and my personal opinion is that His followers that don’t recognize this might consider a little more time in contemplative prayer and maybe ask God what it means that love is Holy.

I don’t mean to speak negatively of your parents; they believe what they believe and I can’t change that. But I do think they aren’t really understanding His message when it comes to marginalized people. 

In any event, I would call you autistic (or, if you prefer, a person with autism). That doesn’t mean you have to identify with the autistic community or the neurodiversity movement, or anything like that. But you have an autism diagnosis and unless you have a specific medical reason to believe the diagnosis is wrong, then it is probably right.

As for your parents… I don’t think there is anything you can do. Faith is a hard thing to change. If you can, I would just ignore it. If you think you can’t, then I would talk to their pastor. If they don’t have one, I can help you find someone to talk in your area that could help figure out how to talk to your parents on their terms.

Final note; though my pastor is Christian, I am not. My understanding of Christianity is through her, not based on my own experiences. If you want to talk more about the theology, there are Christian autistics that follow me, most of whom could probably do a better job of explaining that aspect than I can.

Hey! I’m a Christian with an Autistic family, and I have ADD, which is related to Autism. If you want to talk about your confusion with someone who shares your beliefs and has some of the same experiences, I’m open to talking.

Message me or send me an ask!

madamethursday:

jumpingjacktrash:

vastderp:

the-greatest-genderqueer:

futureresearcheralex:

Thing #1 that frustrates me about ADHD/Executive Dysfunction advice:
“Oh, you have a mental/neurological issue that makes it difficult for you to be organized, follow routines, stick with systems, maintain a schedule, do your work, etc.? Well, what you need to do is GET ORGANIZED! Schedule everything! Find a system and stick with it! Maintain a schedule! Do your work as it comes in!”

It’s like that Allie Brosh comic where her fish are dead, and everyone’s offering to help find them, or advice like “feed them!” Or “make puppets out of them!” And she says, “No, see, that solution is for a different problem than the one I have.”

Yes, I would love to do those things! I have tried to do those things! I am still trying to do those things! But it’s like that post about how you’re going through an invisible obstacle course, and what looks like a block to everyone else seems like a wall to you. Instead of saying, “it’s a block! Go around!” It would be much more useful to hand me a bag of flour so I can see the obstacles for myself and how to get around them.

I keep looking for something I can do. I can’t maintain an agenda- closest I can do is lot appointments into Google Calendar. I can’t use to-do lists- they overwhelm and freak me out and I end up doing less than before. Breaking down a task into a bunch of tiny pieces should work in theory, but again, freaks me out, and I usually end up spending an hour planning and then I never actually do. I can’t set deadlines for myself. Whatever part of the brain allows other people to say, “yes, it’s due on the 29th, but I want to be done on the 25th” just doesn’t work. I can’t make my brain think something needs to be done until the last minute. This is especially bad in classes where everything is due at the end of the semester. I end up doing what I just did, and having to do two whole classes worth of work in two days. Oddly, once that level of desperation kicks in, I’m capable of sitting down and pounding through the material- but for some reason, I can’t tap into that level of focus without a short, urgent, important deadline. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.

Thing #2 that bugs me about all self help: Don’t wait for motivation! Just do it!

I think my definition of “motivation” is different from the usual. Most people see “motivation” as meaning something like “wanting to do something, looking forward to doing something, doing the thing with energy and happiness because it is the thing you want to do.”

My definition is closer to “having enough willpower to make myself do the thing despite everything in my brain begging me to go watch Netflix instead.” So when people say, “you don’t need motivation!” What I hear is “everyone else seems to have this source of willpower they can eventually learn to tap into that just doesn’t exist for me.” My best technique for doing stuff is having other people make me do it. Which freaks out my social anxiety because then I feel like I’m intruding on their time to make them help me with mine.

The thing is, I’m not lazy. If I were just lazy this would all be easier to cope with. I WANT to be doing things, I WANT to be successful, I WANT to be productive. I even try, really hard, and the effort that exhausts me seems to be so much lower than the typical threshold. But every time I try to be as productive as I want to be, I burn out in a couple days.

I am on the verge of tears because this is everything that frustrates me about my own ADHD. Every word of this reflects my experience.

i’m so bad today i can only read every fifth sentence and it STILL hits me in the gut. well expressed.

my executive dysfunction lately has been so bad i can’t even work on my hobbies. i can’t even stim right. one of my favorite stims is to lay out a textile work in progress and play with the pieces, rearranging them and finishing their edges and doing all the fiddlybits. lately, even though i have a nice clean worktable and my quilt pieces all laid out by color, i have managed to iron a grand total of like… 6 of them. in three days. i like ironing quilt pieces. it’s satisfying to me. but it just… doesn’t seem to be happening.

people who’ve never experienced executive dysfunction seem to think our disability only applies to things that are hard or unfun, and therefore suspect we’re just making excuses not to do stuff we don’t want to do. but it’s not like that. i have trouble doing stuff i enjoy doing. i have trouble doing stuff i have to do to live, like eating. sometimes the stuff i get distracted into doing is less fun than the thing i was trying to do – plenty of times i go to get food and get distracted and fold laundry instead. because folding laundry is a routine, it’s an organizing task, which takes less executive function than making food, which requires making a lot of little decisions and judgement calls based on what’s in the fridge, what dishes are clean, etc.

if you had something wrong with your brain that forced you to fold laundry when you wanted a sandwich, wouldn’t you call that a real disability?

Had to read this three times in order to read all of it because my brain is in skim mode, but yeah. THIS. 

I wrote the second part of my comment while functioning. Wanted to add how much I agree and similar experiences I’ve had, but brain stopped working. Anyways, this is what I wrote 5 minutes ago, when I had hope.

Read recently that us ADD folks are interest-motivated. Traditional motivators just DON’T WORK. We have to be excited, scared, intrigued, etc.

I’ve been trying to take advantage of this, with mixed success.

Current tests:

  • Using bullet journaling to keep an agenda – motivator is that designing each page is fun, and I also organize fun research projects in it so it must be a GOOD book
  • Getting myself to do something I like/find easy close to the thing I can’t motivate myself to do – start making tea and then put some dishes away while the water boils; or go pee and then tell myself that while I’m in the bathroom the bath is right there and being clean feels nice

Neither method has been a major success, but both are working better than previous motivation methods! And they leave me less self-hating.

Hey, game designers?

For accessibility reasons, do you think that you could maybe NOT make objects shake, vibrate, or flash?

Or if you need them to do that for more than a few seconds, maybe give an option to turn it off?

My ADD means I can’t filter out motion, and the headache from trying to process 30 vibrating entities on a screen is no fun.

Could people reblog?