#TO BE FAIR. part of it is the ADHD

[autumnoakes]

(id: the results of a mental health questionnaire on an iphone. the results show that the person who took the questionnaire is probably experiencing severe anxiety and depression)

thanks apple health. i'm aware.

[that-butch-archivist]

1 out of 4 accelerated summer courses finished today. Next to go is Chem.

[dreammeiser]

Okie, starting off introductions to my cast with the main little guy, Archie Aster >:o)!!! He’s the host of my Jim Henson inspired 70′s puppet show, Dream Along With Me, and is dubbed Mister Dream Maker by the country of Dreamalong. He has the ability to warp reality but often uses it for frivolous fun (such as rearranging stars to send messages to his friends)! He often loses track of what he’s doing and has trouble staying on task, needing gentle reminders from his pals that they needed help with something and he cannot sing or dance the lid of a pickle jar (to which he would enthusiastically prove them wrong). He also has a living Shadow who is pretty cheeky and prone to mischief! There’s more about this guy but! For now, he is saying a joyous hello and wishing you a Wicked Good Wednesday!

[applin-bottom-jeans]

i like how knitting is an inverse indicator of mental health for me. people are like "omg you must be so patient" buddy it is the exact opposite i am screaming baby that needs to be distracted with set of plastic keys and the more the keys get jangled the less ive been taking care of myself because ive using this to avoiding thinking about everything else and the moment i stop i will flop on the floor and disintegrate

speaking of which I found another fucking bag of sweater yarn

I frogged the project that was using it and now ive gotten halfway through another pullover in the span of two working days hlep

[nexus-nebulae]

i always really like how i can slowly pick up words as i listen to a language more and more. I'm learning japanese by accident

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

every now and then I go through my WIPs deciding what I want to work on and stumble across this snippet again, killing me instantly

“Ceara, I just want to ask you about something, and I’d really appreciate it if you could be straight with me for a change.” “Darling,” Ceara replied with a smug, mischievous wink, “You know I’m not straight.” “Ceara.” One breath in, one breath out. Pirkko resisted the urge to kick her under the table. It took much more willpower than she’d like to admit. “Come now,” chuckled the elder sylvari with a flourish, “You walked right into that one~! But, fine.” She settled onto the table, crossing both arms under her chin leisurely. She wasn’t actually at ease, but anyone who didn’t know Ceara well enough may well have fallen for it. “Go on, then. Out with it. What do you want to ask?”

anyway consider that your confirmation that the Scarlet/Ceara of Regrowth and Flourish AU is literally anything other than straight

[autism-crime]

I love my mum but I am so pissed that she forgot about sorting out the prescription for my ADHD medication. I’ve now been discharged and I don’t even know how I’m supposed to get medication now. If I have to go back on a waiting list, I’m going to scream.

[foxgloveinspace]

lmao i sent a photo of iii to my cousin being all like “i need him” and my cousins response-

“exie… he’s scary. you did not need to jump scare me on christmas eve” 😂😂 she doesn’t get it, which i suppose is nice because it means we’ll never fight over a guy ever. polar opposite tastes lmao

but i can’t stop laughing at the jump scare comment like he’s not even scary (i say as i was literally terrified of him in person)

Literally my sister has a phobia of masks, and I have a mask kink🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 so I get this, haha.

Also, like. Irl I know I would scared so bad of them? I would be SO freaked out😭 but on screen that’s just them ya know? I just know it’d be different irl, haha.

[arionaleilani]

how tf did me facetiming someone i matched with on tinder turn into them giving me unsolicited advice about giving people your full attention after i already let them know that i recently got diagnosed as adhd and it’s hard for me to focus on just one thing/person and then them telling me that “based on my behavior” they think i’m autistic like ?? didn’t ask, we literally started messaging each other like a day ago, even if i am autistic (which wouldn’t be a bad thing if i am) when has it ever been socially acceptable to tell someone you JUST MET that you think they’ve got some kind of mental disorder/illness/disability/etc.

my friends have mentioned that i might be autistic and that’s fine bc i’ve spent a lot of time with them and they actually know me and i take their perspective of me very seriously because they’re the people who see me 100% unfiltered and have known me whenever i’ve been completely unmedicated. i trust their word.

