#cure my executive dysfunction

[herawell]

.

[callixton]

took 10 mg of my ex's ritalin in the hopes it would balance out my adhd and i'm having like. a real weird reaction to it. it is making me paranoid i don't have adhd but i think it is much more likely that my body just isn't sure how to deal with having a stimulant in it for the first time. i'm also not like. high in any way. i'm just sort of jittery and physically unable to settle. and i'm still having trouble focusing but not the way i usually do which i suspect might also be bc this isn't overriding how tired i am. i also can't stop talking when in a conversation

[033h]

realized its because my depression is back not just because its aries season -_-

[defiant-firefly]

In terms of what I've been up to lately, I'm planning on massively overhauling my bedroom (I still live with my parents and with the way the economy is going, I seriously doubt that's gonna change any time soon) because these meds have made me more aware of just how badly I need a space that suits me. I have big ideas, and hopefully this treatment stuff will help me realise them, even if it takes for fucking ever. Like, the skills I'd need to learn for this would be quite numerous I would say so yeah it's a difficult project, but a big one I can gradually work on over time with other stuff I wanna do so maybe I'll get somewhere with it. Literally, after we moved here years ago, we put wall paper on one wall and I had plans to paint the rest of the room but I did one wall, and an unfinished pegasus onto it and we did nothing else to it. Same with the rest of the house honesly. Only room that got finished was the paint in the kitchen. After all this time, the exact same off-white walls everywhere and the grey carpets have kinda killed it for all of us I think, but now that I have an actual emotional requirement for a room that's comfy, cosy, and very much me, I'm gonna see if I can change that.

Dad also says if I actually go ahead with my little dream project of putting a train track high up on the wall that goes all around the room, and it actually looks good (cause I don't do things by halves okay I will take the idea and run marathons with it), he'll let me put another one in the living room themed on the ocean. It pissed mum off because it's not something you're supposed to have in a living room, and she doesn't want any guests assuming the worst, but she's wrong. An ocean themed model railway around the room would be unique, interesting, fun, and loved by everyone worth the time of day, in my humble, totally unbiased opinion.

Speaking of mum, she's gained an interest in making the garden look nice. We were gonna work on a pond and stuff together but she's kinda just doing her own thing so I'm gonna get a bunch of Diglett and Dugtrio garden ornaments and gradually hide them around the place until she notices. She won't stop me! She's used to my shit! But I'm wondering how much I can get away with before she notices the Diglett takeover lmao

[bisxualbucky]

I will abide by the results of this poll

[justsomeweirdbandkid]

Absolutely obsessed with my new desk setup

[azems-familiar]

the date for my carpal tunnel surgery is scheduled for the 23rd. yall i'm gonna be so fucking powerful when i'm not in pain all the time anymore are you kidding me. been dealing with this since 2017 so i like... don't even remember what it feels like to Not hurt to type.

like oh my god. that fic i just posted? if i wasn't in nasty burning pain atm like.... i could've written it in half the time i swear. i will be unstoppable. i'll even be able to game again for long periods of time! i'm so excited for this actually wtf

[silent-sentinels]

google how do we subtly tell our dad that we think he has adhd also google how to eviscerate all mosquitoes in a 50 foot vicinity they are EATING US ALIVE

[alrightstartingscene]

The telehealth nurse I’ve been getting my adhd meds from has officially upped me to 30mgs of instant release adderall a day. I better fucking get so much shit done istg

[untrisha]

My churrent project! I got this little guy this afternoon and spent the rest of the day painting him. As soon as this layer cures I'm gonna do a cute little forest design on the tabletop and maybe paint some surprise critters/monsters in the bottom tray 🤔

my pup is v sus of the table for some reason he keeps walking up to it and just sort of staring and then walking away giving it furtive glances

[e-wwis]

I smoke one (1) cigarette and suddenly I'm functioning executively

[ginnvngagap]

no, Jayce Talis didn't mean "Viktor, your terminal illness and physical disability that causes you constant pain are fxcking awesome actually, you should totally enjoy them" he meant "Viktor, your terminal illness and psysical disability don't make you any less loveable and I never saw you as weak or pitiful because of them. in my eyes, you were always perfect."

