#my adhd symptoms do be getting worse with age

[black-quadrant]

thinking so fondly about my friends here. I may be too tired to maintain consistent contact but please don't think for a second I don't miss and love you very much.

[actuallyadhd]

Hello, I know you haven't posted in a while so I understand if you don't reply to this, but I could definitely use some advice.

I haven't gotten round to getting tested for ADHD, but I have a lot of the symptoms. I really struggle to sit still, I often blurt things out and interrupt people, I can't seem to remember basically anything, I get way too emotional over small things, and more.

The thing is, these symptoms seem to be getting progressively worse. I will hear something and then completely forget what I heard minutes after, forget what I'm talking about mid conversation, haven't gone to sleep on time because I've been pacing in my room and throwing a bouncy ball and eventually scrolling on my phone in bed because I can't get to sleep, I'm late a lot more than usual (I have to go out tomorrow and I'm hoping I'll get up on time, alarms don't work).

But the biggest thing is this: I keep stopping and starting things. I have loads of sideblogs I haven't posted on for days because I started them with huge passion and then either got bored or forgot about them (or both.) I've been thinking about starting a new ask blog, but at the same time I know I won't come back to it.

Do you have any advice for how to manage this?

Sent August 1, 2024

It sounds like things are cascading, which can be super overwhelming.

I always start with what I call The Big Four: diet, exercise, sleep, and stress. If any one of these is out of whack, everything gets harder. This is true for non-ADHDers as well, but for us it’s more important because of how our brains work.

So, first, think about how you’ve been eating lately. Are you getting enough protein? Brains run on glucose, so carbs are also necessary, but aiming for whole grains and the like is better for long-term functioning. Are you eating *enough*? As in, do you forget to eat meals? Do you snack a lot, and if you do, are you going for quick sugar hits?

Next up is exercise. Regular movement is important. Taking active breaks when you get distracted can help to reset your brain so you can focus again when you come back. Exercise also adds endorphins, which boost your mood and can help increase energy and focus for longer. These effects build up over time, so you won’t see results right away, but if you can make it happen there will be benefits!

As for sleep, you’ve noted that you’re struggling to fall asleep. That’s a really common thing for ADHDers, and we have loads of suggestions here to help. Some of the best ideas I’ve seen include listening to podcasts or watching ASMR videos, white noise machines or a fan, reading a book (not an e-book unless your e-reader doesn’t use blue light), or doing some kind of a puzzle book in bed.

Stress can be really hard to manage, especially if anything else is off since that adds to your stress. The best way to handle this is to have a set time each day where you do something fun and relaxing.

You may find that this doesn’t quite hit the spot. So I have a couple more things to look into.

First, it’s pretty normal for us to run into problems when our responsibilities increase. More responsibility means more load on our executive functions, so things start falling apart a bit as we struggle to find a way to make everything happen. Change is hard!

Second, our age and hormones can have an impact on things. If you menstruate, estrogen levels have a huge impact on functioning. It is a very important part of the brain’s glucose delivery system, so when estrogen is low so is glucose. (There are other ways glucose gets to the brain, estrogen is just the most efficient.)

As for age, when you hit certain ages (early childhood and puberty are best known) your brain makes a ton of new connections, and that can make a lot of things harder that weren’t before. This is because your brain is dedicating itself to other things, and often those “lost” skills return once it’s done with the stage.

So think about all of these things and consider whether one or more might be affecting you. Once you know what’s going on, it will be easier to figure out how to deal with it.

Followers, do you have any ideas for managing these issues? Please share!

-J

[cripplecharacters]

Hello! Sorry this is going to be a long ask.

I'm writing a cast of four characters, all of whom have some form of disability and I'd like your input, especially since a few of them fall into tropes I've seen talked about on the blog.

I have autism, ADHD, and chronic joint pain that is undiagnosed but probably related to hypermobility. All of them have ADHD and autism but I'm not going to talk about that at length for any of them because I'm pretty comfortable with writing them.

Dispite the amount of disabled characters I have and the questions I have about how to portray them, this is not a story about disability or the disabled experience, but I do want to showcase my disabled characters in a nuanced way that highlights that their disability is not separable from them.

This is also for a fanfiction, and the source has some trouble with how it portrays disability (evil character with an eye patch, bionics that completely negate the disability) and I'm trying to figure out what I can modify and what I need to just throw out.

I'll go in alphabetical order and talk about them and the tropes I'm worried about falling into/what I want advice on.

Autumn (he/they)

He has ADHD, autism, classical EDS, is mildly HoH (about 20-30 decibels less than normal range), and has three fingers on his right hand due to an injury. They use a variety of mobility aids throughout the story, starting with only occasionally using a cane and ending with using forearm crutches on good days and a wheelchair on bad days.

The tropes/things I'm concerned about with them are the “good” wheelchair user, the noble dead disabled character, and finger prosthetics

The "pure/good" wheelchair user trope I'm partially concerned about because he becomes the moral core of the cast as time goes on and he gets more disabled. He doesn't become a better person, really, but everyone else gets Worse. He's still snarky and can be selfish and jaded at times, but I feel like it's harder to demonstrate that at the end.

Being the most honest and least willing to capitulate to doing terrible things leads to his execution, which is a turning point and a point of no return. I feel like this ties into a trope of the disabled character dying first, especially since he's the one who's using disability aids/is most explicitly disabled.

I've seen the posts about why finger prosthetics aren't useful/common, but I was thinking that he'd start off with canon-typical bionic fingers before eventually realizing that he doesn't need them and it's more hassle to put them on and off than it is to just not have them. Is this an okay use of finger prosthetics since it's kind of grappling with the trope itself? Or would it be better for him not to have them in the first place?

Right now I have it so Autumn’s sister Summer died and he named himself in her honor when he transitioned. That's pretty immutable at this point. However, right now I have her as d/Deaf, with much more profound hearing loss than Autumn. (Which is also why he knows ASL) Does this fall into a disabled dead character issue?

Chauncey (he/him)

Chauncey has ADHD, autism, burn scars, chronic pain (unspecified, based on my own experiences) and dyscalculia.

Chauncey's the one I'm frankly least concerned about any specific tropes. There are only one or two concerns I have with him:

As an author, it's important to know what disability a character has even if they don't know. I know in your FAQ you say “I'm disabled is it okay to x” is generally okay, but do you think I should have a more specific disability in mind that matches my symptoms or can I keep it no specificity?

