#hyperfocus is usually wasted on stupid shit like

[rapidreptile]

I really have been making a lot lately... hyperfocus has been hitting just right... it's been awesome

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Sons of Prometheus

Had to leave off last night because the migraine was too bad to start in on the hyperfocus. Feeling somewhat better today, so I figured to just get a few side quests going.

Right. Runda's Rollerback salvage. And then maybe I'll go do Handa's stuff because it feels unfair. Granted, Runda really needed help whereas Handa's just ... erm ... Handa, but y'know. Fairness in all things? I guess?

Oh. Except if I'm really being fair, I should probably check on that rebel camp the delvers have been on about.

This is ... actually useful. Show myself juuuuuuuuuust enough to lead people out of camp, and then shoot them when they're out in the open. I am such an ambush predator.

Only problem is knowing exactly how much or how little is "showing myself juuuuuuuuuuuuuust enough" because now I'm in melee. Oh, fuck you, rebel shithead.

...I ... do not know how I did that thing where I rammed Aloy's knee into her attacker's face but I doubt I will be able to repeat it. No matter how much I want to. This is part of why fighting games will never be my thing. Well, that and the fibro.

And we're in the camp and ... where is everybody else? Oh. Right. I lured them all outside and killed them.

...Oooooooh, so this is how they're overriding machines. I mean, respect to them for figuring out that whole deal of pulling remote override cores out of Corrupters and then trapping machines with the intent of performing surgery on them, but still, yeesh. Also they can't be doing very well at this if there are this many machine corpses lying around.

Welp. No more of you. Stabby-stabby.

Okay. So. Where is everybody else?

Ah. There's like three of them behind this wall. How do I get in?

Oh. Okay. Gate.

And you ... and you ... aaaaaaaand you. Sorry, Son of Prometheus sniper; I am a waaaaaay better sniper than you. Now. Let's have a look.

Focus that I need to deal with back at base. Right. Okay. I had to go back there for a couple of bits and pieces of quest anyway. I guess this is important enough to drag me back there fairly soon.

Also ... can I just pretend in my head that the Oseram going along with this were just caught by the possibilities of the tech, and aren't blatantly evil? I usually like the Oseram.

...Well, there was Ulvund. Like I said; usually.

.........Maybe if I tell Erend about this, he can crack some Oseram heads and tell them to stop being shitheads. That'd be nice.

Anyway. Rollerback salvage. If I actually have to kill a Rollerback for this, I'm going to be pissed.

Oh. Okay. So it's just picking salvage out of a field and--

OFUCKSHELLSNAPPER DODGEROLLDODGEROLLDODGEROLL!

Right. So much for you, you subterranean pain in my ass. Now. ROLLERBACK. SALVAGE. Plus some extra Shellsnapper bits.

Oooh. Shiny close-range bow. This will be useful when I've upgraded it a little more. I should put together a shopping list.

(Honestly I'm really glad that whatever arbitrary time limit I've been given to get main quest shit done isn't really worth beans. I'd hate to think I doomed the world because I was trying to help an Oseram lady win an armour contest and upgrade my gear Because Reasons.)

Okay. I should head in a Handa-ward direction, but again I'm going for campfires and ... oh. Ruins. I should check those.

If there's a metal flower in there I am going to scream and punch things.

Nope. Just Firegleam. Now ... how am I doing this?

Huh. We're playing with water physics today, are we? Okay. A-swimming we will go.

Y'know, I didn't even look at what symbols this stupid holo-whatever was giving off. I have ceased to care. I am soggy and I would like out of the water hole, please.

(Why can't we go tell Drakka that, hey, if they want to go south a ways, there's a whole flooded ruin that might be a source of potable water while they wait for the Wound to fill up again? This feels like a waste.)

Right. More campfires and ... okay, that Thunderjaw looks upset. Oh, look, Oseram are baiting it again. Lemme see what I can do about this.

STOP. MOVING. NO. STOP. YOU ARE GETTING IN THE WAY OF MY SHOT-- uhoh.

SO glad I'm getting better at dodge-rolling. Smoke-bomb, dodge-roll, INTO the bush I go.

Okay. There. That's dealt with. Oseram, STOP BAITING THE THUNDERJAWS. YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR DEPTH.

What's all this now? Oh. Rebels. It's dark, I'm stealthy, and you're all doomed. Bye, rebels!

Ooh. Spikesnout. I can always use bits from them.

Okay. Just going to collect this shelter, because shelters are awesome and it's the best place to pause for the day. Though I should consider going back to Base later to drop shit off, and also to a settlement to dump some vendor trash.

Also I need to see if I can upgrade anything-- Huh. One upgrade on the shiny purple short-range bow. What do I need for upgrade 2? Ah. Greenshine cluster. I have fragments and slivers a-plenty, but no clusters. Lemme check my map.

Okay, new order of proceedings. Stop game, have food, see how much time I have before D&D, and then possibly go hunt up that greenshine cluster up in the mountains to the east.

I have more to-do lists for my video games than I do for my Being A Motherfucking Adult sometimes and it's weird. Ah well. At least it's more fun. And takes up fewer spoons.

On that note, food.