I have a feeling this take stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what internalized ableism (or bigotry in general) actually is.

as a personal example, I don't exactly agree with the autism as a superpower narrative, and I refuse to be ashamed of not being proud of every single aspect of my neurodivergence and mental illnesses. no, I don't want a cure, because it still defines me as a person, but if someone announced tomorrow that they can fix my autistic inertia, executive dysfunction or sensory problems with just a flip of a switch, I'd accept that in a heartbeat. not wanting to suffer is not the same as thinking I am worthless or lazy because of my neurodivergence.

as another example of internalized bigotry: I've seen a user on the bird app having to defend herself against people who insisted that thinking periods are gross and unpleasant to have is her hating her womanhood. but listen, I fxcking hate having a uterus. I hate that I can get pregnant (I have tokophobia), and I hate periods with a fiery passion (and mine aren't even that painful, I rarely have cramps and they always last around 5 days). I don't like how they feel, I don't like the pain, the mood swings, and yes, I find blood coming out of my vagina gross, especially when it includes those little chunks. it's just a very uncomfortable experience overall. this however doesn't mean that I think I should be treated as impure, or inferior. I don't think it's okay to treat me as if I'm an inherently irrational creature (although I'd argue that all humans are, but I digress) incapable of a single logical thought because of my cycle, and I don't feel ashamed of asking for a pad or a tampon, because it's a natural bodily function and no one should ever be shunned for it.

bigotry is a social construct, it's shame, discrimination, ostracization. it's the belief that certain ways of being are inherently shameful and should be purged from "civilized" society, because to the "correct" people, they aren't even human.

Viktor not wanting to die or be in pain isn't the problem, and Jayce has already demonstrated that the only thing he hates about those conditions is that he doesn't want to lose his partner and he doesn't want him to suffer. the problem is that Viktor believed his illness and disability made him inferior and unloveable. he wanted to fix himself not just because he didn't want to die or suffer, but because he was convinced he needed to achieve perfection in order to be loved and accepted, to be a worthy partner of Jayce.

but this kind of thinking is what leads to erasing everything that makes us human, that makes us unique. that was Viktor's greatest error, wanting so badly to transcend the human condition, he risked erasing human lives all together.

[cripplecharacters]

Sorry to bother you,

Your blog is wonderful! Since it's one of the most dialogue/explanation oriented, i wondered if i may please come to you with a more general doubt. i'm sincerely confused... Why is "curing" disability bad per se?

So far, the arguments (on Tumblr) seem to be,

i. Consent.

ii. Generalisation. ("Everyone will want this same thing".)

iii. The undercurrent ideology holding disability as a flaw to be "cured" (including the use of the term "cure").

On which we all agree, they're implicitly bad no matter if it's disability or a haircut. Very well.

But.

What of magical healing per se is inherently bad? Because being given a choice implies that for every given person agreeing, there are going to be others who won't. So we should still write our fantastical society around them, that's not in any way in question.

But these, the possibility of magical treatment and the non-necessity of the same, are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to "take one before the other", they can very well coexist.

Last question (i promise), is seeking treatment for oneself bad?

Like, if there came up a quest to get the glittering flower blooming once a millennia guarded by the Evil Dragon of Evil and capable of magically taking away OCD and PTSD, sign me up! Or if there's a spell to resuscitate my thyroid or an alchemical pill that solves ADHD's executive dysfunction. i mean, that's kind of what my medications should do if they weren't so costly and inaccessible, and that would be a one-time thing too.

Autism's doing alright, i'd keep everything, thanks.

Disclaimer, i'm obviously not advocating for eugenetics (as this term has been often used and misused in these discussions, better to precise).

All these conditions in one way or another define me and effect my life in a pervasive, quotidian way, or/and on a more existential scale. Not always in bad ways -my life is not a tragedy, and this i wish to make clear. i'm not saying that a "magic cure" should come before a change in society to accommodate disability. What i'm advocating for is their coexistence, as a choice -not evil per se, but nocive if inserted in a context of ableism, negation of individual consent, and, indeed, choice.

Or at least that was what i was arguing for until a few months ago. Now however, seeing as the collective opinion is one of strong rejection for these ideas, i believe there must be some important fallacies in my reasoning, and i wish, before everything else, to correct them. To understand.

Sorry for the monologue, but, may you help me?

Thank you for your time and for your kindness,

Anonymous Sloth.

