Sunstream

I replied with this to another user already by I think this applies here, too: I think what they meant was that they participate in only 10% of conversations because when they do they talk too much. Nothing about OP’s post tells me they’re not aware of the problem or in denial.

I think what they meant was that they participate in only 10% of conversations because when they do they talk too much. Nothing about OP’s post tells me they’re not aware of the problem or in denial of it. Their question was how to stop doing it.

I think you’re taking it for granted that if someone knew about the problem and tried hard enough, they’d be able to stop, so you’ve answered assuming that they mustn’t be taking it seriously else they would’ve quit doing it already- only there’s a lot of reasons why it might be extremely difficult.

ADHD is one of many reasons, and it’s not a matter of willpower. This is why it requires medical and psychological intervention to treat effectively, and it is by far not the only cause of overbearing social behaviours.

Parasitophobia and dermatophobia (fear of parasites and skin disease, respectively). This bleeds into a fear of fungal infection and worms in general. I guess my kryptonite would be a parasitic skin infection 🙃

I don’t know what it is about them that repulses me/freaks me out over anything else- I quite like spiders, snakes, heights, the dark, etc- it’s just instant nausea when anyone starts talking about them. If there’s a hint I’m in danger of encountering either irl, I’m out.

Worst fear is having something crawl into my ear (I guess I can thank Animorphs for introducing yerks to me as a kid). I’ve seen some videos of that sort of thing happening to people, and I can’t even fathom how calm people seem to be in comparison to how I would be if it were me. I’d have to have to put on a watch so I didn’t start ripping into my head in animal panic.

I also have a particular dislike for really large fish and really large lizards. Anything larger than a foot and a half begins to make me uncomfortable. Dinosaurs are right out.

As my sister would say (who has a fear of lizards, herself) “If I were trapped in a room with a komodo dragon and a gun with two bullets in it, I would shoot myself twice.”

This wasn’t maliciousness to my mind so much as it was pure selfishness, but our school guidance counsellor fucked up in a vulnerable moment (particularly for me, but pretty much everyone who had to witness it as well), then doubled down on it and somehow made it worse.

One morning I came to school and my class was really somber. I found out that a girl’s mother had died yesterday- that girl was part of my friend’s group and I’d just met her mother a few weeks earlier at friend’s birthday party; she was lovely. A drunk driver had hit her on a roundabout at 12 midday, of all times, and she’d passed before they’d even gotten her to the hospital.

This was traumatic for my friend on every level, I’m sure, but it was my first experience with second hand grief, so you can imagine it was a bad time to go ahead with the scheduled guest that morning who was there to do a very graphic presentation about drunk driving involving sound effects and acting out a car collision.

I feel sorry for the guy, in hindsight, because he probably hadn’t heard a chorus of horrified screams and spontaneous sobbing in response to one of his shows quite like that, before, but that was on the school admin, anyway. What the fuck were they even thinking? “Yes, yes, we’re all sad about Jessie’s mum … So anyway, this is how she died, in real time!”

So, moments before this bloody show started up, another close friend of mine turned up late and was confused at our dismayed faces. No one had taken her aside to tell her (the bastards. Why would you not take the girl’s close friend group aside to tell them first? Jessie’s mum was like a second mum to some of us), so I found it was on me to convey it. That really sucked. A lot. I was clumsy, friend was distraught, you get the picture.

This bitch counsellor, though… When the completely inappropriate presentation got to the graphic bit, my friend took off crying down the hall 'cause fuck all that, and I made to as well. The counsellor stopped me (like she thought I was trying to go after her), and fucking made me sit down and watch the rest of that show, clinging to my other friends trying to sob as quietly as possible and not imagine poor Jessie’s mum at the moment her death. We were like, what, 15, 16 years old?

I don’t know how the hell my feelings about this bullshit got back to the counsellor, but I think my mum must’ve called the school after I came home in floods, because again, this fucking bitch called me aside right as the bell rang to go home to (figuratively speaking) pin me down and explain to me why she was totally right to do what she did and she hoped I understood that she did the right thing, blah blah blah.

I just nodded along desperately, getting more and more anxious because my one bus out of there had a very narrow window to get on, and eventually had to interrupt her to beg her to let me go home. I got to enjoy the sight of it driving off without me and had to call my mum to pick me up over an hour later (side of the road on a hot Aussie afternoon- no there was no bus shelter, no the school wasn’t open to let me hang around 'til my Mum got in).

Goddamn, I still think about that sometimes. It’s not even close to the worst I’ve heard of teachers, but it’s just so petty and unkind it somehow pisses me off more than overt cruelty. Like fuck off, you can’t gaslight me into believing you had my best interests at heart with bullying tactics.

