#and then when they associated having adhd with being a burnt out gifted kid

[bookalicent]

ik it's been said but being medicated is just such a wild feeling. like i have adhd and just got recently put on adderall and being able to sense the difference of my thoughts is such a weird feeling. like ik when it hits and i can tell when it's wearing off. but also it just really reminds me of the fact i do have a mental disorder that actually affects me and isn't just "laziness and forgetfulness"

[painted-crow]

Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 1

I guess I should start with a little about me, since that’s easier than making you pick through previous asks for information and some of you guys are new here. This one’s going to be heavily personal, so you can skip it if you want.

I’m a double Bird. My Bird primary system is heavily Badger influenced, and I also use Lion to support it by telling me when I should investigate something more closely. If we can dip into primary territory for a moment, I guess you can say I understand the world through systems that model things around me. But not all of those systems are things I’ve consciously examined, or fully investigated.

My understanding of how historical people dressed is pretty limited, for example, because I haven’t studied it in depth to get all the information—but I consciously understand what I do know about it. You could say this system piece is tiny but clear; I could expand it if I chose to find out more.

My understanding of how someone I’m not close to thinks might have more data to work with, but I haven’t consciously processed it; that’s the kind of thing where my Lion primary model will tell me to look closer if that person starts acting weird. This system piece might be described as huge but fuzzy; I could clarify it if I sat down and thought about it. I probably have more of these than I realize, but Lion basically takes care of monitoring those. I don’t have to investigate everything.

But some of my systems are both large and fairly clear, because I’ve taken the time both to gather data on them and to examine it. My understanding of myself is… well, I won’t say it’s terribly clear, because I’m in my early twenties and I’m still constantly getting new information, plus someone keeps changing the environment and mucking with my data (that would be me). But I have to examine it, because my brain is like a notoriously buggy piece of software and I’m the poor schmuck saddled with tech support duties.

Basically, the reason I’m good at playing therapist with other people is that I’m constantly doing exactly that thing with myself. (This probably makes me a very annoying patient for actual therapists.)

About that buggy brain, then.

I have major depression. That was professionally diagnosed when I was a teenager and it’s probably genetic. I take medication for it, when I remember to. It especially flares up in the winter or when I’m under stress. I probably have some kind of anxiety disorder too.

I’m almost certainly autistic, which I’ve never brought up with a professional—the first person to figure it out was the system I’m now best friends with, because they’re autistic and they knew I was within two weeks of talking to me. It took me two years to catch up with them and figure it out myself.

In my defense, I thought executive dysfunction, sensory overwhelm, dissociation, and hyperempathy were like… secret menu items for depression, because those only really bug me during depressive episodes. My current theory is that they’re related to autistic burnout instead.

I mask a lot, subconsciously—it’s actually really hard to turn that off normally—and I just can’t do that as much when depressed. If I do, my tolerance for everything else goes way down and I’ll go into overwhelm and start having shutdowns and dissociating. I recover pretty quickly (hours, not days), but if you’ve never spent 15 minutes standing in a Walmart aisle trying to decide whether you want a jar of peanut butter, but you can’t make decisions because you can’t access your emotions and you don’t really feel like you’re “here” but you kind of just want to go home… well, be glad I guess.

Of course, I have other autistic traits that show up when I’m not under stress, but they’re seldom associated with autism because most people don’t know what autis are like when we’re actually happy. Like, hyperlexia? That’s not even an “official” word, the auti community just uses it because “official” literature hasn’t caught up. I taught myself to read at age three (according to my mom; she says I was reading news headlines and stuff, not just books I’d memorized) and wrote a 35k word novella when I was ten, with no external prompting. My audio processing used to be terrible, but I routinely tested at college age reading levels as a kid.

I also might have ADHD? If so, it’s also mostly just noticeable if I’m under stress, and then it’s hard to tell if that’s the issue or if it’s just autism/depression again.

You might be getting a clearer picture of how my secondary and its model end up burnt so often!

(Resisting a very strong urge to cut stuff from this post.)