[mcrmadness]

I’m just wondering about ADHD again and how the doctors here say that there’s no need for testing me for ADHD because I had “no signs of ADHD in my childhood”. Well, I was born in 1991. The whole terminology and the knowledge over ADHD was different back then.

I was talking about this with my mom a couple of days ago and she said that I had troubles with homework - not that I would have not understood them, I just had such a hard time focusing on them. She said that she constantly had to remind me that I need to focus on the homework and not draw doodles or do other stuff. She sais she asked even from the school how deal with a child who cannot focus on their homework and from school they just said “Make sure the table is completely empty so there is no distractions.” but my mom told them “Do you really think that helps? All they need is a piece or paper and a pencil.” and those were the tools I had - my school books and pencil. I didn’t need distractions on the table in order to get distracted from homework.

She then also said that back then no one even talked about ADHD. It was still known as MBD aka Minimal Brain Dysfunction Syndrome and since I was not “stupid” and definitely did not show signs of learning/developmental disabilities - in fact I was learning faster than other kids - there was no need to worry about this syndrome. (Nowadays it’s apparently removed from the Finnish list but can still be used as an umbrella term for things like ADHD etc.)

I was trying to google this term now, to understand when was the term replaced by “ADHD”. I only found that this was done in the US already in the late 80s but I could not find anything about Finland, but I know for sure that what comes to things like mental disorders and neurodiversity, Finland has always been running late when compared to e.g. the US... I could only find some sort of Finnish ontology and thesaurus website and it says that the article about MBD was created in 1986, but the article about ADHD only in 2000. That would mean I was 9 years old (and my social anxiety and selective mutism were starting to really grow), and ADHD was still considered very much the “disorder of hyperactive boys”. This website does not even know the term ADD so I have no clue when did they start using it for the first time (in Finland). I just know that my sister got the diagnose along with an Asperger’s Syndrome somewhere in the mid 2000s. Now I’m starting to feel like I want to go find some old books about psychiatry just to see when did they start talking about ADHD and ADD in Finland and how did they describe it as BEFORE they discovered it exists also in girls (and since I’m afab, I most likely have the inattentive version), because this is just driving me so crazy.

I just... I don’t know. I just feel stupid because why is it me who needs to read about the history of psychiatry? Shouldn’t it be the psychiatrists doing so? But I do wonder what would he say if I went to him and really said that “no wonder they never suspected AD(H)D in me as a child when the term literally did not exists in Finland yet”. I just feel like I need to start writing down something like a book about my experiences. Collect EVERYTHING I can find that I have written over the past 15 years in the internet and copypaste them into a file and print this out to him. My brain just empties itself when I’m supposed to talk to a doctor but then I just face these things in everydaylife 24/7. And he just wants to give me antidepressants for anxiety. Okay, he did offer me occupational therapy too but I am afraid that it will just... kill my creativity again. I mean, look at my “timetable” for one week if we think I’d have a random person visit me once a week, let’s say e.g. on Tuesdays:

Monday: Nothing - the resting day after weekend aka no way I’m gonna get anything done. Know that there will be occupational therapy next day - don’t get anything done because mentally trying to prepare yourself for that. Tuesday: Hypothetical occupational therapy. Not possible to get anything done beforehand. Afterwards you’re so tired and the day is done so just sit around the flat and feel like going crazy from bored but be unable to do anything because TIRED. Wednesday: Nothing - the resting day after the therapy. The next day is a grocery store day. Start mentally preparing for that. Can’t do shit because of that. Thursday: Grocery store day. Can’t do shit before or after. Before because can’t start anything in case unable to stop in time - and when having to force a hyperfocus to stop when it’s not stopped on its own, it makes me so irritable and absent minded because can’t think of anything else but that one thing I was hyperfocusing on. Friday: Nothing - rest day after grocery store day. Mentally prepare for the weekend on which I usually always visit my parents on both days. They live in the same city, just less than 2km away but I still can’t start anything before that really, and I come back home so late I won’t be able to do much. Weekend: Visit parents on both days.

And then repeat. So when am I gonna draw? Edit videos? Write? I always do the creative things at night because PEACE and because my brain just works better at nighttime - ALWAYS has. I even found a diary entry I had written when I was 13 or 14 and I had been fighting with my parents because I always did my homework so late and my dad didn’t understand that, and I was then screaming in my diary that they just don’t understand that I am not ABLE to do my homework earlier than in the evening/at night, it’s just not possible to do them right after school.

Already now as I have about 3-4 free days in a week, sometimes even 5, I feel like I need more free time from my free time. I’m constantly thinking about how I want to do this and that, like I want to draw, write, edit videos, write... they are on the top of my mind 24/7 but still it takes weeks or months to get anything started. I just wrote about this yesterday that I feel like I have two moods: either too little time AND energy or too much time but a plenty of energy. There’s no in between. Now I am lucky to have too much time for myself but it also means I have all the time in my hands so I can always procrastinate and do everything the next day because I have time. Which means I won’t do shit, because I have no deadlines, and I start doing those things only when everything lines up perfectly. It’s never a decision to take my sketchbook and start drawing. It’s more of an impulse - I just feel like now it’s the day for drawing and suddenly find myself holding the papers and pencils in my hand.

