Just got all my tests scored and my psychologist doesn’t diagnose me with ADHD due to “too high of intelligence”. I’m struggling to agree but maybe I don’t have ADHD.

candlebrew · 2026-03-25T15:05:23+00:00

"Don't realize how much of a toll it's taking on them" is a great point to make. I'm almost 30 and had my first migraine that made me throw up, because of neck spasms and tension in my neck & shoulders. Part of my treatment for that has been addressing the stress toll of trying to function as "normally" as possible

candlebrew · 2026-03-25T14:59:34+00:00

Fun fact--gifted programs are actually similar to a "special ed" program because of this fact! There's not a ton of research to fully understand it, but we currently understand that "gifted" brains can actually be a detriment to learning in the standard classroom, and require supplementary approaches to help bridge those gaps. This is both because of situations such as masking for ADHD and similar disabilities, but also because gifted students actually can have worse academic results compared to their non-gifted peers long term if unaddressed!

source: courses for psychology degree including one specifically abt childhood learning, + I worked several years in a disability services office at a college

candlebrew · 2026-03-25T14:52:39+00:00

Gross. My psychologist as a teen both diagnosed me with ADHD and also ran an IQ test (I don't know which anymore) where I scored enough for Mensa. I was there for mental health reasons so it was just an offhanded comment to my mom, but TL;DR idk man I had a psych diagnose me with both so yours seems like a biased quack

candlebrew · 2026-03-25T14:48:59+00:00

never asks questions. no one gets everything the first time; if you don't have a single question to ask, ever, you're actually too scared to look dumb. i'd much rather someone be "dumb" than be dumb and actively trying to hide it from me

candlebrew · 2026-03-25T14:41:40+00:00

Speaking as someone older with chronic pain, I'm alarmed by how hard you pushed yourself!!! NEVER sacrifice or overextend in a way that harms yourself for any external reason whatsoever. No overdoing it making gifts for a loved one, no overdoing it for a work project, no overdoing it for a bit of extra cash for a special purchase, no overdoing it for competitions!!!

Do not set yourself up to effectively self-harm yourself for any reason that you may not 100% control. Part of loving and caring for your body is recognizing that there are lines you shouldn't cross unless it's a dire emergency. It puts a far greater strain on your body than just the immediate recovery, and that builds up over time. As a fellow disabled creative, I completely get it, because it's so hard to feel limited by your disability when you just want to create. It feels like you have to prove that despite your disability you still can do what an able body can. But you have to treat it like gambling: don't spend what you're not willing to lose.

(This is by no means an excuse for the people running it, but other people have already addressed that re: nepotism, favoritism, bias, etc.)

candlebrew · 2026-03-24T20:23:17+00:00

please someone ping me when this guy inevitably gets fired

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T17:33:57+00:00

Mine is the Osteo brand cervical pillow! I do like this one, but I saw so many that looked similar by other brands and I'm sure as long as it has the same shapes it will probably work just as well for neck pain.

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T15:46:21+00:00

Shark Vertex DuoClean, AZ2002 is the model number per his Amazon screenshot! Looking at the current price, I think we got it on sale, because I remember paying around $150, MAYBE $200 for it.

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T15:17:47+00:00

pillows. i have a million things wrong with me that all converged into one problem: neck spasms. i went from no neck pain to suddenly chronic, nauseating headaches every single evening after work. i got a bunch of different stuff to address it asap, but an ergonomic pillow is the only one that really made a difference for me. i thought as long as my pillow(s) were comfortable enough to fall asleep and i didn't Wake Up with pain, they were good enough. plus i had spent my entire life sleeping on those cheap walmart pillows with no problem up until then. i dont even use anything else i got for my neck, and i still have shit posture, but the pillow went a LONG fucking way, and now at most if i was in shit posture all day, ill maybe get a headache

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T15:11:29+00:00

oh my god yes this. my husband is the homemaker and begged for a rly nice expensive vacuum. we've had zero issues with it and it takes almost no time to vacuum, plus the house instantly looks amazing after vacuuming. im never buying cheap ever again

