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bluelanderI saw my notes app on my home screen, so I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts. I don't know how things worked out this way. Serendipity, I guess.
I wish it was easier to clear the contents of the current note. I have to long-press somewhere on the screen, tap the three dots to expose the "select all" option, tap "select all", then press backspace. I guess it's not that burdensome, I just wish there was an "erase all" button I could tap. I can delete the whole note, but then I have to create a new note, which is another whole process. I don't want a process, I just want to clear the buffer. Rip the paper out of the typewriter and roll in a clean sheet. Actually I guess that's directly analogous to deleting the current note and creating a new one. Look, Tuesdays are rough for me right now. Apologies.
Tuesday is currently my therapy day, and for ease of making up time it's scheduled basically first thing in the morning. I normally have to be at work at 8:30, and therapy is either 08h00-09h00 or 08h30-09h00. She's usually able to schedule me for the full hour though. I have a 30 minute walk to work, so in theory I'm an hour late to work and I can stay an hour late, but in practice it takes me time to recover and there's usually *some*thing I need to do in the morning. This morning it was seeing the landlord about something I have to be there in person to sign a thing for, and that took some time, so I got to work at 10:30. My ADHD makes me sensitive to changes in my routine, so therapy is a little extra hard, but I'm being really brave about it.
One thing we've been talking about is whether I've been misdiagnosed and have actually had autism my whole life. My spouse suggested the possibility, and at first I thought it was unlikely, because there are a lot of symptoms I associate with autism that I don't experience, and in many cases am the diametric opposite. I don't infodump to people easily, I actually have a really hard time opening up to people. I don't get lifelong hyperfixations, my brain bounces around from thing to thing (for example, I might have a blog I update every day for a year and then lose interest for several months.) I don't struggle with empathy or telling how people feel by their expression, if anything I'm a little oversensitive in that respect. I'm reasonably okay picking up social cues. I don't stim or self-soothe (I like to fidget with things when my hands aren't doing anything, maybe that counts.) And I know autistic people aren't a monolith and don't all have the same struggles, and I know ADHD symptoms have some overlap with autism, I just thought I didn't identify with enough of the classical autism traits to qualify.
But I don't know if all of my neurodivergence can be explained by ADHD either. I don't know what it is. My therapist wasn't dismissive of the idea that it might be autism, but said she can't really help with the diagnosis and suggested I ask my psychiatrist, which I will at my our appointment. I asked my previous psychiatrist, who thankfully I only saw twice before he left for a different practice, and he was extremely dismissive. It was for practical reasons—he said the test is expensive, and an autism diagnosis wouldn't help me get any additional benefits or accomodations that I don't already qualify for with an ADHD diagnosis. And sure, fair enough, I'm not approaching this from a medicalist point of view where I'm like "I need an official diagnosis or I can't have autism", and in a perfect world, no diagnosis would be necessary. I could just be like "this is how my brain is, these are the reasonable accomodations I need,", and that'd be it. My current job is very accommodating. They let me work with the overhead fluorescent lights off (we have big windows that provide a lot of natural light) and they allow me to wear headphones all day while I work. But I might not be here forever, and wherever I work next might be like "Why do you need sensory accommodations? You're not autistic?" And maybe my psych can write a note like "my client needs these accomodations for ADHD" and everything will be fine, but I dunno. My current psych is a lot better, and he'll probably bring up the same cost/benefit warning, but I don't think he'll dismiss the idea out of hand. And hey, maybe I'm not! Maybe it's all ADHD or maybe I have some as-yet undiagnosed form of neurodivergence. I don't fundamentally care about the actual label, I just wanna understand my brain and get through life with as little suffering as possible. And I think I have an above-average understand of my brain and what it needs, I just need to figure out how to fulfill those needs in a social system that is hostile towards and punishes what it considers abnormal.
Garbage Digest special insert:
Oh no! I tried to open chunblr, the app for current traffic conditions in the tunnel under the English channel, but I accidentally downloaded chumblr, the app for information about shark bait! Is my life a sitcom or what??