Same happens with chores, chores just never make me feel good unlike doing one of these fun things. Oh and chores are also something that will make it hard to do the fun things because I kinda... don’t let myself start doing the fun things if I have the not-so-fun things undone. Which means again procrastinating and postponing something like dishes for days. I am not sure where have I got this mentality. Because like... wouldn’t it be a lot smarter to let myself to draw instead when I KNOW I can’t start doing the dishes, instead of punishing myself with “no washing dishes, so no drawing either”? Because as a punishment it does nothing. It does not motivate me with the dishes. They will be there for days or weeks anyway and they will be done only when I get that impulse to finally do them. Or, usually it’s not an impulse even. It’s just me needing food and in order to get food, I need to cook and in order to cook, I need clean pots and pans and in order to get those, well, I need to do the dishes.

I think this mentality partially comes from my school time. I aways knew how to prioritise my homework so that I get them done the most efficiently I could. Which meant that I always made the less-interesting homework first and the homework from subjects I liked, the last. I did this because when I started with the stuff I had harder time focusing on, it made it easier to focus on the interesting stuff. If I had started with the interesting stuff, I’d have had a lot less concentration and energy left for the less interesting homework and the chances of understanding a word of what I read would have been very minimal.

I still pretty much use this with everything I do - work first, fun later. I guess for neurotypicals this is not a big deal and probably something they all do, but my brain really wants to do the fun first and the work never. (By work for myself I mean things like chores etc. When I was actually working, it actually went: work first, fun never - because I was so tired after work I could not do anything that involved brains.) If I start with the fun, I literally will never do the work part. So I have to have the work first, even when it means I will procrastinate with EVERYTHING else too. But that is the only way to get it done at least at some point. It’s just that I feel like my life is nothing but work. I always have to shower, do the dishes, clean the kitchen table or start cooking. (Let alone the rest of the stuff like cleaning the HOME.) It’s a neverending worksite. I barely have time for fun because I don’t let myself to do that because the work is not done yet. But it just... never ends.

I think the reason why I hate chores is because no matter how many times I do them, I still always have to do them again soon. I shower, but I need to shower again in a few days. So it feels like it’s a waste of energy and time! Why to shower now when I have to do that after a couple of days anyway??? I do the dishes but there they will be again in a few days as I keep eating from them! Washing a plate after every use is also not an option - then “it’s just one plate” so it’s easy to put it in the sink because it’s not a big deal to wash it with other plates after a couple of days. Until it’s been 2 weeks and there’s again the rest of my plates in there and I hate my life again because I never remember how much washing the dishes also makes my back hurt but I need clean utensils because food.

But when I create something or play a video game, there is always a finish line and once you get past that, you don’t need to start over UNLESS you want to! When I draw something and it’s finished, it will stay like that! It’s not going anywhere, it won’t fade, I don’t need to draw it ever again if I don’t want to! So it’s not waste of my time, it’s something that will last almost forever. And I love the dopamine rush I get when I look at a finished product, but I don’t have the dopamine rush when I look at my cabinet with clean plates because I know they won’t stay like that forever. They won’t stay like that even for a few days. And that literally kills my motivation with every chore I need to do.

[painted-crow]

Hello. Can I ask you to give an example of your bird primary analizing and thinking, and changing it's mind and rethinking it's system about something? When you'll have time of course.

Overwork

I used to fall into the trap of glorifying overwork.

The various communities I belonged to as a teenager had this tendency to hold exhaustion as a status symbol. The general base of the idea was that if you were really dedicated and pushed yourself to your limits (read: long, long past your limits) then you could accomplish incredible things. It's usually flavored with individualistic ideals of achievement, and holds a very specific type of goal in high regard. It's also very American.

As a teenager, I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was going to start a startup, code some kind of app that would do something pretty basic in a really well designed way, and everyone would end up using it. I hyperfocus on things I'm interested in, and I thought if I could harness that, I might be able to have a stable income doing something cool and inventive.

This isn't an inherently bad idea. It's just that the startup world, the tech world, the local culture in my area, and the national culture of America all send a very focused message that working yourself to burnout is very cool and dedicated and great.

I'm not entirely sure how I came to challenge that. Partly it was experience. When I was 18, I took a full college class load alongside an internship (with a company that had a toxic culture... it was exhausting on its own tbh) and ended up unable to focus during class and too tired to get anything done while at home. I ended up dropping one or two of my classes (I can't remember; possibly one of them was that one with the online professor who went MIA so it was effectively dropped for me).

Then I wound up learning a working knowledge of PHP and doing 75% of the semester's work for one of the classes I kept... all in four days. I passed the class. In fact, my professor knew what I was doing and why (he was one of the few people who suggested that maybe I shouldn't be burning the candle at both ends like that), and although I'd carefully calculated how much I needed to do in order to pass and done that, he fudged it somehow and gave me an A.

But I think a large part of what changed my mind was my mom trying to tell me that what I was doing was batshit insane. I don't know if she ever challenged me directly on this point (possibly she did and I brushed it off because: teenager) but every time I decided to step back from what I was doing and cool down, she supported me. She wouldn't let me beat myself up for not achieving ridiculous goals. She reminded me that I always think I'm doing worse than I actually am; I'm very self-critical and have a long track record of perfectionism.

