#neutrodivergent

[idea-wh0re]

Okay- I'm going to rate pacing music.

For people who definitely do not know the term I have coined it, you zone out to music and imagine scenarios with your favourite characters, or just imagine scenarios of any kind from any place, real or imaginary. It's an escape!

Often, neutrodivergent people will do this to distance themselves from reality because fuck reality man.

I do not know who else can do it aside form neutrodivergent people, but let's continue!

I'll be rating music on how well it does and how much you have to restart.

Personally, I tend to have a short time span and just want a quick little rush of dopamine sometimes. Sometimes I want to go for longer!

The songs can get boring so I have to find new ones, sadly, but that's ok

So, without further ado I present... The ratings!

Freaks, by Surf Curse is a good one around 20-25 seconds, with an exciting chorus, enough to imagine your scenarios for a few seconds, with 20 seconds before to set the scene in your head.

If you just want the chorus part, then you have to restart it over and over again by turning on your phone and restarting or use the bar on the home screen.

I'd say 8/10, honestly- good to zone out to as long as you restart it a lot.

In this Shirt by the Irrepressibles is one if you want to pace for a good few minutes, with a consistent beat throughout the song and it doesn't have a particular chorus of intensity.

It helps set the scene and act it out in your head properly, but more slowly. However, you may get bored of the same beat.

I'd say 7/10, it's a great song in all its value.

Okay, Venom by Eminem. It has a rather good beat at 1:16 l exactly, perfect for your scenario. However, some of us will not have the attention span to listen to it for an entire minute, including me, so I set it to 0:40 seconds before pacing. It's enough time to get some backstory before the final imagine comes.

If you listen to it for a whole minute, you'll really get some good backstory.

Generally, you do have to move it back to there, which requires opening the phone if you move it back there.

I'd say a 6/10, pretty good song but it's not that good for just one final imagine.

I may do more of these posts in the future.

[luckjustkissedyouhello]

No joke, I often wonder what my life would’ve looked like if I wasn’t born in 82. If I wouldn’t be struggling to find a diagnosis at thirty-fucking-eight to explain why my brain, my life is like this.

long post is long

All through elementary school I had 1 friend, the other outcast. This happened in two separate elementary schools in the district. Two separate groups of kids decided there was something ‘wrong’ about me that they didn’t like, and that was that. In my first school, I was put in group therapy (and didn’t even fucking realize it, I was the kind of kid that just went with what they were told - always desperate to please). I don’t remember much about it other than the leader - the school psych split between 4 elm schools who would come in once a year to say ‘hey I’m here if you need me’ - and a kid talking about being hit in the face with a waffle maker (I remember being fascinated by his black eye, it was so black and puffy and it took sooo many meetings to heal properly). That’s all I remember. That’s all the school ‘did’ to help me.

One time my mom was giving me a bath, and she was like ‘why are you covered in bruises?’ (Ironic b/c she was a hitter) and I just said ‘oh the kids on the playground’ like it was normal for me to get my ass beat. She went to the principal. This was probably like 90/91. He had me write an essay about the other things I could do to stay away from the mean kids - I think he’d been told I followed the bullies around. Idk, man. I didn’t get social cues, I thought we were playing, etc. (for the record, my mom did tell me to leave the office and then told the principal she wouldn’t contradict him to me, but she thought that was an awful way to handle me getting bullied - again it was the 90s, I don’t fault my parents much for not realizing something was *seriously* different about me. That’s the point. Autistic was just for nonverbal kids. ADHD was for those so active they couldn’t sit in the classroom. Neuro-typical or Neuro-Divergent were not terms anyone know about. They didn’t discuss or know much about the spectrum of neurodiversity. They sure as fuck didn’t see it in AFAB kids like myself. I was just ‘weird’ and I have the mental scars to prove it (typing about elem school right now? Making me sweaty and nauseated- that’s how I feel when I look back at most of my childhood in school. Actually. My eyes are sweating too)

