Brain Bubble

First actual new post on the blog! One of my minor superpowers is very good directional hearing. When I was in college, I took an improv theater class. At one point, there was a game, where one person was blindfolded, and the instructor took a ball of paper and tossed it into the center of the room. The blindfolded person then had to retrieve the paper ball. Until I watched other people, I simply didn't understand why this was a game. For me, it was not much harder than it would have been with my eyes open. Locating the paper ball by the sound it made was about as hard as looking to see where it was, then looking away and picking it up. It was a trivial task. Watching other people do it made me realize that was not true for everyone. Coming off of this, I have also taught myself very basic echolocation. When I am in a dark environment, I will made small ticking sounds. I can use these to identify nearby large obstacles. It's not anything like the detail I would get with sight: ...

I have a bit of an unusual take on body positivity. I love my body. I love my body. But I'm more or less neutral on my physical appearance. On the whole, I feel vaguely positive about it, but only very weakly so. There are a few features I quite like. Mostly I don't give it a lot of thought. But I love my body. I love biking 30 miles to give people cookies, or 100 miles to see my partner. I love that I can bench 100 pounds or squat 200. At a simpler level, I love the feeling of warming up on a cold day, or stepping into air conditioning on a hot day. I love the feeling of my partners' hands touching me, and I love being able to use my body to make other people happy. I love tasting a fresh berry that I just picked, or smelling bread that I made with my own hands.  I love my body because of the things that it can do. How it looks is something for other people. Enough people seem happy with that, but it's not my big concern. What I care about is all the things it does for...

Recently, I went to an osteopath to talk about some joint issues and wandering joint pain. I'm hypermobile, and, because of this, my joints are kind of stupid. This means that, frequently, I'm having trouble with some joint. The complication of this, is that it might be my right hip this week, my left ankle the next week, and my left shoulder the week after that. This means that trying to treat the specific one doesn't really make a lot of sense, because it will be something else next week, and the underlying cause isn't going away. I've heard from some people that osteopaths can be really helpful for taking this seriously and thinking about approaches for moving forward. The one I went to was wonderful, took plenty of time with me and took me seriously. I'm working on following up on her recommendations, and that's all great. That's not really what I'm here to talk about. I was a little nervous going into this, because I've always thought about ...

I'm pretty good at distracting myself from things that hurt, whether that is physical or emotional. My distractability is a little bit of a super power in this area, and I've written about that before. Using that superpower, however, has a cost. The cost is that intentionally invoking that distractability puts a major hit on my executive function. I have much less ability to control what my brain will go to instead. Which is really annoying when there is so much work that needs to get done. Sometimes work is the perfect distraction, but when it's not, there just really isn't anything I can do about it. 

I'm currently taking a workshop through work. This week, they assigned a little over half an hour of video as part of the prep work, including a 20 minute video. When I pointed out that this was an accessibility issue and could be a major hurdle for some people (including me!) I got the response "You're right, without captioning, the videos aren't fully accessible." Once I explained that wasn't the only issue, the teacher did see the concern and thank me for the feedback, but I'm really frustrated by the frequent repetition of this. They also explicitly said that some of them were concerned not to assign only print/text. I believe that I may be an extreme point on this, but I have heard from so many people with ADHD that learning from videos is really hard. Especially slow, talk heavy videos. I think this is an issue that is frequently ignored: obviously videos are easier for everyone, right? I want to figure out a way to push, at least at my own instituti...

One of the kids in my house is a classic super bright, extremely ADHD kid. While we've had some issues along the way, she has a team of adults, including family, teachers and psych professionals who understand what she is dealing with and want to help her, rather than punishing her. I look at this and I'm so glad she has it, and at the same time, I can't help but feel envious. When I was a kid, if you were smart enough to get by, anything else you did was just acting out. No one talked about helping with your focus issues, they just chastised you for not paying attention. If you got good grades, you could get away with a lot, but also no one would acknowledge the ways that you were struggling. I was lucky. I did have some help from my mother in very informal ways, I had a few excellent teachers who helped where they could, and I figured out a lot of coping strategies on my own.  Still, I have to wonder what it would have been like not to have to figure it all out for myself...