He's a clone who was rapidly aged and I wasn't sure how to figure out if/how that might affect his dyscalculia since it's not exactly a situation that happens in real life but that's about it.

Morticia (she/her)

She's my protagonist. She has autism, ADHD, a visual impairment in the form of a missing eye, and visible scarring on her face.

She's heavily based on the canon character who was an “evil eyepatch” guy. I changed it so she actually has issues with said eye and made her less evil during the period of time she uses it but I'm not sure if I should just ditch the eyepatch all together.

She starts with a bionic eye (it's not perfect, but she can see out of it to some extent). Then she gets into some sci-fi bullshit and starts piloting around a robot telepathically, but her signals get crossed with her bionic eye, so she covers it with an eyepatch while she's piloting the robot. She does use this scheme to commit 28 murders, but the murders are kind of justified by the plot? She's really written as doing some ehh things for what she believes is right. I definitely wouldn't write the eyepatch that way if it wasn't in the source, but it was like the way to identify her character in the source, so it feels weird to not have it at all.

After that, she gets arrested, gets her bionic taken, and gets a prosthetic to keep appearances and hold the shape. Stuff happens, and she gets another bionic with some more visual info that is sometimes too much for her. She gets a lot worse than when she had the eye patch, but she does still have a noticeable eye difference. Her later bionic is totally customizable and she normally keeps it a glowing gold.

I have questions about her facial scarring because she uses it to play on people's perceptions. When she's campaigning and trying to look innocent and kind, she covers it as much as she can. However, when she feels like she is in control and can do whatever she wants without consequences, she doesn't bother or even chooses to try to cover her freckles but avoid her scars because she thinks they make her more intimidating. This results in her having her scarring visible during scenes where she's being "evil" but not when she's being "good." Is that okay? It feels like it's playing into the "villain with scars" but since she as a character is doing that, it feels less like the story itself is doing it (especially since Chauncey has similar or slightly more prominent scarring and doesn't do similar things), but I'm unsure.

She is evil, and disabled, but I don't want her to be an evil disabled character. I try to associate her covering up her scarring more with masking/trying to fit in than with her being “good” but I'm not sure if it comes off that way.

Mortimer (he/him)

ADHD, autism, and limb difference (upper arm amputee)

Mortimer is probably the character I'm most worried about with my disability rep (shocking considering the five huge paragraphs I just wrote about Morticia). He's the trope of “amputee that fixes his own prosthetics/tinkers on himself.” He also makes Autumn and Morti’s aids (at least until the arrest). He also kind of falls into an autistic savant but I'm less worried about how to navigate that since I'm very familiar with the autistic community, am autistic, and have other autistic characters.

I'm worried that if I make the prosthetics he makes not “cybernetic fix-all” it'll defeat some of what I'm trying to do with making him just as good as inventors who have done that in canon. I don't know how to retcon that canon without using an author's note, which feels disjointed and I want to avoid it.

To try to work with this and not ignore the fact he's disabled, I show the prosthetics needing maintenance and try to show them sometimes being uncomfortable or heavy.

However, this leads into my second problem with how I'm handling his disability. His character arc causes him to go from being the nicest one in the cast who is very meticulous but can sometimes have a temper, to becoming reckless, rude, and seemingly uncaring.

As he becomes more reckless and less willing to care for himself, he stops doing some of the necessary maintenance on his prosthetic, causing it to break more often and rust. I'm worried this looks like I'm tying his disability getting “worse” with his morality, since he also stops caring for others as much when he stops caring for himself.

I'm also not sure if it is okay for him to paint his bionic arm to try to look like a flesh arm, since he was a criminal and he was trying to make himself look less identifiable at a glance. And if it is, when he stops doing his maintenance on it, it makes sense for the paint to chip, but that would strengthen the association of him being more visibly disabled as he becomes meaner and harsher. I'm not sure if having Autumn bring the only one who's personality remains more or less the same while becoming more visibly disabled balences this out a little bit or if it's a point of having two tropes at the same time doesn't make either better. (If Autumn is a “good wheelchair user”)

Questions involving more than one character:

Autumn knows some ASL. Mortimer is an unrealistic character that knows far more than any one person can know, and he knows basically any language as far as the story is concerned. Autumn teaches Morti a little ASL, as well. Since Autumn can understand most conversation, they generally use it instead of whispering rather than in normal conversation. Is that an acceptable use of ASL?

Currently all of my visible facial and limb differences are due to injury. I have extremely few other characters with any prominence or description at all, certainly to the extent where it would be reasonable to know if someone has a difference due to injury or birth. Do I change/add something to these four so it's less All Injuries?

I mentioned before Mortimer and Morticia trying to hide their differences for different reasons. I don't really want to go into any sense of shame they have over it, just them hiding for practical purposes. If it's not appropriate to hide them for practical purposes, do I have people react as if they had hidden them or is that erasure? (e.g. Mortimer doesn't paint his arm and it's visibly mechanical. Is that something the police are looking to identify him by or do I ignore it? It feels weird to ignore it, but if it's causing problems for the characters it feels like a reasonable reaction would be to try to blend in, but is trying to blend in/hiding their disability just heightening the sense that disabled people need to hide?)

I'm so sorry I wrote an Entire Essay I promise I tried to be concise but I have a lot of questions about the tropes I fear I'm hitting and whether I'm missing anything trying to portray the disabilities I don't have

Hi!

I will answer only some of your questions because I don't have enough experience with a lot of the subject matter here. I'd recommend looking at this post some time after it's published to see if maybe a follower had an answer/suggestion for you.

Now for the questions I'm able to answer:

For Chauncey;

It's 100% okay to base it on your own experience. At times disabilities are mysterious and unspecific, that's just how it sometimes is. The problem with this that appears from abled authors is that the symptoms or treatments just often don't make sense, because they have no clue what they're doing; confusing basic terms, making weird conclusions...

But you are a person with lived experience. You understand how your symptoms work and how you manage it from the best - first person - point of view. If someone is well-equipped to write a character with your disability, it's you.

For Morticia (cool name BTW);

As of the bionic eye; as far as I'm aware they don't really exist yet, but this is a sci-fi scenario so it's a bit different. (If you want to hear about the currently real options, here's a post that could interest you).

I'm slightly puzzled by her eyepatch fixing the signal issues; I would've assumed that it would transmit things either way (?) because with an eyepatch she would still see, just the inside of the patch and not the usual stuff. But my cluelessness here might be my fault by the fact that I'm not familiar with the source material. But if it's meant for a general (non-fandom) audience, I think it would be great if you could elaborate on the science here!

