AstrophelDragon

Does anyone else here have both Tourette's Syndrome and Sensory Processing Disorder (or like, sensory things from something like ADHD or autism)? I was wondering if anyone else feels like their tics get worse when they are overstimulated

They really do. Like now when I'm starting college and I want to find new friends here and there are meetups where I could easily find new people to talk to but it's too loud with too many people and so someone comes up to talk to me and I'm unable to say anything...(unfortunately that is what happened yesterday)

Brown recluse spider

Because it is really hard to understand something that isn't your experience. Coming from the other end, I had a hard time understanding sexual attraction was an actual thing (being ace and growing up very religiously), and it took a friend explaining to me how it was real and some time thinking about it before I accepted that. So it just takes some time. There's a difference between people who just don't understand, and people who refuse to listen or put in the effort to understand (and idk which one your cousin is but I'm just saying)

Trans(?) Spider-Gwen

pogo stick

boing

google

It sounds like you probably experience romantic attraction: You seem to be interested in having romantic relationships with real people. So I would say you probably identified it correctly here, you just have a lot of anxiety And potentially a touch aversion, or just not caring as much about physical contact. Which is not required for romance, even if that's generally what you see in media

"I wish I had the power to feed him to vicious dogs."

"ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY GREAT ONE, WE WILL NOT DO THE FORBIDDEN ACTS IN FRONT OF THE GREAT ONE"

Ew puzzle pieces

I just finished reading that book!

What books have you read that have good representation?

I'm always wary of books about neurodivergent characters written by neurotypicals, bc it is really hard to find good representation

I would also like to add that Brandon Sanderson is my favorite author Also as stated Dracula is pretty good Besides that, I mostly just reread kids/teen books so idk if I have many other suggestions

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Groundswork. Something where I can go outside and move around and get energy out without having to do super intensive manual labor. And there's a bunch of varied tasks I get to do. And I don't really have to talk to people

Speaking of being unproductive all summer, I finally did something productive! I finally applied for a job! I found the easiest job to apply to at my college that still pays in the mid-range of most jobs, and is something I'd somewhat enjoy doing, but I don't have to do a resume, or cover letter, or interview or anything. I just filled out the application form. Still I am so proud of myself! I've only known for a few months that I have ADHD, and it's just nice now to acknowledge that some things are just hard for me to do, and celebrate when I can get them done, instead of beating myself up over taking forever to do it

Yeah that's what happens to me too. I love the idea of summer because there is so much I could get done. But then I barely do any of it because I'm just not busy enough. I need the pressure of not having much time, along with having required tasks, to force me to get things done. I did band in high school, and I absolutely love marching season because we have rehearsals 3 days a week, either a football game or another rehearsal on Fridays, and then once we get to October, marching competitions on Saturdays. And with my advanced classes, there is no time for procrastination. If I have 10 extra minutes at the end of a class one day, I will be working on homework. And sure, it's exhausting, I wouldn't be able to do it all year, but for the 3 months of marching season? I love it. I am so happy because I get to spend so much time doing band, which is what I absolutely love, and it works so well to satisfy my ADHD (it's the perfect level of stimulation because while there is a lot of sound and stuff that goes on, it all fits together into the music and in a way that makes sense, so I don't usually get overstimulated), that in the small amount of time I'm not in rehearsal, I can get myself to just do my homework. And everything is just so structured and it works really well And then marching season ends and I have so much more time but it's so much harder to force myself to do things and things take me way longer to do than they did during marching season So summer break is even worse. Because at least school is structured. And, idk if it's an ADHD thing or just me, but I love structured things. I love how organized school is, where you go to 6 different classes, all in the same order every day, there's a plan for every day, and you have homework/projects/studying that lead up to tests, and you have grades to measure your progress, and it just makes sense (unless you have a very disorganized teacher like I did for one of my classes, and then you always feel super stressed about that class and don't do very well in it bc you don't have the motivation to study like you need to without that structure). But anyway over the summer, you're tired of structure, right? You want to be impulsive, you want to just do what interests you. And at first, you are so excited about things that you work on them a bit, and you feel like it's going to be a good summer. But then, not having structure makes your anxiety worse, and not having structure means you just keep jumping between things without finishing them, so then you feel bad about yourself and your anxiety gets worse, and then the worse your anxiety gets, the harder it is to do things, and it just keeps spiraling, that by the time you gets back to school, you are so happy for it to start just because you need to get pulled out of the spiral. Also yes I relate to this a lot. And it also doesn't help in terms of productivity

