Looks like Operation Gladio C is moving ahead at a respectable pace.

Apparently it's not a human rights issue to engage in political repression by target an ethnically russian population of civilians with indiscriminate violence.

So I dipped my toe into Reddit for the first time in a while. (Relapses are always difficult things to deal with.)

On r/Psychiatry there's a discussion running about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and there's a really interesting spread of opinions. That sub is supposed to be exclusively for qualified psychiatrists, although it's not very well moderated in that regard. Opinions ranged from being in favour, to fairly neutral, to extremely critical of the idea (and of ADHD itself [!!]).

This is what has prompted me to post this State of The ~~Union~~ Disorder Address today.

One thing that barely got any mention in the thread in question is the origins of the concept of, and I think even the term itself, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (don't quote me on that part - I could be misremembering). My introduction to the concept of RSD was through scrambling to get myself up to speed on ADHD and absorbing information from Dr Russel Barkley in particular and also Dr William Dodson, two of the leading experts in ADHD (although both of them are kinda old, with Dr Barkley being in retirement by this point). In older talks from both of them, they each outline the emotional dimension of ADHD that get overlooked by the diagnostic criteria and, tbh, the term ADHD itself which doesn't recognise the emotional aspect. I think one day, eventually, we are going to see the label itself shift to recognise that it's a disorder characterised by executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation rather than hyperactivity (which is sometimes present but often not and sometimes wholly absent, especially as a person matures) and attention deficit (same as above - sometimes absent, sometimes present). Both of these parts of ADHD are, imo, manifestations of poor executive function and I'd argue that it's a dysregulation of executive function moreso than anything - it's extremely common for ADHDers to report experiencing hyperfocus but the problem is in the difficulty in regulation of that focus. This is not necessarily an example of executive dysfunction in the way that it's commonly understood, although the ability to regulate one's attention "appropriately" (however you want to define that exactly) does fit into the true definition of the term but I digress.

From memory, Dr Dodson referred to RSD by a different term. It seemed pretty obvious that he was working towards the same conclusion independently that Dr Barkley had also been working towards, and the concept didn't even have a conventionally-accepted label at this point.

As ADHD, and especially adult ADHD, has come into more mainstream acceptance and awareness, there has been a huge amount of peer knowledge and support filling what is honestly a pretty wide chasm of knowledge and understanding of the condition. (I realise I'm part of that phenomenon.) In an ideal world this wouldn't exist, but alas. This has led to what I think is some fundamental misconceptions about ADHD on both sides of the professional/lay person divide, and these definitely emerged in the discussion on the thread.

With regards to professionals, in my opinion, some major misconceptions are:

• That ADHD is overdiagnosed

• That it doesn't exist (ugh)

• That it is just the result of trauma (lookin' at you Gabor Maté)

• That it's some trendy diagnosis or that it's something that is used as a diversion from people averse to the diagnosis of BPD especially (this definitely came up in the thread)

• That the emotional dysregulation dimension of ADHD doesn't exist or that it's is simply indicative of a co-occuring mental health condition

• That RSD is just some tiktok trend that popped into existence out of nowhere

• That RSD is just social anxiety or a trauma response, or something along these lines

On the other side, some of the misconceptions from lay people are:

• The glamorising/quirkification of ADHD (no, staring out of the window at work or in class when you're bored is not the same thing as ADHD and nor is impulse buying shit online)

• That ADHD is just about dopamine/it's just about a lack of dopamine (both are untrue)

• That ADHD can be "cured"

• That ADHD meds make you a zombie or that everyone responds to stimulants with better attention and so stimulants are just a crutch used by people who lack willpower or discipline

There's probably a lot of other misconceptions on behalf of lay people but I'm not going to bore you with all of them - you're probably aware of most of them already anyway.

One thing that stands out to me about all this is that ADHD, ironically, suffers from success - stimulant meds are the absolute envy of the rest of the psychopharmacological industry. (If an antidepressant had the rate of success that stimulant meds do for ADHD, it would be a defining moment in history akin to the advent of lithium in the treatment of bipolar.) What this means is that, for a long time, ADHD was diagnosed in mostly boys, and mostly the ones who exhibited a lot of hyperactivity, and the solution was to throw stimulants at the kid and move on because this would largely be seen to resolve the problem or the external and more disruptive aspects of it. Because of this, there's a big gap in research into adult ADHD, the underdiagnosis of afabs, and examining what exists beneath the superficial, external observations of ADHD.

Hence where we find ourselves today and why I'm writing this post.

So where does this leave us?

