Stronger Than You

People with psychotic disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with personality disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with substance abuse disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with tic disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with bipolar disorder are neurodivergent too.

People with dissociative disorders are neurodivergent too.

Neurodivergence isn’t just ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression. (Plus those last two also get left out sometimes!) Neurodivergence is anything that affects your brain.

“Neurodivergent people hate loud noises” is actually just as valid as a statement as “neurodivergent people have delusions,” “neurodivergent people have tics,” or even “neurodivergent people have low empathy.”

And now for something completely different.

This is the ADHD Teapot. I made it in a ceramics class a few years ago. I use it to explain executive dysfunction to people who haven’t come across the term before (and those who think of ADHD mostly as Hyperactive Eight Year Old Boy Syndrome).

So, most people’s brains are like a regular shaped teapot with a single spout. Let’s say that your time, energy, focus etc is the liquid you have in the teapot. Your executive function is the spout, that directs the tea into the specific cup you want to fill-aka the task that you’re meant to be doing. Spills happen occasionally, but generally most of the tea goes in the right cup.

If you have executive dysfunction, (a symptom of ADHD, trauma, autism, schizophrenia etc.) you have multiple spouts going in different directions. You can try pointing one of them at your chosen cup and you will probably get some liquid in there, perhaps you will even fill it right up (finish the task). But meanwhile, tea is also pouring out of several other places and not going where you want it. If you have another container nearby, perhaps some of it will end up in there. But quite a lot of it is going to end up on the floor and accomplish nothing.

And at the end of the day you’ll have filled one or two cups ( or sometimes not even one) compared to the five or six that somebody with the same sized teapot (but only one spout) has filled, and everyone wonders why you’re so bad at getting tea poured, and why you make such a mess in the process.

One day I’d like to spend more time learning pottery and create a really technically good fucked up little adhd teapot. But that’s a long way off since i currently live in the outback and the nearest pottery workshop is some 400km away. But I figure that for now, it might be a useful or interesting metaphor to somebody even in its rough draft form.

This post is the cup I filled instead of cleaning my house btw.

This post is the cup

I filled instead of cleaning

my house btw.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

adhd is crazy cuz its called "cant pay attention disorder" and then it can completely ruin ur life and make u nonfunctional and people irl assume it's the 5 year old boy disorder and people online assume it's the annoying 15 year old disorder meanwhile the dea thinks you want to do substances for fun so they wont let anyone produce more of the medication that keeps ur life somewhat intact

burn out

Internet hugs for anyone else out there dealing with burn out or other mental and/or physical issues that make it hard to interact right now

why did they make this world so hard for autistic weirdos

how it feels to wash your hair and brush your teeth and have clean clothes on

Can we stop using "still lives with their parents" or "unemployed" or "doesn't have a drivers license" or "didn't graduate high school" as an insult or evidence that someone is a bad person? Struggling with independence or meeting milestones is not a moral failing.

Girl suffering mental illnesses and crippling loneliness: “I’m struggling bad but it’s definitely my fault actually, I just need to try harder somehow. I just need to find a way to try harder”

can we talk about the shame that comes along with having ADHD?

the shame that hits you when you walk around your messy, cluttered room, knowing you don’t yet have the motivation or hyperfocus to clean it, even though you want to.

the shame that hits you when you retell a story for the thousandth time and the person you’re talking to gets bored or annoyed or confused by it, cuz you couldn’t remember you had told it before.

the shame that hits you when you ask someone to repeat what they’re saying multiple times because you keep forgetting or you just can’t hear them.

the shame that hits you when you forget something super important after you leave for a trip, and you ask to go back for it.

the shame that hits you when you know you’re overanalyzing something someone said to you, but it still hurts.

the shame that hits you when you snap at people who are just talking to you while you’re hyperfocused.

the shame that hits you when you realize you don’t remember jackshit about your life, you don’t have any memories, and you wonder what it was all like.

the shame that hits you when someone asks you to just shut up or sit still after you were just expressing your emotions, your happiness even, but were just a little too loud about it.

all the shame. over everything. we should talk about that all more.