Neurodivergent Peoples

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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.

Yeah. It just feels isolating.

[EGGHEAD]

14 hours ago, Maybe Mae said:

Since I saw a lot of fellow autistic people and ADHDers in this thread: I want to hear about you guys' hyperfixations/special interests.

What's cool stuff that makes your brain go brrr?

i switch between art, writing, any of the games or other stuff i like, and doing nothing

[Rackson]

13 minutes ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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.

Yeah, I hate that feeling. It feels like you are wasting your time no matter what you do. I had a time like this about 2 months ago where I would just watch youtube and play videogames, and none of those brought me joy. 

I kinda have the reverse end of this where I can't stop finding new hyper-fixations, and it sucks cuz I can never stick with one thing and get really good at it. 

[EGGHEAD]

2 minutes ago, Rackson said:

Yeah, I hate that feeling. It feels like you are wasting your time no matter what you do. I had a time like this about 2 months ago where I would just watch youtube and play videogames, and none of those brought me joy. 

I kinda have the reverse end of this where I can't stop finding new hyper-fixations, and it sucks cuz I can never stick with one thing and get really good at it. 

i quite enjoy art but i have periods where it's really hard for me to find motivation for it cause i burned through my surplus of ideas and i dont know what else to do
its frustrating

[AstrophelDragon]

2 minutes ago, Rackson said:

I had a time like this about 2 months ago where I would just watch youtube and play videogames, and none of those brought me joy. 

I kinda have the reverse end of this where I can't stop finding new hyper-fixations, and it sucks cuz I can never stick with one thing and get really good at it. 

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.

[HelloThere]

5 minutes ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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.

During school (I'm not even sure if I have adhd I'm just here to see if I can relate at all) I remember somehow being even... more productive? Idk it's hard to describe because I just felt tired and practically insane half of the time, yet by some miracle I kept my grades high. I even managed to get a bit of drawing done, but I never managed to really focus on it during then. During the summer though, my ability to just do... anything kinda drops to 0 all the time. I've gotten like a total of 4 pages done in the past 3 months, and I just keep getting angry at myself for it. That was like, the whole plan for the summer and the moment I try to get it done, I fail miserably no matter how much I like it. It's like there's a mental block in the way.

[Maybe Mae]

25 minutes ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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.

I do feel a bit off and restless during those times and am always on the lookout for a cool new thing but usually I just end up focusing on my special interests instead during those periods of time

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, HelloThere said:

During school (I'm not even sure if I have adhd I'm just here to see if I can relate at all) I remember somehow being even... more productive? Idk it's hard to describe because I just felt tired and practically insane half of the time, yet by some miracle I kept my grades high. I even managed to get a bit of drawing done, but I never managed to really focus on it during then. During the summer though, my ability to just do... anything kinda drops to 0 all the time. I've gotten like a total of 4 pages done in the past 3 months, and I just keep getting angry at myself for it. That was like, the whole plan for the summer and the moment I try to get it done, I fail miserably no matter how much I like it. It's like there's a mental block in the way.

Yeah. During summer I’m not being given specific tasks. So I get restless.

[Rackson]

1 minute ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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.

The things I go back to are either: telling stories, and making jokes. Those are some of the only things that stay with me. As for feeling kinda broken, I understand completely. My mental health is shit, and antidepressents and ADHD meds aren't helping. 

Sorta vent about ADHD below:

This isn't a fresh take but I think the average person doesn't understand all the problems that come with very active ADHD, they just imagine someone not paying attention and being hyper, they don't see the constant battle with impulses, wild mood swings, how unhealthy some hyperfixations can be, overthinking, constant fidgeting everywhere, blurting stuff you wish you could take back, and the endless stressful pit of fiery hell that is procrastination. People just say "omg, like I couuuuld not pay attention in math class today lol, I am so ADHD" and leave it at that. Society just sees what the media tells them about ADHD. In reality, its like driving a car without power steering, you can sorta control your brain and get it into the general direction that you want, but the car is going to go where it wants to go, even at the worst times. 

As much as I am my own person, ADHD runs my life a lot. It makes me blurt things out when I shouldn't, It keeps me awake at night when I should be sleeping, it makes me forget basic things and names that a normal person should remember, it makes me feel like shit one day and makes me feel awesome the next day, it makes it hard to tell a story without getting side tracked midway through, it makes random questions and thoughts pop into your head. 

ADHD helps a lot with creative stuff, I wrote a 90 page full film script this year and couldn't have done it without ADHD, I am learning how to draw with ADHD, I learned how to code because of ADHD. Its a blessing and a curse, because it can ruin you or help you so much. This is one of those days where I don't like my "neurodiversity" one bit. Because it is a battle constantly. 

I think people shouldn't be ashamed for having ADHD, but it is so so far from simply "being distracted". It is so much more, and all depends on the experience of the person with it. The best way I have heard ADHD emotions described is "With ADHD you either feel way too much, or way too little"

If you have ADHD and are reading this, good luck

 

[HelloThere]

3 minutes ago, DragonWithAQuest said:

Yeah. During summer I’m not being given specific tasks. So I get restless.

My parents try to give me those tasks, but even then it’s hard to follow. It’s incredibly annoying when you try to maintain the order of things and it just falls apart.