this person from tinder, however, i have sent like maybe 20-30 messages to where we talked about nanowrimo and i was like omg it’d be so cool to meet someone who also writes, whether it’s as friends or as more, i would love that—only for our facetime call to be less than 20 minutes long and for them to try and diagnose me as autistic just because i, after ALREADY TELLING THEM that i have adhd and after them asking about meds and me telling them that i haven’t taken my adhd meds today because i didn’t have work and also i’ve taken multiple naps today which has made my head even more foggy and made it even harder than usual to focus, found it difficult to focus.

like. i wasn’t unresponsive. i wasn’t ignoring them. i was listening and i was responding, i just also was looking between my phone and my laptop screen.

which okay i understand that maybe i’m just frustrated because of the “based on your behavior” comment because an 18 minute facetime call does not give someone enough interaction time to try and fucking diagnose me as anything, and maybe this is more of a we just didn’t vibe and that’s fine, i don’t think they’re like a bad person or anything and if nothing else i’m glad the mismatched vibes were felt before deciding to meet up or anything, but also.

eighteen minutes. literally eighteen minutes and they fucking “based on your behavior i think you’re autistic” and “here’s some advice, when meeting new people you should give them your full attention”

FUCK that.

[frivolous-pastel]

I'm feeling overwhelmed this week and had therapy phone call for 4 today but I'm too overwhelmed for therapy

So I asked to cancel and they asked if 10 tomorrow works and I'm expecting movers/cleaners for fire damage tomorrow from 9-11 but I said Sure!

[the-down-upside-finch]

Throwback to the time I did a writing workshop using the first few chapters of Minding Q's and someone called Sterling a manic pixie dream boy 😭

[chososhoeso2]

This is so real. For each of my degrees, once I graduated my parents would congratulate me and tell me that they were so proud of all my hard work and that I should be so excited that the fruits of my labor had paid off. Each time I was just confused by them. I mean in high school I was really stoked, but it was because it meant new beginnings. I didn't really care about what led me to that point. But for college and grad school I just didn't care about any part of it. I was indifferent. And with the last one, I just straight up told my parents that I didn't understand why they were so excited. And that there isn't anything to go crazy over because I just did what I was supposed to in order to get that result. It was nothing more to me than completing tasks on a checklist. Actually, I feel more accomplished when I have a clean sink after doing dishes that I've been putting off for weeks than I did for getting my masters.

people say folks with adhd struggle with "delayed rewards" aka long term goals and as such we tend to focus more on short term rewards. what they don't talk about is that at when we Do accomplish long term goals we don't actually feel anything proportionate to the amount of work we did to achieve it. In my head I suffered for a while and then money spontaneously appeared in my bank account.

[firkant-fugl]

I don't remember if I've written it but I love Maggie so FUCKIN much and she's SO autistic coded and I love that so much 😭💜😭💜😭

[clovernment]

currently at an all time low, folks

low dopamine really really really fucks you up. im watching a train hurtling towards me at full speed and im sat on the tracks cant be bothered to move an inch

as always the anticipation of worse times is somewhat suckier than the worse times. like throwing up.

i hate that i can make my life a bit better by working hard right now but tism brain really really does not want to

[copperbadge]

I'm getting depressingly good at identifying the formula for Pop Academic Books About ADHD.

Regardless of their philosophy it pretty much goes like this:

1. Emotionally sensitive essay about the struggle of ADHD and the author's personal experience with it as both a person with ADHD and a healthcare professional.

2. Either during or directly following this, a lightly explicated catalogue of symptoms, illustrated by anecdotes from patient case studies. Optional: frequent, heavy use of metaphor to explain ADHD-driven behavior.

3. Several chapters follow, each dedicated to a symptom; these have a mini-formula of their own. They open with a patient case study, discuss the highly relatable aspects of the specific symptom or behavior, then offer some lightweight examples of a treatment for the symptom, usually accompanied by follow up results from the earlier case studies.

4. Somewhere around halfway-to-two-thirds through the book, the author introduces the more in-depth explication of the treatment system (often their own homebrew) they are advocating. These are generally both personally-driven (as opposed to suggested cultural changes, which makes sense given these books' target audience, more on this later) and composed of an elaborate system of either behavior alteration or mental reframing. Whether this system is actually implementable by the average reader varies wildly.

