Be the change you want to see.

(I get to use this icon again)

Did you cry during the inauguration? I did, big shuddery breaths and all, and I've been doing it off and on all week.

Monday was a long effortful hike which my body needed badly.

Tuesday I got my Second Opinion with the Kaiser psychiatrist, and she said yes, I think you do have ADHD, and offered to try me on Strattera.

Wednesday we got up early enough to watch the Inauguration, and I cried a lot

Yesterday (Thursday) we had couple's therapy and I got to say a couple of things that have weighed on me my whole life. Jeff shared some things he said he would like to change, so there were lots of Feelings, and he kept me company while I had them.

Today's been cleaning up cat pee AND ALSO finding out I have a viral post on The Wellerman and the Worker's Songs folksong Tradition, so now I'm going out to find more good ones to add to the post.

Eventful goddamn week.

<3

I wish that I had had access to the term executive functioning, or executive dysfunction, years ago. Having the knowledge that this is a thing, makes a big difference in how harshly I will judge myself for failing to do things that I feel like I should be doing.

I have trouble writing, at least fiction. I'm writing short pieces for Tumblr right now, or occasional answers to questions on quora. I have multiple works in progress on AO3, and I can feel the story sitting in that part of my brain, and I can't find a way to let it out yet. And it's frustrating as hell.

This executive dysfunction is largely, I guess, emotionally based, sometimes physical distress is part of it but largely when I'm in emotional distress is when I have the most difficulty. And today, I'm only writing this post because I am out of the house, house sitting/cat sitting for my friend girl purple. And while I'm here, I can use speech to text.

For writing, it hits me in different places to write by hand, to write at a keyboard, to write on the phone, or to dictate. At this immediate moment I'm making an end run around the writing dysfunction by speaking instead. I've been thinking there must be other ways to get around the fact that writing is hard right now I mean, now more than usual. With the pandemic and shelter in place, with not being able to have access to my usual support network, or my activities that feed me, like dance, like going to an open floor dance or a five rhythms dance, I can't go visit my friends I can't ask somebody to come over and sit with me while I accomplish things. I think maybe I need to pet the cats, and maybe I need to sit down and let myself feel my feelings.

I think the next thing that I will do for myself is I will write down onto paper and put it up somewhere I can see it, the list I just made of the different ways that I could write and perhaps I will also pull out the couple of self-help books that I've used in the past to wake up the skills that I have had in the past to Get Shit Done.

Time to go eat a food and try to get shit done.

This is going to be a quick stream-of-consciousness kind of post, so I apologize for any typos or missing punctuation. I've been saying for years how annoying it is that I forget to eat. just in the last year or so after many years of taking metformin, I discovered that one of the side effects of metformin as an appetite suppressant. I got reminded of that because one night last week I forgot to take the medications before I went to bed. And then the following night when it was dinner time I think I ate twice as much as normal. I had one section of leftovers, and then went back and finished off the Chinese food as well.

I was off my meds for a day. The thing is, I actually had a hunger impulse that day and that is one of the things I am disconnected from more days than not. And I know that failing to eat affect both my mental health, my optimism, my energy levels obviously, and my ability to think clearly. So one thing I want to try and figure out is if there are other things available to treat my kind of diabetes than metformin, and whether we need to do anyting particular in order to try a different med.

My health as a general case oh, it's pretty good, I feel. Barring of course they ridiculous coronavirus shelter-in-place and quarantine, and bearing in mind that I have pre-existing conditions that really seemed to me like they will get triggered really hard if I catch this particular virus. So physical health related, I'm working out twice a week I feel pretty good as far as painless go I am not experiencing a lot of my usual muscle tension and pain. I do miss my mom, my sister and my niblings, and I should have may be arranged a screen type visit with them over the weekend. Benjamin just graduated from high school in so far as you can graduate from high school in 2012. and as of I guess today or maybe yesterday it sounds like he is off having adventures in southern California with a couple of his high school friends. Which on the one hand good for him and on the other hand f***. Because I'm going to have to wait and see whether it's possible that he has caught the virus before I come back up and visit. Although I know he's smart enough and self-aware enough to know that only too self quarantine when he comes back before he goes to see Mom. Mom has said he's been very assiduous and so has Ainsley about mask-wearing and being careful around her so that makes me feel better and a little bit safer for myself as well. At some point I would really like to go see them again?

But I just have to be really freaking careful. I cannot. Not. Afford to catch this virus, before we have antidotes reliable treatments, or a vaccine.

Circling back to the food question, the mind question: the ability to think when I cannot manage to feed myself very reliably. It makes it very difficult to get anything done. I can have the best of intentions and between the ADHD and not enough brain spoons it just does not happen. My Oblivion is actually very good for me in that regard, which is that when I feel myself starting a shame spiral I shove everything into the oubliette and then I don't have a shame spiral anymore. Of course I also don't have any niggling little reminders of those things that I intended to do.

I have tasks I meant to do before Christmas and haven't gotten done. Things I wanted to put in the mail. And I haven't done them. More things I wanted to put in the mail when we started shelter-in-place. I haven't mailed those either aside from about 8 at the very beginning. Have made one mask. That's it and now my sewing machine is jammed and the troubleshooting for that is beyond my current capacities. I'm not even depressed about this or ashamed or beating myself up or anxious or even tired. It's more numb. Some of that is due to the fact that I know I'm hungry even though I can't feel hunger. But I can tell based on how my brain is and is not working. I think I'm going to ask friends for help. Maybe I can subcontract out some of the brain work we'll have to see.

I hope you all are as well as you can be and staying as safe as you can be I'm thinking of you and I'll try to get back with everyone when I have a temporary likely resurgence of spoons.

