I really suck at mapping feelings to situations. I don’t know what causes this (I don’t know if the what or the why even matters), but sometimes it can fucking hit. I can go from feeling everything to feeling nothing, and the latter makes me believe I never truly felt the way I thought I did. Can anyone relate?

Maybe it’s as simple as boundaries? Maybe I discover dealbreakers that are hard to ignore? Maybe it’s because sometimes, I feel like I need more alone time than usual, and people always seem to take this personally. Which is why I force myself to hang around for way too long

I fear this is something that therapy can never fix because I am simply describing neurodivergence incarnate

Anyone wanna take bets on what the "cause" will be?

I'm guessing Beanie Babies

This post was genuinely inspired by the post about adult pacifiers that was posted on the site some days ago. Some background, long post:

I started smoking on and off at fourth grade, the first drag and I was like "omg this makes me feel so good", it never tasted bad to me. Then come middle school and age 13 I started to truly smoke and kept going for 20ish years straight. At the end I was almost a two packs a day person running fully on extremely hard exercise, nicotine and caffeine. Ngl it never felt bad, the opposite really and my ability to function was pretty good plus the smoking gave me the social out and the ability to relax that I needed.

Then vapes became available online and as I had always assumed smoking to be an oral plus a fidgeting thing for me, I decided to try that. I left my pack of smokes unfinished the day I got the vape and been doing that ever since, over ten years now. I've only fallen off the wagon once for three months or so after the first covid years and in hindsight I think it was me dropping the nicotine amount too low as it was a time when gicarette smoke started to suddenly smell good to me again. I hated the smell from the moment I started vaping and hate it again now that I raised the nicotine level back to what it was.

I am self-diagnosed audhd and currently don't have access to a diagnosis, my employment healtcare deems it unnecessary as I am currently "performing" well. I get that medication would probably help, but it isn't an option. I've made my peace with the fact that I self-medicate with nicotine and it probably harms me, but am increasingly worried about dragging stuff into my lungs all day long.

So as I think this is an oral + lung + hand stim along with a nicotine thing, I am wondering if anyone here has found something sort of like smoking, but not vaping, that could replace it as a stim? Fidget spinners or such don't work for me. I am thinking the sucking and mouth touching is needed, as weird as it maybe sounds. Hello Freud, I was bottle fed as a baby :D (bad joke).

Considering trying nicotine pouches and something, but I've no idea what that something could be. Thoughts?

I don't think pottery can be repaired in a way that restores function. There are no epoxies or glues that can repair it and leave it food safe and able to store hot liquids for long periods. It's just broken now.

alt-text for thumbnail: The words "building spaces for autistic people" over a castle background. There are bookshelves in the corners and candles on the floor and a window in the middle. In the top right there is an autistic pride flag of 5 different colors.

What the fuck is wrong with me. I can watch something that doesn't speak to me whether it is good or not, but the moment I start to like like it I just stop it and get afraid of continuing with it. For example my backlog is full of games that I know I will like but I never play because I am afraid of not properly enjoying them or understanding them.

Is this shit behavior ADHD, autism, OCD or a combination of them all? Do you have this issue as well? Sorry for the rambling but I am high and in despair right now, I can't enjoy anything at all anymore (when I was a teen I didn't have this issue, it appeared after a particularly hard semester in uni)

When I had an easy way to categorize my age, I felt way too comfortable around people simply because they were in my age range. Obviously it doesn’t work that way now that I’m exposed to people of all ages in work or when doing activities, but finding ways to relate has never seemed more difficult. I keep getting told that everyone is looking for some sense of community or whatever, but it’s so fucking hard to break in. Especially as a single person without many of the common life experiences you’re expected to have in your late 20s. What’s going on in my head is another problem. Like, I have some of the same voices that have been around since I was a kid. Aging, especially in a rapidly changing world going to shit in every way, blows.

what’s wrong with psychological thought

This has always been one of my quirks, even as a young child, and I'm wondering if it might be autism related. I have always saved my money to an unusual degree. When I was maybe 10~ I remember being given money for some fair thing and only getting water the whole day so I could save it. My parents have noticed and commented on it many times, being a "penny pincher" etc many times. I always comparison shop, think about value, agonize over purchases etc. My friends will nag and nag at me to buy a new game they like but if I'm not sure I'll like it and get "enough" time out of it I don't. I'll try and do the math on how many hours and how many times I'll use something. I have always had a lot of money saved up for my age. Even when its not my money I'm spending I'm still incredibly cautious about not wasting it. I've changed my order before to save someone else a few dollars. I check when I'm getting paid probably close to every day. I don't need the money, I have plenty in my checking account and few expenses. I can't tell you why I care so much about it.