With the later eyes she gets, I advise you to keep her visually impaired even if her vision improves somewhat. It shouldn't be a cure. You potentially could think of it like hearing aids, where they can be more or less helpful, but are often more annoying than anything else and aren't fully "restoring" the sense by any means. Maybe her bionic eye has static, or weird spots, or causes double vision.

Now for the "hmm" part...

"When she's campaigning and trying to look innocent and kind, she covers it as much as she can. However, when she feels like she is in control and can do whatever she wants without consequences, she doesn't bother or even chooses to try to cover her freckles but avoid her scars because she thinks they make her more intimidating."

Please, please, please don't do this. To answer your question; not okay.

I have written a post somewhat about this kind of thing. I really dislike playing with ableism in this way. Portraying scars as "intimidating" on an already dicey character... just no.

To pull this off in a way that's not offensive, you would have to research disfiguremisia in and out. It would need active commentary and a lot of teaching-the-reader-why-this-is-bad, and if you have to ask if it's okay, then you just aren't ready for it. And that's fine! You don't have to write a scenario based on heavy disfiguremisia, so don't. Remember, it's not her acting a certain way, it's you writing her to act a certain way.

I don't want you to take this personally, but please just don't write this. Not like this, at least.

For the "fitting in" part, I addressed it in the post linked above; I don't think that I have anything to add that wasn't included there.

For Mortimer, the best I can do right now is give you a bunch of links that will hopefully be helpful to you. This is just way beyond my answering capabilities and we don't have any mods who are amputees at the moment, so you're at the mercy of follower input for the most part. But;

Post of posts about arm prosthetics

Our general amputee tag

@cy-cyborg 's account, xe posts great writing advice, often regarding prosthetics. I believe that ze accepts asks as well.

For the rest of the questions;

"Currently all of my visible facial and limb differences are due to injury [...] Do I change/add something to these four so it's less All Injuries?

I would say yes! Some of the tropes that you're working if are Not Great, so adding a few additional characters that don't fall into them will help a lot. Try having some characters with similar disabilities that don't tick the issue-causing boxes. Throw someone with a facial difference that doesn't commit any kind of mass murder in there.

"I mentioned before Mortimer and Morticia trying to hide their differences for different reasons. [...] If it's not appropriate to hide them for practical purposes, do I have people react as if they had hidden them or is that erasure?"

In real life they would probably be recognized by it, though I need to say that there is absolutely a part of the population who just Doesn't Notice. People can absolutely be oblivious, especially if the lack of limb is hidden by clothes. Particularly if there are a lot of things going on.

That said, if whoever seen them has noticed, then they would look for that. That's just the logical outcome. But I don't think an eyepatch helps much to hide the actual disability, they would still assume that the person with a bionic eye and the eyepatch-wearing person are probably the same.

You can potentially avoid it by making a large chunk of the population disabled, lol. "Girl without an eye" isn't very helpful information to hunt someone by when there's dozens of people with that description in the city.

For the end, I'm sorry that some parts of it might have come off as Not the Most Encouraging (the Morticia part...), please remember that I'm just criticizing the tropes and implications. I can kind of tell that whatever the source material is, it is way worse about its treatment of disability/facial difference, so I would consider it an improvement nonetheless. Still, it could be better. I hope that the above links and answers will help you with your project.

If any followers are familiar with the topics discussed here, you can leave a reply or reblog with your suggestions. Remember to be constructive.

I hope this helps!

Mod Sasza

Hey! Mod Patch hopping in here to talk a bit about Autumn. I think that you’re aware of the tropes this could fall into is a good first step. 

First of all, you mention Autumn is missing some fingers and has classical EDS. Both of these could make using a manual wheelchair more difficult. Is the wheelchair in question manual? If it is perhaps consider adding a power assist (perhaps like a fantasy version of a smart drive. 

I’m not too concerned about him being “pure” because you mention that they are 1) working with other “immoral” folks. My suggestion would be to try and lean into the selfish and jaded parts of the character. Show his motivations aren't exclusively disability-related. I am a bit concerned about his execution. I understand that you might not be able to change that plot point but can you have other characters who use mobility aids and survive longer? They don’t have to be as major in the story.

mod Patch

[psychabolition]

Why and how do you reject diagnoses , treatment and recovery?

The why is answered quickly ,. For a lot of us "treatment" doesnt help or actively harms us . Its not uncommon to face psychiatric abuse as part of your treatment plan: including conversion therapy, physical violence, social ostracization /isolation, stigmatization or severe side effects from psychiatric drugs which can include brain damage and death .

So how do we stop thinking that we need treatment from professionals to feel better and to lead a life that we enjoy when we know it doesnt help us ? The biomedical model and its logic make us feel this way. We're told that we have an illness that causes our pain and that can only be treated by doctors and psychologists. But this model is inherently contradictory and that we have an "illness" thats the cause of our pain has never even been scientifically proven . If youre labelled with depression you dont have low serotonin, if youre labelled with schizophrenia theres no genetic defect, if youre labelled as adhd/autism your brain doesnt look different than the brain of people without the label. "mental disorders" are not an "illness" by medical standards.

Also, the logic of the model doesnt really make sense. Your 'mental illness' can never "cause" anything because its solely a descriptive label (every psychologist will admit this !! - all diagnoses are just a list of descriptions of specific behaviors/experiences/ways of thinking), its never the reason for anything. I think we need to avoid the circular logic of "well i do x because i have y condition (which was diagnosed based on clinician observations of x) and my brain is simply broken in a way requiring me to submit to expert clinical management and surveillance". I think its highly misleading to talk about symptoms of an illness since saying 'I am suicidal because Im depressed' is the same as saying 'Im suicidal because Im suicidal'(remember: its only a descriptive label!!) - it doesnt explain anything. I think its really unhelpful and also simply not scientifically backed up to think about any experiences/struggles/distress that we have no matter how unusual/painful/norm deviation as an 'illness' of our minds/brains.

The way I depathologize myself and reject the (bio)medical model is by saying that I think of a lot of the experiences that got me diagnosed and that also made me label myself as "ill/disordered" as simply a deviation from "neuronormativity" (=whats societally deemed 'normal' to think/feel/do depending on your assigned gender/age/socioeconomic status/...). So when I say that "Im neurodivergent" what I mean is that I "deviate from neuronormativity". And when people are not neurodivergent I say that theyre "neuroconform" - which simply means that they manage to conform to what society expects of them .