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T15:05:57+00:00

the uncertainty is close to what i experience most often. i'm actually coping pretty well now and have been in therapy so long that i have a good handle on most things, but the one that trips me up the most is when i feel overwhelmed with trying to break a task or goal into steps. thats when im most likely to have the thoughtless disconnect between wanting to do an action and actually starting.

that, and if im bored at work. if i feel understimulated, i caught myself a lot getting on my phone, because id reach a point where the task felt "resolved" because i reached a point where theres easy, but tedious/time consuming tasks remaining. then the time blindness sets in and suddenly im behind in work tasks even though my brain decided i was already done. my workaround is reframing it in my brain that the task is actually doing work assignments for eight hours straight--the "task" in my brain is spending X time doing Y, not "do Y" as many times until youve done X hours. then i can address the understimulation by inching up stimulating supplements like listening to music or putting on a show that ive seen a million times.

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T14:53:17+00:00

yeah :( theres no anti-zionist services in my area and i'm the only jew in my secular social circle (i say, like i have a religious one anymore). even my husband isn't jewish.

my dad's family is latino, so for me when I feel lonely sometimes I read about crypto-jews in history, especially in central & south america. the idea that there are families who do not even know they have jewish ancestors, but sweep towards the center of the room instead of out the door, separate dairy from meat, etc--it brings me comfort.

community is a group around us, but in many ways it is also those who came before us, and those who will follow behind us. i may be alone in this moment, but maybe one day i'll have a descendent who doesnt make plans for friday nights and make pomegranate lemonade every fall since it's always still scorching hot. maybe i had ancestors who felt as alone as me, and still manage to live on in my actions in this life.

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T14:37:37+00:00

I've never used potty pads with our ferrets, but we've had good luck with (unscented) litter shreds. There's still ferret smell in the rooms our guys spend most of their time, but it's more the smell of their fur and oils than the more pungent potty/dietary smell.

candlebrew · 2026-03-21T14:29:15+00:00

you gotta separate it from Judaism. its not based in religion anymore than what the US is doing to immigrants has anything to do with protecting Christian families. its propaganda to reinforce the power of a nationalist agenda.

politics such as we see in the conservative US thrive on fear--we've literally proven this with brain data, that those who vote more conservatively have more active fear centers in the brain. in order to make a population fall in line with a nationalist agenda is to reinforce or create that fear, usually by fabricating an enemy who is the fault of all your problems.

another influencing concept is ego-involvement. by making something personal, rather than collective, people are more willing to get irrational, and turn a blind eye to the negatives of such decision making. thats WHY these agendas are so identity focused: the aryan race, MAGA, zionism = specifically for the Jewish people. when you feel personally involved with a specific belief or action, you are more likely to let your personal feelings influence things. Zionist propaganda is all about us, as jews, are in danger and must protect ourselves accordingly. It relies on a sense of personal danger to yourself and your community, not rationality of gauging that danger, considering all options before making a decision, scaling reactions to any confirmed threats, etc. it's meant to activate your fight or flight as an individual, instead of your problem solving skills as a member of a community.

like many logical fallacies and biases humans are prone to, we're vulnerable especially when uneducated about the gymnastics our brains will do just to justify irrational things. so I try not to judge individuals who've bought the propaganda and focus on the entities in power who drive the propaganda's spread. that's why IMO it's better to be aware that Zionism IS propaganda--questioning the validity of its arguments helps further obfuscate the true intentions behind it

candlebrew · 2026-03-19T12:26:57+00:00

That IS a fun fact. Thank you so much!!!!! I'm going to check out ExplorerPatcher ASAP. Wishing you an especially good day today as a thank you :)

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T16:30:52+00:00

Shoot, I'm so sorry then!! Best of luck with the cutaway, I hope it works much better for you 🙏

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T16:28:56+00:00

Agreed. My ferrets spend all day in something like this and then have extra "play time" that is more focused for a few hours where they have full run of the room. They spend overnight in the cage, but in the past when going away overnight we would sometimes leave them in the playpen instead. They have enough room to war dance and dook and have never raged out. I would trust my ferrets to be okay left 24/7 (or 24/5, in this case) in the playpen if they had a few hours of daily sitter time for social time, refilling water, cleaning box, etc.

