Instead of telling yourself, “I should get up,” or “I should do this,”
Ask yourself, “When will I get up?” or “When will I be ready to do this?”
Instead of trying to order yourself to feel the signal to do something, which your brain is manifestly bad at, listen to yourself with compassionate curiosity and be ready to receive the signal to move when it comes.
Things I did not actually realize was an option
What’s amazing is what happens when you do this with children. I hit on it when working at the foster home, where nearly all our kids were on the autism spectrum, and they weren’t “defiant” around me because I said things like, “How long do you need to stand here before we can move?” and “Come into the kitchen when you’re ready” instead of saying, “Stop staring out the window, let’s go,” or “Come eat dinner,” and interpreting hesitation as refusal to obey.
I have also definitely found that doing the “okay when I finish counting down from twenty is getting up time” has been useful.
Yup, that’s way better for toddlers and younger kids. It helps when they don’t have the self-awareness, attention span, or concept of the passage of time to estimate when they’ll be ready by themselves.
Oh I meant for me. XD Saying it to myself.
WELL OKAY WHOOPS XD I should not have been overspecific, I was just thinking about teaching this stuff to the parents at my job and your reblog made me immediately think of you with Banana and the kidlets.
Another hack: when you want to get up but are stalled by your brain and frustrated – stop. Breathe. Think about what you want to do once you’re up, without thinking about getting up. Treat it like a fantasy, no pressure, just thinking about something you’d like to do in the future. Instead of thinking “I should get up” over and over, think about having a bagel for breakfast, or getting dressed in your soft green sweater. Imagine yourself doing the thing.
I find that exercise often side-steps the block and the next thing I know I’m out of bed and on my way to doing the other thing I thought about.
Works for other things too, if you’re stuck on one step and having a hard time doing it, think about the step after that. Need to do laundry and you can’t get yourself to gather up your dirty clothes in the hamper? Think instead about carrying the hamper full of dirty clothes to the laundry room. And when you get to that next step, if you get stuck again, think about the step after it – you have a hamper of dirty clothes that needs to be put in the wash, let your subconscious handle the “carry hamper to laundry room” step while you’re thinking about the “putting them in the wash” part.
YMMV of course, and this doesn’t even always work for me (particularly not when I need to do a collection of tasks in no particular order, like packing for a trip… “pack socks, pack underwear, pack toothbrush, pack pants, pack shirts” is the kind of non-linear task list where this trick doesn’t help at all), but it’s something I’ve found helpful often enough.
This is one of the most beautiful threads I’ve seen on Tumblr simply because it deals so compassionately with an issue so many of us have and can barely even articulate to ourselves, let alone to anyone else. <3
I think I get overwhelmed from the thought of all of the consequent steps, so maybe I’ll do the reverse of the advice above and try to focus on the first one.
@the-rain-monster i was just about to say something similar. that can work too sometimes. instead of going “ugh i need to eat something” for four hours, i try to focus on each step in turn.
and i mean each TINY step. just getting out of my chair has this many steps:
- pause music
- remove headphones
- hang headphones on laptop screen
- pick up laptop
- leg-bend recliner footrest shut
- set laptop aside
- stand
and i reckon that’s why i get stuck on it; because i’m trying to treat it as one thing, while executive dysfunction is treating it as seven things, and choking on trying to skip to step seven.
concurrent with this is a method i call ‘junebugging’. which is where i go to the location of the thing i want to do, and just sort of bump around the region like a big stupid beetle until the thing somehow accidentally magically gets done. this is an attempt to leverage ADHD into an advantage; i may not have the executive function to make myself a sandwich on purpose, but if i fidget in the kitchen long enough, some kind of food is going to end up in my mouth eventually. and hell, even if i fail on that front, i will probably have achieved something, even if it’s only pouring all my loose leaf tea into decorative jars.*
@star-anise please may i give you an internet hug *hug!* because god how i wish anyone had known to do that for me when i was a kid. my childhood was one big overload, and like 99% of the huge dramatic meltdowns that made me the scapegoat/laughingstock/target of my entire elementary school were simply due to people not giving me time to process the next step, and interpreting a bluescreen as defiance/insult.
