#old ask but untreated ADHD sometimes makes me forget of asks i was going to reply to

[zilodak]

Oh, and also I'd wanted to add that Sim Spring gives me "Retro turkish music mixed with abba and industrial metal" but I can't find something similar.

I have something but it doesn't have ABBA or industrial metal vibes. It's also in the Sim Spring playlist!

Lin Pesto - Maazallah (YGA)

[surviving-guilt]

Checks and Balances

Many are keen on accepting the notion that the abused carry the abusers. This is what we call a revolving door.

They would also argue that the indifference of man is just as evil as evil men are by their actions.

If your friend texts you they’re going to kill someone and 10 minutes later does it, are you evil for not stopping them? Most people would say no.

If you and your friend are in a room with someone else, and they tell you they’re about to shoot the other person and 10 seconds later they do, are you evil for not stopping them? A little more wishy washy, but most people would tell you there was nothing you could do.

What if you were in the car with them, they parked in front of an ex’s house, and told you they were going to run them over the moment they walk out of the house? The ex opens the door, your friend whips around the block to gain speed and momentum, it takes about a minute and a half to make it around the block, you see the ex walk into the street, you see the impact coming and it happens. Are you evil for not grabbing the wheel at any point? For not texting someone or calling the authorities when it was still being premeditated? For not getting out of the car when you had the chance? The courts would decide if you were an accomplice or not, but would you be evil for your inaction? Whether you tried to talk them out of it or not?  -- If you say yes, why aren’t you equally as evil for the first example with the text? Why not for the second. People act as though “evil” and “immoral” are synonymous, they like to pretend all things are circumstantial, but that is truly a conclusion that people make up within their own minds. I will start my point here by saying on the conversation of “good” vs. “evil” there is no gray, it truly is black and white; it is light vs. darkness, or light vs. the lack there of. 

