When you get diagnosed or self diagnosed it is very common to start showing more and more symptoms. It isn’t that you are faking or doing it on purpose, it’s because you now don’t have to hide them and you’re expressing yourself fully in ways you though you needed to hide.
And that you’re realizing things ARE symptoms that you didn’t think were before. Don’t ever feel like it’s a placebo effect. The things you’re experiencing are very real.
WAIT, THIS DOESN’T SHOW JUST HOW AWESOME DIANA IS.
This is from ruckawriter’s run on WW (the best ever, imho). Medusa turns one of Diana’s employees into stone (Diana is a full-on ambassador as well as superhero) and then challenges Diana to a fight. Diana is skeptical, but Aphrodite pretty much says, “Listen, we’re not gonna take this shit from Medusa, you gotta fight her.” So Diana shows up pretty ready, blindfold, armor, all that. But it turns out Medusa has manipulated the event to be televised, so that after she defeats Diana, she can look into the screen and turn all the people watching into stone.
Just TAKE THIS SHIT IN FOR A HOT SECOND (all images courtesy of scans_daily)
Then the stuff above happens. YES, BITCHES, DIANA—WHO HAS RECENTLY HAD A SWORD RUN THROUGH ONE OF HER KIDNEYS— TAKES ONE OF THE SNAKES SHE CUT OFF MEDUSA’S HEAD WHILE BLINDFOLDED AND SQUIRTS THE POISON IN HER EYES SO SHE IS BLIND SO MEDUSA CAN’T FUCK WITH HER.
Why? BECAUSE SAVING AND AVENGING EVEN ONE MORTAL LIFE IS WORTH HER OWN GODDAMN VISION THAT’S WHY.
But after that badass “Never?” THIS PHOTO SET LEAVES OUT THE BEST PART. WONDER WOMAN IMMEDIATELY CHOPS OFF MEDUSA’S HEAD. NO HESITATION. NO NEGOTIATION. NO DESTROYING A WHOLE CITY JUST TO BEAT HER UP A LITTLE MORE. CHOP AND DONE.
And then?
DROP THAT MIC, DI.
DROP IT LIKE THE MAGMA-HOT SHIT THAT IT IS.
To Rucka’s credit, this wasn’t no false-ass sacrifice, either. She stays blind AND STILL SAVES EVERYONE’S ASSES.
How does she get her sight back? She does something for Athena and Athena grants her one boon. So what does our Diana do? Ask for her sight back?
NOPE. SHE ASKS FOR LIFE TO BE RETURNED TO A CHILD KILLED BY MEDUSA.
And Athena was like, “Shit, Wonder Woman, you’re better than all of us, I guess you can have your sight back, too.” And Diana’s pretty much like, “Fine, that’s cool I guess, I was still getting shit done without it.”
THIS IS WHY I HAVE A LOT OF GODDAMN FEELINGS ABOUT WONDER WOMAN.
#Wonder Woman #1
And we can’t get a Wonder Woman movie showing this very fight because…?
tips for what to do after a really long cry because you’re probably feeling all kinds of exhausted and drained and i don’t want that for you in the slightest:
take a shower and change all of your clothes even your socks and underwear. this is the first step to everything.
pour yourself a big, cold glass of water and drink it. all of it. once you’re done, get yourself a refill. this will boost u physically and emotionally instantly please trust me.
grab a snack, something light that you don’t have to wait to prepare. i recommend a pudding cup, a piece of fruit, yogurt, a popsicle, or some crackers.
get under the covers. turn on something - tv, a movie, music, anything distracting. or consider calling a friend or talking to anyone nearby, even your sibling the next room over!!
know that you are loved. you are important. you mean more than you know right now, more than you will maybe ever know. you are worth all the stars in the sky. you deserve to feel good.
if a guy is hitting on u and he is clearly the alpha in his group of guys.. go for the third in command and undermine their whole power structure
Oh god, I used this tactic so often. Because in most cases I was trying to pull dudes for my friends, rather than myself. You figure out who their leader is, go for #3 or #4 in the group, who is generally much cuter and a bit more shy. This is why he ranks high, but not too high. You go hard on this dude. You hold his hand and smile at him. You don’t even have to go further. Dude #3 is just bewildered you brushed off #1. This makes the dude at the top antsy. It causes dissent in the ranks. Your friends can now swoop in, picking from the remaining dudes as they start to scatter in the wind. They have lost all sense of self. You have secured free drinks for the rest of the night. And whatever else your genitals desire.
