#WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S A SYMPTOM OF OTHER ISSUES??

[chronic-conjuring]

I also used to work at a smoke shop, and lemme tell you what. People LOVE drugs. Like REALLY REALLY LOVE drugs.

My store became and stayed the highest grossing store in the entire company for my whole time working there. And part of why that happened is because me and my main coworker weren’t judgmental assholes when we had meth and heroine addicts come in. A lot of those people were seeking alternatives to try and stop, actually, and I can’t tell you the amount of times these people were so ashamed and scared to ask for a safer alternative like Kratom. Most people I helped, and almost all of my regulars, were thrown aside by the medical system and needed something to curb their pain just to function. Many people use drugs to help sustain their way of life, to be able to work enough to put food on the table for their families. Most of those people I helped were using THC products specifically.

The majority of our customer base was disabled, chronically ill and chronic pain patients. We got plenty of other people too, you wouldn’t believe how much tobacco and tubes the Amish and old people will buy in one trip, and the college nearby had us serving a lot of younger people who just wanted something to help them chill out after class. But those were the exceptions in my case.

And you know what? I’m fucking proud of the fact I worked there and gained such good rapport with my regulars. I was helping people in my community not only find safe alternatives for dangerous substances, but in some cases I also got to see them start to put their lives back together because of it. Giving friendly access to THC kept many people from becoming addicted to opiates. It’s amazing what happens when you put in some effort to help people who use drugs and treat them like normal everyday people.

Because the large majority of them are! I only had a select few that were at the point where people would label them as addicts just by looking at them or interacting with them briefly, and by a few I mean I can count them on two hands. Again, at the highest grossing store in the entire company (that kept breaking our record sales monthly) I had less than 10 regulars that were that far down the path of addiction. Not to mention the fact I’m from an area heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic. You can’t tell who uses what just by looking at them most of the time, only extreme cases are that way.

And those people were the ones I wanted to help the most! All of them had some heartbreaking stories of how they got there, usually the story was kicked off from some unpredictable event that could happen to anyone. Car accidents, sudden severe illnesses, a loved one dying, unknown genetic diseases popping up. People don’t typically get into harder drugs for funsies, addiction is a societal problem. It’s a maladaptive coping mechanism for much larger issues.

Most often it’s a symptom of things wrong in how our society works, like our medical system taking someone’s pain medication away because of the fear of addiction by doctors, severe depression from economic struggles and political violence, growing up or being in an abusive/ neglectful environment or one where the parents are users themselves. These aren’t immoral people who deserve to suffer or be cut off from their communities, they’re people who got a shit lot in life and you’re only perpetuating that by being shitty towards them. You don’t have to like them, you just have to recognize their humanity and act accordingly. The fact it’s that hard for people to do that is so sad, and I judge anyone who chooses to do so and dehumanize addicts more than I do the addicts.

ETA: btw liking drugs isn’t inherently bad. People have loved drugs ever since we discovered them. That’s kind of the point for some of them. Needing drugs to function is also not inherently bad and is just how it is for some people. DRUGS ARE AMORAL

You don't have to like weed but I find people who are vehemently anti-weed but claim to be left leaning infuriating. If you go into a rage because you smelled someone smoking pot, how the fuck do you expect to form community with people addicted to meth? It's easier to say you hate smokers than to say you hate all drug users in leftist spaces because one makes you sound a bit like a square while the other is the writing on the wall. You aren't anti-weed, you're anti-drug user and anyone who uses substances is not safe around you.

[liberalk1tsch]

How do you feel about people equating Katniss’ depression after Prim’s death to her mother’s own after her father’s, and the abandonment that resulted from it?

oh i can feel this is gonna be a long one.

there's two things i want to be very clear about.

the likelihood of katniss having the same mental illness as her mother is extremely high; they both present with near-identical symptoms. i think they definitely suffer from the same illness.

however

2. their situations are entirely different and deserve to be treated as such.

katniss' catatonic depression comes after losing her sister, the person who — in catching fire — she describes as the only person in the world that she's 100% certain that she loves.

asterid's first episode that we know of occurs directly after burdock's death.

while both of them have surviving loved ones after these deaths, there's a distinct difference in their support systems and availability of treatment.

in regards to asterid, it is extremely abnormal that she doesn't have any sort of support system. as someone who grew up in poverty myself, that's not really how impoverished communities work. typically, the only reason people wouldn't keep reaching out to help a family in need is if you are actively pushing them away, which we know to be a canon character trait for asterid.

(my dear friend and go-to expert on all things appalachia @loungemermaid does a great job of discussing the specifics of that within appalachian communities in this post, and asterid's role further down in this post.)

this likely results from her own issues with her parents, as she contextually appears to be disowned by them entirely, so she struggles to allow herself to grow close with others in her personal relationships because she herself has been abandoned and thereby developed an inherent fear that to grow close to someone is to put herself at risk for getting hurt.

from what we know, it seems as if asterid is that one girl who doesn't maintain her friendships once she finds her partner and essentially cuts herself off. i won't pretend to know if this is on purpose or not, but i will reiterate that poor communities tend to do a great job at reaching out to each other, so even if her town friends shunned her, there probably wasn't a lack of people willing to be in her network. keeping in mind she lived in the seam for at least 11 years before burdock died and had plenty of time to establish herself in the community. maybe this is because of her own trauma, maybe not, but regardless, it would make burdock's death all the more painful if he was really her only person (and based on the text, it seems like he is).

the issue is that she didn't exclusively have herself to think about. i'm not a parent myself so i won't pretend to be an expert on something i've never experienced, but i don't feel i need to give birth myself to know that the second you're planning on carrying a child to term, you don't get to be selfish anymore. you do what's best by your kid, even if it's intimidating for you.

i can understand that she couldn't "snap out of it" per say when she went catatonic. most people can't. additionally, i empathise with her in that she didn't have the proper medication to treat herself.

that being said, she had years to build a network for her family in the event that something drastic like this should happen (and based on what we know, it seems like a relatively common occurence) and didn't. whit put it best when they said "Asterid is still just a little girl, trapped in her own trauma, in her own head, where a single choice that her parents didn’t agree with means they didn’t love her anymore. It’s a cycle. It’s a shame. She could’ve broken the cycle. She could’ve called out for help, from someone. She didn’t."

when i studied nursing, one of the first things we learned was how impactful a patient's community and network can be on their outcomes and recovery. as a healer, asterid would know this. it's no secret in the medical community, no matter how high your education goes. it is one of the most basic aspects of patient history to take note of. but she doesn't develop that for herself or her girls. whether by hubris that they wouldn't need it, or apprehension at going out of her own comfort zone, i don't know.

and so her daughters are neglected. they nearly starve to death, and katniss is forced to assume the archetype of the parentified eldest daughter. from the time she is 11, she always has someone to take care of.

neglect does not have to be intentional to be neglect.

even after asterid gets better and begins medicating herself, she is still highly dependent on katniss for tessarae, hunting, gathering, etc. it's only after they're taken in by 13 and asterid is given a proper job that she's able to support herself, hence why it's so different when katniss falls into her depression following prim's death: katniss has nobody to take care of but herself. she's allowed to be selfish and wallow in her grief.

haymitch is drunk at home. peeta's in the capitol. finnick's dead. prim too. gale's in 2. and asterid . . . asterid has abandoned her for real this time.

there's no catatonia to blame it on either. yes, asterid's grieving. it's understandable why she doesn't want to return to 12. but she's fully medicated, and she has a minor daughter who's deeply traumatised and experiencing her own catatonia. she needs her mother now more than ever.

but she's not there for her.

she leaves without so much as a goodbye. doesn't even wait around to see to it that her only living daughter isn't going to be executed for murder. and she chooses to do this when everyone else who loves katniss is either in treatment themselves (peeta in therapy in the capitol, haymitch self-medicating, etc.) or dead. sae and buttercup are the only reasons katniss stays alive in the months before peeta returns to 12. but even then, we have no way of knowing if that was at asterid's request (personally, i think it's haymitch's).

she pushes katniss away one final time. maybe it's because she reminds her too much of burdock with her looks and her voice. reminds her too much of prim as her only surviving daughter. then again, maybe not. the amount of canon information we have on her is abysmal. either way, she projects her abandonment on her daughter and katniss once again nearly dies as a result.

basically this is all a very long-winded for me to say that while i think they have the same illness, their situations aren't particularly comparable, and their relationship is complicated, to say the very least.