I say this because “morals” are man-made and vary culturally, therefore, in the grand scheme of mammal existence, morals do not exist. I know this because my dog does not know I’m an asshole for calling women bitches, but it does know if someone or something malicious or evil is present. Quick word of advice -- if your dog is usually nice to most humans and literally hates someone that walks in one day and you don’t know why, take the hint. Your dog will know to run away because of an earth quake or tsunami before you will, and it will know evil and toxic people before you realize it. Trust your dog. Anyhow, no one would argue that walking passed someone drowning a child in a pool or lake and not doing or saying anything makes you a fucked up person, but everyone has this confused fucked up conversation about what if that child was Hitler? Would a strict Catholic, against homosexuality and abortion, still believe in the purity of that fetus if it was born gay? Where are these invisible lines we draw in our heads and when is something gray and not black and white? I ask all these conflicting questions as someone who believes very little in circumstantial exclusions and gray areas. For example, many people recognize “high functioning” people on the Autism spectrum and that have asperger’s as having extraordinary talents despite their “disorder” but would look at someone who is schizophrenic as having a simply negative disorder. I do not. I feel all mental disorder, both naturally occuring and developed through physical or mental trauma, is both an affliction and a potentially powerful adaptation and expansion of mental ability and/or capacity. This is not to say that this is true at face value. I am sociopathic, have bipolar disorder including BPD, seasonal depression on top of Bipolar, PTSD, severe ADHD, and go through bouts of anxiety at different points in my life depending on where I am, it’s a living hell, i know. But surviving it and battling it head-on when it’s easier to run away long enough to learn ways to manage it and cultivate the “positive” symptoms along with the bad ones has left me more capable than I was before these disorders overtook my entire life. I am in no way saying that ALL people with mental disorders are better for having them, not at all actually. At their worst, these disorders are so debilitating that they kill who they afflict, or rob them of the ability to lead a successful functional life, or even form basic human relationships, and these examples are what most of society uses as their basis for their impression of mental illness in general. When you hear the term “sociopath” the images that come to mind may be serial killers, child abusers, animal abusers, or generally evil people, but I’m sure your first thought isn’t “Owner of a Fortune 500 company.” As i’m sure when you hear “Autistic child” you don’t immediately imagine tech geniuses that are the best in data analysts, developing algorithms to make for better technology, or catching hackers and predators by sorting metadata for big companies and the government.  I’m also sure you hear schizophrenia and think that someone should be in a jacket or heavily medicated and a danger to society, but have never thought that you may have met a very high fuctioning schizophrenic who goes untreated and you just think of them as nice and quirky. Someone you may know with dissociation may come off as selfish and forgetful and insensitive or overly sensitive, but I’m sure you wouldn’t think that in the time of complete crisis, they may be the sanest, most calm and rational person in the room capable of leading everyone to safety rather than being in complete panic, now would you? Someone with OCD may come off as an anal, controlling, selfish, narcissistic, and sometimes condescending prick, but they’ll know where the exits in the room are, when someone may trip in front of you due to an untied shoe, exactly how much time until the next bus, etc. Someone suffering from severe anxiety that has learned to manage it may actually know better than you when something is worth freaking out about, because they focus so hard on reasoning and not letting irrational fears and feelings overtake, that when they finally do let themselves freak out, just like my dog hating someone, it IS time to listen and freak out. People often mistake ADHD as the inability to concentrate, but often time the issue is that they are focused on TOO MANY things at once and don’t have the energy to fix any one thing because they’re experiencing more of the world at once than you can fathom without drugs. Most people don’t believe that in any given moment, I can be listening to you speak, have music on, have a completely different song playing in my head, while thinking about the past and wondering about the future on two different trains of thought going in different directions, and texting someone all at the same time while still actively listening and responding to whomever I’m speaking to with no issue. My ADHD is an issue when I have to sit in a quiet room and accomplish one task, too little stimulus is my downfall, not too much. My last example is those with emotional disconnection issues, be it from PTSD, sociopathy, autism, anxiety, or a variety of other potential factors. They may find it hard to care, like, and especially love, and may come off as “cold” and incapable of sympathy, empathy, or tenderness beyond simple introductory kindness, but believe me when I tell you that when they DO care, when they DO love, when they do form a bond, no one you ever meet will care more, love harder, and try with everything inside them than they will. Saying “I love you” less DOES make it more valuable when it is said. 