No I like, really burnt myself out being too perfectionistic about school, and my mental health has just been really baad in general, and so this past year has just been switching between too much time on youtube, or rapidly changing hyperfixations every couple of hours (mostly the former though unfortunately). Even in general though my hyperfixations change too much for me to feel like I ever really accomplish much. The most reliable things I can finish are either reading books or learning new songs on the piano/marimba, and now even those are failing me and I feel kind of broken.

Do you (and anyone else) hate the feeling of not having a current hyperfixation? I do bc it just makes me feel kind of lost. And then I'm going through my list of things in my head that I like, and none of them seem interesting atm, and I just have a few days where I don't really do anything because nothing interests me. And I'm tired bc I just spent a bunch of energy burning through a hyperfixation, and it's hard to get started again.

Asexual was relatively easy for me to figure out, since I am apothisexual (sex-repulsed, wants nothing ever to do with it). It took more effort for me to realize that other people actually feel sexual attraction than it did for me to realize I didn't (if it's less obvious to you, you can still totally be ace, that was just my experience). Once I understood it, asexual just felt right. When I first said to myself, "I am asexual", I had an almost sinking feeling inside, not positive or negative, but just like something inside had found its place. Same kind of feeling happened when I realized I was genderfluid. However, it took me over two years of questioning to finally figure out that yes, I am aromantic. Because, romantic relationships aren't exactly repulsive to me. I like being romantically close to people, and I'm pretty sure I experience some sort of tertiary (like, alterous or queerplatonic) attraction, that I thought for a while must be some sort of romantic attraction. I realized I was aro-spec, but couldn't figure out the exact microlabel that fit me. I tried on a bunch, and some seemed to fit my idea of myself really well, but I was never fully satisfied with them. I also had been in what was sort of a romantic relationship in the past, and honestly enjoyed it, but we never were quite comfortable with calling it romantic, and the other person turned out to also be aro-spec, and we kind of just, fell apart. I assumed because of that, I couldn't be completely aromantic. I must feel some sort of romantic attraction. But nothing felt right. Finally, I realized that just because I had been in a semi-romantic relationship and even enjoyed it for a time, didn't mean I couldn't be aromantic. When I said to myself, "I am aromantic," I again got that sinking feeling of, this is correct. Because romance doesn't feel right to me. I like people in a platonic way, and sometimes I get some sort of other, stronger attraction to them, but it's not romantic. It's just, something else. Sorry I probably made that more confusing. To summarize, I'll say, don't be afraid to try on different labels and see what fits. And know that some people do figure it out quickly, but sometimes it takes a lot longer to sort through yourself

Coding, space (and anything related), Owl House, classical music (and a lot of other music), piano, percussion (and band in general), physics, queer stuff, neurodivergent stuff, books (like just, getting sucked into random books for hours), Zelda, adding wildlife to the Seek app, psychoanalyzing myself, and categorizing things (and categorizing people, which isn't necessarily a great thing to do) (and also this goes along with my queer and neurodivergent hyperfixations) Oh and Interstellar. Idk how I forgot that one, seeing as it's my pfp

SAME. Honestly, idk if I fully completely romantic ship things. Not that I do much shipping in the first place. But my "romantic ships" are more like, really intense QPR ships, and my platonic ones are just regular QPR Also this. I don't like when people break canon ships for the most part, bc I just don't understand them. And I absolutely hate when people come up for ships for people I hc as aroace. But there are a few canon ships out there, like percabeth or solangelo or huntlow or raeda that are just--good, and I love seeing the characters together. And these ships have some level of emotional depth to them, or some logical way like you said, or just very well flushed out relationships that are interesting to read about. Which is why I only really like canon ones Also, I am way more likely to enjoy gay ships than straight ones (as long as they're at least implied canonically) (and generally more when they're written by a queer author)