Neurodivergent cocktail

She/her, they/them Blog for my neurodivergence and physical ailments Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD (Official diagnosis), textbook Dyscaliculia (probably never gonna go to the effort of being diagnosed though)

[dognoselover]

im calling myself out on this one

[adhdcognizant-deactivated202110]

👁👄👁

[dyslexic-dyspraxic]

I mean it's accurate

[borderlinereminders]

I’ve posted a lot about how it’s okay to put yourself first. It’s okay to have boundaries. It’s okay to say no, even when someone is disappointed by that.

And I stand by all of that.

But I also want to talk about the middle ground, because especially with BPD and our tendency towards black-and-white thinking, I think sometimes we can take good advice and turn it into an absolute.

“You’re allowed to put yourself first” doesn’t have to become “I should always put myself first.”

“You’re allowed to say no” doesn’t mean you should never choose to say yes even when saying yes costs you something.

“You don’t have to sacrifice yourself for other people” doesn’t mean healthy relationships never involve sacrifice.

Sometimes we inconvenience ourselves for people we love. Sometimes we take on a little extra emotional labour. Sometimes we give more because the other person doesn’t have much to give right now. Sometimes we do something we really don’t feel like doing because it matters to someone we care about.

The important distinction is that this shouldn’t always be one-sided. You shouldn’t have to constantly abandon your own needs to keep a relationship. You are still allowed to have limits. You are still allowed to say, “I can’t do that today.”

But there is a lot of space between sacrificing yourself for someone and never sacrificing anything for them.

And there’s another side to this that I think is just as important: sometimes the people who love you will inconvenience themselves for you.

Sometimes supporting you will take effort. Sometimes you’ll need more than you can give back. Sometimes someone will rearrange their plans, listen when they’re tired, pick up some of your slack, or do something they wouldn’t otherwise choose to do because you need them.

That doesn’t automatically mean you’ve done something wrong.

Healthy relationships aren’t built by two people making sure they never cost each other anything. They’re built by people caring for each other while still being allowed to have boundaries.

Sometimes love is inconvenient.

Sometimes you’ll be the one inconvenienced. Sometimes you’ll be doing the inconveniencing.

The goal isn’t to never inconvenience ourselves for others. It’s to be able to choose when we do.

[king-the-pathetic]

The thing about being autistic with low support needs is that non autistic folks can't tell that you're autistic but they know that something is Wrong with you.

This makes them uncomfortable. And they don't know how to deal with that feeling so surely you must be punished

[totally-cis-offical]

Wait that explains everything so so much

[rainbow-demoness]

And since we don't face direct punishment for missing positive social cues like we do for negative ones, our coping skills and compensatory hypervigilance don't develop the same way. So we go through a world of never recognising positive signals, sometimes spotting negative signals, and knowing for sure there's more negative signals we're still missing, because those keep blowing up in our face.

Kind of fucked tbh.

[friedmagnolialeaves]

[atlas-eye]

"Obligation [kills] enthusiasm. ... curiosity collapsed under the weight of [duty.] ... autonomy fuels motivation, [and] the moment something becomes compulsory, it starts to feel like work.

[But] almost nothing in life is truly mandatory, only consequential. Freedom [means] recognizing that you're always choosing, and that every choice carries a cost."

[pinkrabbitsbythenational]

(for people who don’t know kathleen stock is an infamous British terf who triggered a whole “free speech” university row over her views)

this is what people mean when they say that transphobia and ableism are interlinked. because *of course* the same person who refuses to believe people when they assert their gender also refuses to believe them when they assert a disability. because who knows their bodies better than a random british upper-class white woman!

and at the end of the day it really boils down to this vindictive need to police and bully strangers because 1. why do you care about someone saying they’re a woman, dressing like a woman etc. and 2. why do you care about someone using a walking stick if they don’t 100% need it? the answer is, neither of those things affect your life, and you shouldn’t.

[anarchopuppy]

golly its almost like there was some kind of virus going around recently that gave a bunch of people lifelong disabilities. does anyone remember anything like that?

