NEURODIVERSE - Tumblr Posts
; * sits down * * five hours later * ... OHHH THAT'S WHAT I MEANT TO DO !! ... It's luckily not too late to .. To .. Do the thing I need to do. that I 100% remember ..
; a new chapter !! from my fav fic !! I'm now going to be on my phone for a considerable amount of unspecified time doing no one knows what even though I was supposed to be doing smth else !!
; autistic arospec culture is not understanding the whole " I'd do this but my romantic partner doesn't want me to " or " I love this but my romantic partner doesn't so idk !! "
A lot of the time when professionals interact with psychotic people, they try to reduce our distress by getting us to stop believing things. For me, that only made things worse. It was confusing and distressing. I felt angry, scared, and misunderstood. The best way I've found to cope with delusional thinking is something I discovered on my own. I'll give an example here so, huge TW for unreality and paranoia.
Scroll away if you're not able to hear delusional thinking.
Yesterday I started freaking out thinking people could hear my thoughts. This is something I've occasionally experienced since I was a child. When this comes up, I always think there's some massive conspiracy, where everyone can hear my thoughts but they react to me as if they don't hear anything. And they're all in on it. This time, it was triggered by intrusive thoughts that I started judging myself for.
As you can imagine, this is distressing. I started talking to people through my mind, which only made it worse. I couldn't focus on what was happening around me. What I did to reduce that distress is.. weirdly nonchalant. I just sat there and thought "Well, if this is true, it's not like they're going to change how they interact with me. Everything is the same as it was. Nothing I can do about it, might as well just keep on keeping on."
That calmed me down enough to start focusing on what I was doing, and eventually completely forget about it until now. Whenever I try to treat my delusional thinking as something I have to stop immediately... it literally only makes my mind double down. But if I work within what I believe - what I "know" - I can find another way to look at it that isn't so scary.
This works with my hallucinations, too. I sometimes see shadow people; they're more like jump scares than anything. They startle me, and I start to wonder if people I'm looking at are real. But that latter part only really happens if I get fearful of them. To avoid that fear, I try to think of the shadow people as just friends watching over me, checking in. They don't do anything, after all. They just pop up, stand there, and disappear.
(Talk of unreality ends here)
So, yeah. This doesn't work for everyone, and it doesn't always work for me depending on what I'm experiencing/how I'm feeling. But without this, I'd be far worse off; it doesn't take too many missteps for me to spiral. I guess my point is, my reality doesn't have to be "normal" for me to be healthy as a schizophrenic person. It just has to be something I can live with, as happily and safely as possible.
And that's ok. Neurodivergent people are allowed to exist, and some people are helped best by finding ways for them to exist as they are without so much distress - rather than trying to eliminate troubling symptoms entirely.
"disability only exists because the world isnt accessible" idk how to tell you this but chronic pain still hurts
; I know it's talked about but genuinely it's not talked about enough how difficult ( difficult ) it is being autistic. And it's not even just because I have autism, sometimes it's from Third Party People Being Ableist™ and making my life 20x harder than it was previously.
; and I'm sick and tired of people trying to be allies by denying that I'm autistic ?? Denying my struggles and saying " you're just a little funky !! " or " you're not different, you're the same as any other person <3 " because I'm not ( not ), I'm genuinely not like every other person. And wow are you going to be disappointed when you find out I actually can't function like you, I physically can not. I can't do most anything like a " normal " person and every day is a struggle because people want to see me as average, so they treat me as average and neurotypical and no different from them, but I am different. I do need things that others don't, I do need support even if I'm probably categorized as low support needs, I still have needs that the average person doesn't !! I'm Autistic !! I am different, I am not like the average person and it disables me. I do not resent being autistic, I do not want to be neurotypical. What I resent is how I'm treated because of it, how my struggles are either ignored or stigmatized. I resent not being able to function how others want me too, and therefore being labeled as a nuisance or a difficult case.