5. A brief optional section on how to make use of ADHD as a tool (usually referring to ADHD or some of its symptoms as a superpower at least once). Sometimes this section restates the importance of using the systems from part 4 to harness that superpower. Frequently, if present, it feels like an afterthought.

6. Summation and list of further resources, often including other books which follow this formula.

I know I'm being a little sarcastic, but realistically there's nothing inherently wrong about the formula, like in itself it's not a red flag. It's just hilariously recognizable once you've noticed it.

It makes sense that these books advocate for the Reader With ADHD undertaking personal responsibility for their treatment, since these are in the tradition of self-help publishing. They're aimed at people who are already interested in doing their own research on their disability and possible ways to handle it. It's not really fair to ask them to be policy manuals, but I do find it interesting that even books which advocate stuff like volunteering (for whatever reason, usually to do with socialization issues and isolation, often DBT-adjacent) never suggest disability activism either generally or with an ADHD-specific bent.

None of these books suggest that perhaps life with ADHD could be made easier with increased accommodations or ease of medication access, and that it might be in a person's best interest to engage in political advocacy surrounding these and other disability-related issues. Or that activism related to ADHD might help to give someone with ADHD a stronger sense of ownership of their unique neurology. Or that if you have ADHD the idea of activism or even medical self-advocacy is crushingly stressful, and ways that stress might be dealt with.

It does make me want to write one of my own. "The Deviant Chaos Guide To Being A Miscreant With ADHD". Includes chapters on how to get an actual accurate assessment, tips for managing a prescription for a controlled substance, medical and psychiatric self-advocacy for people who are conditioned against confrontation, When To Lie About Being Neurodivergent, policy suggestions for ADHD-related legislation, tips for activism while executively dysfunked, and to close the book a biting satire of the pop media idea of self-care. ("Feeling sad? Make yourself a nice pot of chicken soup from scratch and you'll feel better in no time. Stay tuned after this rambling personal essay for the most mediocre chicken soup recipe you've ever seen!" "Have you considered planning and executing an overly elaborate criminal heist as a way to meet people and stay busy?")

Every case study or personal anecdote in the book will have a different name and demographics attached but will also make it obvious that they are all really just me, in the prose equivalent of a cheap wig, writing about my life. "Kelly, age seven, says she struggles to stay organized using the systems neurotypical children might find easy. I had to design my own accounting spreadsheet in order to make sure I always have enough in checking to cover the mortgage, she told me, fidgeting with the pop socket on her smartphone."

I feel a little bad making fun, because these books are often the best resource people can get (in itself concerning). It's like how despite my dislike of AA, I don't dunk on it in public because I don't want to offer people an excuse not to seek help. It feels like punching down to criticize these books, even though it's a swing at an industry that is mainly, it seems, here to profit from me. But one does get tired of skimming the hype for the real content only to find the real content isn't that useful either.

Les (not his real name) was diagnosed at the age of 236. Charming, well-read, and wealthy, he still spent much of his afterlife feeling deeply inadequate about his perceived shortcomings. "Vampire culture doesn't really acknowledge ADHD as a condition," he says. "My sire wouldn't understand, even though he probably has it as well. You should see the number of coffins containing the soil of his homeland that he's left lying forgotten all over Europe." A late diagnosis validated his feelings of difference, but on its own can't help when he hyperfocuses on seducing mortals who cross his path and forgets to get home before sunrise. "I have stock in sunburn gel companies," he jokes.

[hedge-bones]

tonight i knocked a (nearly full, size large, RIP) iced coffee out of my fridge and it spilled all over the kitchen floor--including my feet, i’ll get back to that--and this resulted in two things. 1) my partner listening to me curse out everything over discord while i used actual literal bath towels to clean it up because i’m out of paper towels,

but more importantly 

2) cursing out everything specifically because it got all over my feet, soaking my socks and making my feet sticky, and that is Much Worse, bordering on Intolerable, pushing me straight from 

“mildly annoyed because it’s super hot today” into 

“bordering on a full meltdown because i’m sticky and bare foot and these are both unacceptable assaults on my sensory processing”

and it’s one of those days when i wonder how my parents never considered i could be autistic because this occurred with regular frequency as a child