bittersnurr:

animatedamerican:

theragnarokd:

annekewrites:

pig-along:

it’s not even necessarily about whether or not it really is beneficial for depressed people to exercise, the discussion is not about whether exercise and cleaning and calling your friends helps. it’s about whether that advice helps.

“if you drink more water, it will help with your brain fog” is usually pretty unhelpful. or “get up and exercise, your mood will lift.” it makes me feel like 1) you think i don’t know the first damn thing about the human body, 2) there is no hope for treatment that helps me recover, and 3) i am totally alone in this because people just do not know the difference between a bad mood and a disease, and i should not tell them if i get breast cancer because they will simply hand me some sunscreen.

your starting point needs to be, “ok, all the usual ways don’t work. just feeling thirsty doesn’t work to remind them to drink. the situation by its very nature is one where the conventional advice and the things that work for my brain DO NOT WORK FOR THAT PERSON.” that’s the only way you’ll be able to give relevant advice.

“drinking water can help with brain fog”
vs.
“a big bright water bottle might solve some problems related to forgetting to drink. for one thing, the water won’t get gross sitting out and open, because of the water bottle’s lid – you can feel safe drinking from it the next day. plus, it can’t be spilled as easily, so if you’re stuck in bed or on a couch, you can keep it there with you. that way you can keep a larger amount of water nearby than would be practical in a glass, and you don’t have to remember to get up so many times to get water. if you get one that you think is really cool, you might want to drink from it more often, too.”

THAT is what i think “we can’t all be neurotypical, karen” means.

You mean like how when I was doing special ed advocacy for middle schoolers with ADHD and they started the goddamn color coded folders shit again and I cut them off with “NO. ONE folder. One big one, with dividers if it makes you feel better.”

There is nothing I hate more as an ADHDer than organizational tips from the super-organized. Most of those just provide more distraction and more things to feel like a failure about.

tbh I just started being like – there’s a shit tonne of ways to do things. the only rule is, if one doesn’t work for you, try something else. 

(and it’s also okay to say you’re not trying anymore, you’re too tired or don’t think it’s worth the effort. it’s your life, you get to decide that.)

the problem isn’t saying “some people find it helpful to drink water when they have brain fog”, it’s – when people say “this doesn’t help me” – making it their fault somehow, making them do the emotional labor of persuading the advice giver that they really did try and then explaining why it didn’t work.

the other day I talked about having difficulty cleaning my house. friends have chimed in with lots of advice… and it might have been useful had I had the emotional energy to process it.

I didn’t. so I gave myself permission to mentally say “fuck it” and ignore their advice. they’re my friends, so they know enough not to press further.

I figure it’s good to share what works for one, just in case somebody momentarily forgot that hey, drinking water can help. (hey, that happens!) but telling people that if your chosen solution didn’t work for them they’re doing something wrong is shitty, and that’s the reason a lot of people have a hair trigger about this stuff.

The distinction between “will this course of action help?” and “will advising this course of action help?” is one that more people need to be aware of.

(And one that I really, really could have used through my childhood and adolescence.)

Also something I encounter is, if I am given advice, try the advice, find it not helpful but then it is somewhat helpful with a modification, I will be treated as having not taken the advice.

Like if mindfulness and thinking of stuff like pretty fields of boring flowers doesn’t work to focus on, but instead something like drawing DOES, I will be told the latter doesn’t count if it doesn’t sufficiently fix the issue. Like I am not only being told to do things that didn’t work, but things I am ALREADY DOING but someone has decided that if I did them the “proper” way would work better, and that me refusing to abandon the working one for the poorly suited useless one is “resisting treatment”.

The problem isn’t the advice, it’s that sick people are not allowed to refuse treatment without getting shit for it. It’s that a lot of people receive coercive treatment over doing a coping technique “wrong” because the default doesn’t work.