Thank you for your ask! The reason curing disability is bad in media is because the disabilities cured often cannot be cured in real life. People with incurable disabilities already have so little representation, taking away the characters they see themselves in with an impossible cure is incredibly disheartening. I live with multiple incurable physical conditions, and I’ve accepted that I’ll live with them for the rest of my life. Day to day I already deal with people saying how much better my life would be if I didn’t have these conditions I had no choice in getting, I don’t want to see that in my stories! If someone has my conditions I don’t want the author to get rid of them with magic, I want to see that character going on cool adventures and being badass! Sure a magical cure might be nice, but that’s never going to happen. I’m going to be living in this body for the rest of my life, and I want to see stories where people like me get to live their lives with their conditions!

Disabled people should be allowed to see themselves in sci-fi and fantasy stories! People who can’t be cured, who can only have their symptoms managed, who have to be on medication/assistive devices the rest of their lives and who don’t want to be cured should be allowed to see themselves in media without the constant reminder that most able bodied people think their lives would be so much better is they would simply stop being disabled.

Additionally, even conditions that do have cures or ways to manage them aren’t realistically portrayed. There are never any symptoms, side effects or rehabilitation, it’s always portrayed as a magical cure that completely gets rid of the disability. This rarely happens in real life, and I don’t think it’s wrong for someone who shares a condition with a character to want to see that condition accurately portrayed.

It’s perfectly fine for a disabled person in media to want to seek treatment, plenty of disabled people in the real world also have to fight to get treatment (though the fighting is usually against insurance and doctors, not dragons and wizards). But like I said above, it should be at least somewhat realistic. The world is already over saturated with stories of people getting magical cures that make everything better forever, but what about cures with long lasting or permanent side effect? What about healing that requires extensive physical therapy? Or someone who needs to take potions for the rest of their lives to manage their condition? These realities should also be portrayed. Sure maybe some people want to see an escapist fantasy where their conditions could get cured, but not everyone wants that and it’s almost entirely done by abled authors who fathom why anyone would want to see a disabled person who isn’t trying to ‘overcome’ their disability.

We’ve also reblogged this post & answered this ask that deal with similar topics if you want to check them out.

I hope this helps! Have a nice day,

Mod Rot

-

Everything Mod Rot said.

Basically, it's like giving us representation and then taking it away. Readers with that disability are going to read that book and relate to that character. Having a character like you in a work can be so important. But then the character is magically cured of an incurable condition, and now they're completely abled. Good for them. But the reader is still disabled. The reader will still always be disabled.

Disabled representation is already so rare. It's not really nice to take away what little we have.

- Mod Aaron

Echoing what everyone else has said, I want to add an extra thing:

If there was a wealth of disabled characters in media, represented with respect and nuance and care and all that, some stories involving disability being cured wouldn’t feel out of place, because there would already be so much to see that it would be an interesting departure and not posed as the only option for a happy ending.

And if you’re writing something about curing a disability that you have because that’s your experience and it’s what you want, that would make sense as well.

But since so many representations of disability in media have the underlying message that the only way to truly be happy or worthy or whatever with a disability is to have it cured, to have the least amount of signs of disabilities ever, then adding more of the same to that can be not just frustrating but harmful.

An “overcoming” of disability, a “making invisible” of a visible disability, or a cure for a disability are not the only stories worth telling about disabled people—because they are also not the only lives worth living for disabled people.

— mod sparrow

[shakingparadigm]

hello!

Welcome to the blog! I'm shakingparadigm! I prefer not to use other names, so please refer to me as paradigm or para for short! I go by they/them exclusively :)

I make art for, discuss, share and write about ALIEN STAGE, my current interest! I'd be very glad to meet and share my enjoyment with others who enjoy it, too.

My inbox is always open and I'm happy to receive thoughts about ALNST! Usually life (+ my executive dysfunction) is beating my ass, so sometimes it takes me a while to answer asks. I promise you though, I'm really glad to receive them and I'll answer as best as I can! If you have any questions about Alien Stage or just want to share something, my inbox is always open!

I hope you enjoy what you find here! Thanks for coming!

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[shoku-and-awe]

This morning, I didn’t want to take my meds again. I interfaced with my brain and tried to unpack why, and it was this complicated miasma of

because the world is bad

to take them I would have to eat

I can’t tell if I’m hungry

I feel fat and I shouldn’t eat

I don’t want to make breakfast

You only get to have one breakfast and I don’t know what to choose

I have too much work and too much going on in my head so everything is impossible

If I take them I am somehow acknowledging that the world is still turning

Soon I will need a MyNumber card to refill the prescription and I keep forgetting to finish the application so I should be stockpiling them just in case

And hmmm. A lot of that is just life, but also a lot of it sounds a lot like executive dysfunction. And—stick with me here—maybe this is nothing more than a WILD coincidence, but executive dysfunction is a symptom that my meds are supposed to treat. *And* I haven’t been taking my meds the last several days because of Don’t Wanna. Hmm. Hmmm! What could it all mean?

