spooniestudy

[spooniestudy]

Someone once said to me, “I hope the pain eases soon.” It struck me as the purest blessing that had ever been offered over my head - I hope the pain eases soon. It’s so gentle, so kind, so hopeful. So to everyone who’s hurting: I see how hard you’re trying, and I hope your pain will ease soon.

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ADHD-havers, I have a suggestion for you.

Consider some kind of foraging activity. A lot of my family have ADHD and a lot of my clients have ADHD and I've noticed over the years that a LOT of folks with ADHD have brains beautifully wired for foraging. Enough of them found this before ever meeting me that the pattern became obvious. It seems to function a lot like meditation works for many people without ADHD. It's great for calming, centering, and dopamine production.

That could take many forms! I first noticed it with fruit/berry picking, and mushroom foraging. But I've seen wild herb foraging, and even trash pickup. Basically find a way to be outside, looking for something with a bit of demand for detail noticing, that gives you something for succeeding (like, for example, raspberries). My wife can spend 10 minutes picking raspberries in the ally of our city lot and come back visibly calmer and happier, and, you know, with raspberries.

And this is why, along with native planting, I'm designing a foraging garden for my household.

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Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

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By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.

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Workbooks to improve executive functioning

Since the post I made last night about improving executive functioning was so popular, I figured I should pull these out of my comments and give them their own post, in case it's helpful for people.

I have worked with the publishers of all of the books linked below and can vouch for their psychology books. The publisher of most of them, New Harbinger, is an extremely credible evidence-based psychology publisher.

Obvious disclaimer that everyone's brain is different and what works for someone else may not work for you.

Is there evidence that executive functioning can be improved? Yes. This book appears to be a very thorough overview of the field, and contains both advocates and detractors of cognitive training, for a balanced perspective. From the table of contents, I would really recommend jumping straight to Part 3: Developmental Perspectives for executive functioning (EF) writ large.

Certain therapy modalities are specifically designed for skill-building in areas like impulsivity, decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility, all of which are EF skills or very dependent on EF skills. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is probably the best field to look at for these - skill-building in those areas is its core goal.

Some DBT workbooks:

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Teens

There are also a lot of workbooks for ADHD that are sometimes more broad but also can help with executive functioning:

The Adult ADHD and Anxiety Workbook: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills to Manage Stress, Find Focus, and Reclaim Your Life

The CBT Workbook for Adult ADHD: Evidence-Based Exercises to Improve Your Focus, Productivity, and Wellbeing

The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD

General executive functioning workbooks:

The Executive Functioning Workbook for Teens

Executive Functioning Workbook for Adults: Exercises to Help You Get Organized, Stay Focused, and Achieve Your Goals

Hope these are helpful to someone!!

[spooniestudy]

becoming an adult cheat sheet!

learn to coupon

what to do when you can’t afford therapy

cleaning your bathroom

what to do when you can’t pay your bills

stress management

quick fix meals

find out if you’re paying too much for your cell phone bill

resume workshop

organize your closet

how to take care of yourself when you’re sick

what you should bring to a doctor’s appointment

what’s a mortgage?

how to pick a health insurance plan

hotlines list

your first gynecology appointment

what to do if the cops pull you over

things to have in your car in case of emergency

my moving out masterpost

how to make friends as an adult (video)

how to do taxes (video)

recommended reads for surviving adulthood (video)

change a flat tire (video)

how to do laundry (video)

opening a bank account (video)

laundry cheat sheet

recipes masterpost

tricks to help you sleep more

what the fuck should you make for dinner?

where should you go for drinks?

alcohol: know your limits

easy makeup tips

find seat maps for your flight

self-defense tips

prevent hangovers

workout masterpost

how to write a check

career builder

browse careers

birth control information

financial management software & app (free)

my mental health masterpost

my college applications masterpost

how to jumpstart a car

sex ed masterpost

[spooniestudy]

How To Assess How Toxic A Group Is

I’ve noticed that a lot of us on tumblr like to be involved in smaller groups as well, whether this be discord servers or facebook groups or any sort of group chat. Unfortunately, a lot of us also have experiences with groups that had turned out to be toxic or even traumatizing. The warning signs for a toxic group can be really hard to pick up on. Luckily, there’s a great tool that can be used to measure how toxic a group is!

TW for mentions of cults & cult abuse in the link below -

https://freedomofmind.com/bite-model/

This is The BITE Model. It was a checklist created to help assess how cult-like a group is under four different types of control: Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional. This is NOT a tool for figuring out if something is a cult or not. The reason why I’m suggesting this checklist is that it can help measure how toxic a group is, even if they’re not a cult.

For those of you out there involved in discourse groups or discourse-heavy groups, I’d especially recommend looking at the full BITE model. Be safe on the internet!

[spooniestudy]

“Perhaps most of all, though, you deserve to be okay. You deserve to know that a day in which you can just barely get out of bed because you are sad, or sick, or simply not ready to see the outside is not the end of the world. You deserve to know that moments of weakness do not make you fundamentally weak, only fundamentally human, and that sometimes we’re not going to be effusively happy, and that is okay.”

— Chelsea Fagan

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A comic about controlling your symptoms and trying to get other people to understand why it’s so hard to do so, in goo form

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As it was requested by quite a few people, I made a Venn Diagram showing the overlapping symptoms of ADHD and PTSD. I really hope this helps!

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Moodnotes for iOS has helped me get a grasp on reality and calm myself down, more times than I could realistically count tbh. It helps me snap out of panic mode by helping me reframe the way I’m looking at things. I think it’s like $4? It’s been a long time since I purchased it

I don’t always like CBT for every situation - negative emotions aren’t always something to run away from, and they can be indicative that something in your life needs changing - but Moodnotes is good for getting me just grounded enough to see straight

Some other apps I’ve seen good things from:

- SuperBetter (Android, iOS) Free: uses game logic to help you complete small tasks. You can download specific journeys (like recovering from depression) and are then given daily suggestions to help you with that goal. One of my favorites

- Moodpath (Android, iOS) Free: is a mood tracker that also helps you track depression symptoms

- Sanvello for Android and iOS I haven’t used, but have heard excellent things about. From what I understand, it has a lot of features Moodnotes doesn’t, and can provide a place to track moods and thought patterns

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I’m hoping to pick this blog back up - given that everyone is stressed about COVID and learning online, I figured I could try to help in some small way

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Everyone: Omg listen to this amazing podcast!!

Me, a person who can’t pay attention to anything that doesn’t have visuals for more than 3 minutes without being bored/distracted:

[spooniestudy]

weird little brain tweak/reframing that helped me out. i Often find that advice that seemingly helps Everyone Else doesn’t make any sense to me, in ways that are hard to describe, and it can be really frustrating. but when i find a way to explain it to myself that finally seems to break through and make it click, it feels really good