[fyxestroll]

Please can you write something with Magnus the Red? Doesn't matter what

pairing: magnus the red x reader (gn.)

warnings: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, descriptions of body horror, angst

notes: tried to make this as gender neutral as possible. please tell me if I missed any feminine terms. first time writing for magnus hope I did him right.

There’s an old saying that “there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.” 

Magnus begged to differ. Genius is insanity, as it is what society labels it so; to break preconceived notions is viewed as insanity.

And then he met you.

You, the brightest pharmacist in all of Tizca with nearly enough accolades to match his.

You, the most insane scholar to ever roam Prospero’s medical institutions.

Prospero was most known for its sorcerers but at the end of the day, it was the land of scholars meaning any and all avenues of knowledge were pursued, including medicine. You, specifically, specialised in concocting medicine from the planet’s flora and fauna to assist in a patient’s physical recovery from psychic maladies.

That was how your paths crossed.

See, the thing with contracting psychic illnesses is that those afflicted have either gone mad or are days away from passing on. Ignoring ethical concerns—but you always cared about those, the latter were too unpredictable and the former would rather spend their final days with their loved ones which left you without any test subjects.

So you decided you would become the test subject. 

And you had proudly proclaimed so when proposing your research to him. He had baulked at the proposition. It was suicidal, and while Magnus is the last person to preach about caution, he wasn’t the one running around asking for money to consume poison.

He rejected it the second you finished your presentation.

In response, you continued to push, hounding him like a dog. You were practically there at every turn approaching him with passionate—— near manic eyes. He continued to reject you for years, hoping you would eventually wear yourself out, but that never happened.

Instead, he became your research partner.

Somehow, you had managed to convince him, and somehow he had let himself be convinced.

Maybe that was a sign of what was to come, a sign that that partnership would grow into something more.

Or maybe he was just as insane as you.

No, that’s not right, isn’t it? You always made far better decisions than him. Always.

Either way, the endeavour was a success, and together, you discovered several treatments in quick succession. You went on to open a clinic; it was a humble place compared to the towering pyramids that overshadowed it, and on the day of its grand opening, you asked him to marry you. 

Right. In. Front. Of. Everybody.

And he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

You became his, his partner in study and in life. Magnus was never one to believe in blessings, but you were his, and he couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t meet you. It was a good marriage, all things considered. Propsero prospered under your care; you and he were at your happiest, and that didn’t change when his Father, his progenitor, finally came for him. You simply became a parent to his legion, to his Thousand Sonds.

Sadly, by his fault, it was short-lived.

He sought to resolve the issue of the Flesh Change that plagued his legion and paid a far heavier price than he thought.

In the beginning, you had joined him in looking for a cure. 

But his legion, his sons, continued to die. 

Bit by bit, he watched as your hope for a cure dwindled. It broke you; you, the brightest star in Prospero, the doctor who cured the incurable.

“We’ve know that this illness is connected to the Great Ocean,” you had said, looking over the cadaver of a legionnaire, an apothecary who had ended his life as soon as the symptoms of the Change worsened, “But its cause is unknown and those affected are not limited to the physchically gifted of your gene-line.” 

You looked to him, forlorn, “I’m starting to believe there is no cure. We simply do not have enough knowledge about the Great Ocean to find one.”

He should have left it at that, grieved those lost and shifted his focus to palliative care. 

But he didn’t.

Giving up did not mean you would abandon the pursuit—not even the Emperor Himself could stop you from attempting to save a life, and the research would simply be put on the back burner. He knew you had hoped that if you did not find a cure yourself in the present, you would in the future, if not, years down the line, someone would. 

You had the patience to wait.

Magnus did not.

You were always his better half.

He delved into the Depths of the Great Ocean against his better judgment and his Father’s warnings. Then It came along and It offered a deal—a cure in exchange for a piece of his soul and a piece of his flesh.

He took it, and you paid the price.

You see, when he married you, he tied his soul to yours. It was a vow of loyalty in that he would have no other but you. However, to those who looked into the Warp, they would see the two of you as one, entwined forevermore.

When he Resurfaced he had found you screaming as you attempted to claw your eyes out. Only, you had no eyes, just smooth skin where they should have been. 

The same happened to your mouth, days later. 

Next week, your ears.

By the end of the month, you were nothing but a sack of conscious flesh with a hole for a nose.

The rest of your body was in similar condition. Limbs multiplied or disappeared, and bones rearranged themselves under your skin. His best apothecaries could find no source for this unknown affliction, but Magnus knew.

He was paying his dues.

A piece of your flesh. A piece of your soul.

You suffered for months, physically screaming out in pain, begging him to put you out of your misery. He couldn’t, he couldn’t bear to let you go. You were his better half and he could not accept that he had done this to you.

He promised you a cure. 

That was for naught.

One night, you fell silent, your soul disappeared. 

To where?

Magnus does not know.

Ten millennia later, your soul still eludes him.

Perhaps, it is better this way.

Prospero, your beloved Prospero was razed and now it was being rebuilt. However, gone were the beautiful gardens, sprawling plazas and towering pyramids of Tizca instead, there was only a great war forge. 

Every bit of his homeworld will play its part in the great game.

And you would hate that.

Your clinic, your research would no longer be used for cures but to create the ailments. Some would say such an act would be more befitting for the followers of the Plaguefather but the Changer of Ways appreciated such twists of fate.

In this way, you, his beloved,  would be remembered.

You would hate this.

You would hate him.

[rin-and-jade]

We're In This Together: A Post of Pairs & Connection in Alters

This topic's not commonly talked about, since we always thought that alters have to be different in order to be a valid experience as a system. I've come here to show you another perspective to tackle that Status Quo:

Alter's are connected with each other--sometimes obvious like in pairs, sometimes subtle ways on how they communicate to other groups better.

It'll be an interesting subject today--I'll Show ya!

Fast Pass: TLDR Section Is Available!

Alright, Im Listenin'

We've had many discussions within the community on why parts are compartmentalized, became distinct personalities, or able to hold different memories/symptoms/skills. Now, that's one view systems often focus on,, this's the time to talk about what's been keeping your innerworld and parts functional in real life despite the chaos.

Do you often think to yourself why parts come in pairs or many at once instead of one by one in a gradual timeline?

While there's no single factor that helps make sense of this, there ARE some primary ones:

Low Dissociation It's what helps them understand each other's thoughts without saying them out loud, since they vibe with similar frequencies.

Low Emotional Amnesia This helps them understand what the other is feeling, no matter how small, its like some integrated empathy that's mutually shared.

Splitting from the same Source (alter) While it's true that the essence were distributed away, some retain the original part, which often makes those separated alters gravitate towards each other again. Sometimes they also remember where or who they belonged to, retaining past memories is absolutely possible.

Arriving from similar origins They can appear one after the other (in short time span) or alternatively, appear together in a group. This can be caused by changes in the environment/daily life, which brings forth newer equipped alters if existing parts fail to integrate/download the updates.

Is this,, Normal?

It sure is, and there's reasons to back those up.

Similarities can be shared across alters due to how amnesia and dissociative barriers affect each alters differently, this can be compared with two extreme spectrums:

The OSDD 1a is subtype where amnesia and barriers are still prominent, yet the lack of distinction brings us some hints that alters do not have to be different in order to be separate.

And the Polyfrag can have multiple variations of a single alter, contrasting with OSDD's less distinct but separate parts. This suggests different forms of interconnection--meaning, alters are linked through shared origins, functions, or retained traits rather than always being fully different personalities.

Those with DID or other CDD's can also experience this, just in less obvious forms outside of my examples. Depending on what type of system you are, this experience will manifest differently for everyone, and is not universal or comparable.

If you're still confused why an alter split or formed here and there, then it might be harder to understand why groups can appear--In this case, i'll explain the basics to help you understand why.

Tell Me Why?

It's possible to split or form alters that have similar skills, traits, or purposes since the brain do not possess an innate sorting system based on aesthetics or clear organization to box each parts differently.

When you think about it, the brain is geared for survival and producing resources based on what obstacles it had encountered--think about how sharing workload provides better stress resilience when compared to a single part handling all the burden, a big contrast isn't it?

An alter who forms or splits from, is the cause of stress from uncertainty or any complex issues it cannot navigate/solve. It's much easier to simplify solutions to black and white, leaving the grey areas untouched,, this helps them perform actions immediately without overthinking any other perspectives.

