If you can afford it, I highly recommend getting some Tiles from @TheTileApp for things you use and lose regularly. I have some on my keys, my work lanyard, my wireless headphone box, and this personal details folder I always used to lose.
They have key rings, tiny buttons and wallet cards. If you lose them, you just turn the bluetooth on on your phone, call the item and it will ring if it's close. If it's not close, any time another tile user works past it, it will ping on your map so you can go find it.
If you have bluetooth on on your phone all the time, you can also use it in reverse, by pressing a button on them that calls your phone, even if it is silenced.
I know they're expensive, and I've held off recommending them bc of it, but it's the sort of thing that it you can afford it, it can save you money in the long run. They've genuinely changed my life bc I used to lose these things all the time, and now I don't.
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I can feel a long thread about the limitations of neurotypical based therapy for ADHD coming on, but atm it's all just messy thoughts so if someone has already written that thread, please link me and save the angst haha ❤️
There's so much big structural stuff to unpack but today I'm just thinking about my therapist asking me if I had tried taking over mopping the floors and ironing from my partner as a way of "participating" in the face of my chronic illness inadequacy anxiety.
A. My neck pain makes that impossible
B. We both have ADHD...you think we iron our clothes????? You think we own a mop for our 1 bedroom apartment???
Her point was to find new things to replace the old things I did...but like, my partner would never value me doing this anyway?
If you considered and then discounted ADHD because you're academically or professionally successful, but your personal life is an absolute mess, it might be worth reevaluating. Same goes for doing fine until a big life transition.
Me during my Masters: On three major scholarships, acing my writing, volunteering for academic collectives, present in the community.
Also me during my Masters: ten mugs hidden in my draws, wearing unwashed clothing, not messaging friends back for months, dropping all hobbies.
And then after FINISHING my masters (when I told myself everything would be better): listless, daydreamy, losing things constantly, struggling to get started and always feeling three steps behind everyone around me.
Why do some people on who generally put a lot of thought into their stances, and also have ADHD, not bother to learn anything about it and instead share their ableist takes everywhere as though they are an authority?
It makes me so tired! They pull out all the same ableist tropes we hear all the time as though it's new or insightful? Like pal, that's not your originality it's your internalised ableism and you're not "smarter" than everyone or edgy for refusing to deal with it.
I don't understand people who are committed to intellectual rigour in all other aspects of their lives but don't do any critical thinking about their own brain and just internalise everything one doctor told them once or try to claim ADHD isn't a real thing.
I know many disagree with me, but I earnestly don't understand the benefit of only framing ADHD as an exclusively bad thing. To me that just ends up with eugenic thinking about getting rid of ADHD, which would mean getting rid of me as a person. It's intertwined with who I am.
This isn't me trying to be edgy, this is me genuinely reflecting and trying to understand why so many people think challenging the pathologising of ADHD is oppositional to accepting it as a disability. To me they can both exist in unison.
I think "superpower" narratives are harmful. It makes it seem like every ADHDer could be "successful" if they worked hard enough, which is untrue. People who push this always seem to be rich, white, and male, so they have access to implicit accomodations that many of us do not.
This time two years ago I was literally in my uni office, high on my friend's adderall, frantically completing my Masters thesis. I was late to my own birthday dinner, and had to pretend everything was fine, even though I was super out of it. I had no idea I had ADHD.
I had been struggling so badly with hitting my writing goals, that a friend offered me some of her ADHD meds. I said no three times, and then said yes. I didn't know I had ADHD, I just knew that finally I was able to write.
Looking back, she shouldn't have given them to me and I shouldn't have taken them. I didn't know how to take them safely. I didn't make the connection between them working, and me having ADHD. I regularly took more than I should have, because I wanted to get things done FAST.
Something that has been hugely beneficial to me is reframing ADHD outside of a pathologising deficit perspective. How would we describe ADHD if we weren't comparing it to a neurotypical standard? How would we describe it if we didn't implicitly accept that standard as better?
For example, ADHDers often feel like they feel things too deeply. But this world is not a moderate place, the injustices and joys are vivid and significant. Couldn't we also frame the indifference many neurotypicals seem to have as disconnected or unfeeling?
I've seen the ease at which ADHDers share personal information be described as "impulsive", "overbearing" and "self centered". But couldn't that also be seen as being warm, honest and trusting? Couldn't the opposite be pathologised as unsocial and defensively private?