Well, firstly I think there's a lot of misunderstandings about RSD and incomplete understanding of RSD. (It's gonna get a whole lot more anecdotal and extrapolation-y from here, so he warned.)

From what the good doctors above describe, it's not really necessarily even rooted in rejection. The term RSD creates a fundamental misunderstanding that the experience is about feeling bad when people reject you or provide you with negative feedback whereas he experience itself is rooted in a very immediate, almost visceral emotional response to perceived mistakes and failures which is completely disproportionate to the situation. This can be something that occurs in a social setting, although not necessarily.

I think a good analogy of what it's like to experience RSD is that it is a frequently occurring emotional response to things that are typically smaller and it feels like that one time in school when you suddenly got called to the principal's office and you had no idea why. There's this sudden, gut-wrenching emotional response where you feel like you're in huge amounts of trouble for something and you don't have any idea of what it is. (But then it turns out that, idk, they just wanted to congratulate you on winning some scholarship that you had forgotten about or they wanted to ask if you for some basic information.)

The difference between RSD and a trauma response or serious anxiety is that RSD is felt strongly in the body and it is completely disproportionate to the experience. An attack of anxiety typically has a solid basis in reality, and it is generally fairly quick to resolve when the perceived cause is addressed. Obviously for generalised anxiety disorder and more severe anxiety disorders, this is not necessarily the case but that's its own discussion. Panic attacks often don't have a particular triggering incident, RSD does.

Trauma responses are ones where your previous experience of a traumatic event is brought into your immediate experience due to some similarities or resemblance to it that occurs in the present - a car backfiring or a door slamming are two good examples. With regards to the difference between a trauma trigger and RSD, a trauma trigger is going to bring you right back to a past feeling when you were traumatised and your responses will be based in that past experience. RSD can fire off from something tiny and it isn't something that dredges up an old traumatic experience for you while transporting you back to that moment in time and what you were thinking and how you were feeling back then.

RSD can kick off from really small things, like feeling as if you forgot to lock your front door this morning or maybe mispronouncing a word in conversation or arriving at an appointment at the right time but on the wrong day. A typical person might worry about their front door and go through the steps they took as they left the house this morning to arrive at the certainty that they did actually lock their door and then things feel okay again. A person with social anxiety might feel really nervous at that mispronunciation and it might really rattle them for quite a while or they might even freeze up or burst out into tears. Someone who finds out that they've arrived at their appointment on the wrong day might go beet red and feel extremely embarrassed. I've honestly done all of these things and experienced these responses before and RSD feels different.

RSD feels like a gut punch, and it often comes completely unexpectedly. I might often worry about forgetting to lock my door when I leave the house but today, inexplicably, today my response is different.

It's that feeling when you realise you forgot to send the email and you lost the big contract but there's nothing you can do because it's already too late by this point, that feeling when you realise you left your purse on the bus and everything in it is gone forever, that feeling when you realise that your partner has been cheating on you and you've only just put all the pieces together.

Except it's just some tiny little slip-up. Or maybe it's not even a mistake at all but it feels like it might have been one.

As someone who has and is diagnosed with PTSD, RSD genuinely hits different. I have trauma triggers. I have trauma triggers for things that I'm not even aware of the historical source of because of extensive childhood trauma. But it's taken me a really long time to realise that there's this other, separate phenomenon that I experience which feels similar in a lot of ways and, for me, which had blurred into the "it's just PTSD" narrative for the longest time, until I finally started developing my understanding that there was something else going on for me.

So anyway I hope that by rambling about the state of psychiatry, about being irritated by some shitty comments on Reddit (the horror!), and about my own experience of RSD along with the historical roots of the concept I'm helping to fill that gap in understanding and to push back against some of the misconceptions that exist surrounding RSD.

As per requests, this is my description of auDHD experience. As there is very little research into this, I'm going to draw primarily upon my own personal experience and I'll draw upon peer experiences and I'll draw in bits of research through this post here and there. I am diagnosed with both ADHD and autism, both adult diagnoses, and there is treatment history to establish these as being accurate diagnoses. The psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADHD gave me a diagnosis of primarily-inattentive ADHD but I had come to my own conclusions that I was probably combined-type which has had its hyperactive aspects mostly buried under trauma. My psychiatrist also independently arrived at this same conclusion unprompted. It's worth noting that being combined-type will colour my experience of auDHD.

As a disclaimer, this is going to be my experience so it will be limited by that fact. This should only be taken as information and not the definitive guide or the be-all end-all of The One True™ auDHD experience.

