so uh. hey. anyone autistic wondering why their trauma is affecting them so harshly despite thinking it wasn’t as severe as it could’ve been?? here’s your reassurance that you’re not overreacting, your Trauma Bank ™ just runs on overdrive.
Read the article; it does a decent job of explaining both the neuroscience and breaking the neuroscience down into an easier to, well, English.
It’s a good metaphor tho, because the situation is never going to get better if you don’t eventually pull the door. And afterwards, no matter what the damage was, you’ll have a working cabinet, whatever plates you could salvage, and a place to start putting new plates.
Reblogging for that comment ^
Hats off for negative jokes turned to wholesome posts
my mom taught me the therapeutic power of cleaning. open all the windows. throw out the old. wipe down the entire house. burn some incense. roast some coffee. then rest. that way the tears from last night don’t feel as heavy.
She just wanted you to clean the house
No it’s actually been studied and proven that for people with anxiety and depression that it’s really good for us it gives us a sense of control, setting, and being well grounded. It allows to make a new place out of the old and is really relaxing
It is such a catch-22, that cleaning when you are depressed (and likely less able to gather the executive functioning to do so) also alleviates it. After having a good clean, I always feel more in control and less stressed. It’s the getting started that is the hardest part. The good news is, even a tiny bit of cleaning has a positive effect, so start with what you can manage.
Even if you just clean up the immediate area around you, even if you clean a little at a time or spaced out over days, you’ll feel lighter.
This!!
Even if all you can do is put three dishes in the dishwasher, or move the dirty laundry pile to outside the laundry door, or throw out that box of leftovers that have been sitting in the fridge for 2 weeks
it counts.
My therapy professor always gets his patients to just wipe the bathroom mirror when they’re feeling that way. Just the mirror, nothing more. But then by the time his patients are done with the mirror, most of them report “well, I was already in the bathroom, so I did the sink and tub too.” And before they know it, they’ve cleaned an entire bathroom.
My therapist once told me that, every day, I should try and do at least one thing that I either enjoyed, or gave me a sense of mastery. And honestly, the enjoyment thing can kind of seem overrated, especially when you feel like crap, but the mastery thing? Doing laundry or taking out the trash or whatever else I can bring myself to accomplish?
Holy shit, man… it’s /good/
This stuff saved my ass back when I had depression. Vacuuming the room, spraying some febreze shit and wiping some countertops works wonders.
tiny baby steps are helpful
do what you can, forgive yourself for what you can’t, and challenge yourself to do better tomorrow (and it’s okay to fail at this; just try again the next tomorrow)
MAKE A LIST.
like, when things are not terrible. break it down into teeny tiny steps. as small as you need. as someone else said somewhere else on Tumblr: don’t worry if someone else thinks it’s ridiculous, this is between you and God.
and then next time everything is shit, you don’t have to think, you just have to follow directions.
Dealing with
executive dysfunction and ADHD becomes so much easier when you stop trying to
do things the way you feel like you should
be able to do them (like everyone else) and start finding ways that
actually work for you, no matter how “silly” or “unnecessary”
they seem.
For
years my floor was constantly covered in laundry. Clean laundry got
mixed in with dirty and I had to wash things twice, just making more
work for myself. Now I just have 3 laundry bins: dirty (wash it
later), clean (put it away later), and mystery (figure it out later).
Sure, theoretically I could sort my clothes into dirty or clean as
soon as I take them off and put them away straight
out of the dryer, but
realistically that’s never going to be a sustainable strategy for me.
How
many garbage bins do you need in a bedroom? One? WRONG! The correct
answer is one within arms reach at all times. Which for me is three.
Because am I really going to
get up to blow my nose when I’m hyperfocusing? NO. In
allergy season I even have
an empty kleenex box for “used
tissues I can use again.”
Kinda gross? Yeah. But less gross than a
snowy winter landscape of dusty germs on my
desk.
I
used to be late all the time
because I couldn’t find my house key. But it costs $2.50 and 3
minutes to copy a key, so now there’s one in my backpack, my purse,
my gym bag, my wallet, my desk, and hanging on my door. Problem
solved.
I’m
like a ninja for getting pout the door past reminder notes without noticing. If I really don’t want to forget something, I make a
physical barrier in front of my door. A
sticky note is a lot easier to walk past than a two foot high
cardboard box with my wallet on top of it.
Executive dysfunction is always going to cause challenges, but often half the struggle is trying to cope by pretending not to have executive dysfunction, instead of finding actual solutions.
i left cabinet doors open all my life and couldn’t make myself stop leaving them open until i figured out my subconscious just wants to know where everything is at a glance. i put labels on each cabinet door for what was behind the cabinet and after that i was a lot better at closing them.
showers are hard for me because they involve a lot of steps to get in and out. buying cleaning hand wipes helps me stay a lot cleaner and happier when i’m too tired or distracted to make myself be a normal person– they’re faster and involve way less prep time, decision making, and unpleasant physical sensations.
i have disordered eating because, again, getting food is complicated, much less cooking anything. buying 10-12$ of cliff bars at a go and keeping them in my room by my bed gives me a headstart on breakfast and lets me take my meds on time. otherwise i would lie in bed, not taking my meds because i had to eat, and not eating because i was too tired and nauseous from being hungry to get out of bed.
‘just try harder’ is not a solution. figuring out the actual problem and addressing it is the solution.
