#headcase solidarity

[ritavonbees]

told my therapist about the good grade in therapy meme. he said it's actually very normal to want

[ritavonbees]

you too can remove the black hole from your chest by talking about it while experiencing a grounding physical sensation

[ritavonbees]

psychologically defenestrated by the realisation that when people talk about how you should only have 3/5/10/whatever tasks on your to do list they are EXCLUDING "ROUTINE" TASKS and i have just been doing to do lists incorrectly my entire life #ThanksADHD

[ritavonbees]

i just tried out an Emotional Acceptance Meditation and it was like "when you're feeling a strong emotion, the first step is to lie down" and i was like whoah, big mood buddy

[ritavonbees]

the empath in fantasy and science fiction receives accurate information about the emotions of people around them, just as the telepath accesses true, unmediated information about others' thoughts. The fantasy of pure understanding has strong appeal for those of us who have struggled with communication, miscommunication and its consequences. (I wonder how much crossover there is with the group of people who find misunderstanding-based comedies of errors too cringe.) you can still put misunderstanding in empath/telepath stories, of course, because this information is fractal - it isn't fully knowable because there's no hard line between feeling, thought, memory, bodily sensation, relationships, context. but in real life you have to rely on secondary sources about that data, which adds infinitely more complexity. you can see how it would be nice to just know something instead of trying to hold, like, a Bayesian probability graph in your head to represent someone else's opinion and expected behaviour.

the fear hand in hand with the fantasy, though - that's a different order of thing, isn't it? the empath/telepath overwhelmed by the interiority of others, who needs to put the work in to raise mental walls, who isn't sure where they end and others begin, that's much closer to the bone.

because you don't need magically accurate information to be overwhelmed, to muddy your identification, to exhaust yourself constantly interpreting - you can do that already. if your brain is constantly generating guesses about what other people are thinking or feeling, it can burn glucose til the cows come home processing its own guesses and having feelings about them.

a long time ago my teacher told me poetry isn't a visual medium but that's not what the poets say. when I've got the cognitive fatigue real bad I flinch away from signs. reading burns energy like breathing. I've got no filter between eyes and mind, I'm interpreting signals before I've had a chance to decide if I want to. by contrast, I sometimes need to hear a sentence two or three times to bring meaning out of sounds. that's energy too, of course - sometimes more energy, because I've got to rotate the thing in short term memory until it clicks, or ask you to repeat yourself and then explain that no, not louder, just again. but sometimes I choose to let it slide, and I've never managed to look at something without trying to read it.

when I'm hyperfocused, I think my brain hits pause on those processes - not seeing, not hearing, although the light and sound are coming in just fine. they just aren't leaving marks. that's how I can hide from the world in a game or a story. but I can't just flip the switch inside my head because I'm tired and not today Satan the whole alphabet while I'm walking through the city - if I don't want to pour myself into the written word indiscriminately I've got to take my phone out or my glasses off and risk walking into things.

interpreting social signals is a kind of reading too, and a much more difficult one for me, more energy intensive. can't switch that one off either, although it is much easier to distract me from it when there's something else to think about. can neurodivergent people without ADHD regulate their attention more effectively? choose not to interpret something to conserve energy?

the funny thing about all those people calling themselves "empaths" in real life - that was a thing for a while, wasn't it? the funny thing was them insisting their interpretations of other people's feelings were true and real just like in the stories. I imagine some people do have a higher accuracy rate than others in certain contexts and communities, but we are all guessing. there's a reason the psychologists talk about "mind-reading" as a cognitive trap. the call is coming from inside the house.

and yet it's not a weird thing to want. this is how we're wired. other people's thoughts and feelings have a material effect on our lives. Maybe we can't stop guessing, but we can choose what we do about our guesses, can't we?

[ritavonbees]

Thinking about the theory that RSD is actually just another way to say Complex Trauma From Repeated Social Rejection.

I can't say for sure that they are identical because I don't think anyone has actually done the science you'd need to differentiate between them, but if it does turn out to be true I think I know one reason why the term RSD has become very popular in ADHD circles when the concept of trauma was already around.

I think a lot of people are very resistant to the idea they might have trauma, and a newfangled jargony clinical label like RSD may feel safer to embrace once you've already accepted that you Have A Disorder - it's a term with a basically similar emotional ~vibe to ADHD and takes less extra mental and emotional work to integrate into your self-image.

Ironically, one thing that probably contributes to this is... RSD, because our cultural ~vibe consensus~ is, like, Not Fantastic about trauma and your brain kinda tries out the concept and goes: I have this -> I tell people I have this -> people are dismissive/show contempt -> fight or flight response!!!! -> nope nevermind this is probably not a thing haha

[ritavonbees]

Me: so what's your background in gender stuff?

My new therapist: well I identify as sexually fluid-

Me: I MEANT PROFESSIONALLY

Therapist: I JUST FINISHED MY MASTER'S

[ritavonbees]

(I'm going to name my band) Unattended Baggage by Rita Von Bees

a #HeadcaseSolidarity zine

I made a zine! this is the first time I've tried digital distribution, I figure zine fairs are...not in my immediate future lol