If you define neurodivergency in this way it includes 1) suffering more severely in our current society than others do 2) being neurodivergent because of positive experience and/or negative experiences that youve made 3) your neurodivergency also includes experiences that havelnothing to do with the reason why you got labelled as ill/sick/dysfunctional/disordered . Like being politically radical in some way - like for example if youre a communist or an anarchist or queer or simply just very different and norm deviating . 4) it includes queerness that is currently pathologized (I like to use the concept neuroqueer).

These new concepts and understanding of myself made me get better in the sense that I trusted again, after years, that only I know whats best for myself . And to be true medication and therapy has only ever harmed me and made me get worse. I can now ask myself whats actually causing my pain and struggles, and its never been my own brain that simply " reacts wrong " . When Im doing really bad it always has a real cause in my real life and theres always something that can be done (even if this means overthrowing the current social order in society)

[thebibliosphere]

Hey Joy, this isn't a question so much as a way for me to convince myself I'm not a hypochondriac, lol. Lately, I've been experiencing symptoms of fatigue, brain fog or memory issues, light-headedness, etc, that are uncommon for my age (30). I have related disorders such as anemia, anxiety, & ADHD that may be contributing to these symptoms, although they seem to have gotten worse or appear more frequently now than when I was initially diagnosed with those disorders. My work allows me to read & interact with disabled people with rare diseases, so I often find similarities with their medical issues. At first, I thought this was all just burnout or something related to the lockdown during COVID. I just saw my doctor and had blood work done to check my levels, and I may have a heart condition (tachycardia, mitral valve prolapse). I've fallen asleep at work before because I can't keep my eyes open, even after a full 8 hours of sleep. I can get dizzy from standing up too fast & can't seem to be on my feet for very long without discomfort & pain (I used to work retail, how did I ever do it?). I've researched some of my symptoms and found ME/CFS and POTS as possible conditions. Do you think it's a possibility I have these, or is it just my anxiety? Thank you! (P.s. Hunger Pangs is on my tbr!)

I obviously cannot tell you with any certainty what is wrong--and I am glad you are seeing doctors about it already and may have possible answers wrt tachycardia and the mitral valve.

What I will say is that there are many types of dysautonomia, of which POTS is one, and that what you are describing sounds very familiar to me as someone with two known types of dysautonomia.

The fact that this is hampering your quality of life to the point where you fall asleep at work, are unable to stand without getting dizzy, and are experiencing chronic pain, is enough of a reason to pursue further testing for things like dysautonomia and, yes, possibly even ME/CFS though given your history of anemia, I'm inclined more toward dysautonomia because the two often go hand in hand.

Also, it is normal to feel anxiety experiencing these types of symptoms. Even if it turns out to be a symptom of your anxiety, doesn't make the experiences any less real and debilitating, and you deserve treatment that will help improve your quality and comfort of life. And there is treatment and things you can do that will make you feel better. Getting your anemia under control should be a top priority if it isn't already. Mines was allowed to go untreated for years until we found out my iron anemia was being caused by pernicious anemia (b12 deficiency), and the iron anemia I'd been plagued with since birth suddenly cleared up.

Years and years of blood transfusions and infusion treatments, and the whole time I needed b12. Who knew? Certainly not my old doctors.

Anyway. If your symptoms are at the point where you are recognizing yourself in things like POTS? It's time to pursue that with your doctor. Don't put it off because you think it's not that bad or others have it worse. Everyone deserves to feel well.

Good luck.

[theautisticdoctor]

Have you ever been screened for adhd? I see that there is a lot of overlap in adhd and autism diagnosis. How was it for you?

Autism and ADHD do have a lot of similarities, as well as ADHD and (c)PTSD. I am officially diagnosed with autism and cPTSD, but I do also score very high on the ADHD spectrum. I got asked once if I wanted to get officially tested, but I refused because at that time my brain just couldn’t handle another label. I absolutely despise labels and getting them put on me gives me massive stress, because I feel so inadequate and as a failure (I’m still working on that). My autism also got kind of buried under all the other labels that got put on me, and I felt like it was going to happen with this again. I don’t do well in adjusting or acknowledging new things and it takes ages for me to accept these labels.

Just like autism, ADHD is also a neurodevelopment disorder, which means it would have been there in my childhood, so for me it is most useful to look how I was as a child. As a child I was not hyperactive at all, only disorganised with a lot of executive dysfunction, impulsivity when high stress levels occurred and easily distracted with bursts of hyperfocus and -fixation. My brother however has always been hyperactive, impulsive, and easily distracted (although he’s also diagnosed with cPTSD). He for example as a 2 year old managed to jump out of the high chair more often than actually sit in it or rock and bounce it back and forth so hard that he would flip over with chair and all. So he is definitely an ADHD’er. Me you could have put in a corner of the room and completely forget I even existed, which therefore also happened, because I wouldn’t make a sound, wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t crawl away from my designated space. You could give me a toy and I would be satisfied with it all day, figuring out all ins and outs, when I was done playing I would start taking it apart and would put it back together, over and over again. Where my brother would throw his toys through the frontwindow of the car (literally) because he was just bored with them and needed more stimuli. My cPTSD diagnosis makes it very complicated to distinguish what symptoms are from traumatic stress and what has been there since before the structural stress (because the structural stress also started in very early childhood) from ADHD or autism.

For me I think it is more helpful to look at it from a holistic perspective instead of adding more quite meaningless labels for a group of symptoms that one might have, I just have a neurodevelopment disorder with a spectrum of symptoms. I have made an inventory of those symptoms and the scope of these symptoms is already a huge disability for which I need to make adjustments to my life. Labels should be used as a tool to help people and their support system understand, figure out and learning to cope with their symptoms. The label is solely there to serve a purpose, but it doesn’t give you any clue about the extent, severity or suffering of the person. In my practice I always tell my patients that I’m treating a person, not just the lab results or diagnoses, and I expect others to do the same with me. I hate it when people only look at results or labels and create their entire treatment plan based on that, you should look at the human that’s sitting in front of you.