Eventually I think the tipping point was figuring out that sometimes depression keeps me from doing stuff, and that I can't just smash my way through by brute force when I'm already burned out. I can't blame myself for not being able to do what all the other burned-out college students seem to be doing all the time, because actually they were all doing exactly the same thing I was.

And I think eventually I extrapolated this to: "...maybe you don't need to wait until you're deeply depressed and burned out before you stop blaming yourself for having limits or pinning your self worth on productivity?"

Really. No shit, Sherlock.

Note

This is an example that actually took years before I recognized it and changed it. The cultural prevalence made it very hard to identify and articulate, which is why it hung around unchallenged for so long. I'd like to be able to give less extreme examples, but the thing is that I don't really remember them! I have a very shitty memory for certain categories of things, and "stuff I decided wasn't true" is one of them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plus, more minor parts of your system, the parts that change most, are kind of invisible to you until they come up (because you're either exposed to relevant information that's reminding you of them, or you're making a decision that involves that belief) and you're actively thinking about them. They're always there, your active memory just doesn't really have, like... object permanence for them lol.

Or if you do remember, then a lot of the time the change isn't very dramatic.

Oh. I just thought of an example of this, actually.

A less extreme example, about pollution

You know how people are like "drinking straws specifically are evil! Save the turtles! Outlaw plastic straws!" And at first I was like, huh, if this is that big of a deal then maybe they have a point.

But then I started to feel like it's a weirdly narrow thing to focus on. If you have the activation energy to campaign against drinking straws, why not instead campaign against the fact that many American cities have very limited recycling programs?

When I lived in an apartment, if I wanted to recycle trash, I had to put it in my car and drive it across town to the recycling plant. Doing means I have to drive my car and add whatever pollution it's putting out into the air. You're trading one type of pollution for another, and it's a cost to me in time and money. Eventually I just gave up and threw away anything that wasn't big enough to merit the effort.

And then I learned that actually, most pollution comes from corporations, and the focus on consumers is probably just to distract us from regulating industrial waste properly by making us feel guilty, and also to get us to buy "eco friendly" products like metal drinking straws (which, btw, take more energy to manufacture and break down a lot more slowly even than plastic).

So, sure. Ditch your drinking straws if you want, definitely don't buy those shower soaps with the stupid plastic microbeads in them, but don't get distracted shaming each other for tiny things when we have bigger fish to fry.

This is how most system changes go down: "I thought about some stuff and learned some stuff and changed my mind." It's not usually a big deal. Sometimes it is, but this low-level stuff is way more common and you don't even usually notice it as it's happening.

[setmeatopthepyre]

Mental Health Tips

So, I was looking through my mood tracker recently and realized there’s been a gradual but undeniable increase of good days and a decrease of bad days, and it hit me that yeah, I have been doing better and better. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that getting my ADHD diagnosis in January was a life changer. There’s a (great) book on ADD called You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy? and that was exactly how I felt. Wait, all the things I’ve been struggling with, all the times I beat myself up over my lack of discipline or worried that I had a brain tumor because I’d forget things in seconds or thought I might be bipolar because I could go from the highest highs to extreme lows multiple times a day, that was all because of one thing? Amazing!

Anyway, realization is one thing. Then there was medication (also a life changer), and therapy, and look where we are now! Over the past year I’ve learned a few things that have had a huge positive impact on my mental health, and I thought they might be useful for others struggling with their mental health, whether it’s ADHD or something else.

You’re not the only one

Just to start off nice and cheesy, but it’s true. The reason it might feel like you’re the only one dealing with what you’re dealing with and struggling to do what seems so easy to others, is because mental health is still stigmatized and not something people generally talk about. But that doesn’t mean they don’t know it.

When I got my diagnosis, I talked about it a lot. Part of it was hyperfocus; it was something that was on my mind a lot so it became my one subject to fall back on. However, another part of it was knowing that if I’d known what ADHD really was earlier, my life would have been so much better so much sooner. At times I was sure I brought it up too much, but I’m glad I did. Being open about my mental health issues made people around me open up about theirs. Whether it’s people you know IRL or a tumblr page with mental health memes, that affirmation that other people have the same quirks and struggles as you do helps so much.

The bare minimum is better than nothing

Yes, it’s obvious. It’s still something I struggle with because there’s that little voice that goes ‘yes, but I should be able to do more’. Guess what? That there thought qualifies as not one, but two negative thinking patterns: should-statements and all-or-nothing thinking. Just because you think you should be able to do something doesn’t mean that’s the best choice for you, or realistic. Besides, who says you should? Society? Society knows nothing.

Thinking you should just be able to do all your dishes but getting overwhelmed at the prospect of doing so isn’t helpful. Washing a single dish, or even just rinsing one because that’s all you can manage? That’s still better than nothing.

That said, yes, strive for progress over perfection, but remember that progress is not the bare minimum. Sometimes, the bare minimum is maintaining the status quo, or even just making sure things get slightly less worse than they could have. And that is okay.