Sometimes you finally accomplish some terrible impossible task that you've been putting off for so many months that it is painful and embarrassing. It takes (of course) 10-15 minutes and is ridiculously simple. At the end of it, you are torn between being proud of yourself for finally having DONE THE THING and furious at yourself for putting this trivial thing off for many months.

Note: This was written in February, 2021. As I've alluded to before, I'm a bit of a gym rat. I like being strong, and exercise is one of the best things for calming my brain down. But also, it's my favorite drug. Being a responsible person who lives with a vulnerable spouse, I haven't been to a gym since the start of the pandemic. Early on, I got myself a set of dumbbells, and I've been making do. It's fine for keeping up on some things. It's fine for working certain sets of muscles. But they just aren't heavy enough for the large muscle groups, and with dumbbells a lot more things are limited by my hands before it really gets to the muscles I want to work. Recently I got myself a squat rack and bench, and then a bar and weights (yes, separated in time. There are reasons.) It's been a few weeks, and I've been working myself back up slowly, because it had been a long time, and I was trying to be responsible. I'm finally back to the point where...

Note: This was first written in August of 2020. Probably the hardest thing about the pandemic for my mental health has been being unable to sort rational from irrational fears. Most of my serious fears revolve around health issues. Some of them are my own, some of them are for others. One of my biggest nightmares is learning that someone I love died months ago and that I never heard.  When I was a kid, I had some really awful periods where I would have paralyzing fear around health stuff that was obviously irrational: I'd be afraid of ebola when it hadn't gotten anywhere near the country, or afraid I would get hypothermia from walking home in the rain. I put a lot of work into addressing these fears. For most of my life, I've been very good at assessing my fears around health, and setting aside the irrational ones. I'm not completely immune to them, but I can put them off to the side and forget about them and be fine. Where I have always still struggled is when I have a...

Note: This was first written in April 2020. Right now, like everyone else, I'm in a state of having less resources to activate my coping mechanisms and more stress to deal with. Under normal circumstances, I can get refreshes from seeing people, going clubbing, etc. Right now I don't have those options, and there's a lot more environmental stress load. This means that, realistically, I just have to make do with less. I get less done, I have less control over what my brain is willing to do. I can't change either of those facts. They are just facts that I have to live with for the indefinite future. So, how do I cope with that and still make sure that I meet the actual requirements of what really needs to get done? Mostly, a lot of acceptance and self-forgiveness, combined with some asking for help, and some being very careful about how I use the coping strategies I have left. Right now, I'm paying very close attention to impossible tasks. The longer they loom, or the...

Note: This was first written in April of 2020. I've talked about this before, but it's become particularly relevant recently. To many people, I read as an extrovert. I know a lot of people. I'm very comfortable and at home in many social situations. I love hosting parties and connecting people to each other. I certainly get energy from big parties. But the truth is that I'm actually pretty balanced between introvert and extrovert. I love my big parties, but in some ways I actually need the alone time more than I need the social time. It's just that usually I get plenty of it by default: working, biking, lifting weights. I need that time to recover, but no one sees that because it's when I'm alone. I've always said this, but, in recent years, I had started to wonder a little if my conception around this didn't really match where I currently was. I've drifted more extroverted over the years: some intentionally, some incidentally. Most people seem t...

Important Note: This was first written in March 2020. Read the rest in that context: I am fine. I'm coping and I have two wonderful partners here who support me. I am getting things done, I am not causing or risking harm to myself or anyone else. Nothing serious is wrong, outside of the world falling apart. I have really good coping strategies. They work as long as I'm not under extreme stress and I'm able to use them. When they break down, I notice quickly. Not too long after, the people around me start to notice. Right now, I'm struggling because of general stress and anxiety about the world and people I care about, because my rituals are severely disrupted (I can't go to the gym, I'm not at the office), because I'm getting very little completely focused alone time, and because I don't have access to any social outlets that charge my extrovert battery. Some of my coping strategies I can still use: ones that are completely internal, and ones that I can ...

