Congrats, I too have a solid group of ND friends all exploring their condition and we have similar mechanism to acknowledge communication issues and trying to make them more palatable for the group in an honest, fair and kind way that brings us all up and doesn’t shut us down. I am incredibly lucky and I love my bros unconditionally too.
Happy to hear you have a community like that too.
That is a beautiful bit of word play there to show a point succinctly. Love it, well done!
Some/most of the way the ADHD presents itself is that they are things that everyone does, but ADHDers do it much more often to the point it is a problem or deemed socially unacceptable. So yes, ADHD touches a lot of things that neurotypical people do which is why it is such an insidious disability, it hides in plain sight and is dismissed by others as the individual displaying those traits just doesn’t have the mental fortitude and they need to practice better control, which leads to the ADHDer not seeking therapy/meds for their condition as they are made to feel that their condition is a personal failing and not an actual disability due to faulty wiring in their brain. This is why many people with ADHD have a negative self image and are typically treated for depression due to that negative self image. If the person with ADHD gets support, through their community, family, school, job, meds, therapist and etc then that negative self image can be dismantled and the real issue is the ADHD, the depression was just a symptom.
A simple thing I tell people when this is brought up to me is that; “Everyone goes to the bathroom a few times a day but if you are going 60 times a day we can all agree you should see a doctor about that.”
It is a hard thing to treat, especially if you are undiagnosed until later in life, unwinding all the negativity around it in your life and dismantling all the unhealthy coping mechanisms is difficult the longer you live with it.
What we are seeing now with ADHD, and related similar conditions, is not a sudden over diagnosis and prescription to treat it but that it has been vastly under diagnosed and untreated and we as a society are just catching up as we start to understand it more.
Apologies, I didn’t mean to monologue at you as this wasn’t necessarily directed at you but you hit a piece of the much larger iceberg and it didn’t feel right to not expound on the topic holistically.
Excellent write up. I hear people ask about this all the time, why the USA defaulted towards SMS/MMS/iMessage when other parts of the world didn’t. It is not the case of now but the history of the technological development and saturation of the technology within the younger demographics that got us here naturally. We didn’t have to make a choice of which platform to migrate our friend/family groups too because we had enough of the functions we needed built into all of our phones along the last 30 years.
It doesn’t come down to what is the best platform right now, it comes down to what was the best, and easiest, platform to get all my friends and family using when my country/region/friend group/etc got smartphones. There are large swaths of the world population where their technology exposure was landline>TV>Internet cafe>smartphone. Where the beginning of their online presence was through an Internet cafe and then very soon after (within years) they had a smart phone. In that model their first interaction with instant messaging was not phone to phone but computer to computer and they used messenger/instagram/whatsapp/wechat and etc and those social networks of friends migrated with them from the Internet cafe PC as the main point of access to a Smartphone as the main point of access.
Have you tried an al pastor burrito from Los Robles Cafe in Paso? Thanks for the rec of Suprema Market
It takes a lot of work to keep your heart from hardening in this world but it is work worth doing.
Wholeheartedly agreed. It was late and I misinterpreted the intent of the post, it is other people’s music that is the problem that OP was referring to, not the accessibility of music in general.
I have AirPods and headphones and love music. I have plenty of ways to stream it from the ether and into my head without others listening but I don’t like to do that in nature. I like records better for that because it has to be intentional and, from a functional perspective, I’d like to be able to hear a rattlesnake rattle before it bites me, or a bear or wild boars rustling in the trees/brush before it becomes an issue and they are right on me, with earbuds in or headphones on in nature can cause a safety issue. I like to be in the moment in nature and there are plenty of times where I do listen to the crickets or the lapping of the water with no music playing. I like feeling vibe of the moment, select the record and then have ~20mins of that music until it stops playing and I either switch records because the vibe has changed or I want to bring a different energy to the moment. It is more situational and tactile with records. Not having an endless stream of random music on a constant cycle is key for me to enjoying those moments in nature.
Like I said, I thought the OP was talking more about accessibility of music in nature in general, not the intrusion of other people’s music onto your life while one is in nature. It is a problem that is not specific to just campgrounds but I can see where it is a bigger problem in a campground than in normal daily life nowadays. With the advancement of technology in regards to streaming, wireless earbuds/headphones and personal technology I think music intrusion on a day to day basis is less intrusive now than it was 10 years ago or more. There are still people blasting music in their cars at midnight driving down city streets but there are less people playing boomboxes while walking down the street or while on the bus, subway or other public places because technology has advanced to a point where we can limit that intrusion on others and most reasonable people take advantage of that more now than they ever have before.
Ahhh, well, it is just me out there so no one else can hear my music, there isn’t another house for a mile in any direction… but this is not an issue with just camping. Jerks blasting their music from their boats as they go by on the lake is a problem but that has been going on since the invention of music. Spock had to Vulcan nerve pinch a dude on the bus across the Golden Gate Bridge in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home back in the 80s because someone was playing music too loud and wouldn’t turn it down.
Yeah, the variety of music got more accessible I suppose but group camp grounds have been filled with music for a long time now, it was something that bothered me back in the 80s when I was a kid. This isn’t really a new issue due to technology, I am sure plenty of bards have been killed throughout history for playing their music too loud in the woods, or in parks, or wherever. Everywhere music can be played it has been played too loud.
I just got back from 3 nights out at a rustic cabin I use as a retreat when I need to get away. I took my portable record player and about 20 records. The record player has an internal rechargeable battery that I recharge with the solar generator I brought with me.
Where is the line where these things ruin a spot versus contributing to it?
Whoa, you are right!
It sounds like you lived through some rough situations; it is a tough climb out but I am glad to hear things have gotten better for you. Keep climbing, friend!