I have an appointment for a video meeting with the audiology department at Kaiser tomorrow because I might be a good candidate for hearing aids. It's finally gotten to the point where it's enough of a pain oh, enough of an inconvenience and honestly the tinnitus is really bugging me. So wish me luck with that!

Back to therapy today, because I have been so frustrated with the psychotherapist no wait psychiatrist at Kaiser and her b******* unhelpful attitude. We talked about that for a bit, and then Laura also had some specific and concrete suggestions for things I can do to help my organization, she suggested an executive functioning coach, which I did not know that was a thing. She also said I should be able to self-refer within Kaiser for the mental health department. Or to complain or appeal the decision to not give me further testing for ADHD. She said there is wellness coaching available at Kaiser which should be for free and that the wellness coaching is CBT oriented and happens by way of the telephone. She also thought that doing some kind of brain training might be useful and mentioned biofeedback as a possibility? Especially if I don't want to try and go on to medication for the ADHD.

She also suggested that I might find it easier to stay engaged in writing, by using different writing modes. Which I already do, for example right now I'm using speech to text, occasionally I will hand write things, and I'll use my phone, or the laptop depending on circumstances. She recommended something called snowflake. Which I'm going to have to look up, but it sounded vaguely familiar and like it might prove useful especially for outlining and organizing ideas.

Found this linked on Facebook, unusually, properly credited.

Via Tumblr: https://highlycaffeinatedhorsewriter.tumblr.com/post/182580123449/whats-the-real-lesson

What’s the Real Lesson?

fittingoutjane
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.

aberrant_eyes
#I wonder if this might potentially apply to people with autism as well?#because I haven’t been diagnosed with adhd but MAN do I fee this#and like I had the situation a lot of people went through#breezed through elementary and high school and in gifted and talented#but then college happened and I was LOST

fittingoutjane
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.

myautisticass
Well shit this explains so much about me

chavisory
Yes, I am autistic without ADHD, and this is…how a lot of things happened to me. I’m an adrenaline addict, too, and this is why.
And I’m not going to say that that mode of operation doesn’t have its uses. But it is a really, really counterproductive way to teach kids how to take the time and focus to learn to do something well and sustainably.
It can also make kids look lazy who aren’t, because you start to learn that you’re only good at things if you can do them PERFECTLY, IMMEDIATELY, RIGHT NOW and you don’t learn how to work through your anxiety and processing difficulties to actually practice and understand something.

misaimed_archer
Also, child never learns how to articulate why the task is difficult.
They learn that they’re not allowed to.

fittingoutjane
^ This is it. The child IS taught that they’re not allowed to talk about the task being difficult. Whether they’re ignored, disbelieved, punished, or given “help” that actually makes things worse, the message is the same: Don’t.

[Bad username or unknown identity: highlycaffeinatedhorsewriter]
Oh my God. I never realized why I was like this. I can do incredible things in a panic mode, like write an advanced 12 page neuroscience research paper and edit it in less than 24 hours. But sit down and skim my class notes in my free time? Nope. I even had a therapist tell me once that I needed to learn how to study when I’m not running on adrenaline because it doesn’t work (sadly it DOES for me so that advice didn’t help.) This explains so much

very quick post
as I need to breakfast and then hit the gym
...sigh

it's uncomfortable to admit the difference between what I thought I was doing and what I was actually doing.
what I was trying to do and what my brain basically had me HAVE to do.

I'll be dropping bits here as I continue to read the adhd book from the library. But one thing I learned today is that the kinds of self-talk I've been slowly training myself out of? have NAMES. Like, you can categorize them into disasterizing, binary thinking... I wish I had the book here, I'll have to edit this later.

I'm kind of in the grief stage. Realizing how different things might have been if adhd in girls was something that they knew about when I was still in primary school or high school. But in the 80's, they had only just begun to recognize add/adhd as a thing.

it wasn't. It didn't. They didn't. I didn't.

it's so damn hard to see the back of your own head.

Not like all my work towards self knowledge is wasted, it's the foundation of the work I'm going to continue doing.

AND I think I may have helped my niece, who is my beloved magpie girl. She's showing all the signs and more of my own distraction, difficulty scheduling, keeping on task, good intentions and poor execution. Pile of failing progress report grades on recent reports from school, her parents are going YIKES

so I told my sister I'd been recently diagnosed with adhd and what I remembered from high school sounded like how I've observed my magpie girl when we've gotten to hang out. That her academic results, same=same. I just covered better, I think.

so my sister and my brother in law are looking into testing for my niece.
it's like, I'm over here Feeling All The Things about my own wasted opportunities but maybe? maybe Ainslee can be spared a lot of what I suffered through, all the shitty self-talk and self-blame.

so I'm feeling optimistic, and I have several courses of action laid out for me to follow, and that feels good.

It’s 2 am. I’m up way past my bedtime because of reasons, namely that my brain won’t shut up and I’m feeling overwhelmed.
Recently diagnosed with ADHD and I don’t know what to do about it. Feels like I’ve been breaking any good things in my life, my whole life.
Only thing to give me peace tonight (this morning) is realizing that I am allowed to ask for help. I have two or three points of contact who may prove helpful. My therapist is one.
Depression sucks. ADHD sucks. Unemployment sucks. I have really good things in my life and I know it, intellectually, but I can’t keep them in focus right now.
I’m going to ask for help. Because I said I would.
This post is how I’m gonna keep myself accountable. Xposting to dreamwidth.
If you struggle with depression, ADHD, lack of purpose, lack of self worth, I’d like to hear from you.

adhd actually adhd depression low self worth low self confidence bad night help request because i said i would accountability gdi brain of course that's a tag
5 notes
Apr 9th, 2017