Remove steps & automate

Speaking of which: often it’s possible to make the absolute minimum easier. How? By removing obstacles, simplifying things so that they don’t take as many steps or spoons to complete. If your laundry basket is in the bathroom while you tend to undress in your bedroom, that’s where you move your laundry basket. Personally, even having a laundry basket with a lid on it is too many steps for me most of the time. If I can’t chuck my dirty clothes right in, they end up in a pile on the floor. Solution: my laundry basket is within throwing range and doesn’t have a lid.

It only has to work for you

Sure, society dictates that clean clothes go in a wardrobe or a dresser. That’s just the way it’s done. But guess what? When clean clothes start piling up all over my room because I can’t bring up the energy or focus or whatever to put them away, I break out boxes. One box for clean laundry. One box for clothing I’ve worn but isn’t dirty yet. And then the laundry basket goes right beside those boxes in my room, in plain sight. That’s my system until I feel better. If I’m feeling up for it, there’s an extra box so that I can divide my clean clothes up between ‘large’ (aka pants and shirts) and ‘small’ (underwear and socks) to make it easier on myself when I get dressed. Did my laundry? Clean clothes go in the clean clothes box. Wore something but it still smells okay and there’s no stains? Toss them at the ‘worn’ box.

Is it how “things are done” normally? No. Does it mean my clothes are even more crumpled than usual? Yes. However, it also means that there’s less clutter in my room, it’s easier to find something to wear, and there’s less risk of me just living in a pile of trash because my room’s a mess anyway.

Your idea of progress may be different from others. Your coping mechanisms might not work for other people. Your adaptive behaviours may not line up with societal expectations, and that’s fine! In fact, that’s more than fine, because they shouldn’t. They only have to work for you.

Remove forks

So the whole spoon theory is fairly well known in mental health circles, but reading about the Fork Theory was an eye-opener for me. It’s explained here, but because reading that article is another extra step (ooh, so meta), here’s the most important bit:

You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right?

Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens.

A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.

This is super relevant for neurodivergent folk. Like, you might be able to deal with your feet being cold or a tag, but not both. Hubby describes the situation as “It may seem weird that I just get up and leave the conversation to go to the bathroom, but you just dumped a new financial burden on me and I already had to pee, and going to the bathroom is the fork I can get rid of the fastest.”

It’s close to the whole ‘removing steps’ thing, but less about making a task easier and more about giving you space to deal with things.

What this means for me is that when I’m having a less than stellar day mentally, I pay extra attention to what clothes I put on in the morning. Nothing too tight, nothing even slightly scratchy. It may be a tiny fork in the morning, but if I’m in a socially difficult situation, it might be a tiny fork too many that will lead to me being overwhelmed or overstimulated. I need to make sure I’m as comfortable as absolutely possible, aka remove as many forks as I can. Sometimes this means shaving my legs even though I think it’s bullshit that I care about that, or wearing clothes that draw as little attention to me as possible. No, I don’t want to care about what others think, but the truth is that part of me does, and I can’t change that right that instant. What I can do is minimize the chance that I get overwhelmed on an already stressful day.

Forks don’t have to be annoyances. They can also be tasks you keep putting off or something you keep reminding yourself of. Sometimes having a self-care day for me means doing all the easy things I’ve been meaning to do for ages but haven’t gotten around to. Sometimes it’s writing down all the things that are buzzing around in my brain, just so that I can assure myself I don’t have to remember them anymore because they’re on paper now. Sometimes it’s turning off notifications for specific apps because seeing them pop up makes me feel guilty when I’m not in the right frame of mind to respond.

Sometimes removing a fork costs spoons, like when I’m at a restaurant with a friend and I know that sitting in a spot where people walk by behind me is a pretty big fork for me, but removing it means asking them if they mind switching spots. That’s when it helps to be open about what you’re dealing with, because most of my close friends know by now that I always prefer to sit with my back to a wall, and I don’t even have to ask.

Compromise and automate

Back to the should-thinking. Sometimes removing forks means throwing all the shoulds out the window because they just aren’t working right now, and you’ll get back to them later. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think I should care about what other people think, but I’m not there yet, so sometimes making life easier for me means compromising on that and conforming to societal standards if I know I’m going to need everything I have to get through a day. Another example: I feel like I should buy whole vegetables and cut them myself and cook my own meals, because pre-cut and prepackaged things are often more expensive and just contribute to more plastic waste. Okay, cool, but that ideal version of me who has the time and energy to do that hasn’t shown up yet, and in the meantime I need to eat. Buying a pre-packaged meal with actual vegetables in it is still cheaper than ordering pizza because I can’t get myself to cook, and it’s still healthier than trying to fill up on crackers because I couldn’t deal with the social aspect of opening the door for the pizza delivery. 

Sometimes, in order to remove steps, you have to compromise. Sometimes, in order to remove another worry (aka fork), you have to automate. When I first started on meds, I would write down the time I took them, calculate when I’d need to take my next dose, and set an alarm. It made me procrastinate taking my next dose, because it was too many steps. There was an app that did all that for me, but I thought it was ridiculous to pay for an app that did exactly what I should be able to do myself. 

I bought the app. I tap one button and my phone sends me a notification when my next dose is due. I have my phone on silent/no vibrate all the time, because notifications are overwhelming to me, so I have an activity tracker watch that lets me reroute only specific notifications to my watch, and now my watch vibrates when I need to take my next dose. I know this isn’t an option for everyone because obviously those things cost money (and it just goes to show how life is so much easier for the rich because they can automate so much), but if there’s any way to turn something you have to do often into something that will do itself mostly on its own, it may be worth looking into. Yes, even when you think you should be able to do it yourself. 