The autism spectrum has a major overlap with the ADHD spectrum. This overlap includes things like sensory issues, stimming, emotional regulation difficulties, impulse control difficulties, executive dysfunction, interest-based nervous system, interconnected thought processes and patterns, hyperfixations and -focus or special interests, social differences and difficulties, communicative difficulties, rejection-sensitivity dysphoria, and making eye contact difficulties. In both disorders the amount of stress or overwhelm is what can make the symptoms worse. Some specific symptoms to ADHD are the cravings to new things and experiences, attention and focus regulating difficulties, which could make it harder to read social cues, inhibition difficulties, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. Whereas some of the specific symptoms to autism are the cravings to routine, order and familiarity, with craving for strict adherence, intuitive disability to read social cues, self soothing through repetitive behaviour, thoughts and routines. When my stress levels rise I tend to move towards the ADHD spectrum, but it keeps contributing to my rising stress levels, so I am thinking it is more masking / coping than actually ADHD. I think, I therefore really fit the autism spectrum better than the ADHD spectrum. But I don’t know, maybe I’ll be ready one day to get myself actually tested, because it also wouldn’t really surprise me if I was.

[nd-babblinggoblinfromthevoid]

The friend finally randomly replied.... with the typical conversation occurring of

Me: *reaches out*

Her: *leaves on read for a few days then replies* I was distant because I thought you should reflect on your actions.

Me: What actions??

Her: The fact you dont even know is why I distanced.

Me: I'm sorry. You didnt tell me something upset you so how would I know? People dont always know something they do or say upsets you. Thats something you have to communicate so we can clear the air/work on it.

Her: Here we are again with you simply not knowing youre wrong. It's all here in our chat.

Me: You. Didnt. Tell. Me. But also it's in the chat? You mean the chat where I told you that you upset me with how you spoke to me? The chat where I bared my heart and mind about having pots and being neurodivergent? About how you treated my medical issues and mental struggles as character flaws instead of what they are, medical conditions? How you spoke to me in a very ableist manner repeatedly when I tried in vain to explain that I wasnt blowing you off xyz times because I didnt care but that because I was having flare ups in symptoms? THAT chat? Because you getting upset that I was honest with you about how you made me feel and why is your problem not mine.

You being a neurotypical, indirect, ableist, holier than thou, MEANIE, is your problem not mine. I was sitting here grieving the loss of a long-time friendship for 2 months because you couldn't be bothered to communicate with me like an adult. I literally do not understand people. I dont understand how you think the way you're treating me is totally okay. I was depressed as fuck but now I'm just more hurt and angry.

Angry that you refuse to accept that someone you were friends with for years decided to confide in you that they were autistic+adhd+pots. Officially verbalizing it. To you. And you just.... shut me out like I was trash. How fucking dare you. How absolutely fucking dare you.

I'm heartbroken, still. Which you don't deserve. I'll miss you terribly. Which you dont deserve. My kids will miss your kids, which is depressing for them as I have a total of 3 mom friends with kiddos their age which is now only 2 I guess. (Not including my new tumblr mom bestie who we havent actually chatted chatted cuz, I'm shy as fuck in the beginning of friendships. But I digress.)

I just.... I'm so hurt. I am so hurt. She doesn't.... even understand how hurtful she is and that's worse. Fucking ironic considering I communicate with her clearly about what upsets me and why and yet it simply doesnt sink in what I'm saying. She simply COULDNT be the reason I'm upset and hurt.

I can't even think anymore right now. This is too much. Honestly I was starting to accept the no contact and her replying with more ableist shit just reopened the wound.

[5-htagonist]

psychiatry pisses me off so fucking much because WHYYYYY is medicine prescribed like that.

schizophrenia: youre crazy so i dont believe ur experiences. Heres a higher than necessary dose of an antipsychotic to get you under control ensure yours and others safety <3 whats that? youre less fulfilled on the medicine? welll at least you arent an evil scary killer. Also this is definitely your only and worse problem and no one cares about your diet or habits.

autism: youre a child so i dont believe ur experiences. Lets reprogram you and give you stimulants typically for adhd so youll control yourself and stop being so angry and impulsive and emotional and focus on what i want you to. This is your only and worse problem so im not going to consider that you might have adhd or that youre overstimulated and your environment should change.

depression: everyones depressed so heres the pills you know what to do. This will fix it and if it doesnt well just switch over and over and if no medicine works well call you treatment resistant. ill recommend therapy but keep medicating even if i know it wont help without therapy. Whats that? you need your material circumstances helped? Well nothing medicine and therapy can do about that ha ha ha.

like. OBVIOUSLY. a lot of the time mental health medications are NECESSARY!!!!! NECESSARY for intervention. ideally, you should focus on your diet first. then focus on your sleep and circadian rhythm. then focus on movement (NOT exercise. you dont need to exercise you just need to MOVE!). THENNNN if those things are in check TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY then medication should be approached. and therapy and support can be present at every step.

of course that cant happen for everyone. if youre in the midst of a majorly life disrupting psychotic, depressive, manic, or other intense mental health crisis... yes you might want medication to be your first line. it is HARDER to take care of diet, rhythm, and movement if you are having mental health issues. but systematically speaking, the amount of focus on medicine and therapies OVER diet rhythm and movement is not helpful, actually. its this weird conception that the Physical Doctors are for all that, and the Mental Doctors fix your brain. have you ever cut sodas and other high-sugar concentration foods from your regular diet? that alone can improve symptoms of depression and brain fog. i dont know. i get frustrated.

i just. i love medicine, i really do... starting adhd medicine from a younger age improves outcomes regarding early death, addiction, life satisfaction, educational attainment, job stability, and more. the earlier you start, if you need it, the better your outcomes. its been miraculous for me. even something as basic and unhealthy as me being a stupid piece of shit stoner is affected positively. i have less stimulus seeking behaviors, so i dont run out nearly as often. the impulse to buy doesnt come up as often, because i dont burn through everything just trying to meet my psychological need for stimulation. likewise, multiple family members are on the same antidepressant as me. i was on the track to totally shutting down when i started them at 12. being stable enough to manage my anxiety and pay attention to my sensory needs was life saving. with my adhd being untreated and undiagnosed at the time, i still wasnt on top of everything. even medicated i struggle with hygiene. but with my antidepressant i stopped ignoring so many of my sensory needs. so at the very least, i had indicators like hair and smell that i could no longer ignore. i love medicine.

but RAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE PHARMA I HATE PSYCHIATRY

[biquinntile]

TLDR: My biggest frustration being a late-diagnosed autistic is getting my brain to re-frame any of my behaviors. I’m having trouble figuring out how to help myself.