To start, I think it's of fundamental importance to understand that my experience of auDHD is one of internal conflict - I have competing sets of needs and desires. This manifests in a lot of internal struggle and it also means that my autistic or ADHD traits can be more prevalent and I can feel "more" autistic or ADHD, depending on my circumstances. (Maybe I'm a Marxist because deep down, at a fundamental level, my ADHD traits exist in a dialectical relationship with my autistic traits lol.) This manifests in a lot of extremes and a lot of bouncing between one extreme to the other.

Ultimately this is why I think I was previously diagnosed with a mood disorder and why it's very common for late-diagnosed autistic/ADHD/auDHDers to be misdiagnosed with mood disorders.

So what does this look like in practice?

I thrive under most novel situations and under high pressure. I find it exciting and this really engages me. However, I also find that I hit my limit in high pressure situations very rapidly, so there's a sweet spot where things are just new or high pressure enough that I thrive. Less, I feel pretty bored and checked out. More, I become an anxious wreck.

However this is counterbalanced by my deep and abiding need for stability, routine, and structure. I need enough that I can count on in my life that I feel capable of dealing with high-pressure and novel situations. Too much change, especially unpredicted change, leaves me really rattled and out of sorts (and not just feeling a bit uncomfortable but it can put me into complete disarray). It can take ages for me to cope with too much change or unpredicted change because, although I can be quite adaptable and flexible, if my base circumstances change then the pace at which I find my feet again is truly glacial.

This is also sort of why I find that I am either extremely well organised or I'm an absolute disaster, with little room in between. Without having structure and organisation, my autistic needs aren't being met so I feel very dysregulated and I am far less capable of relying on this aspect of myself to manage my scatterbrained ADHD traits.

When it comes to socialising, I can be very gregarious. (It's worth mentioning that I'm pretty high-masking when I want to be, so that may also be a factor here.) I am capable of being the life of the party and of facilitating stuff like group work and educational spaces in an engaging and interactive way, and have done so professionally. But this comes with a high level of social anxiety and an extremely limited social battery. I find that I much prefer facilitating, or better yet public speaking, than I do participating in a group activity especially if it's unstructured or there are a lack of clear guidelines and expectations. So externally I vacillate between being very social to being extremely introverted, depending on a variety of factors.

Another aspect is that I genuinely do need a lot of time to recharge after socialising, even when it's great and I'm really enjoying myself. Sometimes days. I feel like this is very much my autistic needs taking the front seat.

With regards to interests, this is a little bit tricky on account of being combined-type but I have very long, stable persistent deep interests ("special interests" but I am loath to apply that term to myself tbh). I also have the classic ADHD sort of brief, intense, transient interests that breeze in and breeze out just as quickly. There are things that I will always be interested in doing or talking about, then there are things that I have a sort of wild fling with before I find that I've suddenly wrung all the dopamine out of it and I'm ready to discard it and move on.

I'm capable of bending my deep interests and sorta redirecting them to topics that I need to prioritise but I'm not sure whether this is a me thing, an auDHD thing, a combined-type thing, or something else.

With regards to sensory processing, I am a fairly typical autistic scattershot of being mostly sensory-avoiding with some atypically high degrees of sensory-seeking, as per the Dunn Sensory Profile 2 administered to me as an adult. I am acutely sensitive to a lot of sensory input however my ADHD is a countervailing force here and I can be completely oblivious to certain sounds or smells or tactile feelings until suddenly my awareness is drawn to this and it becomes borderline intolerable. This may also be due to me being high-masking, having poor interoception, or experiencing dissociation due to lots of trauma, mostly developmental so keep this in mind.

With regards to trauma and rejection sensitive dysphoria, there's evidence that ADHDers are more prone to developing PTSD symptoms. In my opinion one of the major factors in this phenomenon is the fundamental emotional reactivity inherent to the ADHD experience, especially if it's not appropriately medicated. My autistic traits lead me to ruminate a lot and so there's this unholy alliance that exists within me of my being more prone to traumatisation, having heightened emotional reactivity (even with regards to PTSD triggers that occur well after a particular event), and the classic autistic perseveration meaning that I get into ruts with my thinking that are very difficult to get myself out of. This is on top of the typical experience of PTSD and being emotionally and psychologically "stuck" in the traumatic experience. So it's a double whammy. Or maybe an exponential whammy idk.