Are you sure the thing you’re worrying about is a problem?

This may seem super simple and obvious, but I legit had to change the ‘worry flowchart’ my therapist gave me to have an extra first step: ‘Do I have proof the problem exists?’ Spoiler: most of the time the answer is no.

I’m running late, I’m not sure if I’m going to make my bus to work. I’m stressing out about what will happen if I’m late. Maybe my superiors will get angry at me. Maybe this will be one too many times. But guess what? I don’t know if I’ll miss the bus. I might still make it. Until I know for certain that I’m going to be late, there’s no use worrying about what might happen. Even if I end up being late, I don’t have any proof that my superiors will be angry with me. I don’t know yet if the problem even exists, so why act like it does?

Another example: I can beat myself up over the fact that people think I’m lazy because I need to take a break. I feel terrible. I don’t want them to think I’m lazy! I can’t relax even though I desperately need to take a break. I told my therapist, and he asked me for proof. Do I have irrefutable proof that people think I’m lazy? Of course not, that’s an assumption I make. Am I a mind reader? No, I just tend to assume the worst. Okay, so why am I worrying about it if I’m not even sure the problem actually exists? Right.

This is not a moral failing and it does not affect your worth

Building on that: even if people think I’m lazy (and I don’t have proof that’s true!), that doesn’t mean their opinion is fact. Their perception of me is not a moral failing on my part. My therapist made me provide proof for and against the hypotheses that I was lazy, and there was way more proof against that statement. At the time, I was in school four days a week, working three, and had two other projects on the side. If, for example, my parents thought I was lazy for having no energy to do chores on my one free day in two months, (again, I had no proof they even thought that), they would’ve simply been wrong. They could’ve thought it all they wanted, but it did not mean I was lazy.

A lot of symptoms of mental health issues can be perceived by others as negative character traits, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so difficult to discuss sometimes. The thing is: their perceptions and opinions do not actually reflect on you or in any way determine your worth. Your brain going about things differently than theirs is as much your fault as needing glasses is (it isn’t).

And last but not least:

Emotion comes first (and goes last)

That sounds nice and cryptic, right? What I mean is that knowing your immediate reaction to something is unnecessary and that things aren’t as bad as they seem is different from feeling it. Your knee-jerk reaction is going to be emotion. Likewise, it’ll take a while before your emotions catch up with where your brain is going when you reroute your thoughts away from negative places.

The RSD, or Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, that comes with ADHD means that sometimes I have extreme negative emotional reactions to situations. When someone responds a little less enthusiastically than what I’m used to, for example, or when friends talk about something they did without me (even if I wouldn’t have wanted to do that particular thing and they know that), or even when someone didn’t hear what I said, it can cause this void to just open up in my chest and swallow every sense of happiness I may have been feeling. It happens suddenly and drags me straight down to my lowest point.

Lately, in those moments, I’ve been able to check in with myself and analyze what it was that triggered this meltdown. Thanks mostly to therapy I can rationalize that things aren’t so bad, and I can claw my way out of that pit, but that always comes one step after that first instinctual emotional reaction. Likewise, knowing things are fine does not mean the negative emotions disappear straight away. They take some time to dissipate, and I’m a little more emotionally vulnerable for a bit while they do. Emotion happens first, and leaves last.

It can be disheartening. It can feel like progress isn’t being made, but that very realization is progress, even if you’re not feeling it yet. Emotions follow the path they know best, and if for you, like me, that path is automatically assuming the worst, you’re gonna feel the emotions associated with that for a while, even when you rationally know it’s all crap. The thing is, practice makes perfect, and redirecting your thoughts into a more positive direction will, eventually, make that path the easiest one to find. Your feelings may take a little while to figure it out, but they’ll find that path eventually.

I’m not saying I’m cured. I’m not saying I know everything. I have bad days and struggles and all that, but I have been doing better. 

I mentioned it briefly at the beginning of all of this, but I started tracking my mood in July. It’s just one general mood a day, which obviously doesn’t quite display the ups and downs I deal with, but I tried to log the average for the day. I started doing so because I sort of knew I was doing better and better but of course once you get used to something, it becomes the new normal and it’s hard to tell when progress happens, so I tracked it:

[of-another-broken-heart]

I had a really fucked up dream.  I was with a person who was romantic/intimate with me! HA! FUCKED UP. Fucked me up double to wake up out of it. 

Woke up to a voicemail alert on my tablet. My glasses were ready.  Can’t use them. 

The prescription is literally the same I was given last time. These two pairs of glasses have lenses that are, functionally, identical. So sure. They work. 

But they’re twice the size. They’re heavy. They have no anti-glare treatment. They have no oil-resistance. 

And because I spent nearly 30 minutes trying (and failing) to find a frame I actually liked that wasn’t “too big” for me, I ended up picking these basic black frames and thinking I’d be safe. But they’re not. They’re big on my stupid tiny head, and they press against my cheeks and the lens edges are so fucking thick they hit my brow bone and edge of my eye socket. 