Now, if they came in groups, it got the same reason why one appeared,, but now a level above it. There could be multiple stress at once which produces a batch in a similar time frame.

What does their Arrival mean?

If there's an ongoing theme or when the majority have one or multiple traits or issues it's dealing with (e.g, most of your headmates struggles with trust) , that could be a BIG hint that something is up.

You can also call it a reoccurring problem that's desperate to be solved, something that you're uncomfortable to face--yet crucial to heal from.

And, from the alters you've gained throughout your journey, it reflects what stress or trauma that needs to be overcame one day. So.. instead of dreading why you've gained new members, try using a different mindset and ask what do you need in order to cope,, assuming new ones arrived to help you get through life.

How's this related to our topic--

It does relate for today's main subject, because of how some alters talk, and often create their own social groups based on how well they connect with each other.

See for instance, holders can have better access to other holder's memories or how ANP's can talk better with their own similarities compared to talking to EP's groups. Depending on what the alter's dissociated away from, the less distinct, the better they're related to each other.

E.g, A and B are both anger holders, despite having different memories to why they adapted an explosive behavior, the dissociation between them aren't high due to holding the same emotion--Anger. This main similarity between them is what creates better inner communication.

So, its true that alters are all different, although because they belong to the same mind--it's bound to collide and create similar variations from external environment or stimulus.

Okay, i understand! (Takeaway)

That's great, because even if CDD's are made to separate stressful memories or traumas, it does not stop from parts being able to communicate due to their own connected origins which bypass the general amnesia and barriers all systems struggle with!

At the end, to simply explain why connection exists within dissociation, its definitely because of one word: Relation.

Dissociation and amnesia makes it hard to be aware of your own parts or their purpose, but if you got some common grounds to start a conversation--it'll serve as a realization that you're not as separated from everyone else as you'd thought.

Have i challenged the Status Quo? If this made you rethink how alters connect, you might find subsystems even more interesting, here's the link to it!

- c

TLDR SECTION

Alters don’t always exist as completely distinct individuals—many are interconnected in ways that challenge the common perception of system dynamics.

Some alters form in pairs or groups, sharing traits, emotions, or origins. This happens due to factors like low dissociation, low emotional amnesia, splitting from the same source, or arriving from similar life circumstances.

Polyfragmented systems can have multiple variations of a single alter, contrasting with OSDD’s less distinct but still separate parts. This suggests that alters can be linked through shared origins, functions, or retained traits rather than always being fully different personalities.

Alters arriving in groups often reflect recurring stress or trauma, signaling unresolved issues that need attention. Instead of seeing new alters as a setback, they can be understood as adaptations meant to help the system navigate challenges.

Key takeaway: Despite dissociation and amnesia, alters are often connected in ways that make inner communication and cooperation possible. Recognizing this can help systems better understand and communicate with themselves.

[the-one-who-lambs]

I feel like some people in fandom spaces have forgotten that fic writers primarily write out of enjoyment and not because we want to Win At The Numbers Game or cater only to what interests others.

Writing fanfic well is a slow process. It can take months or years to develop a story well, and with social media increasingly pushing quick-form entertainment I feel like there's been a shift towards thinking of creatives as little more than idea generators who need to satisfy that easily digestible, instantly consumable, short-attention-span desire for "content" that should have a broad appeal.

And I honestly feel like that sort of perspective completely undermines the integrity of the creative spirit. Even reading fic is not an experience that can be digested in a few seconds before moving on to the next product. I promise I get it-- it can be intimidating to see a 100k+ word fanfic, even one that you've heard is well-written and worth the time it takes to read! I, too, have a few longer fics I've been meaning to get to. But it's a little disheartening when a five-minute doodle or meme edit I made gets a ton of notes if a fic that's taken a month or more to write comes and goes without much of the excitement I had been hoping to share. Reading and engaging thoughtfully with fanfic takes time. Readers can't reduce it to an experience that fulfills a consumerist-driven want for instant gratification, and I think that's one of the reasons that fanfic and writers are often not treated with much respect recently and are often the first to notice that attitude towards creatives.

Since my main creative medium is writing, I think I've had a different experience with online consumer-minded fandomgoers than creatives are primarily digital illustrators, or animators, or voice actors, or whatever your hobby may be, and I do wonder if that might be due to the inability to consume fanfic and be done with it. But the drift away from thoughtfully engaging with visual mediums are a related issue too; even the fanart that we might look at for half a minute is likely to have taken its artist days or months to create

Fanartists and fanfic writers create what we want because we enjoy it. We're sharing it because we want to be able to share the joy of creating with others, not because we want to fulfill demands made of us. If you're polite and we are open to requests, or if you ask questions/share your favorite details that get our inspiration flowing, we might jump on that! But let's not expect hobbyists to create for us.

Pestering writers who tell and share their stories for fun and for free and treating them as content generators is just one symptom of this. Writing, drawing, crafting-- no matter what you're doing, the process of creating rather than the finished product is the point and makes having creative hobbies worthwhile. Get consumerist attitudes out of fandom spaces

A good way to make sure a fic author never writes the thing you want them to is to pester them to write that exact thing

[pa-pa-plasma]

Wait what do you mean healthy people dont loaf??? It's so comfy why wouldn't they do that?

I'm saying this as someone with hypermobility which is, I'm sure, completely unrelated to why I think this./s

people are so weird, what do you mean "i wish humans could loaf"? this is so easy! heehee

[angryisokay]

I could be harsh and cruel. I know the tender spots, the right things to say, the things that will hurt. I could lash out and twist the knife because in the moment causing pain seems right and justified. For a moment it will feel satisfying, for just a moment.

But once I do it, I cannot take it back. The wound will have been made by my hand. No amount of soothing and care will change that fact. That feeling of satisfaction will wither into despair and regret.

Harshness and cruelty serves momentary selfish desires and leaves miserable consequences in it's wake like a raging house fire. With work and patience you can rebuild afterward. But like a house fire, there will be things you cannot replace once they're lost.

If there is anything you do not wish to lose, set aside the desire to be harsh and cruel, and find a different way to deal with the situation.

[raeofgayshine]

Today was a supremely crappy day, so I ordered myself an early birthday present (by like two weeks but still) and it should come right around my actual birthday, and I was going to do it anyways after I got birthday money but you know

Kind of just been a crappy little while, I’ve been working on my gender playlist to help and since I have a feeling I’ll be under my weighted blanket most of tomorrow maybe I’ll post the current version of it. Might even explain some of the songs if I feel up to it.

Anyways doctors fucking suck and I already knew this but being told over and over there’s nothing actually wrong really fucking wears on me. Maybe if we just stopped trying to diagnose me for something I don’t fit and look at the whole picture… but that would make sense wouldn’t it?

[light-wrath-paradise]

Btwww I might have. A disorder. I will not specify. But it is a new one. One I don't have yet. It is not known yet.

Like it's probably nothing I mean just forget about it it's totally fine and probably nothing and I'm just being hysterical and I managed to subconsciously manipulate my doctors aha. Like don't worry about it I'm sure this is just a hell of my own making and if I really wanted it to stop I could totally just stop it. So don't even worry about it.

The fact that the only people who fully relate to me and whom I relate to are people with said disorder just means that I subconsciously manipulated them into relating to me. Somehow.

[kira-akira]

What I Want You To Know About Long COVID

Well lads, I've been suffering from Long COVID for over a year now. My life is at a complete standstill. I'm 25 years old and I'm too sick to go back to school, I can't work, I had to move back in with my parents and I'm still stuck here.

Here are just a few things I wish people knew about Long COVID, including things I didn't know myself until I got it.

COVID destroys your immune system. Yes, even if you don't have Long COVID. Are you getting sick more often now? When you get sick, does it last longer? There are many studies showing that COVID causes t cell depletion, even in mild COVID cases! T cells are how your body remembers how to fight off infections you've had before so losing those cells? Bad news.

Your initial infection can be mild and you can still get Long COVID. Right from Yale Medicine, "Most people with Long COVID had mild acute COVID." (This is also a good link for a basic Long COVID overview).

There can be a gap of time between when you "get better" from the initial COVID infection to the onset of Long COVID symptoms. Some people get sick with an initial COVID infection and never get better. Some get better and then weeks or months later start developing Long COVID symptoms. Long COVID symptoms can even fluctuate over time, can go away for months and then suddenly come back.