I experience rejection sensitive dysphoria and I respond to treatment for it. I think that RSD in an auDHDer is especially difficult as being autistic means that I am just prone to making more faux pas, I'm going to unintentionally annoy or upset people, I'm going to miss cues, and ultimately that I'm going to face a whole lot more ostracism and social rejection than if I were allistic. So not only do I have a lot of the psychological consequences of trying to exist in a social world that is far from well-suited to an autistic person, I also have very visceral responses in my nervous system when I think I have fucked up or when someone gives me the impression of negative social feedback (whether imagined or real) and this has a pretty major impact on me. I am of the opinion that the ADHD traits that make me inclined to seek out social interaction and push me to be novelty-seeking means that I am much more socially engaged than I would otherwise be and since negative social feedback affects me unusually deeply, I think this is one of the major factors in why I am capable of being very high masking to the point of probably doing quite well at being neurotypical-passing if I care to.

It's my suspicion that most auDHDers are high-masking, not only because they tend to go undiagnosed and maybe even unaware of this personally for a lot longer and so they naturally develop strategies to compensate but because they tend to be more socially-oriented and I reckon they take knocks harder when socialising, all things being equal, so the end product is a person who is a sort of grizzled veteran who has learnt how to survive in the harsh wilderness that is the allistic social realm.

Moving on from that, I find that I am very extreme in how I experience fine details. I often plunge headlong into the deepest depths of detail but I am also quite careless and I can miss very obvious or critical details. I tend to shift between these two poles. Sometimes this also manifests in being so consumed by one aspect of the details that it's to the exclusion of all the other details as well, although that's more of a classic autistic experience imo. This might also be something specific to me but I am a voracious learner. Often I feel like my mind is like an odd-couple where I can get engrossed in a subject for virtually an unlimited period of time and I can be remarkably persistent with learning but I also have intense cravings for instant gratification and novelty which causes me to end up diving into one subject with great depth only to dive into the next soon after, and this pattern repeats itself constantly. It feels like half of my brain is constantly dragging me down one particular rabbit hole and the other half of my brain is desperately and impatiently dragging me to the next rabbit hole. This may also be something specific to me but I find that I'm actually quite a slow learner because of my needs to understand the intricacies of any given topic but, once I really grasp the fundamentals of something I tend to learn very quickly from that point onwards.

With regards to executive dysfunction, my experience is one of constant struggle lol. I feel as though I am constantly juggling too many balls - my need for novelty, my need for certainty and stability, my sensory diet, the need to stay focused and remember things, the need to observe the details so I don't make simple mistakes and so I don't find myself getting lost in any one particular detail, my need for routine and my fundamental incapability of maintaining a routine, attending to my interoception as I am very liable to not register that I'm hungry or thirsty or tired and so on. It feels like I am more or less constantly mediating the tensions between my different needs which often exist in direct contradiction to each other. So yeah, this means I burn out and I burn out hard lol.

I think ultimately my experience of auDHD is one where I can sometimes spot the very clear traits of either one shining through, such as struggling with pragmatics in communication and being completely capable of eating the exact same thing in perpetuity or being so forgetful and inattentive that I'll put my phone down in a drawer only to close it to later have zero recollection of what I did and having a real drive to experience new things. But more often it feels as though I am an odd mix of the two or that there's a sort of stalemate between the two and I feel like I'm kinda neither and yet both at the same time.

Sometimes this works really well, as my ADHD traits make me more adaptable and a bit more even in my interests and how I engage socially or as my autistic traits help me sustain my focus and to have a much better memory for things than I would otherwise have. I guess in short, being autistic keeps my ADHD traits more stable and consistent and my ADHD makes my autistic traits more flexible and it broadens my horizons. Each of them softens some of the rough edges of the other and I find that I can often lean into one in order to compensate for the deficits inherent to the other.

Unfortunately, the upshot of the autism and ADHD combo is that very often these needs compete and are in direct contradiction to one another as well. It's a weird sort of in between space to exist in, one where the only relatable parallel that I can think of that comes remotely closely is ennui - that feeling of being bored but where it's a conflicted or maybe a more existential sort of boredom; if you're just purely bored, you find something interesting or exciting and you have fixed the problem and the need has been addressed whereas with ennui there's a sort of restless interregnum-like quality where you experience a feeling of boredom but the thought of doing something exciting is also in itself boring somehow. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense lol. Also for my experience of auDHD it's not a feeling of being bored at addressing different needs but it's more like craving new things whie simultaneously craving the same things and the same routine, of craving excitement but also being overwhelmed and craving quiet and calmness at the same time. It's really quite odd to be honest.

Ultimately, while I identify with a lot of traits and experiences of pure ADHD or pure autism, I feel as though my experience of these are much more varied and they shift in intensity. I also think that the way that I present, even if I'm not putting in effort towards masking, is one where the traits of both are apparent but they aren't easy to pin down because I readily switch between, say, a classic autistic infodump monologue to being very socially-engaging and mischievous like you might expect from an ADHDer. Or I can be incredibly details-focused while also being seemingly oblivious to details. That sort of thing.