I struggled academically. When I tell people now that I was in the lowest reading groups from K-6th grade, people are surprised: I’m a librarian. But there is some kind of diagnosed learning disability in me that made it impossible for me to pass a spelling test - and I still fucking can’t - and since school tied writing with reading, they decided I needed the lowest group. They knew something was up because my compression was good but I failed the spelling tests. They tested me for dyslexia in 15 minutes one day in third grade. I sat at a machine, looked in, and pointed my finger in the direction the letters were facing. I remember it clearly. From that test, they were like ‘nope you just slow’ and put me in the remedial reading groups. Now, a large difference between comprehension and spelling would be a flag that would’ve been investigated. I know this because 2 of my sisters kids have dysgraphia. Something that wasn’t tested for in the 90s, or if it was not in a school nurse’s office.

Do you know what my grades looked like, even in college? Cs in most everything but my major classes. Grad school, I got a 3.7 - almost as if, and this is a shocker to you neurodiverse folks, I know, almost as if I could only really excel in the things my brain was interested in...wow. Shock.

I often say you couldn’t pay me to go back to high school. But then I wonder. What if I was a student now. Would they have found out about the probable ADHD/Autisim? (I’m not sure which I am but I do know I’m not neurotypical!) Would I have been given resources to help fit into the world I still clearly struggle with? Would I have so much trouble in my carrier as I have now, because people make assumptions about me being lazy or weird or not ‘right’ and dislike my mannerisms and speak and dissect everything I say? Like, no joke, I forgot how to explain the summer reading club in front of an audience once, and the librarian that went with me told the director I was awful. Shit, would that have happened if I was properly medicated? If I knew how to handle my brain forgetting shit, or how distracted the crowd of kids made me (funny thing, I can do standup just fine if the stage lights blinding me from looking out, but the second I see the crowd I get distracted and start mumbling things at people rather than the prepared jokes).

There are positives. I see *everything* happening in my story time. So i see when I’m losing the kids, I see when a sibling is beating the crap out of another. I see those kids in the audience when I talk about the summer reading club that are harassing another student, etc. I think I keep my library safer because I see every-fucking-thing going on.

But I think I’d do so much better in life if I was helped younger. I know I’d feel better about myself. I’m working through my shit self esteem but the truth is I’ve hated myself for not making it work, for not fitting in, my whole life. And the people that say ‘embrace your differences’ don’t know what it’s like for your stomach to drop out when the teacher says ‘find a partner’ because you know nobody will be yours (once, my teacher called my mom in tears because we were planning for a zoo trip and everyone else had a group, and when she asked who would take me, two groups raised their hands and she said ‘I’ve never seen her face light up like that’ - this was the exception to the norm)

Soooo.. yeah. I’m crying now. I’m not sure why I even wrote all this. This is tumblr. Nobody reads and responds much. I guess that might be why. I just...everyone neurotypical is born with a manual I just never had. And I can’t reconcile that with the idea that if I was born 20/30 years later, maybe I would’ve been at least allowed to glimpse the manual from time to time.

ETA: Talking about being undiagnosed with a learning disability and spell ‘because’ wrong every single time....i didn’t do that on purpose.

[lost-sunset-canine]

When we pick up a cat we try to calm ourself,

when we pat a cat we try to calm ourself,

if we offer you to pat a cat that we are holding,

we wish to share comfort, happyness and relaxation...

most neurotypicals that are an adult in years do not seem to understand and get upset..

we simply wish to make them feel comfortet when they are in a hurry....

-Tenshi

[drdrunkpigeon-phd]

Why does no one talk about neurodivergence and loneliness?

[jewishfreakshow]

I am begging you people to STOP saying you're dyslexic if you're not actually dyslexic because recently I was talking about my dyslexia to my friend and they said "wait you were serious?" And I nearly had a fucking stroke

[juliasbaker]

When I speak to myself and I don’t like how something sounded or like it so much that I want to hear again, I repeat what I said over and over and over again & it sounds like “yes it was really fun really it was really fun oh yes we had a lot of a lot LOT of a LOT of fun"