So many people have Long COVID and don't realize it. Do you feel more tired lately but no matter how much you sleep, nothing helps? Is it harder to concentrate at work or school? Can you just not think like you used to? You could have Long COVID and not even know it. Even mild post-COVID symptoms are still Long COVID.

COVID can do anything to your body. Long COVID has over 200 recognized symptoms and can affect basically any part or system of your body. There is no one mechanism or cause of Long COVID which unfortunately also means there's no one cure either.

The effects of COVID are cumulative. Each COVID reinfection increases your chances of developing Long COVID. COVID is also affecting your body in other ways, yes, even if you're otherwise young and healthy! "Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death".

Once you have Long COVID, repeat COVID infections will make your symptoms worse. "80% [of Long COVID patients] saw their symptoms worsen [from reinfection]. In 60% of people who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection caused a recurrence of Long COVID."

There is a lot more I want to say about Long COVID but I want to keep this post at least somewhat manageable to read. Like how when COVID is contracted during pregnancy, those COVID-exposed fetuses have a 6.3-fold increased risk of motor developmental delays, or that another study found 50% of babies exposed to COVID in utero had developmental delays.

You need to keep caring about COVID, for others around you and also for yourself even if you're "healthy". Everyone is at risk. And don't forget 40-60% of COVID infections are asymptomatic, which is why masking even if you feel fine is crucial. The only way right now to not get Long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. It's not too late, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! I know it's easy to get distracted by things in your life that seem more real than the possibility of getting sick some time in the future, and the peer pressure to not mask can be intense. But it only feels less real or less important until your entire life is having Long COVID. Trust me.

I know this is a complicated issue, many people can't afford to stay home when sick even if they want to because of their jobs, there are disgusting policies trying to ban wearing masks, but please if you can. Keep masking. Masking works, masking saves lives.

This post got a bit longer than I wanted so below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of my Long COVID symptoms and some of my experiences as one of the "healthy young people" who got "unlucky". cw brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Welcome to the Thunderdome that is my body with Long COVID. Keep in mind these are just my experiences and symptoms, Long COVID can cause any range of symptoms at varying severities.

Dysautonomia: Exercise intolerance, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), fatigue, and heat intolerance. What do those things mean? Here's some specific examples. Absolutely terrible circulation I am so cold all the time but also, if I get a little too warm I will pass out. Eating hot food makes my heart rate spike, I sweat, my body feels heavy. Blood pooling and pins and needles in my feet when I walk. Don't even think about exercising past walking, it's impossible. I used to work out an hour a day 4 times a week and now walking up one flight of stairs makes my heart pound and I can't breathe. Can't take even just warm showers anymore or I will pass out. Heat rashes from being in the sun for 10 minutes.

Digestive issues: Honestly too many to name but: constant bloating, extreme nausea, constipation, slow motility, lack of appetite, just so much cramping and pain. I lost 18 pounds from Long COVID, as someone who was already considered underweight their entire life, and almost had to get a shunt put into my chest to deliver nutrients because I was nearly completely unable to eat. For the first 6 months of Long COVID, if I could manage 600 calories a day, that was a good day.

Histamine intolerance: Oh boy. My worst symptoms, I don't even know where to start with it. If you know Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) it's very similar. I can only eat 19 foods. If i eat a single bite of something not on that list, it's 48 hours of absolute hell. Coughing, migraines, itchy eyes, such extreme nausea I cannot even describe it, panic/feeling of doom, racing heart rate, derealization, rash, uncontrollable muscle tremors. I only learned about histamine intolerance 5 months into having Long COVID so before that, I was experiencing these symptoms nearly every single day. Terrifying isn't even a strong enough word to describe how it felt to experience all this and have no idea what it was, how to stop it, or if it would ever stop. Really dark times.

Neurological issues: More of that derealization. Inability to concentrate. Anxiety. OCD-like symptoms such as thoughts getting "stuck" in my head, repeating 24/7 completely unable to stop them, genuinely felt like my brain had cracked open and I had lost my mind. Constant dizziness like I'm on a boat.

Sleep issues: I sleep like garbage. I have insomnia, I wake up dozens of times every night and every single time I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams. I can't sleep longer than 7 hours total no matter how exhausted I am. It is exhausting. I'm exhausted, I'm so so tired.

And finally. Just. Really intense suicidal ideation. My body, my health, my entire life has been stolen from me because someone else decided my life was worth less to them than wearing a mask or staying home if they feel sick. Before I got Long COVID, I was preparing to go to South Korea to teach English, then on to a PhD in neurolinguistics, I was supposed to meet my long distance partner and had already booked plane tickets when I got sick. All of that has been destroyed.

Most of us with Long COVID are stuck in a cycle of being extremely sick, then if you're lucky you'll slowly get better over months, just to get reinfected and go right back where you started or worse. Honestly, I'm not scared of dying from COVID. I'm scared of living for a long time, suffering from Long COVID the entire time. This isn't living.

I don't know how to end this now. I'm still fighting, I'm trying experimental treatments, I'm not giving up yet. I hope everyone reading this stays healthy and well.

[autopsyfreak]

Homicidal Ideation

homicidal ideation is the term for having active thoughts about murdering others. these thoughts can be intrusive, however they can also often be voluntary.

misconceptions:

‘people who have these thoughts either have killed someone or will kill someone in the future’ - this is false. most people who have these thoughts usually have disordered behaviours (most commonly as a result of personality disorders) and struggle to find healthy ways to cope with their emotions, therefore provocation and stress can easily cause thoughts of inflicting harm onto others. this doesn’t inherently mean these people are dangerous, nor does it mean that they’re going to act upon these thoughts. most people who experience homicidal ideation never act on it and use it more as a way to process their distress/frustration internally.

‘having these thoughts about people in your life means you can’t possibly care for them’ - also false. caring for someone doesn’t make them an exception to mental illness and it doesn’t stop your mental illnesses from existing. to think that someone’s love for you is only valid as long as they’re not displaying traits of mental illness is unfair and is hugely misinformed. to love and be loved by someone who is mentally ill is to accept that they will display symptoms of their mental illness. you are not the exception and they do not love you any less by showing traits of being unwell.

‘so you endorse murder’ - no. that’s not at all what this means and if you seriously think this then your grasp of severe mental health issues is too limited to be commenting on such topics.

‘you’re evil’ - for being unwell? don’t be a cunt. if you seriously think that having a disordered manner of processing emotions internally makes someone ‘evil’ then that sounds more like an issue with you being too sensitive and having a lack of understanding, not an issue with the mentally ill person experiencing these thoughts. don’t make your inability to understand mental illness into someone else’s problem.

as someone who does experience homicidal ideation, it’s also important to not make the mistake of assuming everyone who is mentally ill experiences these thoughts either. i had an anonymous ask earlier today that directly associated the fact i’m mentally unwell with murder and homicidal thoughts, to immediately make this assumption just because someone is mentally ill is disgusting.

[bubblegumgothglados]

This is my RACK focused judgment free primer for heavy impact play. It covers every part of the body from head to toe and at no point does it say you can’t do something just the risks of doing so. I don't normally put warnings on my posts but most of my writing is fantasy, this isn't. I'm going to talk about any number of painful deaths and heaps more ways of becoming disabled.

In this primer "you" means the one doing the hitting, "victim" is the one being hit, and "tool" is the thing you're hitting with which could be a fist, foot, hammer, bat, anything. I'm writing it this way because its fun for me.

This primer also assumes you know the different types of impacts and how they affect the body, if you don't go look at my other writings.

Finally i take no responsibility for anything you do. All this information is what i could put together from medical journals and car crash reports if I've got anything wrong (and you can prove it) please let me know.

Enjoy

Head. With hits to the head, the two major concerns are concussions and neck injuries. A concussion occurs when a person’s brain impacts with the inside of their skull, this happens because the brain is suspended in fluid so if the skull stops or starts moving suddenly the brain will move out of sync with the skull. Symptoms of concussions can include headaches, confusion, lack of coordination, memory loss, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, ringing in the ears, sleepiness, and excessive fatigue. If your victim lost consciousness for any length of time and is having trouble speaking or understanding your words, you need to get them to the ER. There is no cure for a concussion but the best treatment is pain medication and activities that won’t tax the brain to give it time to recover. There are any number of ways to damage a neck, but generally it happens when a person’s neck is moved suddenly and violently or pushed past its limit. Minor injuries should heal by themselves within a few weeks but if unlucky pain and stiffness can last months or even years. For more major injuries, physical therapy or a neck brace might be necessary but only if the pain lasts longer than a few weeks. It’s also possible to hit someone hard enough to break their neck or fracture their skull but that takes a lot of force. All of these injuries can be avoided by supporting your victim’s head and neck by bracing their head against a surface or holding their head with your hand.