The lenses are literally so thick, the frames can’t even fold flat. 

So I can’t wear them. 

But I’m a filthy fucking Poor(TM) and this is more than I deserve so I should just be grateful and find a way to Make It Work because I never ever Try Hard Enough. 

Whatever. I wasted my time, I wasted the doctor’s time, I wasted the secretary’s time, I wasted the production peoples’ time and resources, and now I’m wasting your time. 

I didn’t figure any of this out until I was home, though. I put them on, they didn’t fall off my face or make my vision swim, so I thought things were fine. And I had mom with me, because I’d asked her if she wanted to go wander around the dollar store for a bit. I just wanted to be out of the house and maybe enjoy looking at some holiday nonsense. 

So we did that. 

She ended up doing a bit of shopping. I felt guilty. I literally just wanted to look. I have no money, she doesn’t really either. 

At check-out, she used a couple manufacturer’s coupons. To save fifty cents. 

I’ve worked at this store before. Not this literal one, but I remembered the system. I made a stupid fucking small talk comment about how the coupon system was a pain here. In front of the cashier, and the manager that came over to make the coupons work. 

The manager immediately honed in on me. My mom noticed. She piped up about how I’d put in applications before, but it only once resulted in some phone tag that eventually ended without me getting in touch with a hiring manager. The manager locked on. Target acquired. Blasts set to Annihilate. 

So I have to go in. At 9:30 in the morning. On Monday. The day before I even get to do my mental health intake paperwork, three whole days before I get to even unload - much less start handling/treating - my mental illness tornado. And I get to be interviewed by this manager who, contextually, thinks I’m some godsend no-training-needed cashier people person. 

Meanwhile, my application was for inventory stocking. Specifically for overnight work. AKA, no goddamn customers to agitate my ever present suicidal ideation into actual suicide attempts. Because that’s what happens to me in retail. I leave and I try to kill myself. Immediately. Usually by walking into traffic. 

But I guess that’s just made up and fake and dramatic attention-seeking excuses! Because no one FUCKING BELIEVES ME and all I keep getting “helpfully” directed to are goddamn face-to-face smile-and-be-happy people-all-the-time customer service and retail jobs. 

Maybe when I’m obliterated and comatose in a hospital bed - or, y’know, preferably fucking DEAD - they’ll believe me. For whatever good it’ll fucking do. 

My mom also insisted on buying another bottle of Vitamin D pills for me from the dollar store, despite my assurance that I still have some left, and that my main issue is remembering to take them at all, and being demoralized by how many each dose requires and how fast they go away (and how little of a difference I feel it makes - but I didn’t say that one). She tried to suggest I leave it upstairs by the coffee pot. 

“Because you’re in that corner at least once a day, so that should help!” 

But I’m not. And even if I were, I usually have to hyperfocus exclusively on what I’m doing just to accomplish that one whole thing in the kitchen, because it’s such a triggering fucking disaster space for me, so I wouldn’t even register that the vitamins were there anyway. I didn’t tell her that part, either. 

“If it’s the amount, just start with one with every meal.” 

That would require me to... eat 4-5 meals. I’m lucky to get one, or two. And that doesn’t come close to covering my required dosage, and it just adds more and more to the list of Shit I Need To Remember And Do, which means my supremely executively dysfunctioning ass will simply never get around to it. I didn’t say this, either. 

I haven’t eaten since... I don’t know. Dinner last night I guess. I’m hungry. But I don’t deserve food. I can’t make food. The only food I have is making me diabetic, so I shouldn’t eat it anyway. 

I want to cry, but I don’t even deserve that. How shitty. How selfish. How useless. What a waste of time. Energy. I’m not even trying to be better. 

[tumblunni]

Random headcanons about the Qu species cos we never really learn much about them in the game except "they are funnie and cute". But i mean. THEY TOTALLY ARE! So i am love them and think more the thoughts.

* Okay so first off why is it that we see so few of them and all the ones we see are apparantly raised in a family of one elderly mentor and one student with apparantly nothing like a human parental structure? One of the few additional facts we got revealed in supplementary materials is that Quina is 89 in human years but this is considered "young adult" by Qu standards. So i'm assuming they have pretty damn long lifespans! Oh man, Qus are final fantasyverse elves?!?! I mean.. Lives amoungst nature... Mysterious and magical... Dedicates their long life to the pursuit of knowledge...it all adds up o.O theyre just elves if elves were funny instead of majestic! Normal elves do the same thing but with books n magic n archery n shit, seriously they just fuckin did ctrl + f replace everything with cookery terms. I HAVE CRACKED THE CODE, YOU GUYS

* okay sorry where was i LOL! Alright so i was thinking an explanation for Qus being so rare and seemingly not having a nuclear family unit = maybe theyre literally just spawned from nature? Like theyre technically a type of monster, just one thats more intelligent and able to form their own society. They just poof up out of the mist every now and then, and wreak havoc on whatever ecosystem they landed in with their Ultimate Super Adaptation Blue Magic Powers. So Qu Marshes are sorta like orphanage/lookout spots where elder Qus will try and find wandering bebs and invite them into the wider society. Most Qus are constantly nomadic, on the search for new recipes, and only the oldest ones will return to their childhood home and dedicate themselves entirely to teaching le youth.