I was abused growing up, including some medical abuse, but my mom knew I had ADHD and lied to me and convinced me I didn’t. She never got a diagnosis but would ask me questions like “What are you, autistic?” I didn’t really understand what either of these terms meant back in 2012 when I was 13/14. So of course I said no, not even realizing until later that this was a rhetorical question (I am sighing so hard rn).

Fast forward to now, me age 26, being recently diagnosed as a person with ADHD and Autism. I spent my entire life up until now masking but even that feels like a weird word to use because it was never intentional. If I had needs not being met, I would find a way to get them met without talking to anyone or I would ignore them/push them away so that I “didnt have” that need anymore. In social situations, I made a lot of mistakes and found myself being very confused…so I would avoid being social altogether, or I would drill myself relentlessly before and after any social situation…and I mean any social situation. I remember people always criticizing me for “taking the long way” or not taking the most efficient route, but for me the “most efficient” route has never given me the results I wanted. It felt like I was a robot who had to constantly tinker with my own parts, with the goal being that one day I would be able to exist with other people naturally the way they do with each other. Not a robot, a person.

It’s very difficult to wrap my head around this not being a plausible goal anymore. I spent so long doing what was more difficult to mask symptoms I didn’t know I was masking. I spent my entire life operating under the belief that everybody was trying as hard as me to deal with sensory and socialization and all that jazz, it’s just that I was too weak to do it as well as they did. And it didn’t matter because I was doomed to fail.

I’m really working hard to not have such negative beliefs about being neurodivergent but it’s difficult bc in my brain I always hoped that one day I would just suddenly flip a switch and things would be easier. I would understand people and they would understand me. I wouldn’t spend weeks (if not months) obsessing over one singular topic. When I look back on moments where the autism was probably showing, I have all these memories of my parents calling me aggressive/angsty/spoiled/stupid/lazy/sensitive/etc. My stepdad would always say “You can’t be that stupid” and in my head, I would say “Well I guess I fucking am.”

All this to say, I have a lot of trouble now even recognizing when I’m doing a form of “masking” because it is so ingrained in me, and had I not done it, I would have faced worse abuse than I already had been facing. It took me until I was 24 to realize I was wearing a size too small in shoes because I believed a level of discomfort was just always a part of life, for EVERYONE not just me. I recently realized that I am not capable of crying in front of other people, even people I care about and trust, because when I used to cry people would find my reasoning trivial or tell me that I was too sensitive and they would (and I wish I was kidding) laugh or make fun of me. That is a silly thing to make fun of someone for, I know now, but I’m not sure how to change the behavior. I find day after day that there are a million things I’ve been overcompensating for or putting up with that I thought was normal or I thought I needed to do to keep up with everyone else (no wonder I feel so tired all the fucking time damn).

All this to say, I’m not even exactly sure what autistic symptoms I have or how to tackle them or even really how masking works entirely. I feel like I don’t know anything about myself. I don’t know how to help myself. Where do I even start? People keep throwing this “high-functioning” term at me, which I guess is fair, but I also feel like my bones ache at all times and I have constant rapid-fire anxious thoughts filling up my brain and I constantly feel like everyone on the earth is touching me and crowding me, even when I’m alone in my room. So I guess if I can keep pushing myself through those feelings, I’ll be fine and functioning fine but I don’t really think I can do that anymore.

Any advice or reading material would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if I didn’t explain things well. I’m trying my best out here

[doomedfromthewombfr]

hi when i got a psychological evaluation when i was 15 they said i experience obsessions and compulsions but then nobody ever talked about it with me and i didn't know until recently (i'm 20 now) when i requested the medical records my caseworkers had. when i brought possible ocd up to my current psychiatrist he completely dismissed me. i was wondering if i could list off what i've been going through and you could just tell me simply if those things are or aren't possibly ocd symptoms . like i have a lot of things that i do but idk if they could be better explained by my other disorders (bpd, adhd, cptsd) so yeah

- if i hear about someone's boyfriend dying or cheating or something i feel like i HAVE to text my boyfriend that i love him so it doesn't happen

- i get intrusive thoughts about whether or not i love him, or if i want the abusive relationship i was in before, and when this happens i have to cut these thoughts off and throw them in a hole because if i think them out loud then that means i really feel that way and i'm bad girlfriend

- i have been hoarding food and trash since age 10. (i do have trauma of being starved so it could explain that but) i also kinda remember before my trauma i would leave rotting bowls of cereal milk in my room because it was stressful to get rid of them but also it was stressful to keep them so my whole life i've been hoarding disgusting shit and i don't want to but i can't stop

- i have a very limited diet and am often worried about my food being rotten, having hair or dirt in it, having bacteria that's gonna give me a stomach bug, being undercooked or bloody

- i get deja vu soooo often and for a while i was like "i've lived this life before and i remember this and now i don't have to ever worry about uncertainty again because i can predict the future" and then when i stopped having deja vu so often i freaked out because i couldn't get my spoilers like babe nobody knows what's going to happen that's what living is like

- interacting with something that i don't want to happen in my life means it's going to happen. since i was being starved for a few years in childhood my hair was falling out. and i was convinced that if i read stuff about hair loss online it would make the hair loss worse. and same with being on tumblr i look at my trauma content and then i scroll and see people talking about their DID or schizophrenia and i'm like "if you read this you will get that disorder in the future"

- when i go out shopping, i check that my phone is in my purse like 10 times in an hour. and then i have to make sure it's still there when i get in the car. and then i have to make sure it's still there when i get in the house.

- (i live with roommates) our washing machine was making a weird noise and i had the audacity to KEEP IT GOING WHILE I LEFT THE HOUSE and the entire time i was out i was like "it flooded the house and exploded and started a fire and killed everyone"

i'm sure there's more i just can't think of rn. but yeah should i push for ocd testing? do they give people different medications for ocd than other disorders? i've been on antidepressants my whole life and they never work cus i actually need mood stabilizers for my mood swings but who ever heard of getting proper mental health care lol

First I want to say thank you for reaching out, I know its not easy to be so vulnerable. I also have to add that I am in no way a professional. That being said I have been mentally ill for decades and have quite a bit of knowledge on OCD. Just from the things you shared, it sounds like OCD to me with intrusive thoughts and a touch of magical thinking to keep it spicy lol.

There really aren’t any specific tests for OCD but they do use some standardized assessments such as screening tools to see if OCD is an appropriate diagnosis for you.