’normal’ isn’t the goal. you can’t be normal. it’s too late, but you know what, fuck normal. trying to be normal is going to kill you. ‘functional’ is the goal, and you can be functional. you can kick ass at functional. and that’s a lot better.
recovery is not ‘soon i will be untouched, perfect, and in a permanent state of bliss. i will be healed and all will be well, forever.’
recovery is ‘i will continue to survive despite what happens, i will find ways to cope instead of continually tearing myself down. i will recover and will see myself in a light that i never thought was possible.’
Reminded of this excerpt from Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children by Nancy J. Napier: “It also helps to remember that healing occurs in a spiral. We swing around again and again to the same old issues, but at different turns of the spiral. Each time we confront a similar feeling or reaction we have yet another opportunity to learn and to heal. Each time, we bring with us whatever new understanding we have gained since the last time we cycled through this particular difficulty.”
the line between not going out as an act of self-care and not going out as a symptom of depression is but a gossamer thread
how i tell the difference: i ask myself if i would like to be out by myself in the park, reading in the shade. if yes, then declining an invitation to be around people or handing off an errand run to someone else is self-care, because it’s a stressful activity i’m avoiding. i’m not self-isolating.
if reading under a tree doesn’t sound good, it’s anhedonia, and i need to make myself get up and move around to encourage my body to step up brain chemical production. so i make myself go for a short walk, and after about two blocks i’m usually feeling a lot less meh. i mean, not ‘all better’ or anything, but i no longer want to curl up like an ammonite and fossilize.
“If I really needed to, I could pretend to be okay, so obviously I’m just being melodramatic and selfish by not pretending to be okay, so you should feel free to ignore me.”
*ponders* A less mean-to-self translation might also be, “Nothing is actually about to fall apart, I’m just miserable, in emotional pain, and it hurts.”
Sometimes I feel like NT/mentally healthy people don’t realize that you can be in emotional agony and still going to survive the week just fine. It doesn’t mean things are actually “okay”, but you’re … fine. You can deal. Nobody needs to start panicking or anything.
A thought, anyway. >.>
Yeah. That too.
Also “I am deeply uncomfortable with Receiving Comfort” and “If you are upset then I will have to pretend to be okay so that I can make you be not-upset so please do not worry no really.” And probably some other stuff.
Hahahahah yes fair there is also the “I am not really okay but I am also one hundred fucking percent not up to dealing with YOUR FEELINGS about me not being okay so please stop.”
Lately I’ve taken to answering “How are you” or “How’s it going” with “Well, I’m upright and moving” or “Hasn’t stopped yet.” It makes people just uncomfortable to not ask questions but it’s also joking enough that they don’t feel like they have to ask if there’s anything they can do.
Yeah often my answer when I’m badly off is “well I’m not dead yet!” in a very cheerful tone of voice. >.>
I don’t even remember putting that thing down but now it’s not in my hand and I don’t know where it went
‘what do you mean you can just think about nothing? what’s that like? I don’t understand’
*tuning out of a conversation halfway through somebody else’s sentence because I just thought of something interesting*
carrying my psychiatrist’s business card with me at all times because I see her once a month and every time I go I forget what floor her office is on. I’ve been there 8 times
‘Between A & B, A would be the right thing to do’ *a cascading thought process that takes a few seconds tops, justifying option B* ‘actually B would be the right thing to do’
somebody else, later: why did you think B was the right thing to do??
me: …. it’s not important, I’ll know better next time
(spoiler: I won’t know better next time)
I know you already told me this thing like 12 times but can you tell me again just one more time because I forgot
it’s not that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do this thing. it’s just that in that particular moment i thought it was okay to do it anyway for reasons that would take 48 minutes to explain even though it only took me 3 seconds to justify it in my thoughts, so it’s easier for me to just say ‘I forgot’
‘I already told you that’ ‘really? I must have forgotten, i’m sorry’ ‘it was FIVE MINUTES AGO. in this SAME CONVERSATION’
this internal conversation:
me: I feel motivated to do this responsible thing
me: if I don’t do this responsible thing right now I will get distracted and forget to do it for another 5 hours
me: so I should do this thing right this second, there is nothing stopping me
me: after I finish this one cell phone game
me, 5 hours later: I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
almost flunking a class because I straight up didn’t know any homework had been assigned despite loving the class and always attending
trusting the memory of literally anyone else over my own memory
intending to do something for days. sometimes months. never doing it
*cuddling somebody* mm this is nice … *2 seconds later* bored now
somebody is mad at me. I might as well fucking d i e
the options in company are: overshare about the one thing I care about or not talk at all
insensitive or inattentive? YOU decide (and when you tell me that i hurt your feelings and I didn’t notice I’ll rejection sensitive dysphoria into fantasies of disappearing forever)
being excellent at my job for months on end, doing everything right and everything well, and then suddenly & without explanation being t h e w o r s t at it for several weeks, making dumb mistakes everywhere for no discernible reason
when asked to explain something: well it all started when I was a baby
‘they don’t need that much explanation’ well YOU tell ME where to start b/c I have no fucking clue tbh
i can’t throw away anything b/c when I look at it I remember all the sentimental reasons I keep it around and they seem just as important as actually needing it and when I close the storage box back up I forget I had it in the first place until the next time I try to get rid of my clutter and repeat this process
i wasnt’ idle for a second all day and yet I didn’t accomplish a n y t h i n g
am i a speed-reader or was I so impatient for what came next that I read only half a page and then skipped to the next one?
getting excited about a project, starting it, then racing to finish it as fast as I can because when I get bored I’ll abandon it and never go back. must beat the boredom
edit my fics? working twice on the same idea? /uproarious laughter
well I fucked that up. too bad I can never rework it because I no longer have passionate energy for it
me, opening a bottle of adhd meds: I don’t have adhd. I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t try hard enough
Kimchi and Justice 