#the auditory processing disorder and ADHD's rigidity are holding hands

[nocturnalnewsiestrash]

So my dead boy detectives obsession has accidentally revealed how bad my audio processing can get. I've been in the I need more songs for my playlist NOW mood lately so I've been wracking my brain for songs that could fit the characters. And I was like Oh! I know just the conan gray song, the lyric 'don't get yourself down at the end of your life' fits Charles’ death so well! And then it talks all about fated love! Ahh I must add it!"

Except I went to the album. And not only is the lyric actually NOT don't get yourself down at the end of your life, which would be one thing. I mean like in hindsight that actually doesn't makes sense why would that be in the song that my brain has been thinking this whole time but I digress. But it's also NOT talking about fated love. The song is literally called Fainted Love and somehow... That never clicked for me?? Like I usually listen to the whole album and never bothered to click on the lyrics (which apparently I desperately need because of my auditory processing disorder) but how, Morgan's brain, did the title literally not matching what I was hearing not ring any bells for me?? I genuinely don't know. And like it's not like I was just passively listening to the song it's one of my favorites on the album.

And since I was misinterpreting the entirety of the song this entire time I like can't reverse it. The song isn't soulmate coded like I was somehow convinced of even remotely but I relistened to it with my new awareness of the actual lyrics and my brain still isn't reacting to it in the semi sad meaning it has in actuality way. My brain still has soulmate heart emojis up in it while listening. Still. I can't with my brain

[borom1r]

WEIRD fuckin ask but we talked about it once and it would not exit the brain. Flavours of neurodivergence within the fellowship: discuss?

OGH. no, good ask. good ask I love it. AUTISM FLAVORED bc that is my own experience :3

Aragorn— autism of the “I Am 100% A Changeling, I Have No Idea How To Relate To Humanity” variety. like yea being partly raised by elves didn’t help but he absolutely wandered around mimicking people to learn how to Behave Like A Person. autism trait absorption for the win!! comes to Minas Tirith and gets a painful crash course in masking, but never quite figured out how to Not stare at someone like a feral cat when he wants something from them (despite the Stare, HATES eye contact)

Boromir— OPPOSITE AUTISM. very direct. EXTREMELY rigid routines. military history special interest (literally just undiagnosed dad autism). probably has food sensitivities but he’s spent so long as a soldier he can just eat anything now. he hates it and he won’t eat a big portion of non-safe foods, but at least he can swallow them. he IS absolutely 100% undiagnosed and doesn’t think there’s anything wrong but if he doesn’t get to perfectly make his bed every morning he will be in a Noticeably Bad Mood for the rest of the day < does not understand that this isn’t normal

Gandalf— oh there’s definitely something going on there, but good luck with figuring THAT out

Legolas— AuDHD king. the autism/ADHD comorbidity is real and he barely bothers to mask. least of all in front of men?? he’s an elf prince and you expect him to act “normal” by human standards? I love how jacked up the Hobbit film timeline is bc Thranduil implying to Legolas “yeah go hang out in Rivendell with a ten year old” is SO funny. canon to me tho. there was a very significant chunk of time where Aragorn was just Mini Legolas. hell world for civilized Rivendell elves. unlike Aragorn, however, prefers very direct eye contact. WILL fully hit you with the 👁️👁️ almost unblinking for a whole conversation

Gimli— I’m gonna be real here. I think neurotypical but in the sense of like. literally nobody cares. dwarves are craftsmen, artisans, smiths, you think they’re going to risk squandering talent simply because somebody needs some accommodations? are you nuts???? like yea maybe somebody’s a Little Weird Sometimes but they can work the forge just fine or tool leather for straps/handle wraps, or draft designs, or stamp metal for decorations, like?? doesn’t particularly grasp the need for labels when you can just work with ppl to figure out what’s best for them + then everyone’s happy. fully has to stew on the fact that Men Don’t Do That, men are actually very rigid about what is socially acceptable and won’t provide accommodations Unless there is a label. wild.

Frodo— autism/depression hell combination. no meltdowns, only shutdowns. auditory processing disorder!! definitely also has poor temperature regulation (CONSTANTLY cold). hey did u know that’s a symptom of ASD? crazy. WILD. anyways. Sam knows he can barely handle the feeling of mittens/gloves so half the time when they’re hanging out is Sam just holding Frodo’s hands so they actually fucking warm up for a bit. not too rigid about Big routines, most of his are Little (always putting a specific amount of sugar in his tea, for example)

Sam— neurotypical but in the sense of my dad where he was just SO used to me being Autistically Strange that he was just like. “well, that’s Strider!” < blissfully unaware. fully just SO used to whatever’s going on w/ Frodo+Merry that it’s Normal to him. like wdym they’re different?? those are just his friends?? hello??

Merry— ADHDDDDDDDDD. and look ik Tolkien said pipeweed is just tobacco but that’s a lie and we all know it, right? right. self-medicating with pipeweed.

Pippin— neurotypical but Pippin-flavored

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease�� lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage.