Category: Uncategorized

Real quick because I have super fun things to do with my brain tonight (researching how something software-related works), I had a surprising day today. Two things happened at work that normally would have completely sunk my mood and my confidence (and also killed my ability to do super fun research tonight)… and I was fine.

Still am, in fact.

Yeah, it was weird.

The first thing was a confluence of corrupted file and impending meeting. Instead of freaking out and making 45 rapid-fire bad decisions ending in tears and poorly-concealed damage to my confidence, I postponed the meeting, moved some shit around, and found 2 hours tomorrow to recreate the file. Without guilt, without self-recrimination, without apology.

Like a boss.

Weird, right? Like, there’s a picture of me falling apart weirdly and overcorrecting poorly under pressure embossed on the cover of The Burned-Out AuDHD Playbook. Wasting my own time by getting upset is my path.

The second thing was an encounter not worth describing except to say it was a meeting with an agenda comprised entirely of toxic dude being toxic. And it didn’t tank me. I wasn’t furious. I kept my hope and my confidence. I wasn’t derailed by my attachment to futile causes. I took action where I could to protect my team and raise a flag, and then I walked away. No tears, no existential dread, no deep dive into my powerlessness. Just do what you can and move on.

During all this (maybe this is a third surprise?) I recognized something I normally fail to see: I was surrounded in both situations by people who could help me carry the weight, who were willing to take a turn holding the banner.

That was an unfamiliar feeling. I suspect that in the past I’ve taken on too much responsibility when I didn’t need to because I couldn’t see how much help was available. I mean, sure there were also plenty of times when I had no potential support in difficult times and I was right to feel alone. But maybe I’ve been overlooking support I could have leaned on more often, too.

Today, knowing I wasn’t alone allowed me to have a measured response to things that have fucked me up for a day or two in the past.

So what’s driving this sudden, calm wave of situational awareness and executive function badassery?

I think it’s because for about 3 weeks I’ve been taking my full prescribed dose of stimulant meds. Instead of scrimping and hoarding to protect myself against more Adderall-shortage bullshit, I’ve been taking the full amount (still small by some standards) and feeling a little bit like unadulterated me.

Yeah, so there’s a lot to unpack, a lot more to observe (2 anecdotes aren’t data), I’m not a neuroscientist, and stimulants can be dangerous. But I think this is a solid, safe hypothesis for me… so watch this space for more as things develop.

A wise friend (Mykola Bilokonsky of the Public Neurodiversity Support Center) taught me that during times when I can’t be the nurturing, compassionate, decisive, emotionally intelligent parent-Jane that my inner children need (usually because I’m too distressed), I can summon her.

I do that a lot now. When I’m unable to find my way out of a terrible emotional place, I talk to her and tell her what I need, or I tell her that I don’t know what I need but I know she will. Usually after I’ve slept or deeply focused on something else, she shows up with some perceptive, compassionate whatever.

This is one way I can get the compassion I need to give myself when I’m overcome with anger or grief, and at risk of (or unable to pull out of) a rolling meltdown.

But it takes a bit of time to work.

And by “bit” I mean, like, overnight or half a day later, far far longer than is useful to calm a meltdown in a meeting, say, or at the doctor’s office, or (Spaghetti Monster forbid) talking to cops. Those times when things could go very, very wrong.

And though usually help arrives from my parent self in a few hours, it often takes too long to fix a ruined day.

In all those distress situations, for me, the most reliable medicine I know for snowballing rage or grief or panic is experiencing compassion from a trusted source. Yet when I’m really distressed… that’s when it’s been historically harder for me to inspire compassion from other people.

(I mean… Those of us who mask autism consciously or instinctively, we mask meltdowns in public for, like, existential survival reasons, right?)

So I need to be able to help myself. And to do that I need more tools for delivering self-compassion.

I need more ways to show up for myself, more reliably. I need self-compassion capabilities that I can’t disable with eroded executive function.

In pursuit of that, I’m trying to teach myself to respond to sudden strong emotions by calling up the feeling I get when I’ve experienced compassion in the past.

Because it has happened, and there’s a particular brain chemical mix that comes with the experience.

I’m not a neuroscientist but let’s just say it’s a tonic of boxytocin, flairotonin, and a dash of schmopamine. In proper proportion, these ingredients feel like safety. Received love. Welcome.

That would be a useful thing to be able to feel more often.

Neurotypical advice for getting more of that sweet sweet self-compassion brain chemical cocktail goes something like… Give yourself some compassion in these moments.

That never made sense to me, but then most neurotypical people don’t have to strip the walls of the rooms in their brains down to the studs so they can continually tinker with the wiring. They just plug shit in.

To solve a feeling/response problem I need a mechanism, a set of inputs and the machinery to transform them into brain chemical outputs. (Imagine H. G. Wells’s time machine except instead of traveling to Morlock-land it spits out little gift boxes filled with feelings.)

To use a different metaphor, I need a spell to cast. A call to prayer. An invocation.

