Please take kids seriously they are actually people. sentient intelligent beings believe it or not. they know when they’re being blatantly lied to.
They might not understand it, but they know when grownups are being shady.
They know.
Please stop acting like it’s inconsequential if you lie to them or ignore them or dismiss their thoughts and feelings. It’s not. It stays with them forever.
So today I woke up and promptly remembered that hey, didn't I have jury duty at some point this month...? I went downstairs and checked the summons postcard and sure enough, I did.
Last week!
Now, this isn't me confessing a criminal misdemeanor, because I was excused, actually. Luck was on my side (and so was the Wayback Machine, which is how I had to check). No failure to appear, no foul.
The thing I'm actually proud of is that I didn't freak out about it. See, when you've got a lifetime of internalized ADHD shame, the typical reaction to realizing that You Forgot Something, Again, goes like this:
Panic so much. You're going to be In Trouble. Nothing can possibly be worse than being In Trouble. This is a category 5 emergency.
Self-flagellate as hard as humanly possible. What kind of useless sack of unreliable shit, accidentally mislabeled as a human being, could have fucked this up so badly? This is just like everything else in your life. Nothing you do is ever right no matter how hard you try. What's even the point? You're an eternal fuckup. Might as well just accept it.
Existential crisis spiral until you can't even remember what the real problem is. The problem is just you. The problem has always been you. Why are you like this?
Eat an entire thing of Oreos, or whatever your self-destructive self-soothing behavior of choice is. Do you feel better? Not really. You stopped hyperventilating at least, so it'll have to be close enough.
Actually deal with the real problem, if it's even a problem. It probably wasn't. Now you just feel stupid for getting so worked up about it.
Completely fail to realize that you punishing the hell out of yourself in steps 2-4 is just reinforcing your panic response and making you less capable of coping in the future, because you've had it beaten into your head that forgetting things, a normal and reasonable human error, is Simply Not Acceptable, even if it's ultimately pretty harmless. But hey, if you kick your own ass about it harder than anybody else would or even could, then you've personally made sure you have control over the severity of the punishment, right?
Right?
Does that sound like a trauma response? Well, it should, because it is. Many people with ADHD have this same trauma response, because having a brain that doesn't work like everyone else's in a world that is not just not built to accommodate that, but in fact is built to convince you that this is a personal, moral, and unforgivable failure is actually pretty traumatic.
That's verbatim how I've lived most of my life. Don't ask me how the hell I got this far carrying on like that, because I don't even know. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger gives you a goddamn complex. But I've been working on it over the past I don't even know how many years, and today, my response was more like this:
Oh shit jury duty was a week ago. Well, now I just feel silly.
Uhh...let's figure out the worst possible outcome. Jail time? Seems highly unlikely for a first time misdemeanor. Possibly a fine, but probably a warning.
Let's look up what actually happens to people in my county who miss their jury duty. They get sent a second summons. That's very reasonable and not at all a real problem if it happens.
Let's find out if I was even summoned to appear. If not, it isn't even a problem. Mention it to my partner at this point. They say 'yeah, I forgot I had jury duty once. I looked up whether or not I was summoned on the Wayback Machine. You told me to not worry about it either way because people honestly forget all the time, and it's a fixable problem whatever happens.'
Realize they are right (and that I forgot this happened until they mentioned it because it was such a non-issue), and I should take the advice I give and treat myself like somebody I care about. I reassure myself that it's not a big deal and people do it all the time and nobody's doing to be personally affronted, and a sincere apology goes a very long way even with a cranky judge if it comes to that. I check the Wayback Machine.
I was excused anyway, so no big deal in the end. I now have a funny story to tell, and I'll probably remember better in the future as a result. Realize that even if it had gone worse, it still would have ended up a funny story later. Yeah, even if they inexplicably threw me in jail for a night. That sure would never get old retelling.
Have a shower and get on with my day.
Gold star for me, I completely didn't even realize that I was de-catastrophizing so well until after the fact. Like I've got it down to a reflex now. I am legitimately just a much calmer person than I used to be. Feels pretty alright! I could get used to this not kicking the absolute mental health out of myself every time something goes slightly wrong. Highly recommend being nice to yourself actually, 10/10 experience.
Anyway that's me tooting my own horn. I feel very emotionally stable and pretty good about that fact. It's been a fucking journey.
One incredibly important lesson to learn, especially when you have adhd or autism or generally any neurodivergence that makes your perception of the world different from the average/neurotypical person
is to learn that other people can also just be flat out wrong.
