That ADHD feel when you go around to people begging them to give you encouragement to do a task that will take 2 minutes

Leo/Cancer 12H + 12H Sun/Moon

Getting too comfortable in your current conditions or refusing to acknowledge how your needs have developed out of fear of looking selfish will make following your desires almost completely impossible.

For Leo 12H/12H Sun, I think you have a habit of only allowing your confidence to extend as far as people validate it, refusing to set yourself up to be the punchline of a joke you have a habit of seeing yourself as. With your ego being cast into the shadows, the only time you allow your confidence to breathe is when someone passes by with a torch. You've become accustomed to cherishing your talents in the dark so much so that you've never taken the time to explore practicing them freely.

For Cancer 12H/12H Moon, you have a habit of saying yes to every demand in a panicked attempt to avoid any conflict. Putting your needs on the back burner, you tend to only focus on making sure everyone around you succeeds no matter what, even if that means moving past you. You have a habit of being prepared for abandonment, finding your role in society to be one of an unpaid psychologist, traveling the world trying to survive off of the wished-for reciprocation that you never actually ask for.

You find no shame in second place because you know how to turn it into a platform to embolden the winner, setting your pride aside to allow them to have their day, but I think the comfort of never having the light shone on you has become detrimental to your cause. I think you find pride in being able to let pain go easily, but there tends to be a twisted past behind this habit, most usually a refusal for your original comforts to be met by people who promised you more than they were ever actually willing to give you.

You call victim to false promises, to a point that it almost feels like you intentionally fulfill your half to hear whatever pretty words they have prepared for you, completely submitting to the comfort while ignoring the backhanded disloyalty being slid in under it. There isn't anything you won't do for somebody you love, except for letting them go and allowing them to face the consequences of their own actions. You have a habit of stepping in between your friends and their fate.

You put no second thought into sacrificing whatever you have left to make sure the rest of the village eats for the night, even if that means going on hunger strike for the fifth night this week, and you need to learn when to stop. You're naturally altruistic, wanting nothing more than to see the people you love succeed, but you need to become more comfortable in questioning what that love is built on before trying to polish a rock like it's a statue. You don't need people as much as they convince you, they only recognize what they're losing without you, and you can't take it away if you're not aware of it. You're not aware of your power because you use it to apologize for not being even better.

I think part of you knows that you can let go at any time, refusing to answer the phone and accepting whatever reputation comes with it, but that's exactly why it bothers you. You never want to be known as the person who didn't help.

You never want to be known as the person who became everything they hated in the people they promised to be better than. You never want that one wrong interaction to be the career-defining moment that means nothing else you do will be taken seriously. At some point, you need to recognize your reputation isn't as fragile as the relationships people love to entrap you in. You are not either good or bad, you do not have irredeemable qualities, your willingness to try harder is all you need.

No matter how slanderous someone can be, the collective will be able to see the quality of your character through the veil of lies your own friends warn you against to keep you around. You are not helpless, people who benefit from your intentionally limited potential find comfort in enforcing your helplessness, and you need to be able to recognize the cause of the cycle if you truly want to break it.

You can't find comfort in consolation prizes and participation trophies, especially when you know the votes were intentionally mishandled to steal the win for someone else. You are not selfish for expecting, and enforcing, payment for your services. Stop working for free to make up for not working in advance, because none of the work being done is advancing you in life. Break away from people who see no value in you past what you can do for them.

Do you hate TTPD or are you just tired of the oversaturation of Taylor Swift that we've gotten in the last 4 years with Folklore, Evermore, Midnights, 4 re-recorded albums, the Eras tour, and all the hullabaloo about her breaking various streaming, sales, chart, and award records?

Do you hate TTPD or are you just massively turned off by the legions of fanatical Swifties who can't seem to wrap their minds around the idea that just because an artist is particularly good at creating music that resonates with them, does not mean that that artist is objectively the greatest and best music artist of all time and therefore above any criticism?

Do you hate TTPD or are you just disappointed with the fact that, after two indie folk albums filled with beautifully crafted, haunting ballads where TS exercises her skills as a storyteller, she has put out an album that basically demands that you are intimately familiar with her dating history to understand?

Do you hate TTPD or do you just wish she'd move on from Jack Antonoff's increasingly stale, repetitive, and honestly sort of lazy production?

I’m not going to say that ttpd is bad but I will say that maybe there’s a reason people don’t drop 31 songs at once

If you heard of writer's block, get ready for reader's block. You want to read. You have time. You know what to read; how have a pile of books ready to be read. You cannot sit still and focus enough to do so or you can't even open the book.

Palestine Masterlist 

Introduction to Palestine: 

Decolonize Palestine:

IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding):

The Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba)

Donations and charities: 

Books:

Palestinian Culture:

Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:

Palestine Remix: 

Voices from Gaza

Palestinian Voices, Organizations, and News 

One of the worst things about adhd is that you can be so well intentioned and you can really connect to a task or assignment and really want to do it but you build it up in your mind and you want to do it perfectly so you end up biting off more than you can chew and it’ll float around in your mind that I have to do this thing but there’s this pressure that keeps building up and you feel like you’re hitting a wall and suddenly the deadline comes and all of the effort you wanted to put in has to get thrown out the window and you’re always racing to catch up in a race that you don’t remember signing up for

Something I wish a lot of people understood is that just because I mention wanting to do something completely doable doesn't mean it's going to happen. Not to speak for us all, but I've got ADHD. I'm almost entirely made up of "I'm gonna"s and "we should"s and "it would be so fun to"s and "one day"s and almost all of it means absolutely nothing.

Wanna know why?

Because when your to-do queue is 700 items deep and you add five new things to it each day, according to priority, almost all of it is never going to happen, even if you would really like it to. There's just not enough time in the world.