Anyway. I still very much didn’t wanna, but I eventually formed a hypothesis with the potential to blow this case wide open. To test it, I had a glass of milk and my meds, and then I sat down and did what I had budgeted as two days of work (some of it while watching one awful horror movie and then another surprisingly fun one) and also some boring admin tasks, and also I made soup, washed dishes, made some ballot curing calls, hit and exceeded my word count goal, played a lot with Iggy, went for a walk, and even had a nice dinner out. Which is probably unrelated to the meds thing. But it’s funny how it turned out that way, right?

[breelandwalker]

Sneak Peek - Spoons In Spades

At a little distance he saw a fire, and beside it there sat three giants, busy with broth and beef. They were so huge that the spoons they used were as large as spades, and their forks as big as hay-forks: with these they lifted whole bucketfuls of broth and great joints of meat out of an enormous pot which was set on the ground between them.

- Niels and the Giants (The Crimson Fairy Book)

[img src]

-----

Intent: To give oneself additional “spoons.”

Ideal Timing: This charm can be made at any time.

Materials:

Spoons

Large Jar

Cotton Balls

Herbs: Hyssop, Rosemary, Thyme, Juniper Berries

When I asked my readers what sort of spells they'd like to see in this second volume of fairytale-inspired spells, one of the most strikingly popular responses was, "Is there a spell to give me more spoons?"

If you're not familiar with the term, "spoons" or spoon theory is a metaphor which describes the reduction in mental and physical energy experienced by people who are disabled or chronically ill, with spoons used as a unit of measurement to represent how energy and motivation must be rationed throughout the day to accomplish necessary tasks. Spoons are only replenished through rest or sleep, so once a person runs out of spoons, that's it for their day. 

The term was coined by Christine Miserandino in her 2003 article "The Spoon Theory," in which she uses dinnerware to demonstrate to a friend how living with invisible chronic illness required careful daily planning and prioritization, and how even with the best intentions and efforts, tasks are often left undone due to a lack of energy or an increase in pain. The term has since been adopted by wide sections of the online community in relation to struggles with disability, chronic illness, or mental health, as a descriptor for daily energy and motivation levels, i.e. "I don't have the spoons for this," or "After a full day at work, I have exactly one spoon left, and I need it for laundry, so going out is off the table."

As someone who regularly battles ADHD, anxiety, executive dysfunction, migraines, and depression, I'm a big fan of spoon theory, largely because it makes those invisible daily struggles, which so many of us have, much easier to visualize and explain. So in honor of all my fellow spoonies, here is a spell to help you gain those critical extra spoons.

For this spell, you'll need a fair-sized jar, some healing herbs, and a bunch of spoons. You can use plastic spoons or metal ones, if you happen to have spare silverware lying around. Use as many or as few spoons as you feel you need. If you need more spoons than can readily be acquired, you might draw or print out pictures or spoons and use those instead.

Place the spoons in the jar with a big handful of cotton balls. Apart from their mundane medical and cosmetic uses, cotton has healing magical properties and also represents the comfort that may feel lacking on low energy or high pain days. If desired, add several pinches of Hyssop, Rosemary, Thyme, and Juniper Berries, or a sachet containing the herbs if you'd rather keep things neat.

Close the jar, give it a big hug, and say:

I bless this jar and spoons And ask for the strength to function; And when I need a helping hand, These extra spoons I'll summon,

Set the jar aside somewhere safe. If desired, you might want to label it. You don't want anyone borrowing your magical spoons for their cereal, after all. When you need an extra boost to help you get through the day, simply open the jar and take out a spoon. You can carry the spoon with you, place it on your altar, or discard it to activate the charm.

Please keep in mind that performing this sort of magic should always be accompanied by appropriate medical and self-care measures. Magic isn't going to cure a chronic illness or permanently alter your brain chemistry. But it can help you cope with the symptoms and give you that all-important push to get yourself through the day. Stay strong, witches!

-from the forthcoming book, The Sisters Grimmoire, Vol. II; © 2021 Bree NicGarran

(If you'd like to check out more fairy-tale spells or any of my other published works, please visit the Willow Wings Witch Shop!)