; I. Am. Autistic. And yk what ?? I'm not making it my whole personality, it is my whole personality !! It's my mother fucking brain, of course it's going to effect most every aspect of me and how I work ?? And so of course most things I talk about or most my experiences are going to " look autistic " or could be categorized as autism, because I'm autistic !! I'm a walking book of autistic traits so yeah, a lot of the ways I think and the things I do are gonna be related to autism, because I literally am autistic. Sorry if that bothers you ?? Like ?? Idk what people expect from me, I'm going to talk about it because it's kinda hard not to when everything I do or say is " affected " by it ?? :/
; anyways, happy disability pride month. Thanks for listening to my miniature rant
; friendly reminder that putting " /lh " or " /j " at the end of a really shitty comment does not excuse you of what you said, and it just adds misusing tone tags to the list !! Because even I, Mr can't read tones for shit, know that was not a lighthearted joke. Thanks and fuck off
; finding out you're neurodivergent is just an " oh " drawn out and progressively getting louder the more you learn about your neurotype.
; when you wake up on your sofa but last you remember you were eating lunch in your kitchen.
on colors and being different and not being enough for yourself
(please reblog instead of liking)
Not even mentioning the anxiety thats comes with that second part. Folding laundry is too hard but the pile of laundry needs to be folded and the longer I stare at it the worse I feel about myself.
ADHD at night: I could write a book. I could get my Master’s Degree. I could go to the club and come home with 12 new friends. I could get a job at that club and meet the mother of my children. I could cure every disease and use my wealth to bring world peace.
ADHD during the day: Fold laundry too hard :( Come back next week
College is wild because it really isn’t about intelligence or the ability to understand the material at all. It’s literally just a test of executive function and abled-ness. I had good attendance. I participated in class discussions…possibly to an annoying extent, I got A’s on my tests. When we did group work in classes, it was usually me knowing the answers and everyone else just writing them down from my paper.
But I watched those same people who copied my in-class work and who barely passed tests and who only understood the material enough to regurgitate it, not to expand on it, graduate while I flunked out. Why? Because I didn’t have the executive function to do homework outside of class. That’s it.
just submitted the paperwork to change my legal name so it's storytime, damn it: why's your user/blog name All of the Above?
warning: it's a bit sad, but it's about my time as a kid, so you knew that already.
let me tell you a story. a story of a young, mixed race, queer, disabled, afab kid with some trauma and emotional issues you could walk to the moon on. actually, i won't tell you the whole story; safety online and all that. but, i'll tell you the bits you need to know.
notice how that entire list was just attributes that are unchangeable? none of that list mentioned that the kid liked to sing, draw, write, and talk to the quiet students in class because they liked their stories and nonthreatening body language.
because that's what i was. that's what everyone made me out to be: a list of things. but they didn't expect it! they said, looking at a kid who learned to pretend to be NT, completely white, and hetcis out of a habit just to adapt to the majority of people around them.
it just became inevitable. that i would always be strange, and people would turn to the words, the indicative words, as a quick explanation for whatever they needed justification for accommodating.
so i wanted to take that for myself. say, "yes, i check every single box you have," and stare them down. because i'm more than the sum of my parts and all that.
tl;dr sometimes, something is so ubiquitous that the only way not to be driven a bit mad by it is to reclaim it. so it's ironic. i'm "all of the above" but, really, just one person.
me, all my life: *eye smiles*
Neurotypicals: you didn't find that funny? :(((
me: *bears teeth, lifts lips*
NTs: ohh!! good to know you're happy!!!
me, with my mask on at work: sorry, I know you can't tell, but I'm smiling under here
8 yr old: oh no it's okay!! I can see your eyes- they're- it's-
me: my eye smile?!?
8 yr old: yeah!
me: :)))))))))
Imagine my shock as a neurodivergent teen when I first realized that using large vocabulary and eloquent speech doesn’t make you less likely to be misinterpreted, rather it adds an entirely new layer of misinterpretation I had never even realized existed in the form of people thinking you’re being snobbish or condescending when you’re just trying to be specific
noone has thwarted the neurodiverse community more than the person who invented clothing tags
you flap your arms when you happy stim, I turn into one of the inflatables outside a car dealership. we are not the same
me when i’ve been telling someone about my current hyperfixation and their eyes are glazed over
me to me: you suck
me to me: don’t listen to them
me to me: yeah suck your dad-
me to me: you don’t like men
me to the void: i want cake
has anyone else ever mistaken an adhd hyperfixation on a person for a crush? because i swear it happens to me every other month.