In short, I was a Gifted Kid. I spent a lot of my teen years biting off more than I could chew, honestly. I felt that I should be able to do more, and I wanted to be taken seriously, but I had basically no idea how to take care of myself because my needs are different from everyone else’s. I’m still figuring those out.

I’m kind of like an orchid plant: incredibly picky about conditions, wants a different “soil” and watering schedule, gets stressed if stuff changes too quickly, but when everything is just right and it does bloom, it goes all out.

I’m not kidding when I say that I have odd needs. One of them is the need for creative work, which seems to be hardwired into me. When I say that art or writing keeps me sane, I often hear back “oh yeah! I’ve heard that can be very therapeutic,” which is an innocuous reply, but it’s always bugged me, and I think I’ve figured out why.

First, because that’s not the reason I make things… I just… have to. Second, I can’t “make up” not doing creative work with some other kind of therapy. Third and most importantly, I’d much rather think of “artist” as my ground state, and depression as a condition that happens when my needs aren’t being met, rather than thinking of depression as the default that I’m just using art to escape from. That seems to me a healthier way of thinking, and probably a more accurate one, but I’m probably the only one who can see that distinction.

If life gets in the way and I can’t make space for creative work, it will actively make my depression worse. I know this because, multiple times, I’ve been unable to pinpoint why I’m feeling shitty, and then I go back to my easel or my writing or (ukulele, cooking, even just taking care of houseplants) and realize I haven’t done anything creative in like a month and thaaaat’s the problem.

I crack open a bottle of gesso to prep some canvases and it smells like… well, I don’t think you can get high off gesso? But it’s not like when you’re out of it on painkillers or cold medicine or whatever. It’s incredibly grounding, like the world snaps back into focus but it’s also oddly euphoric. Or I write ten thousand words in a couple days and it just… I don’t know what that does. I’ve never run across a word for it.

The writer of Smile at Strangers (a really good memoir centered around women, anxiety, and karate) describes a similar feeling in relation to her martial arts practice.

It’s also a bit like when all the snow melts after winter and you step outside and there’s the smell of wet soil under sunlight and I’m not sure if this fully translates for people who don’t have seasonal depression. Sorry.

Dammit, I want to paint… I haven’t had space to set up for like eight months. I’ve been nose-deep in writing projects since last summer for a reason, but right now my friggin Ravenclaw secondary is off angsting about something because of Life Stress Bullshit, and I don’t have the focus to work on any of my writing projects. Apart from this one. But it’s not really what I want in terms of creative work.

*velociraptor screech*

Oh, yeah. I guess I could mention this is why my nickname is Paint. Not sure if that was obvious before. The header image (which is more visible in the app for some reason) is one of my paintings. It’s a tiny one and it’s not one of my favorites, but I had the photo on my phone and the colors work well enough for what I needed.

(restrains self from negging my own painting ability)

This is starting to get into spoiler territory for what burned Ravenclaw secondary looks like, huh? It’s peaced out for a couple weeks at this point. I’m trying to write about what made it take off, but my ability to think of words and form a coherent sentence kinda flew out the window when I approached it directly.

Let’s just say that around the start of the month, someone I was talking to online (if you’re reading this, it’s definitely not you) kindaaaa hit a nasty depression trigger of mine. Not their fault—it’s very specific to me, and I struggle to explain why I can’t really talk about it. Basically, I spent years studying programming and web design, and due to several different but related issues during that experience, it’s now a trigger for me. I very much want it not to be, but trying to train that out of myself has induced more than one panic attack and I’m stuck between giving up on it or figuring out a way to go back to it that doesn’t totally shut my brain down.

That paragraph took forever to write, by the way.

I think I have to end this here. I… am going to go take out the trash, and water my plants, and make my bed, and file some paperwork, and maybe I’ll even mix up some bread dough or do some laundry. Spoiler alert for what it looks like when my Hufflepuff model takes over, I guess.

Oh. And I should maybe probably eat something. I almost forgot about that... again.