Jaw. It takes surprisingly little force to dislocate a jaw, you can do so with a good slap Dislocations are talked about in Note 3 at the bottom of this primer. Heavy bleeding from gums or a tooth that feels loose could indicate a fractured root. This is a fairly minor issue and if you see a dentist quickly they should be able to fix it back in place with no lasting damage. A tooth that has been knocked out completely should survive; get your victim to rinse their mouth out and rinse the tooth off and shove it back into the gap, and then have them see a dentist to make sure it’s properly seated and avoid chewing with it for a while.

Eyes. A fun combination of fragile and complicated. There's no first aid tips I can give you and it'll be real obvious if something is wrong. I will say you don't have to hit someones eye to give them a black eye, it’s bruising around the eye socket that matters. Also check Note 1 about the use of ice when treating injuries.

Nose. It’s more difficult than you think to break a nose. You definitely can with a good punch but you'll have to really commit. A broken nose isn't that serious (I've broken mine twice now) and isn't even ER worthy. If your victim is leaning backwards after breaking their nose the blood will run down the back of their throat potentially making them vomit or very sick. There is a chance a broken nose will heal in a way that restricts breathing in which case your victim may need surgery.

Cheek bone. Below the temple but above the gum line, running from just bellow their ear to their nose. Special mention to this spot because it’s the best place to hit your victim in the head (in my opinion). This piece of bone is very sturdy and not that risky to fracture. Plus, when you hit them here they have to watch it coming.

Neck. The windpipe, jugular, cranial nerves, vagus nerve, carotid arteries, and spine all live here and damage to any of these can cause permanent disability or death. Seek medical attention if your victim has trouble breathing or swallowing, or a lot of pain or swelling. Stingy tools are far less risky here than thuddy tools.

Shoulders. Note 2 on joints. The shoulder blades can either be an ideal impact location or one of the most risky depending on how it’s sitting. If the shoulder blade is jutting out away from the rest of the back, it’s very easy to damage If it’s laying flat against the back, it’s protected by a thick layer of fat and muscle.

Biceps. Top 4 impact location. The main concern is damaging the elbow and shoulder joints, if hitting in a way that will pull on those joints. Much like with the head, bracing the impact area against a surface will minimize the risk. Repeated hits to this area can temporarily disable the arm, which is fun.

Forearm. As above, the main risk is damaging the adjoining joints. There are also several important blood vessels and nerves running through this area and not a lot of fat an muscle to protect them.

Hands. Very little fat or muscle, mostly tendons, nerves, and cartilage. See Note 2 on joints. Special note to the palm, which hurts like hell but is relatively safe because of the extra muscle and fat in that area, great for punishment. Once again, stingy tools are much less risky than thuddy tools.

Breasts/ biceps. Top 4 impact locations. Thick layers of fat, muscle, and bone protect anything vital.

Sternum. That is the bone running down the center of a person’s chest that connects to their ribs. Not in itself very fragile but the cartilage that connects it to the ribs is easily damaged and will take a long time to heal. A fractured sternum will likely cause shortness of breath and pain when taking deep breaths. There's not much to be done about these injuries just rest and avoiding strenuous activity.

Spine. The single most risky impact location. Any damage to the spine risks permanent paralysis of everything below that point. As ever, stingy tools present less risk than thuddy tools.

Rib cage. Designed to protect a person’s most vital organs, the rib cage is very strong. Fractured ribs will cause pain breathing but aren't particularly serious. Snapped ribs can pierce organs If this happens, it'll be immediately obvious and medical intervention is required to prevent painful death. Special note to the 'floating' ribs at the bottom of a persons rib cage which don't connect to the sternum and are therefore much less resilient. Second special note to the spot right above a persons heart. A significantly hard impact at exactly the wrong moment in their cardiac cycle can stop their heart. They will loose consciousness and you will need to give them CPR until they can be defibrillated. This is ridiculously unlikely but better to mention just in case.

Abdomen. If you feel around your victim’s belly, you can figure out the line where their abdominal muscles sit. If you have them tense these muscles, you can hit them fairly hard with relatively little risk because the muscles plus the fat in that area create a thick layer of protection. (Pro tip: "Stay tense or this will might kill you" is not only true but hot and terrifying). Outside of that area or if they don't tense, there's real risk of bruising or even rupturing their intestines, which carries a 50-70% survival rate depending on how quickly you can get them to the ER. Symptoms to look out for are bloating, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and fatigue. Special note to the kidneys, which sit next to the backbone just below the rib cage and are very easily bruised. The primary symptom to look for is blood when peeing. As always, stingy tools carry less risk than thuddy tools.

Gluteus maximus. That's their butt. Hit it as hard as your victim will let you. Enough has been said about this region; I don't feel the need to recover that ground. Note 4 on bruises.

Genitals. I'm not going to get into CBT, that's a separate kink. But the vagina is very durable as it’s pretty much just flesh and fat on the outside Minimal risk, go to town.

Thigh. Top 4 impact location. Outer thigh will hurt more and bruise more. As with the head and arms, the primary risk is damaging the adjoining joints. Note 4 on bruises because this is the primary place for DVT.

Calf. As above. Shins are also a great location for punishment because they hurt like hell.

Feet. Very similar to hands. The soles of a person’s foot are intended to impact with the ground frequently and with some force, so they can take a fair bit of punishment.

Note 1. Ice. It is no longer suggested injury procedure to use ice to reduce swelling. Yes, it is effective at reducing swelling but we now understand swelling is an important part of the healing process and although ice might make it feel and look better in the short term, it actually increases the amount of time the injury will take to heal. You want the blood to be able to flow to the injury to take away dead cells and bring nutrients and energy.

Note 2. Joints. Neck, spine, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, hips, knees, ankles, and toes. The reason these are almost always labeled "red" or "no go" on impact play body maps is because these are choke points for blood vessels and nerves; they are made of fragile tendons and cartilage, and they have very little padding for protection. They're also important for movement day to day and very difficult to heal properly. If a joint is damaged, you can buy braces for every joint from most pharmacies.

Note 3. Dislocations. If you're lucky, a partial dislocation will relocate by itself if you move the joint around as you normally would, not forcing it or trying to manipulate it with your hand, just moving it with its own muscles. If it does naturally relocate but you still have pain a few weeks later seek a medical professional. If you're unlucky or if it’s a total dislocation, you will have to see a medical professional. DO NOT TRY TO FORCE IT BACK INTO PLACE!

Note 4. Bruises. Normally, bruises are nothing to worry about but there are situations where a deep bruise can be a health concern. If the bruise continues to get worse after a week, there could be a hematoma under the skin, which is like a blood clot, and might need to be removed. The other possible complication is Deep Vein Thrombosis, which is a blood clot and can be lethal, if not treated quickly. With DVT, the symptoms are tenderness, warmth, and a "pulling sensation" which are pretty normal impact play symptoms. But if you're doing impact play at the level that could cause DVT, then you and your victim should know their healing process intimately, so if something feels off or isn't healing right, get them to a medical professional; better safe than dead.

[gray-gray-gray-gray]

Let's Talk About The Overlap Between Autism, ADHD, and Schizophrenia

I've been wanting to make a graph like this for awhile, about the overlap between these three disorders. Tagging @auschizm because it's highly related to that blog :D

Text transcribed below the cut because it's long!

Title: Can We Talk About The Overlap Between... AUTISM, ADHD, AND SCHIZOPHRENIA?

Description: You always hear people talking about AuDHD, but schizophrenia has the same if not more overlap with these disorders, and it's not talked about!

Let's start boosting schizophrenic people's voices. There's more to the disorder than just psychosis!

Graph based on my personal experience with schizophrenia, my experiences with autistic and ADHD communities, and the words of people with AuDHD themselves.

Made by @gray-gray-gray-gray on tumblr.