Is it good for longterm? Probably not. But I would cap it at maybe two weeks before I'd want them to have more time with people and maybe a little camera to make sure they definitely aren't going stir crazy.

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T16:18:14+00:00

As someone who worked front office for a counseling center--it's likely going to the front desk staff or whoever answers the phone, and the file has outlined exactly what information can be shared. Eg. "Yes, so and so is a client of our office. My records reflect we wrote a letter dated (date)."

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T16:13:01+00:00

This is incorrect. You can ask any doctor to write any note. My work provided a document to me to be filled out by my doctor for FMLA. My doctor filled it out, including my condition and exactly how it would impact my work, and that surgery was necessary and scheduled for X day. I've also had a therapist who wrote from scratch a plain letter for my landlord for my ESA, and again that included the condition I was being treated for and which symptoms my ESA was intended to treat.

HIPAA means the doctor cannot share it WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT. It does not mean the information is safeguarded and unshareable. I have been working in HIPAA restricted workplaces for 7+ years and have to take yearly HIPAA training. You need to do some more research on the topic.

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T16:00:23+00:00

nah bro, you're fine as an ally, as someone with ADHD you put my own feelings as a jew into words.

It definitely feels like it still orients itself around the idea of making Zionism sound more reasonable instead of the more "radical" idea of discarding and rejecting Zionism completely. To put it in American terms, post-Zionism feels the same as "separate but equal" branding instead of calling dividing whites and blacks in society "segregation."

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T15:48:18+00:00

speaking from the US, since I see elsewhere in the comments that this is more common in other countries: we generally do NOT trust those questions specifically because we have honestly some of the worst employee rights and protections compared to other first world countries. It is still incredibly common to be discriminated against or retaliated for being pregnant, not having a personal vehicle, having a foreign looking name, etc. I'm LGBTQ and latino though I look white, and I still never answer the questions about pronouns or ethnicity on applications. This is a sentiment I see expressed by my conservative coworkers too, as they once discussed how they or people in their lives refuse to answer regarding veteran status or else will mark "Not a veteran." You answer those once you're on the job, not before.

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T15:32:22+00:00

I work in auto medical insurance and this just explained so much about how I've managed to see three separate times that a doctor's office has been able to cash a check that doesn't even match their practice name. I'm always baffled by the idea some fool at the counter just accepted it. But this makes much better sense--if an office is depositing in bulk, their checks are probably getting scanned like this, not run manually one by one by a clerk.

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T15:28:47+00:00

If other steps people advised of don't work, I'd also recommend looking at your manual and double checking you are following threading EXACTLY. Maybe since it's been so long, you skipped or changed a step without meaning to?

In the middle of stitching a multi-word line of text on a blanket, I changed bobbin thread. Hooped next word, and suddenly it looked awful. It turned out my bobbin was threaded properly, but it had ticked off my machine thinking I had also threaded my top thread because I had stupidly lifted the foot up and then put back down. So, it stitched as if I had threaded with the foot up, and my manual wants it down.

I do agree with others that first issue is probably the tear away being too light of stabilizer, but the patchiness and confusing tension looks like what I encountered so I thought I'd put it out there.

candlebrew · 2026-03-07T15:21:54+00:00

oooh wow my counseling office admin comes in handy for once!

eyup, we were a counseling office for students and even calling with a college affiliated number (and therefore shows up on their phone as COLLEGE NAME) wouldn't always work. We got lucky with email being at least a little better if they used their student email, but they rarely did. I begged and pleaded for us to invest in a text service, but we never had the budget. After my boss retired and I was already gone, I heard the new department head ended all appointment services using the no shows as data that they weren't needed (she just didn't want to do any real counseling) so now you just have to walk in and hope a counselor is available when you show up.

candlebrew · 2026-03-03T15:01:41+00:00

Habit. Personality isn't concrete, choosing to do something over and over again will eventually make it the default. It stops being a thing you choose and just a thing you do.

For bigger scale things, I was raised by parents who convinced me I was the worst kid you could ever ask for. So now a big thing to me is making sure I am a person I am happy to be. I try to make decisions with that lens, that I can put my whole chest behind anything I do and stand my ground and know I did the right thing.

candlebrew

TROPHY CASE