so here’s a fun story about this movie. guess who loves this movie? me! i do! i love this movie. i love this movie so much that when i was in the 7th grade and i saw “first wives club 2” on pay per view i was like: HELL YEAH!! FIRST WIVES CLUB TWO!! NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS A SEQUEL!!!
here’s the synopsis for first wives club 2:
disgruntled first wives take their ex-husbands’ new lovers under their wing.
sounds great, right? awesome viewing material for a precocious 11-year-old.
so i buy this movie, and like, three minutes into it i’m starting to feel suspicious?? like it’s really low quality and my girls are nowhere in sight?? how come none of the first wives are the same?? how come they’re alone in a bedroom with mood lighting?? why is she taking off her shirt?? why are they both taking off their shirts?? WHY ARE THEY—
here’s what i did not know about first wives club 2:
it is a lesbian porno of no relation to the beloved 1996 classic.
so of course i, horrified that i’ve accidentally bought porn on my family’s account (and in that state of panic that kids work themselves into whenever anything regarding sex is mentioned), quickly shut off the TV and go upstairs and watch an episode of veggie tales to like, cleanse my soul and apologize to jesus, and that’s that.
EXCEPT, OF COURSE:
you have to pay for pay per view.
so the end of the month comes and i have completely put this incident out of my mind, haha, i accidentally bought porn, how funny, TELL NO ONE. right? and i’m sitting at a nice dinner with my mother, my stepfather, and my very religious aunt deb, and we’re just talking about farm things, whatever, when suddenly my mother puts her fork down and says, “okay, there’s something we need to discuss. as a family.”
AS A FAMILY.
and i’m like, running through a list of people i know who could conceivably be dead, and fantasizing about my mother announcing that she’s going to buy me My Own Computer Just Because U Earned It Kiddo, and she pulls out a piece of paper that says DIRECTV across the top. and i’m like: OH NO.
“i received the tv bill today,” my mother said, and i was like, shoveling potatoes into my mouth as fast as i could because i knew that when i went to PORN PRISON they weren’t going to feed me this kind of quality starch. “does anybody want to tell me who purchased the pornography?”
as a reminder, a quick table survey:
my mother, surprised and disappointed by the porn bill (innocent)
my stepfather, a grumbly old cowboy who just wants to sing along to kenny chesney and watch the hunt for red october (innocent)
my aunt deb, a super religious catholic whose best friend is a nun named Sister Placid (innocent)
me, the 11-year-old with a mouthful of potatoes who definitely purchased the lesbian pornography
silence.
my mother said, “i’m not going to ask again.”
silence.
my aunt looked at my stepdad. my stepdad looked at my aunt. NOBODY LOOKED AT ME, THE 11-YEAR-OLD WITH A MOUTHFUL OF POTATOES WHO DEFINITELY PURCHASED THE LESBIAN PORNOGRAPHY.
my mother shook her head and put the bill down. “this was incredibly inappropriate,” she said. “skip, deb, whoever. buy that shit on your own time. i’m not paying for it. what if molly had seen it?”
WHAT IF MOLLY HAD SEEN IT?
“don’t expose my kid to that crap.”
DON’T
EXPOSE
MY KID
TO THAT CRAP
“if you want to watch porn, fine, but do it in private and don’t expect me to pay for it. i can’t believe one of you did that in the living room.”
I CAN’T BELIEVE ONE OF YOU DID THAT
IN THE LIVING ROOM
but molly, why didn’t you own up to it and explain that it was an accident?
are you fucking kidding
i did not want to go to porn prison
the fun conclusion to this story is that i never owned up to it, which means that there are 3 people in the world who have not solved the mystery of the lesbian porn. a quick survey:
my mother, who lives every day wondering whose porn she paid for
my stepfather, who probably wishes he knew less about his wife’s sister’s porn preferences
my aunt, who probably wishes she knew less about her sister’s husband’s porn preferences
but molly, why don’t you own up to it now, with the safety of time and distance and the knowledge that porn prison isn’t real?
are you fucking kidding
this is the best thing i’ve ever done
I WILL NEVER NOT REBLOG THIS, MY FAVOURITE POST ON THE INTERNET.