*this happened when i was trying to do dishes actually but the principle is sound
yeah i absolutely echo what j’s saying about the steps, it’s a lot like that for me too. i get overwhelmed at the prospect of something that should be simple, and have to slow down and sort out how many steps it’s actually going to take, and what a complicated endeavor it actually is, even if no one else thinks so.
also, i thought i should put in: try to honestly figure out what you’re averse to, that makes things so tough. making a whole bunch of decisions really fast? the potential of things to make a horrible noise? the shame of failure? having to put down what you’re doing now? having to clean up whatever it is you might go do when you’re done?
for instance, for me, the difficulty rating on anything goes waaaay up when a step of a task is ‘go somewhere people will look at you,’ which is for me about the unpleasantness equivalent of ‘jump into a very cold swimming pool right now’. you know you’ll be fine and even have fun once you’ve settled into it, but it still takes a lot of shuffling around and bracing yourself first to go for it. and some days you just don’t fucking want to go swimming.
i discounted this factor for years because i wouldn’t admit that i was so daunted by something so silly as as people looking at me. but, now i know what i’m so aversive about, i can factor it in to plans, and work around it, and be kind to myself. for instance, i was never able to get fit since highschool PE, because i couldn’t make myself go to a gym, or even out jogging. once i figured out the big problem wasn’t avoidance pain or difficulty, it was avoidance of doing a New Thing that i was Bad At in front of Unknown Quantities Of Strangers, which is like a triple threat of stressors, i started working out quietly and safely in my room at night, and i’ve been doing really good on it!
Absolutely loving the tag #you don’t make a broken car work by yelling ALL THE OTHER CARS WORK FINE
Blog
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Executive dysfunction life hack
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Can you imagine the changes to the workforce and how we treated workers if no one HAD to work to survive?
Like often I see these complaints about a universal basic income that are like “well then no one would work!” and I think there are lots of people motivated to have more money even when they have enough to get by, but I also I think, that’s kind of true, if regular employment looked and functioned the way it does now.
But with UBI if both employers and society wanted people in certain jobs those jobs would have to offer more than just “you need us to survive”. They’d have to offer satisfaction and community and purpose.
Imagine the changes places like WalMart and McDonalds would have to make to how they run their enterprise if they had to woo and entice their employees into wanting to be there. Imagine the end of “the customer is always right”, both because employers know their workers won’t put up with and because consumers are forced to have a respect for workers choosing to do this with their time to make the community function when they don’t have to.
Imagine the progress to automation and technology now that we don’t have to worry about unemployment as a result. So instead of a store having 40 employees, they have 10 and automated self check out and price scanners and store apps you can pay on, and automated self-driving bots to keep inventory and restock at night. (And that’s when you don’t just order online, shopping in-store is now inherently a Boutique experience).
But those ten remaining employees are So Valued by the company, and so carefully educated and trained and respected as experts in what they do. People go “you could do that when you grow up, help people shop and find what they need and know what products are best for them.” And it wouldn’t be an insult like “you’ll wind up flipping burgers”, but instead a respected option “you can help people have warm fresh food in one of the oldest and most prestigious international groups in the world, and look at their travel programs and free clubs and classes” (McDonalds wins the Fast Food Mario Kart Tournament every year, their team is best in the nation and if you want a good esports program you work at McDonalds).
Evidence shows people would still work. Evidence shows people want to improve their situations and want to have structure in their lives. Evidence shows the only populations who take advantage of a UBI to not work are students who choose to focus more on their studies and new mothers, who choose to spend more time with their kids.
But it would increase the bargaining power and social power of the average employee by so much. They’d have the option to walk away. And employers would know it and consumers would know it and employees would know it. So if we wanted it to keep working, employers would have to start catering to their employees wellbeing and health and happiness as well as their wallet.
And it would be so good.
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Stray Puppies Won’t Stop Hugging Each Other Since They Were Rescued

Two abandoned puppies, who just won’t stop hugging each other were recently adopted by Buddhist nuns in a pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
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Ah. This is a good start to the morning, world. on Flickr.
Ah, now, this is a good start to the morning world.
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why do black people use you in the wrong context? such is “you ugly” instead of “you’re ugly” I know u guys can differentiate, it’s a nuisance
you a bitch

It’s called copula deletion, or zero copula. Many languages and dialects, including Ancient Greek and Russian, delete the copula (the verb to be) when the context is obvious.