Oh yeah that’s right, that same counsellor told me I had depression, too, when a) at that point in highschool I absolutely did not and it came out of left field completely, and b) when I did start to suffer from anxiety and depression she was as useful as a cat flap in an elephant house. Shocker.

Fuck you Mrs Whatever-your-face-was. I only remember you by the dumb nickname everyone gave you and that’s fair enough because you’re also dumb.

I learned in a video that cats can read our facial expressions just fine, we’re just crap at reading theirs because their facial muscles don’t allow for the same movement as humans (and dogs to some extent). They’ll become more anxious if we show a fear expression around them in a new environment, or become more relaxed and cuddly if we smile at them in a new place. They look to us for reassurance as much as dogs do.

Once I learned that they do a lot of their communicating with their tail, I started paying attention to my two cat’s tail movements and now I can’t unsee it. It’s as obvious as a waving hand, and they’ll talk to one another this way as well as with us.

For example, they lift their tail as a greeting. If I say their name as they enter a room, I might think they’d completely blanked me if I didn’t see their tail lift ‘hello’ every single time. Once my older cat, Bartine, didn’t bother to tail lift, and I said “Oi! Barty! Rude?!”. She then gave me a quick, half-hearted lift, like she couldn’t be bothered with more than half wave, lol

Their tails quiver with excitement if there’s a very interesting treat up for grabs, or my favourite is a coquettish swirl which is 100% “I love you” because it’s always followed up with an approach to snuggle or headbutt. They also understand me when I say I love you, but particularly now because I see the swirl tail and say “I love you, too!” followed by indulgent pets.

'Tis a silly one, but it’s hilarious when it stumps people. Best used verbally:

There are thirty cows in a field, and twenty-eight chickens. How many didn’t?

Oof, that must have been infuriating. I know there wasn’t much choice involved, but good on you for going back each time. I know a few people whose pride would have financially crippled them in that moment. Patience and persistence paid off, in the end. Congratulations on graduating :)

You gotta think diabolically.

My psychiatrist here in Australia cautioned me when doing online research into different ADHD medications to check the country of origin and avoid American sources where possible, as there is a huge anti-drug bias in US public and medical literature, and to stick to European/Australasian/other resources for more accurate information on mechanism of action and potential side-effects.

Boy, he was not wrong. If you go on many American websites that talk about the pros and cons of one stimulant or another, it’ll overemphasise its propensity towards abuse and extensively list the side effects without bothering to explain how the drug actually works in the body.

You’ll think it’s an unbiased source, at first, because the website itself only seem to contain basic drug information (at a cursory glance) only to scroll to the bottom and find that the website is owned/sponsored by a rehab facility, of all places.

It’d seem like there’s money to be made off of dx and prescribing ADHD meds, but we all know how fucking hard it is to dx’d in the first place, let alone prescribed something that works. It’s not wildly profitable to prescribe drugs with heavy federal restrictions on it.

What is profitable, however, is to give someone 6 other psychiatric medications to treat ongoing mental health issues from undiagnosed ADHD, and the half dozen other co-morbid issues like substance abuse disorders, PTSD, anxiety/depression, bipolar disorders, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and so on- none of which you’ll get much traction in treating without also addressing ADHD, and some of which may be misdiagnosed or more effectively treated when identifying the core disorder.

Why treat 1 condition when you can treat 7 ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Better yet, you can do that in an inpatient facility that their insurance can pay for, where you can convince them that their substance abuse issues are due to moral failing rather than an attempt at self-medicating a (widely speaking) treatable disorder, yet hypocritically prescribe them a cocktail of other psychiatric medications for their “moral failing”.

That being said, I’m not saying all rehab facilities are bad or operate in this manner, but it is just one of many ways that the medical and pharmaceutical industry inadvertently or directly discourages appropriate ADHD treatment, additionally fuelled by the government’s bigotry-fuelled war on drugs.

Additional unfun fact, in case the implication goes by anyone; some few folks have discovered exactly how much it sucks when your immune system discovers your eyes and have, indeed, gone blind because of it :(

If you’ve not watched Mork and Mindy, that’s worth it. It was Robin William’s breakout role in television, so if you know Robin, you know what you’re getting. It’s delightful.

I’ve been really getting into Korean tv on Netflix lately, too. Best watched with subtitles and no dubbing. My gf and I have been watching Good Manager, which is about a tacky mob accountant trying to run away from his problems by skimming flagrantly from all of the dodgy businesses he manages. He gets hired at a large corporation and thinks he’s onto his biggest scam yet, but the accounting team are sincere, the managers are psychos, and he’s still got a glimmer of heart beneath his red hair dye and 1980’s Sears catalogue suits that makes stealing from big business really, really hard when they take it out on the little guy. It’s had me absolutely rolling; people’s facial expressions, their theatrics, and vigorous use of the leitmotif really brought it together. 10/10, for me.