As far as medications go, I have been on every medication, dosage and combination (with the exception of MAOIs) and they haven’t helped me much. That isn’t to say that you wouldn’t find relief from the proper combination of meds and finding the right dosages. Along with meds, a lot of people find CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to be of a great help.

If you have a therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist- I would highly recommend talking to them about what you just shared with me and advocate strongly for yourself to get them to listen, evaluate you for OCD and add and/or adjust your meds.

I’m sorry that you’ve been through some terrible things. I have an ever revolving list of “safe” foods and am convinced my thoughts can change the world for better or worse. You are not alone.

[rottenbrainstuff]

Hey ADHD buddies, is this a thing, or it is just me?

My ADHD symptoms, specifically my memory and my attention span, are getting worse as I get older. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about something else that’s gotten worse, and I’m wondering if it’s related or not.

I also don’t dream the same anymore. At all. Say, 20 years ago, I used to often have long, interesting dreams that I’d remember when I woke up. These days, I barely remember anything, and when I do, it’s just a little snapshot that’s like… here’s a moment where I’m at work, or here’s a moment where I’m trying to catch a bus, or here’s a moment where I ate something. Not the same at all.

The more I think about it the more I get honest to god sad about it, because I miss those fun dreams, and I fret that maybe I did something somehow to cause it: maybe I ruined my memory with too much social media, maybe I broke my imagination with my under-stimulating remote job, something like that.

I think I could be more at peace with this if I knew it was, unfortunately, related to a worsening of ADHD symptoms, or maybe even just aging in general, and not something that’s my fault. I don’t know. Do any of you folks have a similar experience? Or did I just wreck my brain on my own somehow?

[affectionatepanda]

Something I’ve been experiencing a lot recently is realizing over and over again that I’ve been disabled… My whole life. In so many different ways. I have ADHD, which you’re born with, so that’s an obvious in once you accept that it *is* a disability and not just something you have that annoys people around you. I was diagnosed with depression and had to get glasses around the same age. I’ve had chronic pain and fatigue since I was a child, along with migraines. And then everything else that either came up over the years or simply got worse with time and no treatment. It’s… wild to me that with all of this, it took me until my twenties to get intentional, consistent treatment for any of it. The only thing I’d been getting any “treatment” for previously was the depression. But it was sporadic and generally intensely unhelpful for a variety of reasons. Just at the end of last year I *finally* found a medication that seems to be working for me for it. And despite finally getting treatment for everything I deal with… I don’t seem to be getting any better. At best I’d say I’ve plateaued with my symptoms. I’m not sure if I ever will get better. I don’t know if I can. Even with “just” my anxiety and depression. I worry so often that this- all of this- is just how my life will look. There’s no shame in it, I’m just tired. Tired of the trying and adjusting and hoping and failing. Tired of all the small, everyday ways things go wrong because of all this. Tired of the isolation. Tired of the realizations. Every single kind of realization. Sometimes it gets so heavy and I don’t know what to do with it. And then it’s happened again- it’s all disabled me.

[lilredbird101]

I need advice/help.

I love being me, but it is extremely hard to keep it together, and I wanted to ask anyone here for advice, tips or help since it feels too difficult to ask people directly in my life.

I was diagnosed with anxiety in uni when I had a mini-breakdown. Around this time I realised I was bi. In the past few years I realised I may have ADHD or autism, which my parents and teachers apparently knew since I was a child, but my parents didn't want to label me so they left it alone. Cue bullying and social-life issues because I was always a bit odd. I am now seeking a diagnosis. After finishing my teaching degree I moved 9 hours from home for work in an isolated town in a traumatic environment. Around this time I developed high-functioning alcoholism and depression. After 2 years I moved towns. The alcoholism died down, but I see it in my binge drinking when we go to a function. I have now worked in a different location, still 9 hours away from home for 4 years. I have a loving partner, cute dog, decent work aside from a gaslighting, bi-polar boss, I've weened off my anxiety meds, and everything should be okay, but it doesn't feel like it.

I'm being diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder which probably should have happened ages ago, my anxiety is flaring up again, I feel like my ditching the meds has made my ADHD symptoms worse somehow, I'm getting way worse social anxiety which really stings for an extrovert with severe fomo, and I'm so negative all the time. Even though I love my partner, I desperately wish that I had had more sexual and romantic experiences with girls, and he is very shaky on if he could do a threesome or open thing, so I feel like I shouldn't talk about it with him because it makes him feel bad inside (he also has very bad anxiety/depression, body dismorphia and self-esteem issues). My internal thoughts aren't helping either. I call it, "Bees in my head". It's all just catastrophising, negative, tempestuous and hopeless.

I want to reach out to people but I'm terrified to. I feel like I'll put too much strain on my partner who already worries a lot about me, I want my parents to see me as more grown up and many times I have confided the conversations with them make it feel worse, my dog doesn't speak English, I want to tell my best friend but don't know how to verbally unpack all of this or if I could even get it out. All of my relatives and friends live that 9 hour drive away, too.

I'm planning on moving back to my home-town next year and working at my old primary school. Both places brought me so much joy. I hope it helps. I have a therapist that I've had a few sessions with now, but she's going on holidays and has upcoming responsibilities and I don't want to bother her when she definitely has worse cases.

Until then, it doesn't do much. I've already taken two days off work for stress leave, and though I want to take more, I feel disgusting for it.

I will take any advice y'all can give me.

[frogofalltime]

day 16

i woke up at 9:30am and got up around 10. i took my meds and ate porridge for breakfast and then proceeded to procrastinate for like. an hour

then i realised i needed to hurry up and shower before my friend arrived so i did that and got dressed and she got here at 1pm. she also suspects she has adhd and she always used to be like two hours late whenever we hung out in the past so she was very understanding that i couldn't meet her at the train station this time.

i decided to wear my favourite dress because i hadn't worn it in ages. my friend studied fashion at university and she has a really cool and unique style that always inspires me to try different clothes ! and i love this dress, it is vintage, the fabric is black with an off-white collar and it makes me feel like a boy version of wednesday addams. i also wore the doc marten shoes that @mollusc-consultant gave me in december; i was too scared to wear them outside before because i heard they can rub your ankles and cause blisters if they are not broken in properly, but my friend brought me some plasters so i put them on my feet and i had no problems at all.

when she arrived i was already feeling very weird from the medication. i was talking too fast and too much, i kept getting up and sitting back down for no reason, i forgot what i was doing and couldn't find things and was generally just very flustered and confused i guess ? tbf i am like that a bit normally anyway as they are all adhd symptoms, but i've noticed the medication is making it worse because it makes me kind of high and insane.

