Tag: this

aniseandspearmint:

lysikan:

otterlymorgana:

firelord-frowny:

Something that may come as surprising to folks whose needs and comfort levels are already catered to by the world around them, is that “coping” is exhausting. 

There are a great many people who are perfectly capable of adjusting to certain situations, be it a matter of social interaction, or physical disability, medical conditions, or whatever the case may be. Through trial and error we have discovered tricks and methods that allow us to function in a society that wasn’t created with us in mind, and we’re very good at making it look like we’re getting along just fine. 

But it’s tiring. Always, constantly having to be vigilant and on-guard while everyone around us takes everything in stride, and then no one understands why, at the end of the day, we shut down. Because we were able to “get by” throughout the day, suddenly our unwillingness or inability to cope is no longer valid. 

It’s like carrying a 20 pound weight all fucking day long. Just because you can doesn’t mean you don’t need or deserve a break. And then when you finally put the weight down, everyone around you scolds you and chastises you, accuses you of being lazy, insists that you’re just “faking because it’s convenient.” 

This is why it’s so fucking unbearable living in a home where everyone chooses to disregard your limits and your comfort levels. Family members will say, “I’m not going to cater to your needs, because the ~real world~ won’t cater to you and you need to get used to that.” 

Consider: People who struggle and cope through everyday life are already painfully aware that the “real world” doesn’t give a fuck about us. This is why we develop coping strategies that allow us to function. This is why when we finally come home, when we are FINALLY through with the “real world” for the day, we just want some goddamn compassion. We just want the people we live with to place value on our needs, comfort levels, and limitations. We want the people who say they love us to demonstrate that love through doing whatever small thing they can do to ensure that when we’re in the comfort of our own homes, we can actually be comfortable instead of having to continue carrying around that weight that we’ve been forced to hold up all. day. long. 

“If you can control yourself at work, you can control yourself at home”

Well, nope. I can control myself at work BECAUSE I can let go at home.

Is that !

having to ‘normal human’ for a few hours at a time is fucking exhausting and not being able to relax when i get home is the reason for half my melt downs.

gryphonrhi:

samjohnssonvt:

the-anchorless-moon:

foolbackwards:

captaindoubled:

madamethursday:

jumpingjacktrash:

vastderp:

the-greatest-genderqueer:

futureresearcheralex:

Thing #1 that frustrates me about ADHD/Executive Dysfunction advice:
“Oh, you have a mental/neurological issue that makes it difficult for you to be organized, follow routines, stick with systems, maintain a schedule, do your work, etc.? Well, what you need to do is GET ORGANIZED! Schedule everything! Find a system and stick with it! Maintain a schedule! Do your work as it comes in!”

It’s like that Allie Brosh comic where her fish are dead, and everyone’s offering to help find them, or advice like “feed them!” Or “make puppets out of them!” And she says, “No, see, that solution is for a different problem than the one I have.”

Yes, I would love to do those things! I have tried to do those things! I am still trying to do those things! But it’s like that post about how you’re going through an invisible obstacle course, and what looks like a block to everyone else seems like a wall to you. Instead of saying, “it’s a block! Go around!” It would be much more useful to hand me a bag of flour so I can see the obstacles for myself and how to get around them.

I keep looking for something I can do. I can’t maintain an agenda- closest I can do is lot appointments into Google Calendar. I can’t use to-do lists- they overwhelm and freak me out and I end up doing less than before. Breaking down a task into a bunch of tiny pieces should work in theory, but again, freaks me out, and I usually end up spending an hour planning and then I never actually do. I can’t set deadlines for myself. Whatever part of the brain allows other people to say, “yes, it’s due on the 29th, but I want to be done on the 25th” just doesn’t work. I can’t make my brain think something needs to be done until the last minute. This is especially bad in classes where everything is due at the end of the semester. I end up doing what I just did, and having to do two whole classes worth of work in two days. Oddly, once that level of desperation kicks in, I’m capable of sitting down and pounding through the material- but for some reason, I can’t tap into that level of focus without a short, urgent, important deadline. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.

Thing #2 that bugs me about all self help: Don’t wait for motivation! Just do it!

I think my definition of “motivation” is different from the usual. Most people see “motivation” as meaning something like “wanting to do something, looking forward to doing something, doing the thing with energy and happiness because it is the thing you want to do.”

My definition is closer to “having enough willpower to make myself do the thing despite everything in my brain begging me to go watch Netflix instead.” So when people say, “you don’t need motivation!” What I hear is “everyone else seems to have this source of willpower they can eventually learn to tap into that just doesn’t exist for me.” My best technique for doing stuff is having other people make me do it. Which freaks out my social anxiety because then I feel like I’m intruding on their time to make them help me with mine.

The thing is, I’m not lazy. If I were just lazy this would all be easier to cope with. I WANT to be doing things, I WANT to be successful, I WANT to be productive. I even try, really hard, and the effort that exhausts me seems to be so much lower than the typical threshold. But every time I try to be as productive as I want to be, I burn out in a couple days.

