One of the many things I'd like to really think and write about someday is the tendency to cast behavior that is not consciously chosen in a "conscious choice" frame. I got a lot of this as a kid growing up religious: failures of self-control were frequently phrased as if they were deliberate, fully-considered acts, as if there was a 5-minute cost-benefit analysis before some kids decided to feel each other's delightful sexual bits or try some of the devil's drink. One take I heard more than once was "why would you choose to compromise your [eternal salvation / honor / soul / etc.] for a few minutes of temporary pleasure?" Even back then, even as a very stupid teenager, I knew that didn't feel right. It wasn't just because of the assumption that 16-year-olds are capable of rationally weighing gradual, slow-burn long-term benefits against short-term, fast-burn, intense benefits (though that's the core of it). It was also that weird assumption that there was ever a conscious choice.

I know, for my part, I had a hundred thousand experiences of being me, doing my thing, then looking up in horror as some authority figure asked what the hell I was doing. Then I would look down, see my hands covered in mud from my mother's flooded flowerbed, or look past the delicious lips of the girl I'd been kissing for an hour, or look at the materials I'd used to create something that were actually someone else's important resources. I'd suddenly see what I had been doing in a new light--the what the hell are you doing? light--and get a very familiar, horrible feeling in my gut: consequences.

But there was no point at which I'd weighed those consequences. I had never had a thought like "let's do this; it will be worth the risk."

For a while, as a teen and young person, I was known as a risk-taker, a daredevil, a thrill-seeker. I really was none of those things. I would suddenly realize that I was hanging from a wild rose bush off a 50-foot cliff in the Cascades, or was flying hell-for-leather down a gnarly singletrack in Moab behind my cousin's boyfriend (an actual downhill MTB hucker), or about to try a somersault on waterskis at 40 mph.

when I was a bit older, I did sometimes have at least part of the mental conversations with myself about risks and rewards, etc. Those conversations didn't often go in reasonable directions, but at least I had them.

I sometimes wonder how I became an academic. I'm not introverted, autistic, or asocial; those characteristics are often excellent for academia. I've been cramming my square peg into Academia's round hole (I just realized how very inappropriate that sounds) for 20+ years.

About 8 years ago I did a teaching observation with a colleague, trying to get tenure (again). After I taught the class she asked, "It was interesting that you decided to spend two minutes talking about a tangent subject instead of following your lecture plan. What prompted that decision?"

I looked at her for a few seconds and said, "I don't know... personal pathology?"

She truly seemed like she had just heard something she had never in her life imagined or considered (she was a bit asocial, very introverted, and probably struggling with OCD; she was perfect for academia).

Now, with the hindsight of a few decades, some hard-won coping strategies, medication, and a slowed-down mind and body, I think I've started to learn some things about myself. In the few situations where people have asked what "choice" I was "making" with a clearly impulsive action I have tended to respond with a good deal of snark. I think questions like that are sometimes a flex, an attempt to dominate others, and the people doing that can go fuck themselves. The people who are honestly confused about why someone would "choose" to build a very low quality guitar out of a metal washtub instead of grading papers their students expected the next day could probably use a little consciousness expansion, too.

There are more things in human behavior than are dreamt of in your weird and narrow philosophy, Horatio.

#tmi #subtoot #personal #adhd #neuroatypical #old

Pure dystopia that people can't tell the difference between :

Post Scriptum.
This post redaction time : 20 minutes.

#AI #NoAI #Chatgpt #LLM #AIslop
#Neurodivergent #NeuroAtypical #NeuroA #ActuallyAutistic #Autism #ADHD #Dystopia #MarkDown #BBCode #EnrichedText #TextEnriched #FormatedText #textformat

#Neuroatypical Double Feature tonight... #Atypical followed by the latest episode of #HighPotential!

@autistics

I did a poll here for a week. 141 people responded. I was interested in #mastodon users' preferred categorization of the term "neurodiverse." The results generally confirmed my a priori predictions but had some surprises. Some takeaways for me, right now:

• Autism was in a tie for top position, unsurprising as, in my experience, autism was the first condition to be labeled "neurodiverse" or "neuroatypical", and is, I suspect, something of a prototype for the category.
• ADHD was tied (given the sample) with autism. I was mildly surprised. I think a few years ago this would not have been the case; ADHD awareness, activism, and acceptance have increased dramatically over the past few years.
• Schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and #bipolar disorders were the next group. The inclusion of anxiety disorders surprised me; I suspected it would be tied with depression disorders.
• Personality disorders being endorsed at the same rate as depression and intellectual disability was a mild surprise.
• Psychopathy being tied with depression and intellectual disability was a pretty big surprise for me. This poll was largely about opinions and preferences, so stigma is (IMO) a big part of it. "Being a psychohpath" seems to be less stigmatized (in a specific way) than I thought... it's also possible the results would change if I'd used the word "psychopath" instead of "psychopathy."
• Intellectual disabiity (until pretty recently labeled "mental retardation" but, you know, the euphemism treadmill) was a wild card for me; I didn't know where it would end up. I would like to do a different survey sometime, with a different response format, so I could see the variability in responses. I suspect this condition (and a few others) would result in a lot of variability.
• Pedophilia was of particular interest to me. The results confirmed my strong a priori hypothesis, and this (plus psychopathy) was a major reason for wording the poll as I did, prompoting for preferences instead of a more objective assessment of the research-based fitness of each condition for the "neurodiverse" category.