I am and have been for a while now, completely freaked out about being able to afford to move out.

I try to play off not caring about money a lot of the time, like when I'm hanging out with someone irl. I guess I don't want them to think us spending time together and spending is an issue for me? Like I can objectively afford it, plus its pretty rare (oof) so I try not to get freaky about it. Plus I enjoy spending time with people far more then it.

Any thoughts/experiences/advice would be appreciated! Low key I'm going on a trip with some friends and idk how much its going to end up costing me and its got me feeling all kinds of ways. It shouldn't be more then one paycheck though. Not necessarily posting because of that but thought it was worth a mention.

No matter how hard I try to read up on this or ask for people's help, I cannot tell when another person is attracted to me. And I feel bad about it, because what am I supposed to do if I want to do anything flirtatious or date? Trial and error? Just try it with anyone I think is attractive until I learn what the patterns are? Sounds like a quick way to be seen as That Guy. Even if I just ask, that's still a pretty forward move, letting someone know I think of them like that. So I really do not know what to do there, and it upsets me.

i've seen so many iterations of this on tiktok. people saying "this tweet motivates me to get out of bed"

how?

"omg you people cant do anything"

i mean... yeah? that's kinda how executive dysfunction rolls?

is the tweet supposed to be insulting? and that motivates people to do shit out of spite? if that's so, i wish my adhd was so weak i was able to prove her wrong out of spite

is it something else? please explain, thank you

Study discredits suggestion that rates of ADHD are rising due to social media trends.

It seems like fireworks just wrapped up in my neighborhood, but I think elsewhere in the US it's still daylight so...

It's been a rough fucking day because (1) all the people I love are celebrating the worst entity on earth and (2) the fireworks people are detonating in my suburban neighborhood are (well thankfully were) wreaking havoc on my senses.

I want to make this post to remind you all that it's your brain, your senses, your way of processing the world, and it's perfectly valid to feel bad about the noise or any other part of the AmeriKKKan independence day.

Please be nice to yourselves today. You are valid, you are worthy of love, you deserve a break if you want or need to take one. Stay safe and take care of yourselves ♥️.

And DEATH TO AMERIKKKA! 🏴🚩🏴🚩🏴🚩🏴🚩

I avoided this comm for the most part in the past and never subbed to it because I felt a sense of imposter syndrome and that I wasn’t neurodiverse enough with my “small amount of adhd” and didn’t want to intrude on the space

As more time passes though I realize just how much that “small amount of ADHD” affects me and I was undermining a part of myself that I had overlooked in the past. So I’m subbing to the comm and am gonna be paying more attention to it going forward.

I am FINALLY going to be able to trial Adderall after taking a long break from meds and want to track how I'm doing daily. What do you do so that you can know the meds are having a positive/negative effect? What are the indicators you track?

Worksheets, your own indicators, apps, etc. would by great. I'm leaning towards making my own worksheet but idk what some of the most important things would be to keep track of.

The feeling I assumed was anxiety my whole life was gone. The uneasy feeling of dread or that I was forgetting something of terminal importance. The way stuff bounced around in my head and made me ruminate on unnecessary things. I just never had a word for it before now.

This whole time I've been in SNRIs that are supposed to help with the same things, but never quite did enough.

I'm only 2 weeks in and it isnt like taking the limitless pill or anything but even just that is a relief rn 🥹

Short version: what active hearing protection/noise cancelling in ear headphones do you use or recommend, and why?

One of the things i struggle with, without really realizing it, is sound. Theres specific sounds that are really upsetting and make me want to claw my spinal cord out of my neck, namely the sound of metal scraping ceramic. But other "normal" noise also puts a huge drain on my system, and i often dont realize this and just end up feeling exhausted and overwhelmed for no reason. Then when i plug my ears for some reason or another theres instant relief.

So im looking for some sort of (preferably in ear) solution to this issue. I dont really know where to start. I would like to have active protection against everything, that also lets voices through, but letting voices through should be togglable. Ive looked at active hearing protection and it seems to be divided into constant low thrumming sounds like machinery or short high amplitude sounds like gunshots.

I look at noise cancelling in-ear headphones and see a whole range of stuff but have no idea how to evaluate it. Given how expensive everything is, i would really rather buy one thing than try many different products.

My home has the following characteristics: constant construction from across the way, a roommate who listens to really loud music on her speakers and wont turn it down, dealing with hearing people having shouting arguments, traffic noises, etc.

Ideally these would also work for being out and about, but if i could just have some respite from these sounds in my home it would be really nice.