Anyway, I think that wraps up my own personal experience of auDHD from an internal perspective.

888? The jokes write themselves.

What the fuck does this have to do with self-improvement?

Well, I think this all kicked off because I saw one too many videos showcasing old sea monkey accessories and, for some reason, it sparked my interest and I started researching shrimp. I live in a small place and I'm on a limited budget with very limited energy so a freshwater shrimp tank feels like an ideal way to provide enrichment in my enclosure.

My intention is to have a fairly closed loop system that is self-sustaining with minimal input or intervention from me, which meets my constraints, and because I intend to only have a heater and a fan for temperature control during weather extremes plus a light (for obvious reasons) I will need to ensure that I have the right environment and especially the right plants to maintain the water quality. In the initial phase I'm expecting there to be an excess of nutrients and so I'm planning on getting a fast-growing semi-aquatic vining houseplant, Pothos, to help maintain the water quality.

Because this particular plant will have all of its water and nutrient requirements being met by the tank that it will be planted in, if things go well then really the only thing that I should need to do will be to stick some inconspicuous hooks on the wall for it to grow along.

Likewise with the tank, the inputs from me should be minimal and I expect that they will be able to be done on an ad-hoc basis rather than needing constant attention and intervention after it has been established.

It will be nice to have something that I am making for myself, for my own appreciation and to make my environment more inviting for me.

I think it will be a nice use of my knowledge too because there's some things that are less commonly done in aquarium-keeping which I plan to try out - there's this one riparian plant that is very popular as an edible vegetable, especially in East Asia, that I know how to cultivate and I suspect will be really suitable for feeding shrimp with. It's also very fast growing, high in nutritional content, and actually quite pretty (with a tiny bit of maintenance). I haven't seen any discussion about this plant as food for shrimp, or any aquatic animals tbh, but I think it's going to be a really good fit. It would be really nice to be able to rip off a little piece of leaf every now and then for shrimp food from a plant which has grown in the very same tank, removing the excess nutrients that would otherwise cause it to become inhospitable to the shrimp. Plus it will cost a couple of dollars to get a few cuttings going and then with a little luck it should be a perpetual food source.

Likewise, if I decide to scale up and make a bigger shrimp tank then I can use my gardening skills to propagate the plants that I will already have to start planting out a larger aquascape and I have already figured out a good supplementary food to give shrimp to encourage breeding and to feed baby shrimplets if I do choose to scale up. It's probably tedious to read about but for a few bucks of input I should be able to make an extremely low maintenance micro worm culture which relies upon apple cider vinegar - something you can buy fairly cheaply but if I am going to make it a fixture then I have the knowledge of how to make a simple, very low cost operation to produce apple cider vinegar from store bought apple juice because I am very comfortable with brewing and I am familiar with how to maintain cultures like mother of vinegar.

I'm sure it sounds complicated but it's really just going to be one bottle of apple juice fermenting away, a vessel of apple wine being converted into vinegar, and a couple of bottles of vinegar eels culturing away - all of which would probably require an hour of time all up which would be spread out over the course of 6 months, including the time it takes to harvest the worms for feeding the tank with.

So I bought a large vase that will be suitable as a shrimp tank the other day on semi-impulse and I'm hoping to turn it into a redoubt against the part of me that wants to give up and check out, without turning it into something that will put huge demands on me.

Maybe someday I'll be able to post a few pictures to show the progress I have made.

I strongly recommend following Artlust on these platforms if you're interested in art, history, and anthropology and where these intersect.

Artlust is really good on matters of gender and social analysis (think like examining and deconstructing beauty norms or gendered fashion trends). The linked video shows how they get very near to Marxian analysis and there's obviously Foucault being drawn upon too but in a very simple and relatable way.

If you're looking for a really interesting contribution to your feed, mostly through bite-sized videos, that range from just pure appreciation for art to discussions about stuff like how textile production took place in history, to the way that gender is represented in art, to trends over time in arts and crafts and what that can tell us about societies, and all sorts of other things then give them a follow.

Truly the US is the greatest country in the world and we are blessed to live in a rules-based order

Posting this here because idk where else to post it. For legal reasons, I'm not sure what Palestinian song this happens to be a mashup of but it's weird that they mention the name George in the lyrics - what kind of a Palestinian name is George anyway? I can't think of a single Palestinian named George lol.

Anyway this song no longer exists on the internet since the original creator removed it post-October 7th. I thought I'd put it somewhere for posterity before it vanishes from the internet forever cos it's already an endangered file. Enjoy!

🟥🎏🔝