Because when you're a child, you're taught stuff that doesn't make sense to you, but that other people always keep insisting are true, or someone pushes on opinion onto you as a fact and you're too young to really get what's going on, so you have no choice but to just accept it.
And long story short, this leads to you, the neurodivergent child, learning that "you're always wrong", ranging from "what are you talking about, the fridge doesn't make any sound" to "your words are always malicious, no matter how might've meant them, and no, you don't get to explain yourself. Apologize, now!"
This leads you to the conclusion that you're the stupid one who just can't see what others percieve so effortlessly, which makes you feel like you're going through life completely blind while everyone else who isn't you gets to have a telescope.
Of course, this isn't to say that you're never wrong. No one is infallible.
But the times that you ARE wrong will be taken as proof that you're ALWAYS wrong, and then you get stamped with the "stupid" label and no one in your life will bother explaining anything to you ever again. Questions from you will be met with annoyed sighs and words of "just shut up and do it like i told you", because getting it over with is of a higher priority than you actually understanding the why and how.
And then, when you mess up because you didn't understand the instructions, and no one answered your questions, you're met with "well if you didn't get it, why didn't you just ask???" and more often than not, you'll stay quiet, because even though you did ask, multiple times, any attempt at explaining yourself and your own point of view was always met with more yelling and punishment and never a second chance on anything. You messed up once, so now you don't get to try again, because that's easier than just meeting you and your own level and explaining things that way.
And it leaves you with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. As this happens over and over as you grow up, you internalize this and start to believe that you're the problem child who can never do right, because on the occasions that you do get something right for once, your success is met with "finally, see it isn't so hard, why can't you do this all the time?"
More disappointment, more anger.
You grow hesitant to try new things, because you're just gonna mess up anything and you don't get to have a second chance. You never get to just try again like other people do. Other people get to have priviledges like the benefit of the doubt and the understanding that no one is perfect.
You do not.
You do not get to have the benefit of the doubt. Anything you say is taken by its worst possible meaning, and any attempt at explaining yourself is taken as deliberate manipulation. "Not only are you rude and inconsiderate, you're also evil and think that your actions should never have consequences for you! Well guess what, for that, I'm gonna punish you extra hard, much harder than I would punish anyone else, because you're evil and you deserve it!"
You grow up angry.
Angry at the world, that was supposed to accept you, but didn't.
Angry at the adults, who were supposed to guide you, but didn't.
Angry at your peers, who were supposed to understand you, but didn't.
You grow up seeing and hearing stories, of people like you, who were cast out of and hurt by their own societies, and who found other people like themselves, who accepted, guided, and understood them.
You hope that you find your own place in the world like they did.
But you never do.
No one accepts you.
No one wants to guide you.
No one understands you.
You don't understand why. What did you do wrong? No one will explain it to you. The only reasons you ever hear are "you're inconsiderate", "you're mean", "you're weird".
Too young to know any better, you try your best to chance then.
You try to be considerate. You try to be nicer. You try to be less weird.
But it's not working.
People still don't like you. Even the few friends you've managed to gather make it clear that they're tolerating you at best, and when you ask them why, they don't hesitate to tear you down.
You never like the right things.
You always say the wrong things.
You're no fun.
You're weird.
You're wrong.
You're misshapen.
You don't fit.
No one wants to hang out with you. You're alone most the time. You miss out on the supposedly oh so important human connections.
You used to crave human connection.
You've tried over and over and over. But you've been denied each and every time, most often with a slap on the hand to make sure you stay gone.
You don't crave human connection anymore.
You don't want friends.
You don't want anyone.
You're fine on your own.
Other people have only ever hurt you, anyway.
You stop trying to be nice.
You stop trying to be considerate.
You stop trying to be normal.
Why should you try? You only ever get hurt, regardless.
People don't like you. They never have.
So you don't like them either now.
Sometimes, people do come near you and seem to be nice.
But you know better now.
You've learned, over and over...
...people are never nice to you.
You don't want to be hurt anymore, so you do the hurting instead. You're mean. You're inconsiderate. You're weird. Why not? After all, everyone has always said you are those things. There's no point in trying to prove them wrong. They've never liked you anyway, and you're done trying to get them to like you.
You can't be liked.
They've made that clear many times.
They've rejected you over and over.
"You're not one of us!"
You're never one of them.
You wonder if you're even human.
Humans are supposed to care for one another.
But no one has ever cared for you.
You can't be human then. You must be something else. Something unique. Something bad. You know you're not good, after all.
You're a monster.
You might as well be.
You don't care anymore.
You're alone either way.
But you're not sad. Not usually, anyway.
