doruthea

tumblr when you word a post slightly vaguely/poorly:

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

and People Don’t Talk About It Enough

Sometimes I wish people understood what it actually feels like to live with AUDHD the combination of Autism and ADHD. It’s not quirky, it’s not “cute,” and it’s definitely not just being distracted or socially awkward. It’s a daily battle inside your own mind, and most of the world never sees the internal exhaustion behind it.

Living with AUDHD means having a brain that can’t decide whether it wants absolute structure or total chaos. One moment you’re overstimulated to the point of shutting down, and the next moment you’re stuck in a spiral of hyperactivity and racing thoughts. You crave routine but get bored of it. You want to focus but your brain refuses to cooperate. You want calm, but everything feels too loud, too bright, too fast.

People see the outside the forgetfulness, the fidgeting, the sensitivity, the intense interests and they assume it’s manageable. But they don’t see the burnout that hits without warning. They don’t feel the sensory overload that makes small things feel unbearable. They don’t experience the guilt of wanting to do things but being unable to start, or the frustration of trying your absolute best while still being labeled “lazy,” “dramatic,” or “unmotivated.”

And the worst part is the loneliness. Because AUDHD often makes you feel “too much” for everyone. Too sensitive, too emotional, too intense, too overwhelmed. So you learn to mask. You pretend you’re fine. You try to act “normal,” even when your brain is screaming.

But here’s the truth: AUDHD is not a character flaw. It’s not a choice. It’s a reality that deserves understanding, compassion, and awareness. People who live with it are fighting battles every single day and doing it quietly.

This is because everything in my life requires work:

maintaining friendships

keeping up with my hygiene

managing bills

making money

remembering my basic needs

sleeping regularly

outputting creatively

All requires some aspect of work for me.

And when everything in your life requires work, your balance goes out the window.

If you're neurodivergent and overwhelmed — I see you.

If you're chronically ill and overwhelmed — I see you.

You're not dysfunctional.

You're not incapable.

“Getting better” doesn’t look the same for everyone, and it damn well doesn’t look the same between the disorders- but that doesn’t mean refusing to get better is a good choice or that you deserve to be around people who don’t want to deal with your shit.

Sometimes recovery is unmasking. Sometimes recovery is learning cognitive empathy. Sometimes recovery is respecting the little sense of self you have left and not trampling over it for attention or supply.

My recovery is unmasking and recognizing my disorder. It’s giving myself positive and consensual outlets for my needs. It’s confronting my implicit biases and understanding they’re not logical, they’re just easier than trying to be better to others.

However, when people take this to the extreme where the only Correct and Morally Upstanding way to fix a character's problems is to have them figure out everything on their own because they are Strong and Independent and then after they've done that they are cleared for a relationship..... man that's depressing as hell. Do you know how much easier it is to work on yourself when you have someone close by who is nice to you? Who cares about you as a person and wishes you the best and is willing to say things like "hey have you eaten anything today? have you gotten enough sleep? I don't think everyone hates you. what if we went for a walk?"

And the thing that pisses me off the most? It’s always people who have never actually been alone who say this. They’ve had friends, relationships, people who care about them, and yet they’ll say shit like, “Sweetie, you just have to learn to enjoy your own company.” Bro, I have been hanging out with myself for years. We are sick of each other.

Like, imagine someone stranded in the desert, crawling on the sand, dying of hydration, and someone walks by sipping a cold drink like, “You know, hydration isn’t everything.” Oh, word? Let’s trade, then. Give me your full, rich, connected life, and you can come experience the joys of prolonged solitude. I’ll even throw in the emotional numbness for free.

Why do some people act like wanting companionship is some kind of weakness? Like, sorry I have the audacity to crave human connection. Sorry for having a completely normal human need. We’re social creatures by nature, prolonged isolation tends to harm mental and physical health.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

