#rigid thinking

[cxlxrblindchamelexn]

my concept of God right now is whoever or whatever, after this life of being misinterpreted, misunderstood, punished, and shamed for things that are not moral issues and that I am always burned out from trying to manage to an acceptable degree, will put a hand on my shoulder and say "I know you tried, you tried so hard. it was always enough."

[justcallmemrslupin]

Just a heartfelt humble post, for a change

(On neurodiversity, lack of feedback and being seen like the Loch Ness Monster for being so protective of the true essence of Remus Lupin)

This is more of a stupid cry for help in a moment when I feel overwhelmed that anything else, and I’ll probably delete it later.

Hey, guys!

I know I don’t have many followers (but i”t is the quality of one’s conviction that determines success, not the number of followers” — sorry, I couldn’t resist! 😅🤭🫣) or even comments because my posts are polemic.

I’m just a neurodivergent woman fighting for people to know the truth about her special interest. I have a very rigid mind, so it’s really hard for me to deal with canon deviations, unless they can be explained by the fanfic plot. That means I don’t understand shipping at all, unless:

a) The ship is canon;

b) it’s an unfinished work and the ship can become canon;

c) It’s with an OC, because it automatically changes perspectives and feels personal (I could never read or watch anything without self-inserting in a character; even in original works. If I don’t find a character to self-insert, I just lose interest).

The thing is: this is a blog I mostly use to vent about Remus Lupin’s mischaracterisation and misconceptions. Because Remus has been my comfort character for over 20 years. I mourned his death as if he was a real person. I spent years feeling a punch in my stomach every time I heard the words “Harry Potter”. This is not just some entertainment to me. It’s real neurodivergent hyperfixation.

Remus’ character saved my life. Twice. And he’s still doing that, not letting me fall into severe depression again. So it feels really personal to me when people insult Remus or turn him into something that strips away his most remarkable traits. It even triggers me physically! (And yes, I’m working on that through therapy.)

I studied Remus thoroughly. I know his character inside out, I know all his lines, and although I do write fanfiction about him, I never deviate much from canon unless it makes sense and it’s explained in the plot (like time or universe travelling).

But people always prefer fanfics that change his personality rather than mine, which are utterly faithful to him. It’s ironic that my most successful fanfic is “Hey, Remus!’, the one that deviates from canon the most: a shamelessly self-insert OC gets pulled into the books due to “magical metaphysics” and finds out that in the Wizarding World she’s the fictional one and Remus had been reading about her too.

My other fics, especially “Bring Me To Life” (previously called “Awaken”), the one that emotionally drained me so much that I had to give it a stupid ending because I was starting to fall deep into depression, although it tells the whole canon Remus Lupin’s story through flashbacks, it’s the second least successful of them all.

And don’t get me started on the lack of comments. That’s one of the reasons why I stopped posting my fics online and only write for myself nowadays.

I’ll stick to the warming feeling I got from “Hey, Remus!”, where more than one person told me they related a lot to my OC (yep, a shameless self-insert), that my story made them dream, or — the most special one, by someone who became a virtual friend because of that — that it helped them cope with depression. Few people? Sure. But… well, you know what film Remus says about the number of followers.

Sorry about the venting. I’ve been feeling down lately, so I felt like openings my heart to you a bit.

Not my usual post, I know. But I needed to do it. Maybe I’ll exclude it later.

Thanks for being there.

[audhd-space]

It’s not rigid thinking.

It’s sensory sameness / familiarity.

To assert that autistics’ need for sensory familiarity as rigid thinking is a disservice for their thinking ability in recognising patterns and connecting information.

This is what allistic professionals do not get.

Preferring a rigid routine ≠ rigid thinking

Rigid thinking is the inability to consider alternatives to viewpoints and issues.

Sensories ≠ Thinking

[b-beams]

one of the most inconvenient autistic things for me is how black-and-white-thinking turns anything that isn’t 100% ‘right’ or exactly as expected into something that’s ‘wrong’?

something changes or is presented to me in an unexpected way, or the sequence of something familiar is mixed up, and while my logical autistic brain says “oh, okay, that’s different and it will take me longer to get my head around but it isn’t the end of the world”, my emotional autistic brain screams “!!!!!!!!!!! (the world is ending)”

like, can you just let me live???

[faithhopeloveandtherapy]

I’m feeling really sad this evening because after exclusively carrying the baby in a sling for the last 8 months, I’ve finally had to admit he is too heavy for me. My legs have felt like jelly today after two outings this morning, and then I sat on the floor and couldn’t get up again and nearly had to cancel my afternoon outing because I was so wrecked. Also my knees hurt more and more.

I can’t function and do baby care in this state. It’s a very hard thing for me to admit that my body has reached its limit as I have a mentality that I should be able to keep going no matter what if I push myself had enough. So this feels like giving in and admitting weakness. Also I’m sad because I love carrying the baby and having him close to me and I know he likes it too and it has really helped with his attachment and development.

I wish my brain was more flexible and could just be cool and chilled out at having to make this change, but it’s not happy. Eh eh eh I know once I start using the pram I’ll be ok with it, it’s just managing to make the decision in the first place. I get very set in rules. I have a book called “patterns not padlocks” which pretty much sums up what happens to me, I start a pattern and instead of it staying as a guideline it very quickly becomes locked into a rule that can’t be broken. Anyhow, time to get the pram out of storage….if my legs will work that far 😂😭😭

[faithhopeloveandtherapy]

Therapy 09.05.17// flexible brain, one, required to start asap

After we talked about me talking to H, that led onto a conversation about how much I'd changed and grown since I started therapy. T said she thought I had become a more thoughtful parent, and I said yes, I used to parent exactly like my mum did it because I just thought that was the right way to do it, whereas now I try and parent more like T has 'parented' me, being gentle and curious and interested in their feelings. I asked her how I could get a more flexible brain. I said so often I am stuck over *here* and I want to be over *there* and I can see it's a much better place to be over there but I can't figure out how to get myself to make the little mental jump. She didn't have an answer, just said that I already was becoming more flexible and doing things I didn't think possible beforehand. That wasn't quite what I meant. What I want is to learn a skill or technique that I can apply in this situation, when I am stuck, to help myself with the necessary mental gymnastics required to make the jump. Anyone know one? That was just about the end of the session. As I said in the first part of this update, it was a fairly unemotional session. I didn't feel like it had opened up anything new for me to think about, or like T and I had any really connected moments. Whereas usually I will sit and reflect for a while after the session ends, after this session, I just went and got on with the rest of my day. I didn't like it. I like to have something to take away from the session and replay or think over.

[4letteraroace]

even though my very rigid brain doesn’t like it, sometimes the best/easiest thing to do is take a deep breath, say “ok”, and move the fuck on

[foxie-yaps]

a friend of mine has autism (shocker I know) and we’ve sat at the same table at break and lunch nearly all the time (despite it being upstairs and me needing a mobility aid and struggling with stairs) and for the first few weeks, I was sat in a chair and then they just demanded I move one day because ‘that’s my chair’ despite me having sat there and due to my own autism and rigid thinking, not wanting to move. I did, of course. But then today they mentioned how they were ‘so far from you guys’ despite them choosing the fucking chair and literally bullying multiple people out of the chair after ‘claiming it’ and they just??? moved??? as if it didn’t matter??? like fuck off what is this