[alizardjae]

The difficulty in determining the effort an individual has put into a work, both by their own evaluation and that of others, presents a significant problem in attempts to encourage learning in children by using it as part of score evaluations. (For this discussion I am speaking of the public education system of the United States of America, while it may be applicable to other education systems, I do not have the same insight via my own experiences and those of my immediate peer group.)

This is most easily apparent in the disadvantages it presents for children whose efforts are likely to be underestimated by educators, parents, and peers. Examples include children with neurodivergences that make the more common methods of teaching in schools less effective -such as adhd or dyslexia- that may be easily missed or dismissed by adults in their life, children of color who may be subject to stereotypes -conscious or unconscious- of laziness based on their race, and children facing stress in their home lives due to any number of factors who as a result have less time and energy to work on assignments and are preoccupied with the more immediate issues in their lives. These students would no doubt benefit greatly, grade-wise, by accurate effort-based scores, but the ability by educators to know these circumstances hinders the accuracy greatly. As a result, these students are often ridiculed for not achieving the same test results as those in their classes who they are incorrectly presumed to share circumstances with; without knowing the specifics of their brains and lives, they are assumed to simply not be working as hard. This quickly becomes discouraging, and even self-fulfilling, as students may come to believe these evaluations or become burnt out by constantly being given expectations more difficult to achieve for them than their peers.

On the other side of things, students who learn exceptionally quickly for various reasons -often being labeled “gifted” children- frequently have the amount of effort they spend on assignments significantly overestimated, which contributes greatly to the “gifted kid crash” and burnout many face when they reach subjects or difficulty levels that they don’t grasp naturally. The student is assumed to be putting in exemplary effort to achieve the results they get, especially if they are notably fast learners within a group of “gifted” kids, and are thus not given more difficult assignments that would actually require the same level of effort as their peers put in to complete their work. Furthermore, there is little incentive for the children in question to report the ease of their work, as it quickly becomes apparent that they will be scored lower by doing so, and lower scores have a strong negative association in our society. The student is able to reason that by letting educators know that they don’t have to put effort into their work they will either be assigned a lower score for their work regardless of the quality of the results or will be given more work to do, which is naturally undesirable. As a result of this the student becomes used to coasting, and when they eventually reach the limits of their talent, or are faced with a subject they do not intuitively understand, often do not have the skills or perseverance necessary to deal with the perceived failure.

The only real solution I can think of off the top of my head is a more individualized system of education, perhaps where students are given a general evaluation on each subject at regular intervals that are not part of their grades, but are instead used to readjust the pace and style with which they are taught. This is obviously a difficult solution to implement, as it would require even more time and energy from educators than is already asked for a profession that is overworked and underpaid as-is. But simply focusing on apparent effort over results will not fix the problems of the education system as it is not feasible for educators to know the subjective effort of every individual student. There may be more effective solutions as well. And as always, a major part of any solution in this topic is a significant raise in budget for the education system.

[fishklok]

Pickle or Nathan for the headcanon meme? :O

pickle brought me to the dance that is the mtl fandom so i have to go with him :D

brief mention of transphobia under the cut (question 3)

1) Uncommon headcanon about them I am deeply attached to.

Pickles being a presence in his nephew’s life and genuinely caring about him.

2) Widely-held headcanon about them that I reject.

Uh...I don’t know.  “Reject” is too strong a word, but I like the idea of his birth name (or non-Pickles name) and surname being ambiguous.  It makes his other family members hard to tag content for, but it’s funny to me.  Although, Dillon is a brilliant headcanon and I commend whoever came up with it.

3) What were they like as a kid? What was their early life like?

Since we already know his backstory, I don’t think there’s anything I can add beyond making it trans.  Gifted student in his early schooling years, but the stress got to him and he was burnt out before entering middle school.  This might connect to his apparant fear of not being good enough (Dethkomedy, Rehabklok).  I hc that he was typically more reserved as a teenager (especially when compared to his brother), but he tended to bottle up his emotions only for them to explode out of him when it became overwhelming.  Because of that, his outbursts tended to be more noticeable.  I hc that Pickles’ parents did respect his pronouns and gender, but they treated it like they were doing him a favor by doing so.  Pickles getting kinda cagey around his parents is from the residual fear of worrying that they can take that “favor” away at any time.  Seth was more like “okay. so anyway, can i borrow $50?”.