* Either that or i dunno maybe Qus are like dragons in some kinds of fiction? Yknow the thing where a dragon egg is indestructable and lasts forever and takes a hundred years to hatch. So its rare for a parent to manage to keep ahold of all their kids long enough for them to be born, and most qus just wake up in a random place in god knows where and never find out who theyre blood related to. But their society is built more around these found family chef teacher structures so they dont really feel like they lose anything compared to humans. Also whenever a qu wants to pursue some other hyperfocus aside from cookery, they tend to seek out a human as their mentor/parent. After all, humans are everywhere and do lots of things! Its just a lil confusing sometimes cos the blacksmith accepting this random foreign exchange student doesnt expect them to get super attatched and start calling him dad! ("What do you mean you have nowhere to live??")

* oh and yeah i dont think that ALL qus forever have exactly the same personality and goals in life cos 'this entire species does one hobby' is a very stupid idea. Its just that they come from a very harsh and wild environment where you have to eat weird poisonous plants and dangerous giant monsters or else you starve. So itd make sense theyd develop a civilization around it when its a vital part of their existance and like.. The ability to acquire food more easily would be the entire reason WHY they coul start a society, cos otherwise it takes up 90% of their day every day. And developing complex cookery very quickly would also make sense because learning to prepare otherwise inedible stuff into edible form would be the greatest invention of early history! So food is just valued very highly because of those foundations of their society being one built on starvation. Nowadays theyre more able to eat enough to survive but that culture stuck around and they still celebrate even the smallest bowl of rice! So i think its totally probable that there are many Qu who have other hobbies and leave the qu homeland to pursue them, but i also think theyd still keep those cultural values of appreciating cooking even if they had other goals in life. So they do get the reputaion of "only ever chefs" from humans.

* Also to go with my headcanon of Qus being less of an anthro animal like most of the other races and more 'anthro vague concept of scary monsters in general, if they were actually nice and baked pies'. What if kid qus go through a tadpole/caterpillar stage where they actually are just monsters? Quina shows their baby photos and its just this big terrifying fangy blob in a cute onesie. I'm thinking that bebys would spend their childhood mostly feral and dangerous and then metamorphose into their more humanoid form once they become intelligent enough. So the length of their childhood stage could be shorter if theyre raised around other qus and learn to talk earlier. But probably those who rush through development like that would be physically smaller and weaker? Like higher magic stat vs higher defense.

* Qus have a more fluid concept of gender compared to humans. Its not like all of them are genderless but they're comparatively more accepting of people like Quina than humans are. The sexual dimorphism in their species is low so they mostly indicate gender through fashion sense and..well.. Saying "i am [insert gender here]". And their life is full of so many much more dangerous and important things so why the hell would they waste time thinking so much about dumb stuff like "uwu this person is somehow wrong about their own gender and i cant let it go until i prove it". So to a qu it would make literally no sense how humans are all "ugh this trans person is really [birth sex]" like uhh hello she said is girl, where problem??? Humans all look equally identical from a qu perspective so it all seems stupid.

* Similarly i think maybe qus adopt people from other species fairly frequently? By qu law, Vivi would be considered a qu citizen because his grandpa was a qu. If you're raised in the qu ways then you're not a human, that just doesnt make sense! Maybe you're a smaller weaker qu but youre still one of us! There are distinctions in the language between being part of the species and being an immigrant to the culture, but there isnt any predjudice about it. Qus get their reputation of being "stupid" because theyre very carefree and simple i guess, but thats not necessarily a "stupid" thing. They've advanced past a lot of bigotries humanity is still stuck on, because their society around hospitality like this. The power of food!!

* Also they don't speak "broken english" because they're stupid, like dont say that when you never made any effort to learn their damn language. I kinda have the headcanon that maybe qus speak all sorts of different languages since their culture highly values the idea of travelling the world to learn more cookery? Like they only have trouble being a master of any of these languages cos they learned SO MANY and its hard to remember all the different rules. Why do humans have so many countries!!

* I like the idea of Qus having the old medieval "perpetual stew" tradition. Having a family crock pot thats always bubbling with whatever miscellaneous leftovers everyone brings back with them each day. But maybe qus have a big community version? Just a giant town cauldron. Itd probably have way higher odds of giving terrible soup if literally everyone is throwing in ingredients with no regard for each other, but the roulette aspect would be fun, lol!

* Qus have a reverse of usual human traditions for guests. When a qu is a guest in someone's home its expected that they'll cook something for the people who invited them in, and the family will be hapoy to get a chance to share new recipes with this stranger. So its common to open your kitchen to anyone and keep a good stock of ingredients just in case. Similarly, the main way Qus judge if a human is trustworthy is to challenge them to cook something or take down some tasty boss monster. According to legend, humans first came into contact with qu society when a legendary knight slayed a ruby dragon and helped feed a villaige for a week. So thats why qus decided to trust humans,but still some individuals might be wary until you prove a similar feat of cooking strength. Any fellow gourmands are instantly accepted though, and many taverns across human society boast that they are "qu approved". The coveted "five yummy yummies" rating is ever elusive!

* Qus really like Fancy Hats

* i really like Fancy Hats

* this is why i love the qus