Alrighty, so, a few things to unpack, here... First of all, an NPD crash is not an "excuse to be abusive". It's a legitimate kind of mental health crisis that's extremely difficult to navigate, and as such, can oftentimes get expressed in explosive or harmful ways, also known as "splitting". It sounds to me like you might be talking more about splitting, but that often comes at the result of crashing, so I'll kinda be covering both, here. (For a better understanding of NPD splitting, please read this post. "Crashing" basically means lacking in positive supply for the ego, leading to intense self-loathing. This doesn't always result in splitting, but is still very bad for you and can make you want to hurt yourself or worse. Using the fic solely as an example here to help explain, King Candy blowing up on Felix in chapter 11 was an example of splitting, whereas his general suicidal thoughts and self-harming in the later chapters is due to crashing. They can go hand-in-hand, but aren't exactly the same.) That doesn't mean it's okay for somebody to hurt you while going through a crash or a split, but what needs to be understood here is that it's still a form of legitimate crisis, and is not a reflection of who the person is as a whole. For people who don't understand how excruciatingly difficult it is to live with a condition that makes it borderline impossible to regulate one's emotions, I know it can seem like it's just an "excuse to be an asshole", but that is a very incorrect interpretation of what crashing/splitting is like. (Keep in mind, there ARE some people who will put the entire blame for bad behaviour on a disorder, trying to use it as an excuse, which ALSO isn't okay, but that's not what I'm talking about, here. I'm talking about people who are legitimately trying to maintain healthy relationships but struggle doing so due to the splitting/crashing, not the people who refuse to put any effort in or change their behaviour if it's hurting somebody. <-And keep in mind that this can apply to ANYBODY, not just people with NPD (being hurtful and refusing to put effort in and stuff)) So the thing about splitting is, it's basically emotional dysregulation cranked up to the EXTREME. While somebody is splitting, that is not a good time to confront somebody about things that are bothering you, because in the moment, it's most likely to be interpreted in extremely negative ways, even if you don't mean it like that. Communicating that somebody did something hurtful to you while they were splitting is completely fine and should be done in order to build up better boundaries, but doing it while the split is actively happening will not be effective. (Generally speaking.) That doesn't mean it's "brushing that behaviour under the rug" or "giving them an excuse to be hurtful", it just means saving the conversation for when both of you are in a better headspace to talk things through. You don't have to sit there and take it if somebody is going off on you, you instead both have to figure out what the best course of action is to deal with splitting when it happens (will elaborate on this more in a second)

One thing that is EXTREMELY important to remember is that there's no one "correct" answer for how to handle it. I wish I had some kind of universal problem-solver to give you that can simply be applied to all scenarios of a crash, but that does not exist. The way people work through it is different, and not everybody is going to have the same reactions or methods of working through a crash. It's also not as simple as "just get therapy lol", because the entire medical/psychological field is still filled TO THE BRIM with stigmatization against Cluster B disorders, and some medical professionals will even straight-up refuse to diagnose it. Some will refuse to even acknowledge what a person is saying if they have it, and just assume they're lying for some reason or another. "Just get therapy" is not a good answer when you live with something as demonized, intense and all-consuming as NPD, because you have to fight tooth and nail just to find somebody who will actually help you. We've barely gotten to a point in time where BPD is getting more recognition and proper treatment in these fields (and even then, it's still a REALLY rough road), but NPD and ASPD are still far, far behind in being properly acknowledged/worked with. Lots of people give up on finding help just due to how horribly they get treated in their search, and it's kinda hard to blame them when things seem that hopeless.

Anyway, got a teensy bit off-topic, back to crashing and splitting lmao - For a personal example, when my friend is going through NPD splitting (which doesn't happen that much anymore, but still), what they need is a clear reinforcement of boundaries, but also reassurance that they're still loved. It might not help as directly in the moment, but it helps keep them grounded and stop from spiralling further into a crash under the false belief of like, "They hate me, they're never going to forgive me, I'm such a worthless friend" while I'm giving them space to calm down. Saying something like, "Hey, I'm saying this as your friend, and I love you very much, but I can't handle the way you're talking to me right now. I know this isn't how we usually are, I still love you, and I'll be here when you're feeling more ready to talk, but right now clearly isn't a good time for that, so I'm going to step away for a bit, okay?" can be extremely helpful in making sure boundaries are upheld, but also making sure that they know your relationship is still safe, and that you can be approached when things have calmed down. From what I've seen, this tends to be the safest and more common approach for people to take with this stuff. There's often a major fear about being discarded or replaced that comes with these things, so being extra clear about reassurance that they're still loved while also making sure you take a step back so as to not get hurt yourself is usually pretty helpful.

However, that doesn't always work for people. Some people need to be COMPLETELY left alone when they're splitting, like a "I'm going to blow tf up no matter what is said right now, so you need to shut up and leave immediately right this second because otherwise it WILL get worse" kind of thing, whereas some people need to be sat down and directly + harshly called out in the heat of the moment in order to really be snapped out of it, so on and so forth... It varies a lot person-by-person. (These are accounts I've seen from people with NPD online talking about how to work through their own splitting btw, it's a different experience for everybody and takes a lot of work to figure out what's most effective)

Neurodivergent friendships in general take work and patience, and both people need to be willing to put in that work and find ways to communicate respectfully and effectively with each other. Not everybody's willing to put in that work, sometimes folks with NPD refuse to see that change is needed until they hit rock bottom, sometimes neurotypicals refuse to see how much of a struggle being neurodivergent is, sometimes even people who are neurodivergent themselves will completely demonize other nerodivergent folks that they don't understand, and that all can suck sometimes, but it is what it is. Either way, there should be a better understanding that not everybody's brains work the same, and sometimes things get messy and uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean we can brand everybody with a specific disorder as "bad, abusive people" just for having a disorder. That is untrue and ableist, and all it does is contribute to the stigmatization that makes it EXTREMELY hard for Cluster B folks to find better support and healthier coping mechanisms, which will result in less healthy relationships being made overall. Isn't that the opposite of what you want?

Also, friendly reminder that 'narcissistic abuse' exists just as much as 'autistic abuse' or 'ADHD abuse' or 'PTSD abuse'. (Which is to say, not at all.)