Schizophrenia Only

Typical age of onset between 15 and 54 years old

Before the onset/ first psychotic break, there is a "prodrome" where you have a drop in functioning

Reoccuring episodes of psychosis (Hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, etc)

Likely had less noticeable or covert symptoms pre-onset

Often daydreaming, 'in their own world', hyper-self-reflective, 'space cadet'

Autism Only

Need for familiarty & routine

Sudden disruptions to routine are highly distressing

ADHD Only

Craves new experiences & novelty

Autism & ADHD (AuDHD)

Interest-based nervous system (meaning attention & focus is activated based on personal interest, not how important something is)

Onset in very early childhood -- before age 12

Autism & Schizophrenia (Auschizm)

Self-soothing via repetitive behavior

Higher rates of catatonic symptoms

Social withdrawal or exclusion

Difficulties filtering speech

Flat affect

Alogia

Concrete and/or literal thinking

Higher rates of personality disorders, dissociative disorders, and trauma

Internally oriented behavior

Difficulties wording what they

want to say correctly & disorganized speech

Difficulties with insight into what is part of the disorder and what is neurotypial

ADHD & Schizophrenia (SchizoDHD)

Impulsivity & hard to sit still

Difficulties regulating attention & focus, also causing social cue difficulties

Difficulty keeping a daily routine

Jumping around or out of sequence speech

Forgetfulness

Failing to reach a clear end goal or point in speech

Less coherent progression from start to finish in stories

General difficulties with thinking clearly

Drawing blanks / losing train of thought often

Difficulties finding motivation to do things

Lots of energy some days, no energy other days

Troubles multitasking

Planning poorly or not at all

All Three

Stimming

Echolalia, echopraxia

Executive dysfunction

Sensory issues & overload

Emotional dysregulation

Interconnected/webbed thought

ND communication (infodumping, connecting ideas, shared interest bonding)

Increased risk of victimization

Hyperfixations

Higher rates of depression, anxiety, OCD, BFRBS, bipolar, suicidality, sleep issues, eating disorders, and substance abuse

Eye contact differences

Difficulties switching tasks

Masking

Hyperfocusing

Restlessness

Prone to boredom

Memory issues

Social situation difficulties

Time blindness

Difficulties with school, learning, and following tasks

Chronic disorder

RSD

Anhedonia

Alexithymia

Interoceptive difficulties

[canideformed]

Trans men do not have male privilege because you cannot separate their trans identity from their male identity.

People love to say, “but they’re men and men are privileged!” as if you can just. Pretend they’re not also trans. Or they say that it doesn’t matter that they’re trans if they pass because people will just see them as men.

Just. Think it through. Think about what happens when the experiences of trans and cis men are compared at any systemic level.

1. A cis woman says that a cis man sexually assaulted her. The woman is told she is probably dramatic by the cops and the cis man isn’t impacted because all his friends are misogynists. People talk about how boys will be boys and how it wasn’t his fault, women wouldn’t understand men’s’ sex drives.

2. A cis woman outs a trans man and says he sexually assaulted her. The trans man is arrested and jailed (keeping in mind you can be arrested with no proof, only reasonable suspicion—such as an allegation) by cops who openly watch him pee because they wanted to get a look at a pussy on a man. He gets out and his friends hear through the grapevine that he’s trans. They laugh at and grope him the next time they see him and they ostracise him. People talk about how testosterone is such an evil chemical and how the trans guy is dangerous because he has a “female brain running on toxic male hormones.”

For another comparison—

1. A cis man goes in for a routine sexual health checkup—a prostate exam. It is quick, though awkward and uncomfortable. He later begins to feel ill. He sees a doctor who takes his symptoms seriously and treats him appropriately.

2. A trans man goes in for a routine sexual health checkup—a pap smear. He is stared at in the waiting room. The nurse calls “Ms.__” and is visibly confused when he stands up. The doctor isn’t educated on trans bodies and doesn’t use enough lube (or simply doesn’t care to) and it hurts. The doctor asks invasive questions about bottom growth and ignores the guys’ preferred terminology for his parts and his identity. The guy files an insurance claim that is denied because his legal gender is M. He has to either pay or try to deal with the company. He begins to feel ill. He sees a doctor who sees that he’s trans in his chart or spots the testosterone prescription or an old or legal name. The doctor tells him it’s probably the T without doing a proper exam and that T is dangerous for “females” and he should consider stopping.

Male privilege is systemic. It’s not just who the waiter looks at first when they take a dinner order. It’s men being protected by the system by other men in power. Trans men do not have that protection. The second a transphobe thinks a criminal might have been a trans man they start talking about how it was because his mind couldn’t handle the testosterone. (Remember when there was a rumour that a school shooter was transmasc?). They worry about him “tainting” cis women. Because he is trans, it means that people don’t even see him as man enough to be protected by the system. It is because he is a trans man and trans manhood is not respected as Real by the cistem.

Part of male privilege is having your voice believed and your autonomy respected. But trans men are told their pain isn’t real, that they’re being dramatic, that it’s their period or the T. Trans men are at risk for sexual abuse and fetishisation by cis people who might use a medical exam as an excuse to hurt or assault them. Trans men are not seen as a possible type of man, so insurance systems auto-deny sexual healthcare for trans men because “men can’t have that issue.” Part of male privilege is having your voice centred, and yet many conversations about abortion and access to birth control actively exclude trans men, because trans men are held personally accountable for the pregnancy, even when it’s rape. Cis men don’t experience anything like that.

And sure! The situations I laid out above don’t describe ALL trans men. But they also don’t describe ALL cis men or ALL cis women. The difference between cis men and trans men is that trans men, along with other gender minorities and cis women, are specifically targeted by oppressive patriarchal systems by virtue of both their trans and male identities.

It breaks my heart to see people tell trans men to ‘take accountability’ for their privilege when I hear all the time about trans men who are in jail for killing the person who was raping them, about trans men who were abused by police, about trans men who were tortured and murdered.

[ms-demeanor]

You posted about adhd and I was hoping to follow up to clarify something. I’ve explained to my partner a million times about how the borderline-hoarding mess of his space is very mentally draining to me, and he understands but we’ve both essentially accepted he won’t clean his mess because he can’t because of his adhd. You’re saying he’s actually being a shit head?

This isn't necessarily an issue of him being a shithead, but it also isn't a sustainable situation. It's not good for you and there's a level of clutter that's probably not good for him either.

Large bastard is a lot more clutter-y than I am. The solution we've come to is trying to keep our messes at least isolated from one another; he can have his messes and I can have mine, but he can have those messes in his spaces, not all over the place. Sometimes those messes migrate, and that's when it's important for him to make the effort to rein them in rather than trying and failing to make a daily effort to keep our entire shared space tidy.

I think when you say "we've both essentially accepted he won't clean his mess" what I'm hearing is resignation; you're not happy about this but you don't know what to do so you've thrown up your hands and he feels helpless and unsure of what to do to improve the situation. This is the kind of "it's fine" that isn't really fine.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to each separately think about the mess and talk about it together. Are there areas that YOU *need* to have not-messy? Both for utility and your mental health? Are there areas where you can tolerate more mess than otherwise? Are there areas that are going to be harder for him to keep the mess out of than others? Are there things he doesn't *know* about cleaning up the mess?

I'm obviously a big "communication communication communication" person so I'm going to recommend a lot of talking about stuff, which is probably going to mean a lot of thinking about and interrogating stuff. I'm going to say "talk to him about why the mess bothers you" which means you also have to really articulate to yourself why the mess bothers you (for instance I'm not actually *bothered* by a messy kitchen, but I know it's going to reflect badly on us - and me specifically b/c of presumed gender roles - if someone pops by and the kitchen is a disaster, AND a messy kitchen is going to be harder to use). Genuinely, sometimes knowing *why* something is a problem might make it easier for someone with ADHD to do something. And it's not that he doesn't care that it upsets you, it's just that "Oh if I don't wash my breakfast dishes Anon won't have clear counterspace to make lunch" might be stickier in his brain (and less hard to look at emotionally) than "this thing I forget to do upsets my partner so I should do it."

For the record, I think that people with ADHD should read up on Demand Avoidance and see if it might explain some of the issues that they have in their day-to-day life; I've seen some really unfortunate situations with friends where trying to do things that their partner needed became the subject of demand avoidance. *I* have experienced negative outcomes of demand avoidance. The solution to that, however, isn't to stop making attempts to do the thing OR to simply try harder to do as they're asked/told (which reinforces the demand), it's to work on setting up a situation where the partners' needs are not interpreted as a demand. This is fuck-off difficult and requires a lot of patience and care and many attempts to succeed and will be different for each person and relationship.