I can trigger a brain chemical mix with a picture or a word or a color or a sound. I can let myself experience the sense memory associated with it, and then the emotion package arrives.

(I’m pretty sure neurotypical people do this too, but I think having a conscious process for doing this is one of those steampunk workarounds people with alexithymia build because feelings are arcane and shimmering and decidedly blurry magical beasts to us. At least I think so.)

In any case, I know from experience that I can call up a vivid and realistic emotional experience reliably if I know the right mental switch to pull.

Right now I’m focused on two things: finding the right switch to turn on the feeling-of-received-compassion machine, and building the habit of pulling it.

Interestingly, the first requires me to ask my autism to page through catalogs of detailed sense memories to fight the most reliable evocative one, and the second requires me to engage with my ADHD in the tango of routine-creation.

(Because oh yeah the source of most of my lifelong struggles and capabilities is the spicy #auDhd stew soaking my brain. I mean… of course.)

Adventures in brain tinkering continue.

I guess the point is this: I’m starting to break the problem of self-compassion down into smaller chunks, into problems I can solve and machines I can build, and that feels like the right path to be on.

PS: Myk, mentioned above, is taking clients and worth the money. He is neurodivergent, he’s living this struggle every day, and he’s good at real and trustworthy compassion. He’s made a difference for me.

This afternoon, while trying to rather-aggressively decompress after an overstimulating day, this song (“We Have a Dream” by Norwegian R&B songwriter and supremely listenable polymath Jarle Bernhoft) came around on the meltdown prevention playlist…

… and a lyric snagged me out of my angry-chair-rocking stim trance.

I am who I choose to become.

Jarle Bernhoft in “We Have a Dream”

It was one of those lyrics I’d never really heard even though i’ve listened to (and sung) the song a million times, because the music and harmonies are layered and the song is dense with meaning and metaphor. Who has time to unpack all of that when the auDHD special interest deep dive to-do list is already too long?

One of those.

“I am who I choose to become.”

It stopped my meltdown so fast there were screeching noises, and I cocked my head like one of those gramophone terriers.

This terrier.

(Jesus, WordPress. It took me DAYS to find the slightly-stoned-aging-autistic-to-neurotypical UX translation dictionary I needed, to figure out how to make a hyperlink in the Jetpack phone app.)

Anyway.

“I am who I choose to become.”

It felt like a weight clanked into place in my brain.

Of course. Because it isn’t just a reminder that justice is a choice.

It is that, but it is also…a thing a lot of ND people have come to understand in a different, more personal way. Often painfully.

Speaking for myself, choosing who I am going to become hunkers near the white hot core of my high-masking auDHD experience, for better or worse.

Choosing who I am going to become, masking my differences , is how I made my bones as a somewhat successful autistic in a neurotypical world. And I did it for sincere, earnest reasons, because I wanted to do well and do good. But I did it without full awareness of how exhausting and damaging it was for me.

And so, inevitably, choosing who I am going to become is what catastrophically burned me out and left me low-key traumatized over and over and over.

But, see, also, on top of all of that, I’m starting to think that…

Choosing who I’m going to become is what will, dog willing and the creek don’t rise, save me*.

*assuming a wide range of definitions for “save”

Let me take a minute and say this again, for the Janes in the back row, because this is new.

This thing is what nearly killed me, several times.

And this thing is what may save me.

“I am who I choose to become.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’m not capable of doing that with any grace right now, even if I were clear and fully focused – which I very much am not tonight.

Choosing who I am going to become left me low-key traumatized.

But…

The basic thought I’m having is that knowing “who I am” has never been easy for me. But choosing? I can do that.

The thought of choosing who I’m to become now, now that I know so much new stuff* about my brain, just isn’t that strange to me.

*Late diagnosed auDHD. Nice to meet you.

I can see in my mind how it works, how the cogs and wheels relate within a complex system of decisions. That’s satisfying.

Then I hear the little ping that tells me to pay attention, to listen closely now to the part of me that’s slow to share.

This is important. I think.

I’ve been choosing who I’m going to become all my life, since long before I had words for the feeling. I do this more often and more explicitly than most people do. I’m really good at it.

And it seems like making those choices intentionally and authentically* might be a part of creating a sustainable Jane… or at least one that has another 20 or more years of battery life.

*whatever “authentic” means

Choosing who I’m going to become is what will, dog willing and the creek don’t rise, save me.

As a reassurance for those of you who have a dog in the Masking-is-Heathy/Masking-is-Destructive fight, let me please say this clearly: I am and will likely remain strongly Team Fuck-Masking-It-Can-Die-in-a-Fire.

But I also recognize that in my practical reality, masking is a thing I sometimes need to choose, at least until I have better solutions.

I am and will likely remain strongly Team Fuck-Masking-It-Can-Die-in-a-Fire.

Meanwhile, in the gritty friction around one thing being both an existential threat and a path forward…

…I think there is something worth exploring.

So… Imma do that.

Goodnight.

Y’all.

Stimming when I’m happy is a joy factory.

Why did you not tell me?