I was realizing that despite being honest about my issues and struggles, this filter has been overwhelmingly positive. I've focused on coping strategies, superpowers and quirks, not on when things really go wrong. Today I want to talk about the bad days. Some days, I've done everything right. I haven't been overtaxed recently. I got sleep. I've already gotten at least an hour of exercise. I have plenty of different productive tasks that I could do.  And I've tried six of them already, and nothing is working. I've tried getting up and moving. I've taken controlled breaks and returned to things. I've switched tasks. Nothing helps. There's no good reason. My brain just won't do it.  If I'm lucky, I catch it relatively early. Then, sometimes, I can give up for a while: go to the gym, play a computer game, maybe see a friend. If it works, after a few hours doing something else, I might be able to find something productive I can do. If I'm not ...

I often say that I have a bad memory. It's a reasonable approximation, but it's not exactly true. I'm very good at certain types of recall, under certain circumstances, it's just that access is very complicated. I was always very good at school, and tested very well. If I put my mind in "studying" mindset (and I have the focus at the time to do so), I can fairly easily read a chapter once and then take any normal test on it and do well. I can memorize lines or definitions fairly easily, as long as I have the right cues to bring them up. Once I'm looking at my slides for teaching, I have all sorts of detailed facts about the material at my disposal. For day-to-day things, I basically have two different types of memory. One is the equivalent of a few ragged, handwritten notes that provide pointers that I'm left to puzzle over. The other is extremely detailed, and I think of it as the equivalent to a saved game. When I access this, I have all sorts of inf...

Today we're just on interesting features of my brain. There is a constant soundtrack running in my head. I don't know how common this is for other people. I know that most people have the experience of getting a song stuck in their head. That happens to me, but it's generally fairly easy to dislodge: I can shift the soundtrack with distraction just like anything else. However, there is always something playing. What seems to be most distinct about this soundtrack, compared to other people, is that frequently it is not a song that I have heard before. Sometimes I'll have a particular version of a song that I've listened to, sometimes The Beatles will sing a cover of Sisters of Mercy's "Mother Russia" (yes, since I described that, I currently have it playing in my head. No I can't play it for you), and sometimes I'll just have reasonably pleasant instrumental music that my brain has composed as background. Bowed strings, harps, and flutes are the...

I’ve focused a lot so far on the struggles I have with my brain and how I cope with them. That’s important, but I don’t want to ignore the benefits of how my brain works. Today I’m going to talk about how my distractability can be a very good thing. I can be distracted fairly easily from basically anything that I’m not currently hyperfocused on. That sounds like a bad thing, and--to be honest--a lot of the time it is. However, knowing and harnessing that makes it much easier for me to extract myself from bad mental spaces, brainsucking loops and even just grumpy moods. If I’m upset about something, and I realize that my upset state is not productive, I have a set of patterns that allow me to process as much as is productive, and then actively utilize distraction to take myself away from it. As previously mentioned, I’m a high-energy, high-intensity, high-enthusiasm person. As long as I can find something to be excited about right now, I can engineer a switch to a more positive emotiona...

To be clear, I know everyone deals with impostor syndrome, and I do not have clinical anxiety. As far as I can tell, I tend to think about things in many of the same ways as my friends who do, and have many very similar thought patterns and obsessive thought cycles, but mostly I don't find it distressing. I also don't seem to get hit by rejection sensitive dysphoria the same way that a lot of my ADHD friends do. I think some of this is real, and some of this is very long established coping strategies. But I want to express gratitude to all of you who are following these posts, and seeing yourself in them and comparing experiences. I have a Ph.D. and a good job, and successful relationships. I'm happy and have had the right combination of privilege, luck, and a lot of hard work, to build a life that I love. I also have never had any diagnosis for any of the things I'm describing.  The fact that I don't have a professional diagnosis and that I've done so well for ...