So, if you have used any active hearing protection or noise cancelling headphones you really like, could you tell me what they are and why you like them?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5307186

With the escalation in Gaza and West Bank on top of the incident I'm going to limit how much I spend on telegram, lemmy, etc. because I can get massively hyperfocussed on this shit. Feels a lot like when the Ukraine Russia war heated up and I was stuck to my phone 8 hours a day.

I'm lucky enough to have started my meds recently which are absolutely eviscerating my anxiety, but others aren't so lucky.

Maybe delete a couple of apps and limit your exposure for a couple of days so even if you DO doomscroll it's less paralysing.

The new world struggles to be born ❤️

If you are the kind of person who feels apathetic about everything but you ever remember something you cared about when you were younger, write it down. Or do it even if you aren't like that, memories are a lot less permanent than they may seem.

That was all I really wanted to shout into the void, the rest of this is just kind of venting about how I feel right now I guess. Please remove the post or let me know if this isn't the right place for this kind of thing. I've always been very bad at expressing myself and I just wanted to try in some way.

I have no idea what caused this, but for some reason today I started remembering things from my childhood that I haven't thought about for many years. Years of my life that, if someone had brought something about them up to me, I would have instantly recalled were true, but that had just been a completely forgotten void to me at the start of this week.

This kind of thing probably happens to most people at some point in their lives, but right now I feel like I am discovering that I used to be someone different and it somehow came as a genuine revelation to me. I forgot that I ever cared about anything at all.

Here's one of the things I remembered:

I know I'll never be different but in a way I am glad to remember that at some point I was. And right now I am glad I haven't killed myself, which I haven't in a long time. And I do want to hold on to that if I can.

i've wanted to talk about this for a while, but i'm not interested in any fuckass liberal takes, so i'm posting this here

also, i'm not a medical/mental health professional so feel free to call me on my bullshit. i'm genuinely interested to hear why i might be wrong

anyway

adhd and autism are social disorders

that doesn't mean that "everyone is a little autistic". that doesn't mean that "labels don't matter". that doesn't mean that we should all get off our meds. they're genuinely disorders and need to be treated as such

what it means is that they're not illnesses. these conditions are not inherently disorders, they're socially determined to be disorders. they're disorders because they make us misadjusted to our current class society, not because they're inherently harmful to our health

i'm also not saying that there aren't inherent limitations to autism or adhd, of course there are, very clearly. but limitations aren't necessarily disorders or disabling. everyone has limitations, even neurotypicals, but not everyone has mental disorders. children and the elderly have particular limitations, but neither childhood nor old age are disorders. perfectly healthy people have numerous limitations compared to other healthy people, but those limitations don't hinder their participation in our current society

this discussion frustrates me so much because it seems to be either the "labels don't matter" discourse that put me off of seeking diagnosis for over a decade or the "autism/adhd is an illness and i'm broken for having it" discourse which sometimes veers very close to eugenics and puts the blame of our suffering in our "bad genes"

being autistic and having adhd sucks and we need as much treatment as we can get and i love my meds, but this suffering is not my fault. a capitalist class society that steals our lives and grinds us to a pulp is to blame. neurotypicals just happen to be better at surviving this hell (which is exactly why they're typical). in a society designed for our wellbeing, those diagnoses would look very different

what do you think?

I'm starting Elvanse (Lisdexamfetmine) soon, and I was wondering how some people here prefer to take it? Like, do you do every day or do you take days off?

I know there's not a massive withdrawal from it like the SNRIs I take atm but I wonder if some folks prefer to have days off for whatever reason.

This is an org I came across a while back. As it says in the pic and on their homepage, they are all about "Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People".

Their 'encylopedia of difference' has a huge plethora of information on so many topics. Hope ya'll find it as helpful as I have.

"Stimpunks was forged in the quest for survival and inclusion. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit built by and for neurodivergent and disabled people. Stimpunks was founded in December of 2021. We are a community affair. We’re Autistic, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, Tourettes, schizophrenic, bipolar, apraxic, dyslexic, dyspraxic, dyscalculic, non-speaking, and more. We’ve collectively experienced rare diseases, organ transplants, various cancers, many surgeries and therapies, and lots of ableism and SpEd. We’ve experienced #MedicalAbleism, #MedicalMisogyny, #MedicalRacism, #MedicalTrauma, and #MedicalGaslighting. We understand chronic pain, chronic illness, and the #NEISvoid “No End In Sight Void”. We know what it’s like to be disabled and different in our systems. We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community. Disabled and neurodivergent people are always edge cases, and edge cases are stress cases. We can help you design for the edges, because we live at the edges. We are the canaries. We are “the fish that must fight the current to swim upstream.“

Here's a link to their burnout page, which is where I first found them from online searches.