(Also for the record demand avoidance isn't *super* strongly linked to ADHD and it's not a definitive symptom; like Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, it is something that occurs in some number of people with ADHD and can be a useful lens through which to examine various behaviors; you don't need to have DA or RSD to have ADHD, and having DA or RSD also doesn't invalidate your diagnosis; they're symptoms. For me, DA often feels like "if I don't look at it, it can't get me" - If I ignore all the messages I've got they aren't real and don't have real consequences so I'll just ignore my texts. If I don't look at the vendor email about the order, the problem with the order isn't real and it won't get added to my task list. If I don't look at the requests in my inbox I can't let people down when I don't do them. It's a self-protective coping mechanism but it's *maladaptive* and I can't just ignore the vendor email or all my texts. I need to work on a way of doing the stuff that I'm avoiding in a way that makes it less stressful and doesn't hurt the people relying on me. That takes a lot of effort, personal insight, trial and error, and )

But before I dive into specifics I want to be really really clear about one thing: sometimes people are simply incompatible. Sometimes one person has such a low tolerance for "mess" and the other person has such a high threshold for "mess" that it can't be reconciled. It sucks that this can end up being a thing that people break up over, but it is MUCH better to acknowledge incompatibility as early as possible instead of spending years and years building resentment.

There used to be a great forum called MiL's Anonymous that I spent a lot of time on. It had a lot of people in a lot of difficult situations struggling to get by and hold their relationships together. The question that was used as a litmus test to approach each situation was simple: If you knew today that everything about living with this person would be the same in five years, would you stay?

Because you can't control your partner. You can't control the future. You can only control yourself and your proximity to situations that are harmful to you. If you knew, 100%, that things wouldn't get better in five years, would you be okay with staying in this relationship? If the answer is "no," then that's that. Don't worry about questions of whether or not your boyfriend is a shithead, start the process of ending the relationship because there's a good chance the situation is going to be exactly the same in five years.

If the answer is "yes," and you'd stay in the relationship regardless of whether or not things changed, then it's time to take actions to improve your life within the context of the relationship.

(No judgement on that yes or no, btw. If you would hate living like this for another five years, and you would feel like you'd wasted your time and hadn't done the things you wanted to with your life, get out. Bail. Go. It will be better for you and better for your partner if you split instead of spending half a decade building resentments and and problems that you'll have to spend another half a decade healing from.)

Also, a note: you describe your boyfriend's mess as borderline hoarding - is the issue *mess* or is the issue *clutter*? I have friends who are very tidy, but whose homes are very cluttered. They like things, they have many things, they keep many things around, but their houses are always clean and well-dusted and orderly, just with a tremendous amount of *stuff.* I am addressing all of this as though the issue is mess, not clutter. If your boyfriend's situation is clutter (the space is busy and packed with things but it is functional and clean) and your issue isn't with *mess* (things out of place, things not having a place, things that need to be cleaned up gathering in stacks, falling behind on regular chores like laundry and dishes and taking out the trash) then you definitely need to assess whether or not you are compatible.

For instance here's a room that is messy but not cluttered compared to a room that is cluttered but not messy:

That first room is a *mess* but it would be very easy to clean up in under an hour. The second room is fairly tidy, but would take significant effort to pare down and declutter. BOTH of these can be difficult to live with but the second one is not dangerous or threatening to anyone's health. (The second one is QUITE cluttered and if every room in a house looks like this it can be overwhelming to live with; this is actually harder to deal with in a relationship than the first one in a lot of ways. I don't have a lot of advice for what to do if your partner is a high degree of tidy-but-cluttered because I don't actually think it's a problem or wrong to have thousands of books or bins full of lego or a million kitchen appliances as long as you have the space and can keep it safe and well-maintained; this is a really significant compatibility issue)

Okay, all that out of the way, here's the hard work.

Talk about this shit

Talk to your partner and define "mess." Make sure you are on the same page about what you mean when you're talking about what a messy room looks like versus what a tidy room looks like. Gather reference pictures. DRAW reference pictures.

Explain not just that the mess upsets you, but *why* and *how* it upsets you. In this context don't think of it as your boyfriend's mess, think of it as an unpleasant roommate. Discuss this using "I-statements". "When I have to pick up laundry all over the apartment, I feel like a parent more than a partner." "When there are piles of miniatures all over the table, I feel like I don't have anywhere to do things I'm interested in." "When there are dishes in the sink, I feel frustrated because I have to clean before I can feed myself."

Discuss, frankly and openly, whether he knows how to clean. I'm not trying to make excuses for him here but a lot of people with ADHD have a lot of stress and avoidance around cleaning because they spent a lot of time getting yelled at for not knowing how to clean properly.

Discuss your needs, be firm about what you require but willing to compromise. You *need* some spaces to be clean, and some spaces may be harder for him to keep clean than others. It may be MUCH harder for him to keep a bedroom tidy than it is to keep a kitchen tidy; if you need a clean and empty bedroom with everything put away and he simply cannot do that, that is a compatibility issue. But perhaps you need *your* side of the bedroom to be very orderly and can tolerate a moderate level of mess and clutter on his side. Maybe you're really really bothered by a messy kitchen, but it doesn't bug you if the dining table is covered with projects and papers. Figure out something more workable than "his mess goes everywhere and i live with it because he's incapable of cleaning" because he probably is not incapable of cleaning and you deserve to have places in your home that are comfortable for you.

Reduce friction for cleaning

Sometimes the problem isn't cleaning, the problem is the many many steps before cleaning, or not knowing where something should go when you are done cleaning. One of the absolute best things I've done for myself for cleaning my space is getting a broom holder and mounting the broom to the wall. Sweeping is now essentially thoughtless. I don't have to find the broom or pull it out from a pile of fans or go scrounging around for a dustpan it's right there on the wall, frictionless. So here are some ways to reduce the barriers to cleaning:

Make sure you and your partner both know how to use your cleaning supplies and know where those supplies are. When I switched dishwasher soap I had to re-show Large Bastard where I was storing it and how it was used, because to him what happened was the dishwasher tabs just vanished one day and he didn't know what I was putting in the machine or the process I used. He sometimes puts tools away in places that I can't see (he's more than a foot taller than me) so sometimes I can't get started on a maintenance project until he shows me where he put the battery pack for the drill.

Consider making a how-to chart to or having him make a how-to chart to keep someplace accessible so he can reference it while cleaning. Goblin.Tools Magic ToDo is great for this. Basically a lot of the time people with ADHD have trouble knowing what to do from step to step even if they've done something before, so having a step by step guide can make it easier (I have notebooks full of step-by-step guides for everything from paying for my tuition to removing licenses for my customers to weeding my yard)

Remove obstacles; don't keep cleaning chemicals in the garage in a box that's behind a stack of parts, keep them in the room you'll be cleaning. Don't keep the cleaning supplies that you use to clean the bathroom in the kitchen. Sometimes this means buying two bottles of bleach solution and two scrubbers and two sets of cleaning gloves but having fewer steps (fetch the windex, fetch the paper towels, fetch the gloves) is often the key to getting things done (open under-sink cabinet and grab windex, gloves, and paper towels that are there instead of in the kitchen).

This sort of overlaps with the next category, which is:

Create Dump Zones

One thing that I've found that seems very different between people with ADHD cleaning and neurotypical people cleaning is that neurotypical people are good at getting to a point where the cleaning is "done." They have checked off their tasks and they have finished and it is over. There are *SOME* chores that are like this (taking out the trash is a binary state, the trash has been taken out or it has not) and some chores are perpetual (horrid cursed dishes) but I think with people with ADHD, some chores that are binary for neurotypicals are actually perpetual chores. For instance "clean off the counter" is not a one and done for me. "Clean off the counter" may involve a three day reorganization project. "Clean off the counter" does not mean "wipe down the tile and put dishes away" it means assessing whether or not I need to make vegetable stock and bleaching three tea containers and reconsidering whether or not the sharps container should live somewhere else and going through the mail and figuring out what needs to be responded to and taking out the recycling and on and on and on.

We have had company at the house for the last two weeks, so I asked large bastard to clean off the dining room table, which is largely a project zone for him. Cleaning off the dining room table meant putting away his meds (and since he's a transplant patient that involves a 30 gallon rubbermade tote), throwing away some trash, and totally reorganizing his workshop. It also incidentally involved picking up a table from facebook marketplace and moving my plants, which has now involved moving my former plant rack outside (moving buckets, finding and organizing planters and gardening tools) and taking the former table to the thrift store (not done yet) and cleaning the rug that was under the former table. So "either the table is clean, or it isn't" isn't really true for us.

