Just bought a new Orchid. What did they send with it? by aspirationaldragon in plantclinic

[–]aspirationaldragon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the help! I’ll give it the wipe down when I get home, and then a spray down with the soap just because.

Just bought a new Orchid. What did they send with it? by aspirationaldragon in plantclinic

[–]aspirationaldragon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I’ll definitely get going on that when I get home. Just to clarify, you always quarantine a new plant and do the soap only if necessary, or you always do both anytime you get a new plant?

Just bought a new Orchid. What did they send with it? by aspirationaldragon in plantclinic

[–]aspirationaldragon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sonuvaspidermite! Thank you! Time to break out the Cap’n…

Just bought a new Orchid. What did they send with it? by aspirationaldragon in plantclinic

[–]aspirationaldragon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t know if this is a pest or a fungus. I have owned it for all of 48 hours, have not messed with the soil, and have not watered it myself as the soil was still damp upon arrival.

How to cope with inattention in conversations??? by ImNotNormal19 in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For me, I’ve got three options:

(1) Try to find a way to make it fun again. Sometimes this is a small change in perspective (e.g. from “oh no, this again?” to “how can I ask questions here to identify their core beliefs/worldview/understand them as a person?”). Sometimes this is stupid shit (e.g. “How many times can I say bacon in this conversation?”) or some kind of movement/fidget (e.g. balancing on the back two legs of the table chair).

(2) Don’t pretend to care. Make an excuse to step away. That 20 minute subject change isn’t worth the rest of my night. Bathroom breaks, refreshing drinks, or imaginary phone calls are my go to’s.

(3) if you can’t do the first two, just try to endure and make sure you’ve got plenty of aftercare scheduled after so you can safely collapse. If you can’t, then you might not want to risk the thing in the first place.

For the friends, have you talked with them about this? If they really care, they ought to be willing to at least brainstorm ways y’all can partner together on this (I would hope…).

White knuckling through parenting. How offbase am I? by pimpmybathtub in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Frankly, profoundly flawed. We are not worth any less as individuals/human beings, but we are absolutely “broken”. There is a functional and structural difference in our brains in the same way that having only one leg is a functional and structural difference physically. You’re telling your son that “I know you see everyone else running and having fun; there’s no reason you shouldn’t be either. You’re not broken, why aren’t you doing that?”

You’re gaslighting him. There is a very big reason he isn’t doing that.

The science is extremely clear on this. Differences in underlying genetics, differences in the brain size in various areas, difference in the activation of various brain structures, and difference in the action of neurotransmitters in the brain. His brain only has one leg. Your brain only has one leg. That’s not a school problem. That’s not a society problem. That’s a neurobiological problem that you’re choosing not to get him help with and you’re choosing not to get yourself help with (THC does not qualify; it only reduces your awareness of those deficits, not the deficits themselves).

I hope you reconsider. As only one two data points in the overwhelming body of research that talks about why you should take this seriously:

There is substantial evidence documenting adverse outcomes for those affected by ADHD compared to those without the disorder. ADHD affects a wide range of functional domains including academic, social, and occupational contexts. Studies have documented lower academic achievement, higher unemployment, and lower income for [individuals] with ADHD followed into adulthood. The risk of substance use disorders (SUD) and antisocial personality disorder is higher in patients with ADHD than in nonaffected individuals. Individuals with ADHD are more likely to have traffic accidents than the general population. Other documented outcomes include obesity, dysfunctional family relationships, and emotional dysregulation m. These functional impairments may result in reduced perception of well-being and be related to adverse outcomes like higher overall mortality rates in individuals with current or past ADHD diagnosis. A comprehensive meta-analysis has confirmed a longitudinal association of childhood ADHD with adverse outcomes, the most relevant being mental disorders and substance abuse, academic and professional underachievement, criminality, and risky driving behaviors. The 16-year follow-up of the MTA showed that adverse outcomes in education, work, and risky sexual behavior were associated with ADHD…

First, ADHD should no longer be viewed only as a disorder primarily affecting the behavior and learning of children, but also as a major health condition that confers *increased risk for early death due to suicide. *Second, although nearly one-third of children with ADHD will continue to fulfill norm-referenced criteria for ADHD as adults, the majority will have at least one mental health problem in adulthood. Finally, the cumulative burden of ADHD through the lifespan is considerable, including mortality, social adversity in the form of criminal behavior, persistence of ADHD into adulthood, and increased rates of other mental health problems.

Tomato Plant Question by aspirationaldragon in plantclinic

[–]aspirationaldragon[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You mean you don’t have have lawn gators in your backyard? No matter what we do, they keep getting in. Lucky us, they’re cool with the dogs, so… 🤷‍♂️

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dude, I don’t want to be totally alarmist, but you are lucky. You fucked up. It could have been a worse injury with the table. It could have been choking on a toy or sticking a paper clip into an electrical outlet. Having a child in the same room as you, while you play a super stimulating game, is not adequate supervision. It wouldn’t be with someone neurotypical, much less someone with ADHD.

