#like a list of the symptoms or whatever

[skyward-floored]

Hmm. Inch resting. Don't like that.

[fruity-hub-blog]

You know that whole "those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it" thing?

This really is starting to look like TruePhan vs AntiPhan 2.

So maybe everyone should brush up on why that was such a disaster before we irradiate the Phandom for another 10 years.

I'm a cockroach here, but goddamn, even cockroaches get tired of being bombarded after a while.

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[mothman-did-nothing-wrong]

Okay was anyone gonna tell me that I was like actually shadowbanned or was I supposed to just find out after my friend jokingly brought it up

[themslash]

:/ laid low by the common cold again, my friends

[alexclaain]

I wish people would understand that it's such an incredible useless time investment to stress about wether you really have the diagnosis™ - you don't have to proof anything to be allowed to use the ressources shared online in the respective communities to help yourself get through life. I promise you, you're not "appropiating" or "faking" anything, symptoms tend to overlap between a vast variety of diagnoses and thus tips and tricks that can work do too.

I understand wanting to find the definite answer, but that road can be long and time intensive and exhausting - you don't need to suffer through it all without trying any of the ressources people with the diagnosis™ are already sharing online.

[seilon]

you know im realizing now. with the exception of a few resident psychiatrists, ive had like. no good experiences with mental health professionals

[warriorprincesstramp]

um what's a good pithy label for what we're doing this month. no more mental illness march. or something. anyway here are the plans:

- write my essays for the month (ONLY two. I can do that. I can do that!)

- get my fucking propranolol !!! and then be Normal forever maybe...

- attend all my classes from now on. this is a shaky one I'll also accept attending a solid 90%

- get my asoue books in two weeks and start a reread <3 and start a mini reading club w dizzy if they're still down...

- five minutes of tai chi every evening (been meaning to do this for ages and I started today and I already feel soooo much better #slay)

- start lost with beth 🫶

- get new hozier music, yellowjackets s2, and riverdale back (<- this will fix me and then I'll be fine forever btw)

- get a JOURNAL!!!! if you see a rapid drop of weird personal posts on your dash just know I am Fucking Journalling!!!!!!! everyone clap for no more mental illness march!!!!!

- I nearly forgot my birthday is this month. WHAT will I even do for that I haven't done stuff for my birthday in years but you know what it'd be nice to celebrate surviving another year 🤔 I'll be back home then too so we'll see. regardless you all better be sooooo nice to me in my inbox that day <3

[manygreetingsfriend]

.

[hollowedskin]

Love the fucking reasoning of ableists.

Oh yeah do you go to the doctor because you're feeling great with no problems? No you go because you're having fucking symptoms and you think you have the flu by deductive reasoning, and want that either confirmed or denied (and correctly diagnosed) based on the information you give and the doctor being your official expert on questions about health.

Why is it suddenly different for neurodivergency? Nobody goes to a therapist because they have no issues and aren't being impacted in their lives. Fuck OFF.

a while ago i attended this lecture on autism. guy in the audience said he had many of the symptoms that were presented and asked what should he do to get treatment and possibly a diagnosis. instead of answering his question the psychologist went on a tangent about how “the clinic reigns all powerful over guesswork”, and how actually it has become a trend amongst little children on the internet to claim that they are autistic for cool points, and that this hurts real autistic people. no she didn’t tell him how to get his symptoms looked into, she just made it very clear that to her, aknowledging your own symptoms is bad and evil and hurts the poor real mentally ill people.

an ex-friend of mine, then a psychology major and by now probably a full psychologist, once lectured me on how horrible and bad it was that i told her “i probably have some sort of neurodivergency”, and that if i were her patient she would never give me a diagnosis because “you aren’t like this now, but i know that if you get a diagnosis you’ll use it as an excuse to start treating people badly. that’s just how mentally ill people are.”

same ex-friend was extremely disgusted when she found out that fans sometimes make neurodivergency headcanons for characters that have the same symptoms as they do, and that authors sometimes write books with neurodivergent protagonists in stories that don’t focus on that (ex: she seemed horrified that percy jackson has adhd?)

multiple psychologists i’ve seen on facebook agree that they should refuse to treat patients that say “i’m here because i have symptoms of a disorder and wonder if i have it”, and that a patient should arrive to a psychologist as a blank slate.

school psychologist asked me how i was feeling about my trauma situation and i told him i thought my friends would leave me. instead of addressing the issue he said that that no i didn’t, that i was lying, that i had searched “bpd symptoms” online and now i was faking symptoms because i wanted to have bpd, that he shouldn’t have told me he suspected i had a personality disorder because now look what was happening. no, i didn’t search bpd symptoms online. yes, my friends left me, it was a completely founded belief and not a symptom, let alone a faked symptom.

so the next time you hear someone saying they’re “anti self-diagnosis” i want you to understand what they’re saying. what they’re saying is:

- i don’t want people to be aware of their own symptoms

- i don’t think my patients should have access to any information that doesn’t come from me

- i don’t think neurodivergent people should learn how to cope with their symptoms and live “normal” lives

- i think neurodivergent people should be denied a diagnosis because the moment they get one they will become evil and dangerous

- i don’t think people who don’t look like a stereotype could possibly be neurodivergent, even if they have all the symptoms, so i think they are faking it for attention and should be denied treatment

[imabiscuitinthousandworlds]

having even more Realisations tonight. these ones are helpful rather than uncomfortable though. they do however raise the question of "how could i be this oblivious i was such an idiot"

[chatonmagique]

I'm discussing neurodiversity with a friend and she actually suspects she has adhd. I might have all the experience of adhd but who am I to judge right? But the thing is.. she has such strong qualities in area's that are challenging for people with adhd. And I feel like her definition of disorder because she is so balanced and organized in everything she does is on a whole different level. Like she is used to following through in her calculated choices and sticks to her habits more then almost any person I've known and it really sticks out to her when she doesn't. And her definition of I might have adhd is "I've always been dreamy and get distracted by my own thoughts when I'm supposed to be paying attention when someone is talking" Which IS a hallmark of adhd. But I can't feel help but feel.. misunderstood? Because I feel like she underestimates what it means to actually live with adhd. And it's such a fundamental aspects of my life that I know she'd be damn good in masking and overcompensating most adhd symptoms if she had it. I feel a little stupid for letting me bother it, but it still does? Maybe more because she is a close friend of mine.

[1031am]

its a sign of a series true hold on my psyche (1) when i start passing out the trans hcs

1. yuhoh thsts not good

[phagodyke]

I have to be up for work in 3 hours and I'm gonna be real I think ive hit the point where I might not be getting any sleep at all. for fucks sake.

[copperbadge]

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

Regardless of their philosophy it pretty much goes like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mish-mash-marsh]

Why is it, that whenever I ask someone what attraction feels like, they start listing off the symptoms of a panic attack?

stomach ache/nausea

sweatiness

racing heartbeat

irrational thinking

trouble sleeping

etc

buddy, whatever wonky sickness you've got... i don't want it, thanks /j