FAWM : "Neurospicy FAWMers" (by @frenchcricket)

@frenchcricket 8w

Annual neurodiversity thread! Add your name below if you’re on the neurospicy team. I’m autistic, and dyslexic, and my wife is currently seeking an ADHD diagnosis.

@frenchcricket 8w

I felt a lot of imposter syndrome since i got my autism diagnosis a few years ago, but I actually had such a horrible day a few weeks ago that sort of validated me, in a sense. Basically, I was extremely overwhelmed by people and environment and general stress to such a degree that I literally stopped being able to talk. I had to communicate with my partner by using the notes app on my phone. It was actually quite frightening. It lasted a few hours.

Anyway sorry for the digression, i just thought maybe some of you could relate.

@berni1954 8w

My daughter was diagnosed as ADHD recently... which explained a lot that had puzzled us since her childhood (she's 24 now).
The more I have read about it since that diagnosis, the more I have come to realise that I would probably have been diagnosed with it, had the concept been commonly known back in my youth. Instead, I just learned to cope and came up with strategies to appear "normal". I am not sure they worked though, my wife says I am: "mas raro que un perro verde" (more weird than a green dog). 😉

@chipwithrow 8w

This is a wonderfully supportive thread!
My daughter is on the autism spectrum (used to be Asperger's). She and I both have an anxiety diagnosis. Mine is recent - a little over 2 years ago - and I've been in therapy since.
She is now a very successful college student - much better at it than I was.
And I suspect that if we knew in the 70s what we know now, I would have been found to be on the spectrum myself.
Actually, sometimes I think that since it's an autism spectrum, we're all on it somewhere - certainly creative types.

@alyxanderjames 8w

@frenchcricket I got the Engage for use during the day and Quiet for nighttime/travel (they’re softer so easier to wear for longer periods). The Engage ones still let me have conversations if I want to but do a great job of taking the edge off of anything particularly loud or grating. I noticed it the most when someone came over to play our piano in our apartment with 12’ high cement ceilings - it’s a really bright space and while I love the piano I hadn’t been able to handle listening to it in this apartment. But with the Loops I actually enjoyed listening to our friend play!

@hspromking 8w

Undiagnosed but I have the utmost confidence that I have ADHD and a decent inkling that I'm probably autistic (my diagnosed autistic peer has told me he thinks I'm autistic, not sure if this counts for anything.) My son is diagnosed autistic. My mother is bi-polar. I cycle through depression and fits of "yeehaw, the world is my oyster." I'm just generally a mess. Might be able to get some sort of diagnoses but I generally end up canceling doctors appointments before going to them...

@roel_van_veldt 8w

Chronically depressed, being severely disorganized because of ADHD. On top of that chronically exhausted. Is someone else here suffering from having 1000's of ideas, but almost no finished songs? Excruciating...

Yet, I'm a dreamer and a pragmatic optimist until the day I die. And I persevere, against all odds, against my better judgement, sometimes with the courage of despair.

And I'm gonna make a full progressive rock album by the end of February!

@robhowell 8w

@frenchcricket Thanks, I’m actually in Scotland - I googled it and I’m not sure if we have that scheme up here. The GP told me that it would be a very long wait on the waiting list if I go through the NHS (I’ve read 2-3 years in Scotland at the moment) so they recommended going private if I can afford it. I wish they had put me on the waiting list when I was originally referred 10 years ago! So my GP arranged the referral but I’m getting the assessment privately, it is expensive but it will be worth it if I can get some clarity about my issues and hopefully some help!

@kathrynhoss 8w

It makes sense that so many of us are neurodivergent because of course it takes a certain type of person to hyperfixate on writing 14 songs in a month 😂

Since last year I've realized I'm probably on the autistic and ADHD spectrums. Not diagnosed and I don't plan to be bc the American medical system is hell. (And I might want to foster kids someday and the state can discriminate against you for having an autism diagnosis!) Thankful for the 'tism though because it adds some level of order to my impulsivity.

@alyxanderjames and @frenchcricket I also love my Loop earplugs. Can't survive the grocery store or a long car ride without them.

@florianhoffmann 8w

Neurospicy ... aren't we all, in some way or other?

Face recognition weakness here. It'll take me many face-to-face meetings before I recognize you from your face. And don't you dare change hair styles or glasses. Not pathological, but always good for a seriously embarrassing situation... 🫣

And my wife's a super recognizer. She keeps recognizing people in a crowd on the street who she met once 20 years ago.

Now which one of us two is the stranger animal? 🤣 At least we make for a good team.

@ohdeer 7w

Hello!

ADHD (25 years diagnosed) and (apparently) PTSD (3 years diagnosed). Turns out you do not need to have been physically traumatised to have PTSD. Apparently the ADHD-related Rejection Sensitivity can lead to PTSD following emotional trauma, where most other people would "just get over it", because of the emotional dysregulation of ADHD.

The ADHD thing makes it hard for me to write songs about things I have not experienced personally. I can write songs about other people, but songs about me are always about how I am feeling at the moment I write them. And since the last 4 years have been pretty shitty, almost all my songs are sad and depressing. It feels fraudulent to write and sing about how happy I am when I am not. I wonder if that is ADHD or autism or whatever.

Anyway, my shrink has challenged me this FAWM to write a happy love song in 1st person even if I am not in love.

Yikes.

@mdavisto 7w

@haloquin Where TF is the waiting list six years? That's obscene.

Here in South Africa, there's state-funded public medicine, which is ... well it depends how rural you are. Also there you don't make an appointment so much as stand in a queue unless you're

And then there's private, which you need insurance for.

Certainly in private, you would not have to wait more than a week, unless you had decided to approach a very famous psychiatrist.