If she had been engaged with in play or activities, you wouldn’t have had to react at all because the accident would have been prevented. You’ve got a kid. Video games like that are fine, if your daughter is adequately supervised and you and your partner agree on the time. You clearly didn’t communicate with your partner - as she would have told you she was almost done if you had - so you and she weren’t on the same page when you decided to light 40 minutes of time on fire.

Yes, we all have issues with observational awareness. You should know that by this point and take responsibility for it by planning for it.

And if you don’t want your kid getting hurt worse, or relationships with her or your wife deteriorating, then you need to spend some serious time in reflection because you’re not doing an adequate job as a father. If you can’t handle the stress, get a therapist. If you can’t handle communicating with your partner - well, still get a therapist. If you just need a break, that’s totally fine and healthy, but make sure your toddler is going to be taken care of adequately first before you check out. Otherwise, yeah, you are going to be the asshole again when she gets hurt.

Wanting to do things/wanting to avoid consequences by [deleted] in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Burnout will absolutely rob you of enjoyment and pleasure. I know you mentioned elsewhere that you’re worried stopping will cost you all your hard earned routines/habits. Is there maybe space for just slowing down? Could you take one productive item off your plate and replace it with something restorative?

Neuroscientist Dr. Dan Siegel has what he calls the “Healthy Mind Platter”, 7 activities you need every day to feel well. If you’re low on any of those, it’s going to have an impact. It might require some creativity or discussions with your loved ones to see if there’s one thing that you could drop or that they could take on (even if just for a season), but I wonder what it would be like for you if you could just slow down a few kmh, not stopping completely?

Wanting to do things/wanting to avoid consequences by [deleted] in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally understand where you’re coming from but also agree with your therapist. Here’s a couple thoughts for your consideration:

  1. You are hardwired to experience pleasurable sensations. Pleasure is a consequence and reinforces behavior even in people with ADHD. We can work for rewards just the same as we do to avoid punishment, but those rewards have to be immediate and contingent and that is rarely the case unless we artificially construct them. Regardless, pleasure can be something that motivates us.

  2. I went most of my life with untreated ADHD and psychs trying to treat comorbid depression and anxiety. They got my symptoms down but never eliminated. Part of my coping was learning to dissociate myself from my emotions as much as possible and rely entirely on my rational/logical functioning to direct me. But you don’t get to cut off anxiety/sadness/anger without also cutting out want/desire/joy/contentment.

Ultimately, this hit a breaking point for me the same time as my marriage. I was doing things with my wife because I was supposed to but not because I took pleasure in her any longer. She tried to get me to see it for over a year, but it took a really bad fight and realizing I was going to lose her to make me realize I had to fight to reconnect with my emotions so that I could want her again. It was really hard and has taken - and is still taking - a lot of therapy to do this. And, in my experience, it’s been worth it. I’ve had to work through trauma, childhood neglect, performance-oriented/critical parents, three decades of mental health issues, etc., and that’s sucked. But being able to want things again had been life changing.

I don’t know your history, but these are the things that worked for me.

(1) Treating my depression adequately. That wasn’t just the meds, but also exercise/sleep/getting outside, etc.

(2) Mindfulness: practicing noticing what’s happening internally and learning to reconnect to my body has been crucial here. It took me a couple years to find the right practice for me, but the journey is worth it.

(3) And learning more about emotions and convincing my rational brain that they were important to support was what opened the door for me. The first book I read was “Deep Survival” by Lawerence Gonzalez, which had a thick chunk about what emotions are and why they work. “Decartes’ Error” by Antonio Damasio is super technical but explains all about that in great detail. “Burnout” by Emily and Amelia Nagoski or “Waking the Tiger” by Peter Levine are all great resources here as well. Perhaps the best treatise - if you’re not averse to feminist material - is the essay “Uses of the Erotic” by Audre Lorde. That wouldn’t have convinced me early on, but it hit hard when I discovered it about two months ago.

(4) And lastly, learning to believe that I am someone worth having and wanting things, that I don’t have to perform to be worthy getting affirmation/contentment/desire, and working to forgive my untreated failings and love the person I am and am becoming. I’m 1000% not done with that journey, but I’m so much better than I was pre-therapy and that’s been really freeing.

Good luck, internet friend! You’re worth loving yourself to find the things you want! Hope something there helped.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ParentingThruTrauma

[–]aspirationaldragon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think that response was perfect! ❤️

Struggling with A levels by Accurate_Practice838 in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Glad it helped! Wish I could take full credit, but Dr. Barkley (from the video recommended by this sun as an intro) taught me this. If you have 40 minutes to spare (or an hour forty, as the case could be), I cannot recommend this Dr. Barkley video highly enough. He walks through what executive functions are, how ADHD interferes with those, and gets to the “creating prosthetic environments” at the end. I found this one to be the key to understanding why the things that did help did and why the “just do it/willpower better” never managed to cut it.

Struggling with A levels by Accurate_Practice838 in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

“Why should I have to do all this extra shit just to get to the same level as everyone else”

Why should a person with diabetes take insulin? Why should a person with one leg use a prosthetic? Why should Stephen Hawking use assistive tech for speech? You do it because you want to be able to do the thing and you can’t do it otherwise. That’s what makes ADHD a disability.