Instead of telling yourself, “I should get up,” or “I should do this,”
Ask yourself, “When will I get up?” or “When will I be ready to do this?”
Instead of trying to order yourself to feel the signal to do something, which your brain is manifestly bad at, listen to yourself with compassionate curiosity and be ready to receive the signal to move when it comes.
Things I did not actually realize was an option
What’s amazing is what happens when you do this with children. I hit on it when working at the foster home, where nearly all our kids were on the autism spectrum, and they weren’t “defiant” around me because I said things like, “How long do you need to stand here before we can move?” and “Come into the kitchen when you’re ready” instead of saying, “Stop staring out the window, let’s go,” or “Come eat dinner,” and interpreting hesitation as refusal to obey.
I have also definitely found that doing the “okay when I finish counting down from twenty is getting up time” has been useful.
Yup, that’s way better for toddlers and younger kids. It helps when they don’t have the self-awareness, attention span, or concept of the passage of time to estimate when they’ll be ready by themselves.
Oh I meant for me. XD Saying it to myself.
WELL OKAY WHOOPS XD I should not have been overspecific, I was just thinking about teaching this stuff to the parents at my job and your reblog made me immediately think of you with Banana and the kidlets.
Another hack: when you want to get up but are stalled by your brain and frustrated – stop. Breathe. Think about what you want to do once you’re up, without thinking about getting up. Treat it like a fantasy, no pressure, just thinking about something you’d like to do in the future. Instead of thinking “I should get up” over and over, think about having a bagel for breakfast, or getting dressed in your soft green sweater. Imagine yourself doing the thing.
I find that exercise often side-steps the block and the next thing I know I’m out of bed and on my way to doing the other thing I thought about.
Works for other things too, if you’re stuck on one step and having a hard time doing it, think about the step after that. Need to do laundry and you can’t get yourself to gather up your dirty clothes in the hamper? Think instead about carrying the hamper full of dirty clothes to the laundry room. And when you get to that next step, if you get stuck again, think about the step after it – you have a hamper of dirty clothes that needs to be put in the wash, let your subconscious handle the “carry hamper to laundry room” step while you’re thinking about the “putting them in the wash” part.
YMMV of course, and this doesn’t even always work for me (particularly not when I need to do a collection of tasks in no particular order, like packing for a trip… “pack socks, pack underwear, pack toothbrush, pack pants, pack shirts” is the kind of non-linear task list where this trick doesn’t help at all), but it’s something I’ve found helpful often enough.
This is one of the most beautiful threads I’ve seen on Tumblr simply because it deals so compassionately with an issue so many of us have and can barely even articulate to ourselves, let alone to anyone else. <3
I think I get overwhelmed from the thought of all of the consequent steps, so maybe I’ll do the reverse of the advice above and try to focus on the first one.
@the-rain-monster i was just about to say something similar. that can work too sometimes. instead of going “ugh i need to eat something” for four hours, i try to focus on each step in turn.
and i mean each TINY step. just getting out of my chair has this many steps:
pause music
remove headphones
hang headphones on laptop screen
pick up laptop
leg-bend recliner footrest shut
set laptop aside
stand
and i reckon that’s why i get stuck on it; because i’m trying to treat it as one thing, while executive dysfunction is treating it as seven things, and choking on trying to skip to step seven.
concurrent with this is a method i call ‘junebugging’. which is where i go to the location of the thing i want to do, and just sort of bump around the region like a big stupid beetle until the thing somehow accidentally magically gets done. this is an attempt to leverage ADHD into an advantage; i may not have the executive function to make myself a sandwich on purpose, but if i fidget in the kitchen long enough, some kind of food is going to end up in my mouth eventually. and hell, even if i fail on that front, i will probably have achieved something, even if it’s only pouring all my loose leaf tea into decorative jars.*
@star-anise please may i give you an internet hug *hug!* because god how i wish anyone had known to do that for me when i was a kid. my childhood was one big overload, and like 99% of the huge dramatic meltdowns that made me the scapegoat/laughingstock/target of my entire elementary school were simply due to people not giving me time to process the next step, and interpreting a bluescreen as defiance/insult.
*this happened when i was trying to do dishes actually but the principle is sound
…I needed to see this thread, because one of my big dysfunctions is going to bed, of all things, so I’ll end up being up until 2 am on a daily basis doing fucking nothing because I cannot will my limbs to move from their current spot and it always ends up fucking me over.