So with all this said, when is the last time you had an argument with yourself? Who won? Did that seem like a stupid question? You see, people think that symptoms of disorders are exclusive to those WITH disorders, but you see people every day who exhibit the same behaviors as people like me. How many times have you caught yourself purposely not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk? Do you think your have OCD for that? Do you get sad and not want to go outside or leave your bed when there’s bad weather? Do you think you suffer from major depression for that? Does a similar sound, smell, or image that reminds you of an old bad memory make you cringe or feel bad? Do you think you have PTSD for that? More than often, the case is no with all these questions, but you exhibit symptoms without having the rest. So if someone with bipolar disorder learns how to manage their bad symptoms, but allows themselves to exhibit the more practical or useful symptoms, such as high energy and drive during a manic phase, are they not using their disorder as a beneficial tool or way to get ahead without suffering fully from the full negative symptoms of the disorder? Is this wrong? Or an unnatural leg up? Is it wrong to exploit a disorder for a benefit? You may think it’s circumstantial, but I simply do not. One can take advantage of manic symptoms to simply gain, such as being able to go to school, go to work, hang out, party, have the confidence to get with someone and do school work all in one day with little sleep, yes. But what if someone was just coming out of their major depressive episode, finals are coming up, work is at it’s busiest, their friends need them for help through a tough time, and they’re having personal issues at home? Is tapping into the manic energy, drive, and full-on go mode to not collapse under the pressure they’re undergoing considered taking advantage? I would think not. Now let’s revisit our more extreme examples from the beginning. Someone has a dissociative personality disorder, or “split personalities”, they are both you and your friend in the example about killing someone. Part of them fears the other part doing something they consider evil such as murder, does the part that doesn’t reach out or do something about it get the same judgement the part that carries out the act does? Is not stopping a death  you can evil? Yes. But what if your reason is because there is so much stigma against the mentally ill that the absolute fear of being attacked, detained, misunderstood, or not listened to is what causes your silence? If you tell someone you get institutionalized and labeled a danger, if you don’t you commit the act and are looked at as evil over ill, and you can’t just walk faster past it because both people are inside you. This is the torment that leads us to kill ourselves out of fear for not stopping ourselves from the pain we can cause because we’re afraid to reach out for help. But now, what if one personality is a sociopath and the other is human as can be, and just anxious? What if that sociopath is smart and instinctual enough to catch on to the fact that someone is evil, maybe about to go runover their girlfriend and kill her? It wants to do the right thing because the other personality cares about morals and it sees evil. The sociopath recognizes evil, and realizes he can’t reach out for help because he’s labeled as mentally ill, therefore not credible and “damaged” so he decided to drown the person who is going to kill his ex. You, a neurotypical person, walk past him drowning the would be murderer, and choose to keep walking. Putting all morals to the side, who was evil?  The stigmas we have towards the mentally ill not only cause them to suffer directly, but it blinds us to the great potential those who have mental illness have and how they can do such greater things in society BECAUSE of their disorder, and we shut them out instead of letting them in out of fear for what they may do, instead of letting them in out of excitement for what they may do. That same person struggling with an inner sociopathic personality may be a huge asset to law enforcement, but won’t be allowed to be because they would fail a psych eval.  The point of this post is that if we were more supportive of those with mental disorders CULTIVATING and managing their symptoms to their benefit, rather than suppressing ALL symptoms with stigmas, shame, and medication, we could be a lot further along on our progress as a society instead of muting the great minds that could better us all. We create the serial killers and “psychopaths” of the world by forcing them to have to run away from themselves based on the potential of the damage they can do rather than the potential of the great they can do with self discipline, self awareness, and joined management with professionals that can give them the tools to use their disorders for good rather than suppress what makes them who they are. For some, we are not defined by our disorders, but in some cases we ARE our disorders, and suppressing that makes us less human than you think we are with them. Abusing us makes us the abusers when we give up on trying to get help, and for many the ones we abuse are ourselves to dangerous and even fatal extents.

The biggest thing I want to stress is not looking at someone with connection issues or sociopathic tendencies as a serial killer or societal reject, because when we learn to put our resentment for not feeling things the same as others aside, we rely on our instinct and we’re much closer to recognizing evil the way your dog does than you are, and our trouble grasping “moral” vs “immoral” doesn’t mean we can’t teach ourselves right and wrong if you let us try to learn more about ourselves other than “YOU’RE BAD.” All of this is food for thought, and me realizing what I wish I did years ago, I’m not as bad as I think I am, and I’m not as bad as I can be, and most importantly, not letting myself be as bad as I can be makes me good. It is okay that the only opinion of me I care about it my own, because it is me that has to learn how to live as me, manage me, and control myself for better or worse. Not accepting help is okay, taking a step back and saying “i need this time to figure me out” is okay, and warning people that you’re afraid of not responding well in certain situations or doing something others would find wrong is okay if you recognize something and say or do something about it.

It is okay to be ill and not suppress yourself if you learn to cultivate the good. I am not handicapped, in fact, I’m one of the most capable people I know. Self improvement is not selfish. I may never love myself, but I can appreciate the good parts in all the bad, and that’s huge. FUCK YOUR STIGMA, BE YOUR OWN BIGGEST FAN AND CRITIC, AND BE WHAT YOU GOTTA BE EVEN IF ITS IMMORAL AS LONG AS ITS GOOD.

Congrats if you read this.  

Thoughts?