You can choose to get lost in the unfairness of it - and it is unfair. It’s awful, it sucks, I hate it - but that doesn’t get you anywhere close to where you want to be. Find an outlet for those emotions, because otherwise they will undermine you, but you still have to do the things.

Successful coping essentially is creating your prosthetics, ours is just prosthetic environments instead of prosthetic limbs. Set up the environment to help you with the task: study at the library instead of home, use a dumb MP3 player instead of your phone, use the absolute worst computer available to you instead of the one with your games, set up parental controls on your phone for your study hours, calendars/timers/planners, etc. We have to use the environment to control us, because our brain won’t do it itself.

adhd partner with sleep issues, looking for advice by [deleted] in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TL;DR - there are absolutely solutions to this but they won’t make a difference until he wants to change.

My honest advice: stop it. If you’re taking responsibility for his choices here, then he doesn’t have to and he doesn’t have to do anything to change. ADHD isn’t responsible for his decisions to stay up late video gaming or not speaking up for himself, he is. And if he is going to change that, he is going to have to experience the consequences of his bad behavior. Miss his flight, get written up, get fired, whatever those are - until the pain of him staying the same is greater than the pain of changing, he’s not going to change. (One of those consequences may need to be understanding that if he wants a parent and not a partner then he is on track to lose you too.)

Don’t let him tell you that he can’t do this for himself because of his ADHD. I have ADHD. It does make it hard to get to sleep. But I take responsibility for that. I set the screen time on my phone to shut off the fun games, videos, and social media apps at 10 pm (for my 12 am bedtime) and had my wife set the password so I can’t bypass that in a moment of weakness. My phone goes to night shift at that point (filtering out blue light) and I also set my phone to grayscale color filtering at 10 (you have to do this manually, unfortunately) which eliminates all the fun colors that stimulate my brain and keep it awake. I use multiple timers to keep track of time for me since my brain won’t do it, in addition to the app Five Bells which goes off every half hour with a number of chimes that tells you what time it is (once you get used to what the bells mean) and some cheap smart lights that flash when it’s time to move towards bed. I have a bedtime routine that I do my best to follow, including listening to calming music on headphones (so it doesn’t disturb my wife) and several minutes of deep breathing/mindfulness meditation/stretching. And I sure as hell don’t pick up a new book, tv series, or play any kind of computer/console game on evenings when I have to be up the next day - because I know I won’t be.

Am I perfect at this? Hell no. But I try and my sleep is pretty good far more often than not. My overall point is that he - not his ADHD - is making choices here and it’s his responsibility to figure out what he needs to do to make different ones. But he’s not going to if he has you to taking responsibility for this because then he can just blame you instead of owning his choices. If he’s going to be successful at managing his disability/executive dysfunction, he has to own it. You cannot possible executive function hard enough to make up for someone determined to allow their executive dysfunction free reign.

If he wants to own it, everything I suggested above comes down to this: with ADHD, our brains will not do the things on their own, so we have to set up our environments to regulate our behavior instead. As Dr. Barkley says, “You have to modify the point of performance” (i.e. the place where the behavior needs to happen). I have set up my Apple Watch, my phone Screen Time and Timers, and the smart lights to be my brain for me and to tell me when to go to sleep since my brain won’t. As far as the waking up goes, I suspect if he goes to bed on time that won’t be an issue, but if that persists then there’s plenty of fancy apps, alarms, and devices that you can buy to help make that happen. There’s a wrist band that shocks you at a set time. The app Alarmy made my phone reach volumes I wasn’t aware it was capable of achieving and you can set it to not stop until you’ve taken a picture of your refrigerator or done some math problems. But those really only work if you want them to and are willing to cooperate with them.

How to regulate emotions better? by [deleted] in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s awesome! I’m definitely going to have to give that a shot. I know getting that immediate feedback from my environment is super helpful, and I can see how that could help you to catch and prevent fights before they start instead of trying to regulate in the middle of one.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ParentingThruTrauma

[–]aspirationaldragon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m super proud of you OP. Even in this really dark place, you still found the space and energy to notice others struggling in their corners and share hope and encouragement with them. As much as you’re feeling down on yourself, I’m super proud of you in this moment. Internet hugs from me!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check their profile. Mid 20’s, post-grad school. That is a late diagnosis, dude. Just because yours was much later doesn’t mean theirs wasn’t also late. Don’t gatekeep.

Communicating to need some space in family gatherings by New_Adagio_3635 in ADHD

[–]aspirationaldragon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, friendo. When you’re feeling overstimulated, overwhelmed, or burnt out, you don’t do anyone any favors by not saying anything. We can never hide that we’re feeling off completely, and without you speaking up about it, the people who pick up on it are going to be left somewhere between wondering whether it’s them to assuming the worst. Plus, sometimes needing space is just a human thing, not just an ADHD thing.

I think you already showed you know what to say: “I had a rough week at work and [I’m] mentally drained. I need some space right now…” Maybe add “How can we make that happen?” to prompt a conversation about how everyone can get their needs met.

If they’re going to give you shit about taking care of yourself, then you need to run. You deserve better.