then we went out to a falafel cafe i've always wanted to try, it was very good and affordable too. even though i haven't had an appetite recently i actually did feel hungry so i enjoyed my falafel wrap very much. it took me about an hour to eat it though because i'm a slow eater even without meds but the meds are making me slower since my brain thinks i am full even when i haven't eaten much.

then we went to the supermarket because i needed to get groceries for myself and @etherealspacejelly (who is too sick to do much at the moment). i felt bad dragging my friend along on errands but she actually offered to come with me in the first place and she said she enjoys doing mundane tasks with people so i am glad !

the supermarket was Literal Hell. very packed full of people and overstimulating and Bad. i got everything as fast as possible and we packed up and left as quickly as we could

then we walked to the house and dropped off robin's groceries. i wanted to go home because my bags were heavy and i needed to put my shopping away but my friend kept talking to robin for a while (which i think was also uncomfortable for him because standing up makes the nausea worse and also interacting with people takes a lot of energy so i am sorry about that)

then we walked home and i put away the groceries and made some herbal tea but i had no appetite again so my friend ate snacks with hers and i just drank the tea by itself.

we chilled in my room for a while and then it was time for my friend to leave so i dropped her off at the train station. i was feeling very weird by now. mostly overstimulated and tired from socialising but also dizzy and nauseous from the meds

when i got home i drank some water because i was very thirsty and then i lay down on my bed with the lights off to decompress. i distracted myself from the bad feelings by scrolling on my phone and stuff.

robin reminded me to eat; i didn't want to make a proper meal because all i craved was toast and chocolate. i had some grapes and nuts as well to make it more balanced.

after eating i felt much worse. i genuinely thought i was going to throw up. i distracted myself by reading percy jackson.

i also saw my flatmate who i hadn't seen for months and i found out she has a girlfriend !!! which was super exciting because i did have a suspicion she was queer but i was not sure and i didn't want to assume anything. but it's so nice not to be the only one in my flat; my other two flatmates are religious so i am very closeted around them. i am really glad there's another person here that understands.

i got ready for bed but i was still feeling like i might vomit so i didn't brush my teeth just in case. then i had an accident and realised my left thumb was bleeding a lot, and it made me panic, because i'm not good with blood. but robin calmed me down and gave me a logical step by step solution to sort it out and i did that and calmed down and felt much better.

finally i brushed my teeth and got into bed. i still feel sick but it is not as bad. i'm going to try to sleep now. hopefully i don't stay awake until 3am like i did last night.

[lisanamazu]

Or old age or something. Or maybe old age And "something".

Today I read a tweet that amuses me in a good way: "Biologically, by 30, people have already given birth to children and died in the teeth of a predator, so after 30, everything in our body starts to fail in unison." Scientific-unscientific is not the point, it just triggered once again to think about what kind of shit has been happening to my mind in recent years.

Procrastination reaches terrifying proportions. I might not be able to just post a show schedule or wash the dishes for WEEKS. The tab/dishes will dangle in front of my eyes, I will sigh heavily looking at them, tell myself "must" and … do nothing about it.

Fine motor skills. Or rather, WRITING. Yes, for me, as a writer, this is a terrible scourge: not just typos, I sometimes write WRONG WORDS. I think it would be more correct not to throw it off on motor skills, since I can typo between Q and L, but on the brain in general and its understanding of what it is doing. Seriously, sometimes I just write WRONG WORDS.

Spontaneous stuttering. Everything is fine with my speech, I never had any problems with it: neither dyslexia, nor dysgraphia (to point 2), but here, it happens, I talk, I talk, and suddenly I CANNOT go through some kind of sound. As a rule, not a sonorant consonant, that is, one of those on which stuttering usually occurs. Well, I can't at all. Moreover, in the same word, there may be the same sound before it, and it is pronounced normally. It only helps to urgently choose a synonym. Jumps out like a jack-in-the box absolutely randomly.

Symptoms of ADHD, which I do not have (not diagnosed, not tested, we will assume that it is not). I'm talking about keeping fucking attention. I used to have some difficulties, yes, but I could complete part B or part C or write 5 pages of text before I needed a distraction. Now I'm starting to feel this need much more often. If you think that now I need to be distracted after each exercise, then hell there. Not even after the written word. I CAN FALL OUT OF THE WORK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIEROGLYPH. LITERALLY.

"reading a scroll but getting a funk hole". I'm having trouble reading. Most notably in Japanese, ゆ and よ, especially after [i] (i.e. ゅ and ょ), don't want to be read correctly. ゆ instead of よ, よ instead of ゆ. や does not join the party, but this couple resists both reading and writing, substituting each other. It also happens with kanji: I see one thing, I read another. And no, this is not about underlearning, this happens precisely with well-known elements of the language (come on, try to give me at least a hint that I just don’t know the や column, take a chance XD). In the native language, it manifests itself less due to the fact that we, as a rule, do not "read" literally, we "shoot" entirely, without reading the characters, that is, it flies directly to the reading / writing mechanism, and not to recognition.

And all this is connected with classes that give me the feeling that I live. I want to do them well. In addition, the counting in my mind also flies into hell, I used to count relatively quickly, but now … in the middle of counting, the thought just stops. Banal division/multiplication by 10 can stop me, can it be worse?…

And it all seems like such a small thing, but it affects areas of my life that are important to me and … makes me feel like a fucking unfit and helpless. I seem to be drowning in this, and in the presence of a rotten desire to scoop out, I just go to the bottom.

[exosupport]

My exotrauma is. unfortunate. I spent most of my childhood in a wheelchair, I had brittle bone disease and gamstorp disease (episodes of muscle weakness/temporary paralysis) and while my Gamstorp got better with age (which was the primary reason I was a wheelchair user) my parents always took extra care of me because of my brittle bone disease. They meant well but I couldn’t play sports, or do PE, and sometimes they got so worried they would make me sit out of school if they thought I could get hurt. I once broke my arm and was in the cast for six months because my bones took longer to heal and they made me learn from home even though my ADHD would get worse with it. They meant well but I felt sheltered my entire life, and it’s weird now being in an abled body and randomly getting phantom symptoms. But I like it, I can do a lot more than I could. There’s it’s cons and it’s perks, I guess. But the memories don’t go away even in this, what is it, new life. -JD (divergent IRL source, he isn’t like me)

.