I am on the verge of tears because this is everything that frustrates me about my own ADHD. Every word of this reflects my experience.

i’m so bad today i can only read every fifth sentence and it STILL hits me in the gut. well expressed.

my executive dysfunction lately has been so bad i can’t even work on my hobbies. i can’t even stim right. one of my favorite stims is to lay out a textile work in progress and play with the pieces, rearranging them and finishing their edges and doing all the fiddlybits. lately, even though i have a nice clean worktable and my quilt pieces all laid out by color, i have managed to iron a grand total of like… 6 of them. in three days. i like ironing quilt pieces. it’s satisfying to me. but it just… doesn’t seem to be happening.

people who’ve never experienced executive dysfunction seem to think our disability only applies to things that are hard or unfun, and therefore suspect we’re just making excuses not to do stuff we don’t want to do. but it’s not like that. i have trouble doing stuff i enjoy doing. i have trouble doing stuff i have to do to live, like eating. sometimes the stuff i get distracted into doing is less fun than the thing i was trying to do – plenty of times i go to get food and get distracted and fold laundry instead. because folding laundry is a routine, it’s an organizing task, which takes less executive function than making food, which requires making a lot of little decisions and judgement calls based on what’s in the fridge, what dishes are clean, etc.

if you had something wrong with your brain that forced you to fold laundry when you wanted a sandwich, wouldn’t you call that a real disability?

Had to read this three times in order to read all of it because my brain is in skim mode, but yeah. THIS. 

^^^^ Why adhd is highly comorbid with Depression and Anxiety! Why I have low key depression and anxiety but don’t hit the benchmarks for formal diagnosis.

The top post? Me exactly I want to cry

I have procrastinated getting up to get cake. CAKE, people. This is n o t about wanting to do something.

I was procrastinating eating lunch when it was literally sitting on the table to my side.

I am procrastinating a hobby I’m good at and enjoy, and cleaning the house which I don’t enjoy doing but do enjoy the results of.  Hell, I can’t even decide what’s for dinner and I’m the cook.

mikeellee:

over-ana-lysing:

I hate the misconception that introverts don’t like talking. If you’re the right person, we’ll talk to you for hours on end about pretty much anything. However, it’s incredibly difficult to find the right people, so for the most part we’ll probably just stay quiet.

Been there,my friend.

Are People with ADHD Lazy? The “Moral Diagnosis” of ADHD

psychotherapy:

“…the idea that a person with ADHD is just being lazy is amazingly persistent. This doesn’t adequately acknowledge the significant amount of effort that they are often exerting. Their minds are working away, trying really hard to organize a boatload of undifferentiated information in their brains, even as they might seem “lazy” because they have trouble completing (and sometimes even starting!) tasks. But fMRI research conducted with children who have ADHD reinforces that “lazy” is simply an ADHD myth. In a presentation to the Society for Neuroscience, biologist Tudor Puiu suggested that in children with ADHD an important mental control area of the brain (the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex), works much harder and, perhaps, less efficiently than for those without ADHD. “These networks are disrupted.  The ADHD brain has to work harder than the normal brain,” he said.

ADHD adults can tell you they are working really hard to get mentally organized—expending tons of energy on it—yet are frustrated that they get consistent feedback from important people (teachers when younger, parents, spouses, friends) that they aren’t working hard enough. This confuses hard work with results—and the two are sometimes strikingly disconnected for those with ADHD. One person I know described what it feels like to have ADHD as “having the Library of Congress in your head, but with no card catalogue.” Think about how hard it would be to get organized—a Herculean task!  Dealing with this sort of mind 24/7 can lead to a sense of helplessness—a sort of “I’m dancing as fast as I can so please don’t ask more of me” feeling. Sometimes that feeling is voiced (and often met with a disbelieving, “Then why aren’t you doing better if you’re trying so hard?” from a frustrated spouse or parent.)  Sometimes the “I’m dancing as fast as I can” feeling is not voiced but simply leads to feelings of overwhelm or paralysis.”

—Melissa Orlov (full article here)

andreashettle:

mmmyoursquid:

seananmcguire:

mmmyoursquid:

chameleonchild:

eenymeenypia:

mmmyoursquid:

People love to talk about whether or not disabled people can work

but if you can work just fine and your disability is destroying your ability to have a life outside of work (because work takes all your energy and more)

Dead silence. Nobody cares.

File this under, oh you can be active for 4 hours? You can work part-time. Um no, I have to get ready for work (30 min) get to work (15 min) get home from work (15 min) feed myself all day (30 min) maintain myself, my home and my life (15 min, yeah right), which leaves 15 min for work and absolutely nothing else.

This is so accurate, back after I’d relapsed I wanted to try and go in for one class at school so I could still stay in contact with the education system. I let slip during a meeting that I managed to drag myself to that I could manage about 4 hours of activity a week, which the teacher sprang on to mean I was being lazy for just trying to get to 1 hour class. Never matter that it was 30 minutes travel, that I would have to get washed and dressed, that I would probably still need to recover for 3 days from it. 

Far too often abled people see the things they do easily as “non activities”, they don’t realise that for many disabled people these things have to be carefully planned and measured, and sometimes they simply can’t be done.

reblog bc the non activities thing seems really important words

I get X number of pain-free steps per day right now, which means that, for large conventions (like SDCC), I need to be in a mobility device.  I had someone ask if I used up my steps every day before transferring to the scooter, and look surprised and a little horrified when I said “no, I save them so I can go to the bathroom unassisted.”  Like, they had never considered that walking is involved in peeing.

!

Reblogging for the important point that the term “activity” may mean something very different and much broader for a disabled person with a chronic pain or fatigue related condition compared to its meaning for a non disabled person. If you’re tired enough, simply sitting up in a chair rather than lying in bed is an activity that drains energy otherwise usable for other things. A thing I knew from other people with pain and fatigue related conditions, but worth reinforcing for followers who didnt know or had forgotten.