[Rackson]

16 minutes ago, HelloThere said:

During school (I'm not even sure if I have adhd I'm just here to see if I can relate at all) I remember somehow being even... more productive? Idk it's hard to describe because I just felt tired and practically insane half of the time, yet by some miracle I kept my grades high. I even managed to get a bit of drawing done, but I never managed to really focus on it during then. During the summer though, my ability to just do... anything kinda drops to 0 all the time. I've gotten like a total of 4 pages done in the past 3 months, and I just keep getting angry at myself for it. That was like, the whole plan for the summer and the moment I try to get it done, I fail miserably no matter how much I like it. It's like there's a mental block in the way.

Read what I just posted, that is a little tiny bit what it is like having ADHD.

[AstrophelDragon]

1 hour ago, HelloThere said:

During school (I'm not even sure if I have adhd I'm just here to see if I can relate at all) I remember somehow being even... more productive? Idk it's hard to describe because I just felt tired and practically insane half of the time, yet by some miracle I kept my grades high. I even managed to get a bit of drawing done, but I never managed to really focus on it during then. During the summer though, my ability to just do... anything kinda drops to 0 all the time. I've gotten like a total of 4 pages done in the past 3 months, and I just keep getting angry at myself for it. That was like, the whole plan for the summer and the moment I try to get it done, I fail miserably no matter how much I like it. It's like there's a mental block in the way.

1 hour ago, DragonWithAQuest said:

Yeah. During summer I’m not being given specific tasks. So I get restless.

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.

1 hour ago, Rackson said:

The best way I have heard ADHD emotions described is "With ADHD you either feel way too much, or way too little"

Also yes I relate to this a lot. And it also doesn't help in terms of productivity

Edited July 27, 2023 by AstrophelDragon

[Keith]

14 hours ago, Rackson said:

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.

I DO!! Having a hyperfixation really motivates me to do stuff, even if they're not related to the thing I'm fixating on.

[AstrophelDragon]

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

[Guest]

7 hours ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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

Congratulations! What’s the job?

[AstrophelDragon]

7 hours ago, DragonWithAQuest said:

Congratulations! What’s the job?

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

[The Newest Fabled Creature]

Having autism is just an experience, truly.

So, like, I stim, not quite as much as I did as a kid, but it transitioned to different forms to be less obvious (like, as a kid I played with inanimate objects instead of my toys, but then that turned to me fiddling with things like pens now or walking back n' forth in a room). I also eye stim? If that's a thing? Like, I'll pin point something with my eyes, and I don't do it as much as I did as a kid, but I would just look at something for the general feeling of either spacing out or for the sensation of seeing something out of the corner of my eye. But, most of the time, and I don't think I make any face at all while doing so? -  I would just stare and that's it.

I get overstimulated a lot, and often seek out a something for just one of my senses to be overloaded with (Loud room? find something that smells good or listen to music louder than the loud thing. Something smells abominable? find a rough textured something to feel aggressively or find something really soft to rub my face into. Felt a texture that is despised? bite something or make aggressive grabby hands in the air for no reason).

Don't even get me started on the hyperfixations dear God

Edited August 1, 2023 by The Newest Fabled Creature

[Guest]

I feel so disappointed right now. I’ve been following a fantasy book series for 5 books so far. I’m on the sixth book. And it has horrible autism representation. It was so bad she had to rewrite it. And I have the original. I just want to see more magic and wizardry. Not a caricature written by a clueless neurotypical.

[AstrophelDragon]

17 hours ago, DragonWithAQuest said:

I’ve been following a fantasy book series for 5 books so far. I’m on the sixth book. And it has horrible autism representation. It was so bad she had to rewrite it. And I have the original. I just want to see more magic and wizardry. Not a caricature written by a clueless neurotypical.

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

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, AstrophelDragon said:

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

Yeah. Every book with an autistic character that was actually good was by an autistic.

[AstrophelDragon]

3 hours ago, DragonWithAQuest said:

Every book with an autistic character that was actually good was by an autistic.

What books have you read that have good representation?

[Guest]

41 minutes ago, AstrophelDragon said:

What books have you read that have good representation?

-The Outside. It’s sci-fi cosmic horror with an autistic main character. Excellent. Highly highly recommend.

-Into the Drowning Deep- Horror about killer mermaids, lots of disabled characters, an WLW romance with an autistic character

-Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen- Realistic fiction about an autistic girl joining the baseball team

-Daughter of the Deep- One of Rick Riordan’s books, based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of the main characters is autistic

-On the Edge of Gone- A dystopian sci-fi book about a moderate to severe autistic character that explores the inherent ableism in deciding who gets to live in a worldwide catastrophe

-The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime- Another book about a more severely autistic person trying to solve the mystery of who killed a dog. I know it has criticism, but I personally think it does a very good job depicting the autistic mind

-The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family- two sisters team up to start a detective agency. The entire family is ND, and there are lots of depictions of the different ways autism and ADHD presents 

I’m sure there are more, but they’re hard to find.

[AstrophelDragon]

3 hours ago, DragonWithAQuest said:

Daughter of the Deep- One of Rick Riordan’s books, based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of the main characters is autistic

I just finished reading that book!

[Guest]

Opinions on this on a pin? I like it. But the puzzle pieces…

[AstrophelDragon]

Ew puzzle pieces