[pride-knightess]

no.

brainfog.

[kosmogrl]

[partywithponies]

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

[partywithponies]

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

[fairycosmos]

no one is coming to save you its true its true someone might be coming to hang outttttttttt though. someday

[lifepro-tips]

If your SO can't make a decision about where to eat, play the 5-2-1 game. You give them 5 restaurants, they pick two, and you pick from those.

My gf of 3 years is the queen of “wherever” and “I don’t care” when it comes to this. This little game fixed our problem immediately. It takes the pressure off of her, but still gives her a choice about where to eat.

(this can also work with kids and indecisive friends)

[charlesoberonn]

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

[charlesoberonn]

To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.

They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.

[charlesoberonn]

The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

It’s more nuanced than “cult” or “not cult” and doesn’t make false equivalences between groups

It’s versatile, applying to groups big and small, and cults of all kinds, religious, political, financial, etc.

It focuses on what’s important, which is what the cult does to its members, and those members’ experiences, and not on irrelevant details like how uncommon their doctrines are or whether they have a charismatic leader

[charlesoberonn]

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

#you might notice that there are a lot of similarities between cult techniques and those of abusive partners#and that is an important thing to be aware of

yah that goes in the post

[charlesoberonn]

The creator of the BITE Model considers abusive relationships to be two-person cults.

[forgotn1]

It’s important to note that almost every sect of evangelical christianity in the US today fails the BITE Model.

[alp-crispy]

This was the post that lead to breaking my JW mindset. Been a while since I seen it.

[charlesoberonn]

I’m glad I could help in your deconstruction, if only a little bit. I wish you all the luck in your journey moving forward.

[tuulikki]

And to highlight a key aspect of the “two-person cult” dynamic:

Not all high-control groups are religious. Secular cults exist.

I’d strongly recommend reading this brief bio of Janja Lalich. She’s a deprogramming therapist, but she’s also a cult survivor from a political cult.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

high control groups can also form in friend groups and online! any social group can theoretically be a high control enviroment that’s abusive. any group can be a cult if someone uses that group to control and abuse others.

[derangedrhythms]

Natalie Haynes, from 'Stone Blind'

[animentality]

[wheelie-sick]

for the lovely lovely deafies out there who want to get involved in direct action you absolutely 100% cannot ever bring a hearing aid or cochlear implant with bluetooth to any direct action. bluetooth devices all carry a unique signal that can be used to identify you if it's picked up at a direct action. go with a [more] hearing buddy and communicate in sign language. if you don't mutually know a sign language then come up with gestures. do not risk your freedom because you want to have your hearing aid/cochlear implant at the action. it's not worth it.

[wheelie-sick]

flock cameras are also now tracking bluetooth device signatures when you pass them. if you drive past a flock camera with your bluetooth-enabled hearing aid or cochlear implant, the flock camera knows you passed through

[thewolfwaitsbelow]

Wait I just realized this is gonna apply to all cgms and most if not all insulin pumps. They’re all Bluetooth devices, it’s essential to how they work

[ailithnight]

I did not think it possible, but I have just developed even more hatred, derision, and contempt for the perpetual surveillance state.

[leebrontide]

This kind of shit is why my writing is about disability AND surveillance. This is the newest way disability is being used to surveil and target people, but the trend has been around for a lot longer than any of us.

[leebrontide]

Wait actually can someone source this for me? I’ve got a presentation coming up that I would really like to include this in.

[wheelie-sick]

it's called SignalTrace

404 media has a paywalled article about it

[angelfeed]

Bypass paywall

[moveslikekeithrichards]

trying to calculate which part of your godforsaken body you should aim to preserve while choosing a sleeping position on any given night

[deanwinchesterapologist]

its always the beginning of the rest of your life so you basically dont even have to worry about anything because literally every second is alive with fresh potential. shouldnt we be celebrating this every day shouldnt we be skipping in the streets

[introvertsnation]

If you know you know @introvertsnation

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