4) Symbols/motifs that I associate with them–colors, animals, zodiac signs, mythic themes, imagery, objects, etc.

I really like octopuses so I have to go with that obviously.  Why am I so bad at this specific question lol.  Whenever I have to color code my drawings, I make him green for obvious reasons.  The instrument I associate with him is a drum kit because I’m uncreative.  I’m so bad at this I’m sorry.

5) Other characters or types of people I have in mind when I draw and/or write them.

Pickles reminds me of some people I know irl, so I channel some of that energy.  I don’t really have any outside influences beyond that.

6) What I project onto them when I draw and/or write them.

Well...the trans thing.  I think trans!Pickles was the first transmasc headcanon I’ve seen recently where I felt like I was actually being seen.  This is a personal thing, just wanted to jump in here and say.  There is no perfect template for a trans character or headcanon that will represent everyone perfectly.  But Pickles was able to resonate with me because it was a kind of masculinity that I personally wanted for myself.  Pickles legitimately helped me with my height-based dysphoria.  Also it was refreshing to see a trans headcanon for a character who already settled into his masculinity and it’s not a big deal anymore.  Anyway, there’s that.

Also adhd maybe?

7) A surprising hobby, interest, or phobia they have.

I can see him being good at math, but he has to work through it on his terms with his methods.  I don’t have any headcanons for fears that aren’t present in the canon.  I’m not very good at this lol.

[pan-cakez]

For me, its that double whammy of being the oldest child, especially as first gen Americans. I'm the oldest out of all my cousins too, so the pressure is even worse. To be the best and to be shining model for not just my family here, but my family back home, to represent the American Dream. And then the whole burnt out gifted kid, that once my grades started slipping, I lost all sense of myself. My family didn't really let me have hobbies outside of school clubs, so what was I if I wasn't smart? Who was I if I wasn't smart. Oh not to mention that because of my father's profession, my family are practically socialites within our country's community here in my city, my mom even being on the exec board for the association. So EVERYTHING I did was under scrutiny. I had to stand up straight, look a certain way, walk a certain way, behave a certain way, and failure to do so would bring shame to my family.

Then I found out I was pan. And then a couple years later, genderfluid. And there's that pressure to stay closeted lest my parents kick me out and disown me. Or I just flat out bring shame to my family, meaning all that trauma I went through to be perfect for them was useless.

Also, finding out I had ADHD, depression and anxiety in college, and having to navigate life with them, without my family's support. I realized that I did so well because I was being held accountable. My parents were constantly on me about homework. But the older I got, the more they backed off. I was missing assignments that could easily do because deadlines weren't real concepts to me. I failed my first class in senior year of high school and I was never the same. I gave up on myself and that was when my depression really reared its ugly head. They found ways to "fix it" without addressing their contributions to my mental illness. I actually developed a slight eating disorder because of suddenly gaining weight and unable to lose it, and my family shaming me for such. Still struggle with it on and off years later.

So much of my life had been me shoving "undesirable" traits of mine under the bed or pushing them into the closet so that passers by can take a glance and think that everything is fine. But I know its not. And I hope one day I get to be open and vulnerable without fear of it being used against me, but for now,, I have to keep fighting, even when I feel like everything is crumbling around me, because if not me, than who? Who's going to fight for my own interests? For my own protection? And failure just isn't an option. Breaking isn't an option. Because if I crack, I don't think I'll ever be able to get the pieces back together again.

Hey, anyone want to hear my thoughts about how Luisa’s song “Surface Pressure” is super relatable to someone who is neurodivergent. Specifically those whose diagnosis are invisible and not obvious to onlookers, like Depression, AdHD and other learning disabilities?

Anyone?