HOWEVER "hang on we can't eat until the table is clear so let's drive to Pico Rivera to get that console table right now" isn't a workable plan, so you create dumpzones as areas of holding between the start and the finish of the chore.

A dump zone can be a laundry basket. It can be a craft bin. It can be a back room or under your bed. It is a place to put things that you are going to deal with later because if you deal with them now it is going to derail the thing you are actually trying to do, which is set the table for dinner.

Dump zones are vital to cleaning with ADHD and I recommend them for day-to-day cleaning as well. The day-to-day dump zones might be more for you than for your boyfriend. For instance, Large Bastard works with bullets and he sheds bullets all over the house. I used to get stressed when I found bullets when I was cleaning because are these work bullets? Are these recreational bullets? Are they in testing? Do they need to be pulled? Do they go in the workshop or the office or the garage or does he need these today so they have to stay on the counter? And the answer now is "that's not my problem naughty bullets go in the jar." Which is perfectly sensible because he gets to say "mystery yarn goes in the bin" and "art supplies go in the bucket."

I feel helpless when cleaning a lot of the time. I'm frustrated and lost and I don't know where stuff goes and everything I pick up spins off into three projects in my head and every step feels like a wall to scale. Dump zones help me with that when there's pressure or a reason for cleaning beyond day to day home maintenance. People are coming over? The bedroom is a dump zone, I'll deal with that later. I'm just cleaning up because I need to? Okay I can find a permanent home for this new dish soap.

AS A VERY IMPORTANT COROLLARY TO THIS:

Active projects do not go in dump zones while you or your partner are cleaning. This may mean designating a project sanctuary area like a corner of the table or one particular chair in your main room where a project can be placed so as not to be disturbed. (if my current crochet project ends up in the yarn bin, that may mean that I don't pick the project up for another three months, it lives on the windowsill behind the couch because that's where it'll get worked on)

Do not put things away for your partner, put them in the dump zone for your partner. Your partner has to be the one to put their own stuff away in a way that works for them. I tend to find that this naturally puts a limit on the time stuff sits in the dump zone, because eventually you'll go "hey where's my thing?" and will put stuff away. If that doesn't happen, it's still generally better to have stuff in a dump zone than all over the home.

Do not decide you know what things go together from your partner's stuff and try to "put like things together." The neurotypical urge to put like things together is the mindkiller(j/k). You do not know which things are "similar" in your partner's organization schema and attempting to organize things on your own is going to end up with all of the things "organized" being functionally lost forever from your partner's perspective. Large Bastard's mom would do this and it was infuriating, she'd say "oh I put all the electronics stuff in one box" and she would mean soldering irons, transistors, ham radios, HDMI cables, and cellphone chargers. We are *still* going through boxes of stuff that she "tidied up" when he was hospitalized in 2020 and 2021.

To prevent the need for quite so many dump zones over time, you can work on setting up landing zones and "homes" for projects and tools.

Landing Zones

Landing zones are places where things go when you come inside from doing various things. Sometimes your landing zone only needs to be a tray for your wallet and keys, sometimes your landing zone needs to be a place to take off muddy boots and put a trowel and gloves down before you shower.

To make an effective landing zone, consider what behaviors you're trying to minimize and whether the people using it are ACTUALLY going to use it. For instance I was tired of the corner of my hearth getting cluttered with random junk so I hung up some hooks and put a shelf and a basket there and it became a really effective landing zone for my bag and keys and the mail, but it was VERY ineffective for Large Bastard because it's by a door that isn't the primary door he uses to enter the house. As a result I always know where my keys and bag are but he has trouble finding his keys and wallet. He tends to enter the house through our bedroom and has an overloaded valet next to the door and that's usually where his wallet ends up. Mounting a shelf to the wall above the valet and putting a basket and a hook on it will be a better place for his stuff to land. It's not that he's not using the first zone because he doesn't know that it's there, or because he doesn't care about lost time when I'm searching for my car keys after he borrows them, he's not using it because it's not by the door he uses. That's all.

I have a landing space for when I come in for gardening that's different than the one when I come in from grocery shopping. I have a landing space for when I walk into the dining room instead of the kitchen when I get home.

Landing spaces prevent stuff from piling up all over the place because they are a limited functional space that should be used frequently. Mail ONLY goes in the landing zone. If you have mystery mail or if you're not sure it's safe to toss, you put it in the landing zone. You can't let the mail get piled up too high or you won't have a space for your keys. You can't let the change in your wallet tray get too deep or your wallet is going to slide off, etc., but you also don't just put change on the coffee table or your nightstand because the landing zone is right there.

Homes for items are just what they sound like. They're the place the item goes. It lives there. My meds live on my nightstand. You would not believe how poorly I did with taking my meds on my vacation because they weren't on my nightstand. A while back large bastard lost one of his sets of sorted meds and we tore the house up looking for them because he couldn't find them in his nightstand, which is where they live. *I* found them in his nightstand because I emptied out the entire top drawer (he had only looked on the top layer) and found them underneath a radio and a hammock. Even though they were *hidden* they were in their home, so they were findable. I recently needed ink for an art class. Art supplies live in a dresser by my desk. Ink lives in the art bin or the top left drawer. The ink was not in either of these places (it was on a cabinet in the dining room behind a teacup) so it took me weeks to find it.

Sometimes the reason that ADHD spaces are so messy is because objects have been assigned homes in places that are visible and if they get moved they get lost. This is a genuinely difficult problem that requires a lot of effort to solve and can involve a lot of trial and error for creating a tidy living space. For some people, open shelving and visible storage might be a good solution. For some people, assigning a VERY clear home and inculcating that location by habit is the only way to clean up a space. For some people one very cluttered corner to at least isolate the chaos does the trick (for me and large bastard open shelving doesn't work because anything in one place for too long becomes invisible; that means that I rely on assigning things homes and large bastard relies on having contained chaos and a general idea of where to search but what that DOES NOT mean is that he is clean or tidy. His spaces look like an explosion. But he can mostly find his stuff and do what he needs to do and as long as that's limited to specific places in shared spaces I can live with it; the dining room table can be a disaster, the kitchen cannot).

People organize things differently. It often takes a while for neurotypical adults to settle into an organizational style that works for them and ADHD adults may need to settle into a new system every few months for it to continue working. The cleanup and declutter is most likely going to be a permanent project that is always going to demand some level of attention from everyone in a shared space, but "my ADHD means I can't do it" is not really going to fly. Maybe his ADHD means that he can't keep his space tidy, but it doesn't mean you can't move stuff from shared spaces into dump zones or that he can't do stuff around the house.

If he's insisting that his ADHD means that he can't clean it is possible that he's not being a shithead, he just feels helpless and doesn't know where to start and has adopted the belief that he's a useless piece of shit who can't even keep a tidy space like a grownup because he's internalized a lot of shitty attitudes (hello, my internal monologue about keeping a clean house). But it's also possible that he's just being a shithead.

It's something that's worthwhile to investigate with him. If he's unwilling to make an attempt, then he's being a shithead.

It is also not your responsibility to rehabilitate another person. If he wants to clean and it's something he feels bad about and needs some help and support with the way that someone might need help or support for learning to use a mobility aid, that is fine but you don't have to be the one who gives him that support if it's detrimental to your health, and you don't have to be the one to teach him that stuff if it's not something you're capable of. And if he is NOT interested in working on making your shared living space more accessible for you, that is not your suitcase to unpack and you just have to ask yourself the question from the start: would I stay with this person if I knew the situation was never going to change?

IDK, I'm sure a lot of this reads like "anon you must take on the emotional labor of training your partner to be an adult" but it's really meant to be more of a way of assessing yourself and your relationship. If you created landing zones do you think he'd use them? Would he get angry if you assigned a laundry basket as a dump zone for his stuff while you tidy the living room? Is living with him long-term going to be comfortable for you if nothing changes? Do you have enough of a shared definition of "mess" that you're at least in the ballpark for what counts as a clean house?

anyway good luck, and a reminder to folks that I'm compiling a bunch of adhd resources and other information on my personal website, ms-demeanor.com. It's coming along slowly but it will eventually include stuff like ADHD cleaning tips and how to tackle a hoard, so maybe keep your eye on that space.