So!! If you're friends or lovers with someone like me and you keep wondering if that thing they said is ever going to happen, please ask them.

Because, personally, there is a good chance that if I suggested something would be fun to do with a friend and then didn't follow up on it within the week, I didn't know you were actually that interested, and/or completely forgot about it, and/or it got swallowed by the higher priority to-do items in the queue. If you ask me about it and say you really wanted to do that, your personal investment is going to make that item jump the queue by like 95%

Sincerely, a guy with so much ADHD

Having ADHD and trying to have executive functionality is like having a toddler for a brain.

It keeps screaming because it wants something. One particular thing. But it won’t actually tell you what that things is.

So you keep trying to give it things in the hopes it will stop screaming. You change the music, you light a candle, you give it a fidget toy, you take it for a walk, you feed it something yummy all the while, your brain (the toddler) Keeps crying and screaming.

In the end you’re in tears. You’re pretty sure you’re not going to get anything done today so you take a shower and change into something comfy.

And then your brain stops screaming.

Turns out you were uncomfy and thats why your brain (the toddler) kept screaming. The jeans were too tight and you were kind of cold and the discomfort was distracting you.

Now you can actually work.

Thinking about how special interests and hyperfixations are not so much an "unhealthy opsession" as they are a means to calm yourself down.

Is it really obsessive to think about your favourite show, movie, subject etc. all day every day and not being able to function properly? Or is it your brain recognising your anxiety from being forced to socialise and being thrown into loud uncomfortable spaces, and creates images in your head, reminding you of the thing you love so that you can calm down.

It's not unhealthy. Your brain is literally fighting to prevent an anxiety attack.

As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, one thing that’s been helping me grapple with the intense shame I have over all my “wasted potential” is accepting that potential doesn’t exist and never did.

This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.

I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.

I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??

If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.

Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.

So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.

And if you have ADHD, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: you do not have limitless potential confounded by your laziness. You have the good potential of a good person, and you can access it with practice and work, but do not accept the story that you are choosing not to be all that you are or can be. You are just a human person.

So, are you "chronically late" neurodivergent OR "overcompensates for the fact that I have no concept of time by being ridiculously early" neurodivergent?

chronically late. now that I'm working adult, I'm the latter.

Apparently this needs to be said so

Forgetting things is morally neutral! Memory issues are morally neutral!

You're not a bad person if you...

... and anything else I might have missed!

“I’m not going to do the thing because I don’t view it as important.” ← Conscious decision made of your own free will.

“I want to do the thing because I view it as important, but trying to get myself to do the thing creates the same reaction as trying to put my hand on a hot stove would.” ← Executive dysfunction, a physical health problem that doesn’t answer to your own free will.

“Trying to get myself to do the thing creates the same reaction as trying to put my hand on a hot stove would. This must mean I don’t actually want to do the thing and I’m just tricking myself into thinking I do.” ← No, that’s still executive dysfunction, but you’re having brainworms about it.

Adhd things that need to be talked more about (because adhd is more than just not being able to focus)

These are all the ones I can think of right now, but it’s really important we talk about this stuff more. All of these things that come with adhd can be very frustrating for those around us because they don’t understand that we can’t help it. To an outsider, it may just look like a person with adhd is just lazy and doesn’t care, when it’s actually just how our brains are wired. None of us want to be frustrating to others!! In fact, all of this frustrates us too!! But since adhd is just known as “not being able to focus”, people don’t realize what all comes with it and how it can really fuck everyone over.

Please add more if you can think of anything else!! I’m horrible with lists lol

^^^ I was gonna add RSD, glad someone else did! Also (this is long and I know I left a lot out/probably messed up but I don’t have the brain rn to proofread and these are Important):

ADHD is an executive function deficit disorder (EFDD) 

A lot of the below points are related/connected to executive dysfunction, bc it’s such a huge part of our brain structure, even with the help of meds. Strap in for some psychology fun, folks!

ADHD IS A REAL DISORDER THAT GOES WAY BEYOND WHAT YOU THINK

I know we ADHD peeps have trouble reading lots of text at once, so 

TL;DR: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!??!?!!!??!!!

Thanks for explaining the brain stuff! It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while now!

Adhd things that need to be talked more about (because adhd is more than just not being able to focus)

These are all the ones I can think of right now, but it’s really important we talk about this stuff more. All of these things that come with adhd can be very frustrating for those around us because they don’t understand that we can’t help it. To an outsider, it may just look like a person with adhd is just lazy and doesn’t care, when it’s actually just how our brains are wired. None of us want to be frustrating to others!! In fact, all of this frustrates us too!! But since adhd is just known as “not being able to focus”, people don’t realize what all comes with it and how it can really fuck everyone over.

Please add more if you can think of anything else!! I’m horrible with lists lol

^^^ I was gonna add RSD, glad someone else did! Also (this is long and I know I left a lot out/probably messed up but I don’t have the brain rn to proofread and these are Important):

ADHD is an executive function deficit disorder (EFDD) 

A lot of the below points are related/connected to executive dysfunction, bc it’s such a huge part of our brain structure, even with the help of meds. Strap in for some psychology fun, folks!

ADHD IS A REAL DISORDER THAT GOES WAY BEYOND WHAT YOU THINK

I know we ADHD peeps have trouble reading lots of text at once, so 

TL;DR: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!??!?!!!??!!!

Thanks for explaining the brain stuff! It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while now!

literally every sleep advice pamphlet and website: don’t do things before bedtime! no reading! no video games! don’t watch tv! nothing stimulating at all within two hours of going to bed! :)

me, an adhd: you fools. you buffoons. i can’t even manage one minute without stimulation. i will die before following this advice and that is a threat