That is a well spoken summery of the current issue with our political system. Thank you for taking the time to write that up and share it.
It is sometimes hard to have faith in the future when we are so inundated with our current issues. To cultivate hope in the future it is key to remember that time marches on and the older generations will always be replaced by a younger generation. I believe if we keep our democracy alive for long enough we do have the potential as a society to right many wrongs that the younger generations have lived under for the past 50 years and if we stay on target with our wants and needs and can put empathy and compassion for our neighbors as a core belief then it is only a matter of time before we get elected representatives in power to start affecting change.
I believe we, as a people, can do better for our future generations and that is why we all must do our civic duty and vote, not just for president but in our local elections, no matter how small, and every election above that. We have the power to change all this and I believe we will in time. It won’t be overnight but it can be within our lifetimes. Small steps matter because right now we aren’t capable of making huge steps but when the big steps forward become attainable we are prepared as a society to take those steps.
Thank you again for your post, stay strong and motivated and we can do this. Remember this isn’t just about you and me but us as a country, as a species and our responsibility to the future generations that will come after us. We can right our past mistakes and keep hope for that future alive. We have a greater voice now than we realize and are already electing people into positions of power to affect this change. We are not in this alone but in this together; not me, Us!
Not to put words in the previous posters mouth but my thoughts are that he is riling up his militant base in anticipation of either getting jail time or losing the election so that the most violent individuals in his base of support would maybe protect and fight for him. I think that was what the previous poster was inferring.
Unfortunately not long after the first movie came out some component company on the back end had financial troubles and the rights to the movie got caught up in an ownership battle or something like that. It’s been a while since I read about why the sequel was never made even though everyone seemed primed to do it so my details may be fuzzy on it but it had something to do with the rights halting the project for a long time, like 15-20 years or something like that.
There are 10s of us!
Yes!
Love that game, and the sequels; EV Override and EV Nova. I was looking for a game that played like Starflight, a PC game from the 80s, found EV and was pleasantly surprised.
Though I do hold Starflight in higher regard than EV. It deserves a solid remake.
Repeat a mantra in your head. The mantra could be anything really. You do not need imagery to meditate. Another trick is to look at your hand and try to feel/sense the inside of your hand, focus on that.
I am on the other end of the phantasia spectrum; I have hyperphantasia. This causes problems with meditation because my ADHD gives me intrusive imagery.
The key with meditation is to just keep trying. Mediation is an incredibly useful tool but it is something you have to constantly practice. It is harder for people with ADHD to accomplish consistently but it is entirely possible to learn to do it well. If you practice enough you may learn how to live most of your life while meditating.
Learning how to meditate was the turning point to gaining control of my life and start on the road to a functional life. I am not saying medication (I’m on Vyvanse) and therapy (once a week for me) aren’t equally important or weren’t major contributors to better understanding and living with my condition but learning how to meditate and doing it consistently was when things started to click for me.
I believe Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading ADHD researcher over the last 4-5 decades who is now mostly retired, has a statistic that if you have undiagnosed ADHD and are over the age of 30 then you have an almost 100% chance of developing an anxiety disorder as a comorbidity to your ADHD.
I was diagnosed at a young age with depression and battled that my entire life, prescribed depression meds off and on for 30 years until I decided to explore my ADHD/Autism/synesthesia suspicions and a few other sensory things. When I was diagnosed with ADHD and went on meds for that it completely eliminated my need for depression meds. Turns out the issue wasn’t a chemical imbalance in my brain causing depression but it was my internal negative self messaging that was causing me to be depressed. Who knew that struggling with AdHD and autism my whole life that caused me to try really hard to the point I would burn myself out and fail, a symptom of ADHD, was causing a negative self image of me being a failure. The ADHD meds helped me overcome my executive dysfunction issues and the therapy helped me unwind that negative self image I had, which took care of the depression.
I can honestly say I am now living my best life and I am the most happy/joyous/content I have ever been. It took a lot of work over the last 5 years and YMMV as it is not an easy road to address these issues later in life but the journey is worth it. You owe it to your current and future self to explore ADHD/Autism suspicions.
I realized I could never be happy without first finding out who I am and how my brain works because I couldn’t play this game of life without knowing my strengths, weaknesses or pitfalls to avoid until I learned who I was and how I worked. Once I learned that info I started building my life routines around those symptoms in a healthy and structured way and I feel more real as a person. Not a shell trying to pretend to be normal. Once I was able to unmask and be openly honest with the people and world around me so much of the anxiety, doubt and pain just evaporated. I was using way too many brain processing cycles masking that it was draining the life out of me.
Explore who you are and you may find peace and balance.
Good luck, I’m rooting for you!
Yes, no doubt, it is such a wide spectrum with many co-morbidities, generalizing anything is really doing it a disservice. Many, but not all, use therapy as a way to gain an understanding of their condition and to acknowledge how their triggers work to develop mental fortitude to address those triggers. It is definitely not the same for everyone and there is work being done by thousands of people daily to understand ADHD, and other related or unrelated mental disabilities, to develop better tools. For now, predominantly, the focus is on meds and therapy because those are the tools we have right now that have the highest probability of alleviating some of the suffering related to those conditions.
Sorry, I did not think I was implying that chemical assistance or therapy were not valid treatment paths for those who have ADHD. They saved my life, I slogged through decades of not knowing; with meds and therapy to address my ADHD, and various other issues/co-morbidities, I can honestly say I am by far the happiest I have ever been. It is a long and difficult journey and my path, like everyone else’s, is unique. For people who suspect they may have it but don’t know where to begin then exploring therapy and meds is an excellent place to start. It may not be what you need to get to where you want to be but bringing your issues to trained professionals to grow your support team is not a bad move to make, they can help you get the help you need.