I wish it was easier to clear the contents of the current note. I have to long-press somewhere on the screen, tap the three dots to expose the "select all" option, tap "select all", then press backspace. I guess it's not that burdensome, I just wish there was an "erase all" button I could tap. I can delete the whole note, but then I have to create a new note, which is another whole process. I don't want a process, I just want to clear the buffer. Rip the paper out of the typewriter and roll in a clean sheet. Actually I guess that's directly analogous to deleting the current note and creating a new one. Look, Tuesdays are rough for me right now. Apologies.
Tuesday is currently my therapy day, and for ease of making up time it's scheduled basically first thing in the morning. I normally have to be at work at 8:30, and therapy is either 08h00-09h00 or 08h30-09h00. She's usually able to schedule me for the full hour though. I have a 30 minute walk to work, so in theory I'm an hour late to work and I can stay an hour late, but in practice it takes me time to recover and there's usually *some*thing I need to do in the morning. This morning it was seeing the landlord about something I have to be there in person to sign a thing for, and that took some time, so I got to work at 10:30. My ADHD makes me sensitive to changes in my routine, so therapy is a little extra hard, but I'm being really brave about it.
One thing we've been talking about is whether I've been misdiagnosed and have actually had autism my whole life. My spouse suggested the possibility, and at first I thought it was unlikely, because there are a lot of symptoms I associate with autism that I don't experience, and in many cases am the diametric opposite. I don't infodump to people easily, I actually have a really hard time opening up to people. I don't get lifelong hyperfixations, my brain bounces around from thing to thing (for example, I might have a blog I update every day for a year and then lose interest for several months.) I don't struggle with empathy or telling how people feel by their expression, if anything I'm a little oversensitive in that respect. I'm reasonably okay picking up social cues. I don't stim or self-soothe (I like to fidget with things when my hands aren't doing anything, maybe that counts.) And I know autistic people aren't a monolith and don't all have the same struggles, and I know ADHD symptoms have some overlap with autism, I just thought I didn't identify with enough of the classical autism traits to qualify.
But I don't know if all of my neurodivergence can be explained by ADHD either. I don't know what it is. My therapist wasn't dismissive of the idea that it might be autism, but said she can't really help with the diagnosis and suggested I ask my psychiatrist, which I will at my our appointment. I asked my previous psychiatrist, who thankfully I only saw twice before he left for a different practice, and he was extremely dismissive. It was for practical reasons—he said the test is expensive, and an autism diagnosis wouldn't help me get any additional benefits or accomodations that I don't already qualify for with an ADHD diagnosis. And sure, fair enough, I'm not approaching this from a medicalist point of view where I'm like "I need an official diagnosis or I can't have autism", and in a perfect world, no diagnosis would be necessary. I could just be like "this is how my brain is, these are the reasonable accomodations I need,", and that'd be it. My current job is very accommodating. They let me work with the overhead fluorescent lights off (we have big windows that provide a lot of natural light) and they allow me to wear headphones all day while I work. But I might not be here forever, and wherever I work next might be like "Why do you need sensory accommodations? You're not autistic?" And maybe my psych can write a note like "my client needs these accomodations for ADHD" and everything will be fine, but I dunno. My current psych is a lot better, and he'll probably bring up the same cost/benefit warning, but I don't think he'll dismiss the idea out of hand. And hey, maybe I'm not! Maybe it's all ADHD or maybe I have some as-yet undiagnosed form of neurodivergence. I don't fundamentally care about the actual label, I just wanna understand my brain and get through life with as little suffering as possible. And I think I have an above-average understand of my brain and what it needs, I just need to figure out how to fulfill those needs in a social system that is hostile towards and punishes what it considers abnormal.
Garbage Digest special insert:
Oh no! I tried to open chunblr, the app for current traffic conditions in the tunnel under the English channel, but I accidentally downloaded chumblr, the app for information about shark bait! Is my life a sitcom or what??