More about #pedophilia: a nice, big mountain of research strongly suggests that it is a condition of altered brain development; in fact, it is probably a sexual orientation. A better survey than this simple poll might assess participants' understanding of pedophilia in addition to the question I did ask. I suspect many people confuse pedophilia with child molestation/abuse (nb: pedophilia is a pattern of attraction, not a set of behaviors, though many pedophiles have also abused children).

Both the left and right political meta-groups in the USA have latched onto "pedophile" as a label for child molestation--usually of post-pubescent children, where pedophilia is very specifically a pattern of attraction to prepubescent children. There was flirtation during Trump's first term with the more correct(ish) labels "hebephilia" and "ephebephilia", but I think the need for a stronger, more dehumanizing label won in the end, and "pedophile" packs a bigger cultural/emotional punch than "child molester."

Anyway, thanks to everyone who participated. This is fascinating enough for me that I might even do a real survey sometime. If I can get my dean to stop giving me extra classes for calling him out on his anti-labor nonsense.

Notes:

#neurodiverse #neuroatypical #poll #adhd #autism #schizophrenia #anxiety #bipolar #PersonalityDisorder #psychopathy #depression #IntellectualDisability

https://straybun.status.lol/6939f1bb75637

Clinic Director: We understand that people with ADHD can have severe difficulties with time management and keeping up with things. Reinforcement and punishment are extremely unlikely to produce any lasting change in these behaviors because, you know, ADHD. Really, the only thing that makes a meaningful impact on that kind of thing is medication.

Office Manager: Of course, doctor.

CD: We also know that punitive methods of behavior change are even less effective for people with ADHDthan for the general public, with even worse negative consequences.

OM: Mmm hmm.

CD: If the consequences happen hours or even days after the behavior you're trying to change, forget about it. Zero effectiveness plus anxiety, negative mood, lower self-esteem, loss of trust...

OM: That's very interesting, doctor. How do you want to manage prescriptions for our ADHD patients?

CD: Punitive methods, obviously. Those people have to learn to manage their time and tasks. Let's refuse to fill the prescription unless they jump through a few hoops within an arbitrary time frame.

OM: [taking notes]

CD: And let's make sure the punishment is separated from those time management failures by at least a few days.

#ADHD #psychiatry #neuroatypical #meds #rx

The to-do list waxes and wanes, swells and shrinks. The to-do list does not get "finished", despite individual items occasionally meeting this state. The urgencies and weights of the to-do list are suggestions only, but suggestions with power. The order of items on the to-do list appears meaningful but is at least 50% arbitrary. Ask not "which item shall I start with?" Start with literally any item. Any one. Even that one, yes. Any is better than none. The to-do list before you is but the projection into this dimension of the full and complete to-do list. No one can know the full and complete to-do list; if it were possible, any person who came to know it would go mad. The full and complete to-do list might be infinite; it is impossible to know. When you die the to-do list will remain, no matter what you do. The to-do list is not god and it is not the devil. It is not an angel or a demon. It merely is. It is not elemental or a force of nature, however; it is constructed. By you. From your life. From your relationship with and understanding of your life. That doesn't mean it owns you or that it even knows you. Does it think it knows you? It doesn't know you. It's got no cause to be talking shit about you. It's a punk. You owe it nothing. But you probably owe some stuff to some people, partly represented on the to-do list, so just beating its ass down is probably not the go-to move, here. On a related topic: the to-do list is not your boss; you are its boss. It is an unruly, disrespectful employee who says shit you really don't want to hear right now but who you cannot fire. It is a problem employee, as are you, FWIW. The to-do list is everything. The to-do list is nothing. The to-do list is honestly probably somewhere in between those extremes. You should stop writing this ridiculous faux-zen bullshit and actually look at your to-do list.

#affirmations #neuroatypical #adhd #silly

#introductions

I'm the Qwyrdo, a #Nonbinary #ActuallyAutistic #Buddhist #witch with *lots* of special interests, not limited to:

* #Calligraphy
* Fantasy #cartography
* The age of sail and historic naval combat
* #Science
* #Astronomy
* #Linguistics and #conlanging
* #EarlyMusic

... and probably other important ones that aren't coming to mind at the moment.

Pronouns are they/them or ze/zer.

Oh. #Queer and #neuroatypical and #Trans.

Please read my profile, too! ∑:ᴈ