Neuropsychology Shenanigans

While this is my first and therefore "main" account, I am most active on the following side blogs: @geminiacal-phoenyx and @love-bliss-alchemy 💖 If you're following me here, you may wanna go follow me there also.

[geminiacal-phoenyx]

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

[babyanimalgifs]

Love transcends barriers 🥰

(Source)

[sm-baby]

you heard him

[neuro-nyx]

Boop!

Apparently there's no escaping the boops even if i don't opt in 😂

[inside-my-gay-mind]

[relatablememestuff]

[underwhelmingalchemist]

*mom voice* You can get these words back when you know what they mean

[avpdvoidspace]

Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.

[savouryduck]

when I was in high school, I overheard two older students talking about a friend of theirs.

One of them said something like, "it doesn't bother me that [Friend] was in residential mental health treatment, I just wish they wouldn't talk about it ALL the time".

The other replied, "Well, that was all of last year for them. So when they say 'when I was in treatment,' it's like when you say 'last year'."

I try to remember that any time someone says something that sounds Shocking to me. sometimes one person's scary special crisis is another person's last year.

[kushblazer666]

[eldritchbauble]

It's wild to me that people treat addiction like it's the addict's fault for having a weak character or something, and on the other side of it we have "addiction is a disease," which is an objectively better model of thinking but it's still treating addiction like it is in and of itself the problem.

Addiction isn't a disease, it's a treatment.

I'm not an addict because I came down sick with a hankering for substances, because they're fun. I was traumatized and then dropped into a society that makes survival extremely hostile. The substances are a pillow and blanket. They're a warm mug and being held tightly by a friend. They're an invitation to a seat by the fire when the storm is raging outside the doorstep.

Addicts aren't sick with addiction, we're sick with so much chronic stress and pain that we're crumbling under the weight. Many of us since we were children with no tools for coping.

It might not be healthy, it might not be safe, and in fact addiction is by definition destructive. But it's also an attempt to keep pressure on the wound. The addiction is treatment for sickness.

[eldritchbauble]

I'm not sorry for wanting to feel alive when everything around me feels like a dying world.

[solidwater05]

Apparently this needs to be said so

Forgetting things is morally neutral! Memory issues are morally neutral!

You're not a bad person if you...

forget things quickly

forget people

can't remember entire stages of your life

can't remember important things

can remember some things very well and forget other things all the time

can't remember things (or anything!) about your interests

forget to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, etc

forget to reply to texts

remember things and immediately forget them again

can't remember birthdays, events, etc

frequently answer 'I forgot' to questions

can't retain new information

forget things you used to know

only remember things when it's too late

have vague, distorted and/or unreliable memories

depend on others to know how an event you were in played out

have other symptoms that are worsened by memory issues and vice versa

... and anything else I might have missed!

[whitepeopletwitter]

[eldritchbauble]

A lot clicked for me when my mom said the reason she was so reactive towards me as a kid was that she assumed intent behind things I did, rather than recognizing my behaviors for being normal kid behaviors or normal autism behaviors. So I got treated as if I was an adult who was intentionally doing things to upset her. She'd react to me like I had the maturity and wherewithal to do things in a cruel or manipulative way, making her life harder, when I was just existing. Just trying to learn how to cope and be a person myself. When she told me this I stopped in my tracks trying to process. Why would anyone's default assumption be that a kid is trying to antagonize them instead of like, struggling with something they're experiencing? But she was also raised the exact same way, treated like everything she did carried the weight of adult responsibility, not seen as a kid.

[assaultsofthought]

As a child therapist who focuses on audhd kids THIS!! So often parents put intent behind kids actions when it’s just “kid trying to feel safe and comfortable”. babies are not trying to “manipulate “ you, kids and teens are just pushing back to figure out the boundaries of their world, if a kid doesn’t like something don’t force it on them. Stop expecting better emotional regulation from your child than you’ve ever shown them.

[eldritchbauble]

Stop expecting better emotional regulation from your child than you've ever shown them.

[inkskinned]

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this 7 years ago, somehow. every day someone else finds it and whispers to me - oh, i understand this. something always turns in the wash of my stomach: i am so, so glad you feel seen. i wish you had no idea what this post was about.

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

and when the train is coming - please move.

[eldritchbauble]

Okay cool! So it's wild learning about your own issues. for the longest time I never knew blanking out for most of the day wasn't normal, let alone a sign for things. I always thought using anchors (forcing myself to remember what I ate, or if I left the house at all) is how people kept a chronological memory of the day/week. Amnesia and dissociation is such a corner stone of so many disorders that finding the one that may be causing it feels like a fruitless search, but the search continues nonetheless. So many things go unnoticed until you star discussing it with others don't you think?

All of that yes and a lot of it is that dissociation covers its ass.

[art-of-mathematics]

Book source: Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson

[inked-up-gentleman]

Apple Cider >>>>> Pumpkin Spice

[longingforlovely]

Hear me out: Chai >>>>>> Apple Cider >>>>> Pumpkin Spice

[inked-up-gentleman]

If it's the same Chai I had in Afghanistan, absolutely.

[neuro-nyx]

Okay but

Masala Chai Spice = Apple Cider/Pie Spice = Pumkin Spice = Peach Cobbler Spice = cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, clove, cardamom, anise, black pepper, etc just applied in different mediums