As I mentioned in my self-description, I am a very impulsive person. It's easy for me to make major decisions on the spur of the moment, or get wrapped up in something I'm excited about now, even if now is a terrible time to be doing that, or maybe it's really not something I should be doing at all. This is particularly true if I'm in a high energy, high excitement state. Since I go hard into extrovert mode when I'm around people I like, and absorb energy from those situations, I'm basically in that sort of state any time I'm at a party, con, or similar situation. This can be a dangerous combination, given all the exciting people! In addition, if I'm hyperfocused on something, it's really easy for me to miss really obvious clues in my surroundings, and make bad decisions because of it.  To help address both of these issues, I make a lot of my decisions in advance, and force myself to abide by those decisions in the moment, even if I don't want to...

I just finished a workout, so I think it's time that I tackle what is probably my second most important coping strategy after my external brain. I mentioned in my description that I am very much classic hyperactive subtype ADHD. My brain wants to be moving all the time. Small fidgets help a little bit, but only a little. Getting up and walking around the apartment periodically helps a bit more, but doesn't fix the problem. In order to get basically anything productive done that requires sitting, I need to be getting at least an hour of real exercise in a day. It doesn't have to be high intensity, but it has to be one or two solid blocks of time when I can really get moving. If I'm struggling with work in the middle of the day, one of the most useful things I can do is go to the gym or go for a bike ride. When I come back, I'll have much more focus. As a physiologist, I can talk about Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor, and things like that, but I really think the key ...

This morning, I spent 15 minutes processing an email task. That sounds routine, except that the email and the task had been sitting around for literally months. A truly ridiculous and embarrassing amount of time for a trivial task. There was nothing particularly terrible about this email. It was just impossible.  The impossible task is something I struggle with a lot. I am not going to talk in this post about how I get myself to do impossible tasks. As demonstrated above, I don't have a great solution. If I did, they wouldn't be impossible anymore. I can talk in the future about how I try to deal with them, but the truth is, I often fail. Sometimes for months, like with the stupid email. What I am going to talk about is how I try to have failing to do the impossible task not spill over to be a problem in the rest of my life. The biggest issue with impossible tasks is that sometimes the fact that I can't do that, means I also can't do anything else, because that's th...

I live a very complicated, and very organized life. One that most people I know would have trouble managing. And yet I have an extremely disorganized brain and cannot keep anything straight. The (not really at all) secret: I'm a very disorganized human, but a very organized cyborg. I figured out in middle school that I couldn't live the life I wanted without a lot of external help. With the help of my parents, I started figuring out ways to keep all the information that I needed straight outside my head. It took a long time to get anything consistent and useful, and I went through many different options, but the fact that I started depending on external resources very heavily and very young meant that I got really good at it. I am also someone to whom small repetitive rituals are supportive and comforting. I know that this is true for some ADHD people and not others. I have ritual patterns that somewhat resemble compulsive rituals (although they are not generally connected to o...

I'm going to start this off with a brief (ok, I failed at brief) summary of how my particular brain works. Warning: this got very long. The main (and probably most obvious) oddness of how my brain works basically boils down to ADHD. This has never been technically diagnosed, but it seems accurate, and it's a good enough shorthand for me. Since ADHD presentation is hugely variable, I'm going to list the ways in which this mainly manifests in me.  - I am absolutely incapable of sitting or standing still. I'm pretty classic hyperactive, in ways that most people seem to grow out of. I never have.  - My brain prioritizes anything that is moving or talking over anything that isn't. Absolutely, full stop, under all circumstances.  - I am extremely impulsive. If I don't have things in place to stop myself, I will make major changes and decisions on a whim.  - My brain is a very disorganized place. I have very little ability to pull specific facts out at specific points,...

This is just a blog about how my brain works. Most of these posts were posted elsewhere in a private setting. Enough people there found them useful and/or interesting that I've decided to make them available in a public, searchable format. Besides this post, you may want to start with the second post on the blog, that summarizes the quirks of my brain, but otherwise I don't think order is terribly important. A few rules for how to interact with this blog: 1. Anyone is welcome to read these posts, but if you don't cope with issues related to the ones I'm discussing, please do not attempt to offer advice. 2. This will not be a 101. There may be terms used that you need to research. That's on you.  3. I may use some shorthand terms to describe how my brain works without a professional diagnosis. Please don't question my understanding and interpretation of my own brain. 4. If you are trying to figure out things about how your own brain works, that's fine and I...