So an utterance like “you a bitch” in AAVE is not an example of a misused you, but an example of a sentence that deletes the copular verb (are), which is a perfectly valid thing to do in that dialect, just as deleting an /r/ after a vowel is a perfectly valid thing to do in an upper-class British dialect.
What’s more, it’s been shown that copula deletion occurs in AAVE exactly in those contexts where copula contraction occurs in so-called “Standard American English.” That is, the basic sentence “You are great” can become “You’re great” in SAE and “You great” in AAVE, but “I know who you are” cannot become “I know who you’re” in SAE, and according to reports, neither can you get “I know who you” in AAVE.
In other words, AAVE is a set of grammatical rules just as complex and systematic as SAE, and the widespread belief that it is not is nothing more than yet another manifestation of deeply internalized racism.
This is the most intellectual drag I’ve ever read.
Respect Black languages and dialects 2kforever.
And I find it ironic that a complaint about “improper” use of the word “you” includes the use of “u.”
I keep remembering the example where kids are shown two pictures, one of a person eating, like, a bag of Doritos, and a person who isn’t, and telling kids, “One person is currently eating Doritos, and one person eats Doritos frequently.”
And the way to differentiate there is that “She is eating Doritos,” because, well, she is. She has the bag in her hand. She is eating the Doritos at the moment.
But, “He be eating Doritos,” shows that he eats Doritos regularly.
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(x) | follow @the-future-now
I feel kinda bad for the Orcas, tho. I mean, it’s not like they can eat anything that doesn’t fit the profile that the Humpbacks are protecting. They’re just trying to not starve to death. From their point of view, the Humpbacks are being total dicks.
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How Ironic.
This is what irony is, not rain on your wedding day, that is just bad luck
Those stars tho!!!
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hillary literally defended someone that raped a child, A CHILD. that is a bad person, jfc.
You’re referring, I assume, to the subject of this meme:

This is literally a very short google search anon w t f
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/jul/17/did-hillary-clinton-ask-be-relieved-rapist/ –> READ THIS BUT FIRST:
tldr;
(A) She was appointed as her client’s attorney by the court system; she did not volunteer for the case.
(B) She asked to be removed from the case because she was grossed out by it, but the judge denied her request.
© She didn’t “free” her client; she negotiated a plea deal for jail time, LIKE EVERY DEFENSE ATTORNEY IS LEGALLY REQUIRED TO DO.
(D) If she did not zealously advocate for her client, or purposely tanked the case, she would have faced disbarment from the legal profession. (SHE WOULD HAVE LOST HER JOB)
(E) In the 1980 audio interview, she talked about how her client somehow passed the polygraph that she’d hoped would have helped prove his guilt, and then laughed while saying that since then she never trusts polygraphs, ever.
(F) Even the picture used is not the actual victim, and you can be damned well sure they used a tearful angelic blonde little white girl to drive the hate.
but tldr; yes she defended a child rapist , no she didn’t really have a choice despite finding the case disgusting, because as a civil attorney YOU LEGALLY STILL HAVE TO REPRESENT THEM NO MATTER HOW ICK IT IS (this is what LAWYERS DO, they have NO CHOICE). She was essentially forced into it by her firm, and she made the guy take a polygraph test hoping that would prove him guilty. But when it didn’t prove him quilty (since he passed the polygraph ) she said she forever lost her faith in those tests.
Also, just FYI, in case you’re looking for a law degree, please know that this is STILL required of attorneys today. If you request to get removed from a case because you don’t like it and the court keeps you on you are legally bound to do so irrespective of how you feel about it.
No one is saying that every it of what that man did isn’t super horrible or gross.
But …
being legally bound to defend a rapist
? being an advocate for rape.
Also – bit of history for ya– despite this one gross case (among other civil cases no doubt) the Rose Law Firm she working for was known for actively taking cases for and defending groups like The Black Panthers. #tbt
Please do REBLOG/SIGNAL BOOST this post – the amount of anon messages I’ve gotten in the last 24 hours about this exact topic is uncanny.
People need to know the truth.
i’m really relieved to hear this
the greatest success of the republican party this election has been the demonization of Hillary Clinton, to the point where people actually believe she’s on the same level as trump.
she isn’t.