It's strangely freeing, actually. You don't have to be nice or considerate or normal anymore. Those are human things.
But you're not human. It doesn't matter.
You like the things you like, and do things the way you do, on your own, where no one can tell you that you're liking or doing things wrong. You're happy, maybe for the first time in your entire life.
You realize it now. You've always been happiest when you were alone. Trying to reach out to people was a mistake. Always has been.
You grow and you don't bother reaching out to other people anymore. You avoid human connection like the plague, because to you, it might as well be.
No one cares about you anyway.
They never have.
They never bothered explaining things to you to help you navigate the world, after all.
They never bothered giving you second chances and letting you learn how to do things at your own pace, after all.
That would've been too hard for them. Too annoying for them.
And you were never important enough to bother with anyway.
To my fellow ADHD and Neuro-spicy mutuals; I hope you can relate...
So this next chapter I am writing got me hard today. Mostly because of the trauma that was learning as an undiagnosed child and the strain that it has on people. I didn't realize until recently, I basically made Rhemi a somewhat mirrored version of myself, a girl with ADHD living in a world made for the neurotypical (specifically Charlés). Writing her backstory and her obstacles has been liberating yet gut-retching at the same time. Not only having people question your intelligence and your capabilities for so long and while you quietly suffer wondering what is wrong for you. But having someone like Athena/Phara come into her life still at a young age to teach her and help her build back the confidence that was shattered by people who don't understand or don't care about how you learn. To know that she had someone she was safe emotionally, physically, and intellectually is what she needed. I just wish I had that as a child.
Now if you excuse me... Imma gonna go cry for an hour.
To say this is a touchy topic for me is the world's biggest understatement. I have massive trauma issues because of people accusing me of meaning something that isn't even close to what I wrote/said.
I've had people tell me, the person who wrote the thing, that I mean the exact opposite of what I communicated. Shouldn't I, the person who wrote the thing, know best what I mean? It's infantilizing and gross. It's beyond disrespectful. It's ableist.
NT people loooove to pin communication problems on Autistic & ADHD people. And frankly? We're the only ones who communicate clearly. I can always tell if someone I'm talking to is NT or not by how they react to things I say, especially if there's been a misunderstanding. An autistic or ADHD person will usually want clarification, they won't usually get upset, they just want to know how it happened and whether they can avoid doing it in the future. Because, by and large, we're hard wired to avoid hurting people. Most of us really hate it even if we cause accidental harm. Then once we've talked about it, they're happy to apologize and move on. NTs start by slinging accusations, usually from the get go, and it gets worse from there.
Using accusatory language with someone you disagree with is shitty behavior, people. Do better.
Autistic & ADHD people are always accused of all sorts of nasty things by people who assume things about our words. I'm so beyond sick of it that I'm not going to show any grace or understanding about it anymore.
We're around 1/20 people now. That's 1 autistic or ADHD or combo to every neurotypical person. It's long past time for NTs to learn how to communicate with us.
What will NTs do when they're in the minority and all the rest of the world communicates in ways that are logical and based on facts? When they're the ones who are socially penalized for how they communicate? I doubt they'll do any better with it than we do.
It's one of the worst things NTs do to us. And to be fair, many baby/unhatched NDs do it too, because they mistakenly think that they'll be accepted if they pretend hard enough. They won't be, but they haven't come to understand that yet. So they harm other NDs to gain faux acceptance. And it's a daily experience.
Autistic & ADHD people, generally, are very careful about the words we use. To make sure that what we're communicating is what we mean, and only what we mean. Your insecurities and issues are yours! You need to deal with it! Not push the blame for whatever you're experiencing because of our words onto us!
Our pathological caution is a trauma response from people misunderstanding, assuming, and filling in things that do not exist in things we say for most of our lives.
If you're talking to an autistic or ADHD person, the words written are exactly what they mean. There's no hidden meaning, there's no accusation, it's just the fucking words on the page/screen. That's it.
If you read anything further into it, that's completely on you, not the autistic or ADHD person. That underhanded method of communication is strictly an NT thing. It's shit communication.
Communication rule 1. Don't assume.
Rule 2. Listen without planning your response.
Rule 3. Think about what you mean before you say it.
I learned those as part of therapy, and whoo boy do NT people really need to learn them. There're more, but that's not the point of this post.
If I've written something, it is well researched, has all of my ridiculous amount of education behind it, and it's my thoughts, my opinion, on my blog. It should be taken that way. I have had far more than enough of people accusing me of saying or meaning things I have not said. Don't like something I say? Feel free to block me. Especially on tumblr. This is my space. I'm not sugar coating or softening what I say here at all. This is as unfiltered as I get. And I like it that way. You don't? There's the door, don't let it hit you on the way out.
