Thanks, Anon!

I refuse to believe the best years of my life are behind me. I refuse to believe the best years of my life are right now. I refuse to label my years as being the best of my entire life. Good times are always ahead. I have to believe there are always better times coming.

i wonder what it's like to be emotionally stable. anyways [thinks about fictional characters to survive] i am fine

Took a risk and it paid off

This is the face of someone who knows this doesn't always work.

wooden chair jacket by jean-claude biraben

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993)

One of my favorite things about this scene was that by this point, these three animal actors were so fond of each other that the trainers really didn’t have to do much work to make them go to each other like this. They were really that happy to see each other! 

That made this so much better!

I always loved Sassy and the film as a whole. We named our dog after her.

the question of fic comments is very straightforward actually. readers do not owe writers comments. writers do not owe readers fic. there is no bargain, no transaction, no debt.

fic is a gift. comments are a gift. gifts are exchanged between friends, out of love, not out of obligation.

I write for myself. I post it for others, as a gift, because their joy brings me joy. I read for myself. I comment for the author, as a gift, because their joy brings me joy. perhaps we were not friends before, but we are now, however fleetingly, because we have given each other gifts out of love.

inside me there are two lungs. and one liver. one stomach. a few meters of intestine. there's a lot inside me actually

this is the funniest thing i've read all day

my arrival time at your birthday party will be 8.30-esque dude. it will bear several similarities to 8.30

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

I really wish more ADHD mental health care told you WHY things like this matter to our quality of life.

The Hyperactivity in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is NOT about being physically hyperactive, it's about having a "hyperactive central nervous system" because it's a form of inheritable dysautonomia. The problem with disautonomia, especially the ADHD kind, is that it makes boredom flag to your nervous system as a THREAT, triggering hyperactive and maladaptive central nervous system processes like fight or flight.

But dysautonomia kills you that way. Literally, part of the reason our average life spand increase on stimulents is that it helps manage risk-taking impulsivity that can get us killed by accident, but the other part is that stimulents can regulate a hyperactive CNS such that it is functionally (while impacted by the stimulent) NOT dysregulated anymore. And PHYSIOLOGICALLY that is essential because the physical outcomes of dysautonomia can reduce your life span by YEARS if not decades through self-perpetuating hypervigelence, endocrine disruption, and adrenal fatigue.

So when the ADHD brain goes stimulation-seeking and a doctor tells you to practice mindfulness, it feels like being told "hey go stand in a functioning boiler until you can stop thinking" rather than WHAT IT IS which is the process of re-teaching your body what is and isn't safe.

Standing outside making mindful, non-interpretive/moralized observation of the world helps your brain and body re-acclimate to the idea that absence of that frantic "busy" feeling isn't a threat or a risk to your safety, and gradually reduces the level of distress that just hanging out somewhere triggers for you.

Learning WHY this stuff was being suggested and understanding what it was actually supposed to do went a long way towards changing my relationship with my ADHD. I am FAR more functional now, far less prone to shame spirals and rejection sensitivity, hell, I can **sit physically still for near on an hour at a time** now without feeling like I'm going to crawl out of my skin.

So yeah. Go outside. Let the world narrow around you and take deep breaths until it stops feeling claustrophobic or like you need to climb walls. Learn how to let little sensations become big ones like the way the heat of the sun on your skin starts as a gentle warming and be omes a unique collection of sensory moments depending on how it lands on you. Listen for sounds under sounds and let them fade in and out as you move your focus from one sound to the next. Enjoy. Move on. Rinse and repeat.

When you no longer feel like the world is actively killing you, it's a lot easier to navigate it.

S++ tier addition to the post, thank you tumblr user butts bouncing on the beltway