i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second
anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk
and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something
paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.
i say, paul.
is that a nerf gun.
yeah, says paul.
i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.
he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?
and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–
a foam dart hits me in the leg.
i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.
i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.
no dart this time. okay. sweet.
so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it
anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.
The “I won’t hesitate, bitch” vine but @ friends who don’t love themselves
Here’s something that happens to ADHD children a lot: Getting pushed beyond their limits by accident. Here’s how it works and why it’s so bad.
Child says, “I can’t do this.”
Adult (teacher or parent) does not believe it, because Adult has seen Child do things that Adult considers more difficult, and Child is too young to properly articulate why the task is difficult.
Adult decides that the problem is something other than true inability, like laziness, lack of self-confidence, stubbornness, or lack of motivation.
Adult applies motivation in the form of harsher and harsher scoldings and punishments. Child becomes horribly distressed by these punishments. Finally, the negative emotions produce a wave of adrenaline that temporarily repairs the neurotransmitter deficits caused by ADHD, and Child manages to do the task, nearly dropping from relief when it’s finally done.
The lesson Adult takes away is that Child was able to do it all along, the task was quite reasonable, and Child just wasn’t trying hard enough. Now, surely Child has mastered the task and learned the value of simply following instructions the first time.
The lessons Child takes away? Well, it varies, but it might be:
-How to do the task while in a state of extreme panic, which does NOT easily translate into doing the task when calm.
-Using emergency fight-or-flight overdrive to deal with normal daily problems is reasonable and even expected.
-It’s not acceptable to refuse tasks, no matter how difficult or potentially harmful.
-Asking for help does not result in getting useful help.
I’m now in my 30’s, trying to overcome chronic depression, and one major barrier is that, thanks to the constant unreasonable demands placed on me as a child, I never had the chance to develop actual healthy techniques for getting stuff done. At 19, I finally learned to write without panic, but I still need to rely on my adrenaline addiction for simple things like making phone calls, tidying the house, and paying bills. Sometimes, I do mean things to myself to generate the adrenaline rush, because there’s no one else around to punish me.
But hey, at least I didn’t get those terrible drugs, right? That might have had nasty side effects.
There’s a lot of overlap between ADHD traits and autism traits. Whether you meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, too, I have no idea (because I’m a random person on the Internet), but you might find ADHD resources helpful in figuring out your life challenges.
A lot of “help” for executive function skills comes from neurotypicals who are naturally good at it and lack insight into people who aren’t, which makes it spectacularly useless to the people who actually need it.
Well shit this explains so much about me
This is why I want to scream when NT professionals try to insist that forcing ADD people into “the zone” is the best treatment for ADD. Forced focus is exhausting because it’s fueled by adrenaline. We have reams of medical data that frequent adrenaline rushes in young people are horribly bad for their development and causes a laundry list of problems later in life, both physical and mental.
Literally NT professionals: I know you can accomplish this task if I push you into a state of artificial panic every time I want you to do it.
Me: Or you could, idk, help break the task into smaller, less scary bits, use a reward structure at each stage to reinforce positive association, or even turn it into a game because ADD people are kind of hardwired to love game-like structures and anything that has a whiff of fun to it.
NT professionals: That requires imagination, time, and mental energy that I, a NT person who is not struggling with overwhelming self-doubt and mental block at this moment, simply cannot be bothered to spare.
Me: Oh right, of course. Carry on with terrorizing small children, then.
Nothing like the abusive teaching styles described above happened to me, because I was good at doing work, until I magically stopped being good at doing work sometime in 9th grade and instead started being bad at doing work. At that point and at my school, teachers were more loose about when work got done, so I started procrastinating until the last minute. This worked really well for me and I have had all A’s and the extremely occasional B+ in every class.
It’s only now, reading this post, that I’m realizing why my clever “do it at the last minute” strategy works so well.
😦
One of the reasons I work in the stressful jobs I do (aside from my abysmal college performance)
Is that it’s hard for me to get any work done unless it feels like a life-or-death situation
So, I work at a place where life-or-death situations happen on the regs
I was a really great worker until I switched into an office track and realized that without the nonstop panic and stress of a retail/food service position i’m almost entirely unable to prioritize and complete tasks.
a while back someone reblogged one of my poems on tumblr with the tag “no one deserves to be atlas”
and it hit me pretty hard and i want to talk about that today
listen, you are not a life support machine, you are not to be expected to carry someone’s organs. it is easy to fall into the rhythm of building your life around people who hope they are already dying, but that is not healthy.
i know. i am no stranger to people like this. i have known people who swallow pills with a snakejaw, who drink vodka straight without flinching and pray quietly that it’ll kill them, who smoke on their roof at 2am while crying. people who starve themselves until they can barely stand, who burn or cut or bruise their bodies because no one taught them to forgive themselves and be soft with their own skins. i have been these people.
there is only so much help you can give. if you learn anything, learn how to tell them: i am sorry, i cannot do this today. i am aching from holding the weight of your sky, please talk to a professional.
i see a mentality a lot amongst middle and high schoolers. i see it in college kids too, in some of my closest friends and in the drug dealer i talk to on weeknights. and the mentality says “if you are not willing to drop everything for me, you are toxic and a bad friend”
i understand that mental illness does a good job of making you feel isolated and it makes you scared of losing people, but realize that your support systems hurt too, and in ways that you might not even know.
listen, no teenager should have to add “keep my friends alive” to their to do list.
it can be hard to exist sometimes and it is okay to need help but you cannot place your fate in someone else’s hands. they shake just as much as yours, they are not any safer.
if you love your friends do not make them be atlas. they are not titans. they are small and afraid too.
Holding the Bowl 