It really makes me question peoples reading comprehension. Most people seem to have the reading comprehension of a carrot. Which is probably an unfair comparison for the carrot. If it were just a communication issue, whatever, but it’s not.
Do you have any idea of the cost Autistic & ADHD people pay? To be so careful and worried about our language usage? Imagine having to weigh every single word you ever say or write. Imagine having to twist and turn every single word, then every sentence, then every paragraph to try to see how someone could misinterprete it. Imagine living in traumatized fear of being misunderstood, again. Even if we're not harassed off social media or summarily rejected from social groups, most of us have this trauma long before we leave elementary school. And it's cumulative.
It's fact that most of us die before we're 36. I'm 46, almost 47. I'm past my expiration date. I'm fed the fuck up with shitty communication. I'm old, and cranky, and I've had it.
This isn't a light issue. It's life threatening. You are killing us with your assumptions. Stop. It.
Thinking abt how fucked up it was to be diagnosed with adhd in third grade but still spent nearly all 5 years of elementary school consistantly placed in the torture chamber that was this tiny white "remove all distractions" room tgat I got placed in when i was behind on work
Where i was sat in a tiny blank room, with blank white walls and no windows, in a blank white cubby-desk, and there was enough space in that room to fit two desks in and a printer between them. I was only allowed to leave when i finished all of my work.
Which never happened, because I was sick often as a kid(and shut down just as often when overwhelmed in class) and so i'd come back to this awful cubby every week after 1-3 days of being sick, missing class and struggling even more with socializing, stuck with piles of work to do that just made me so stressed i'd get sick again
And i'd spend all day there, usually. I had to eat lunch there, wasnt allowed to get up or move about for recess. It was supposed to be a neutral environment for kids to catch up in and the lack of distractions helped incentivize neurotypical kids to get their work done and get out
But as anyone with adhd would know, this was likely terramount to the reason i was constantly put there. It didnt help me think, it made me want to do anything but work.
I hated it, it made me, a 3rd grader, often wonder "what was wrong with me?" I was constantly on the edge of tears when talking to adults. I didnt have many friends. I couldnt do many of the fun events as time went on because they were a privilege.
It fucked me up in so many ways that i cant even begin to explain.
I can only fucking hope they dont do that to kids anymore.
Being a kid with undiagnosed ADHD was traumatic in its own way.
For context, my elementary school told my parents that I most likely had ADHD when I was 4. They just also gave misinformation and said that it can't be diagnosed until I was at least 7. So the adults around me knew, but I didn't. I didn't see a psychiatrist about it until I was 8, and by then my self esteem and view of my intelligence was non existent.
Mainly because I was obviously different, everything was incredibly difficult for me, but I didn't have an explanation. I would break down crying in frustration over homework assignments and was only met with more push to do them. My dad got frustrated constantly while studying with me. My other caregivers let it slip more than once that they thought it was too easy to not get.
And on top of taking over an hour for school given homework assignments, my babysitter would print out more worksheets to make sure I understood the material better. Children that age shouldn't spend over 20 minutes doing homework, all I wanted to do was go play like my little sister. On top of that they got me a tutor for the weekends that would be there for an hour.
"A little extra help" was never how I saw it as a kid, I saw it as punishment. I learned to hate myself for something that I couldn't control no matter how hard I tried. I was over exerted in kindergarten to the point of crying so many times and it kept going on like that until I was finally medicated.
And the only aids for developmental disorders at my school came in the form of an extra teacher who would hover around the kids or be put in completely separate classrooms. The abled kids were never given a proper explanation by the adults, so when a bunch of small children are learning social cues to an extreme level, those kids are immediately isolated. There was no extra time for assignments or easier assignments. So I never got any help that I needed even while on medication.
When you're a kid that's constantly bad at school, feeling like you'll never know anything sticks with you. And while I had trouble making friends and fitting in with my peers, the biggest struggle in public school as a child was the constant disappointment from parents and teachers as I pushed myself until I had a breakdown.
I still can never say with confidence that I'm smart. I hear it as a compliment and just don't believe it. When I mess something up because of ADHD symptoms that other people notice and I'm teased for it At All (I'm usually fine with getting teased for anything else) I'll fall into complete self hatred.
I've been working on it for years and I just hate that I was ever treated that way as a kid. I wish society allowed neurodivergent kids to be kids and didn't try to break them into something they can't be.