SIX YEARS?

@wistah 7w

I am medicated for depression and suffer through occasional bouts of crippling anxiety. I meditate, pray, and see a therapist. I journal daily, write a gratitude list each morning, and review my behaviors daily. I’ve been sober since 2019. These are the tools that help me survive and thrive each year. I am compassionate for others struggling with mental health, and would like to see all who suffer receive the treatments they need to survive without fear of stigma or repercussions.

@haloquin 7w

@mdavisto the National Health Service has been massively underfunded, and neurodivergent services in general are low priority. Basically, you only get a clinic if a Dr with the right training and a specific interest decides to put in the work of setting one up... And the funding bodies apparently want you to have 5 years worth of waiting list before they'll give you funding to start. In theory I've you get a clinic and hire/train more assessors that goes down, but for our only clinic in West Wales that coincided with lockdown and difficulty meeting + a boom in referral requests, and that added to the time.

I know some folk in South Wales for whom it only took 6 months, and others who were told there wasn't a service in their area at all, so tough. It's a mess.

You can go private, but apparently even then there's sometimes a waiting list, it costs a lot, and, though some will, not every NHS Dr will accept a private Dx and then give you meds, so you have to pay for any treatment ongoing, which is expensive. Making some folk have a private Dx and are STILL on an NHS waiting list to get a Dx that will get them treatment they can't afford otherwise.

I am baffled by the whole thing too.

@mdavisto 7w

@haloquin I feel like I have to ask what went wrong? You guys used to be the model. Or was it always like this and reading too many British authors gave me the wrong idea?

I don't remember it being this bad when I lived in London. That was a fun time. Fuckers tried to blow us up. I was temping at the British Museum, not the best day.

My insurance doesn't cover treatment for mental illness, it's more of a "we'll patch you up if you get hit by a bus" sort of thing. So, yes, it's expensive.

Honestly, I hate having to take medication all the time just to function like an adult. Don't really have a choice, though. I would prefer having the kind of thing that "gets better" rather than "gets managed better".

@frenchcricket 7w

@mdavisto The Conservative Party is what went wrong. They are ideologically opposed to having a taxpayer funded healthcare system, and have been systematically working to undermine it for years (though admittedly the process accelerated with the expansion of privately funded initiatives by Blair’s Labour government). They do this by chronic underfunding and mismanagement - if you make the NHS fail, the people will demand that something replaces it. Our current Chancellor even wrote a book about replacing the NHS with an insurance model.

@haloquin 7w

Yup, @frenchcricket ,that pretty much sums it up.

@mdavisto basically the current gov are systematically gutting the NHS until it falls apart and they can sell it to their mates. Add to that the stigma around ADHD (and ADHD meds, in particular) and it's pot luck as to what you can get in your area.

But, still, I wouldn't trade my brain for a standard model, even with the challenges 😁 or trade what we've got left of the NHS for a private model, for that matter.

@gavran 7w

Greetings,
Diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.
I've also self-identified as autistic for about 25 years, but my current attempt at getting a professional opinion was derailled by my depression: for some strange reason, my psychiatrist wants me to be somewhat stable and functional before getting down to the nitty-gritty.
Plus some of the hypersensitivities that often go with autism, of course, most debilitatingly hyperacusis.

@donna 7w

Diagnosed chronic depression and social anxiety dysfunction (SAD). For most of my life I thought I was just pathologically shy. It was a relief to discover the anxiety ‘thing’ had a name (and it certainly explained a lot). It also motivated me to fight against it whenever I felt/feel I could/can. Even small victories are important. And despite the bouts of depression, like @roel_van_veldt, I’m an incorrigible ‘dreamer and a pragmatic optimist’.

I’m also dyscalculic. Numbers are a foreign language I could never decipher. When I discovered only about 15 years ago that there was in fact a word for my fear of and ineptitude with numbers, I actually wept. What a weight off my shoulders! All that time I’d thought I was simply stupid.

Thank goodness the dyscalculia element didn’t have any profound effect on my working life, which has always involved language, writing, and education. Mind you, at one point I took the electives psychology and linguistics as part of my joint degree in journalism & English literature, but I wasn’t able go on to the second year of the electives because statistics featured in the curriculum. I regretted that. So I guess the dyscalculia did block certain paths.

So interesting – even comforting – to read everyone’s backstory. What an amazing crew we all are!

And I think you’re absolutely right, @gslade. (-:

@geekysoprano 7w

Neurospicy is such a good word. <3

AuDHDer here, just diagnosed formally in the last year, though completely onboard the self-diagnosis-is-Valid train as I recognize the privilege inherent to my ability to pursue such.

I am also a therapist! Realizing I "clicked" with my Autistic and ADHDer clients more quickly than my allistic ones led to a solid 6 years of wondering, and finally opting to get help sorting it out. <3

Much love to everyone here.

@sheilerk 7w

I love seeing how many of my friends are in this thread! I grew up super shy, now I can see it was extreme social anxiety. I learned always having my nose in a book allowed me to avoid a lot of social interaction when I was growing up.
I can’t think of a single person I know in my immediate and extended family that isn’t neurodivergent in one way or another. I seemed pretty “normal” by comparison. I had dyscalculia, but I didn’t have a name for it then. Somewhere along the way I latched on to the dyslexic label, but in my mind it encompassed the whole panoply of divergencies. When my son was diagnosed with ADHD I did a lot of research on it, but it still didn’t occur to me that I had it too because, as an adult woman, the characteristics were so different. Once I was finally hit with the blinding flash of the obvious I could see examples everywhere, throughout my entire life. It explained so much! Add in my night owl tendencies, which I found out also has a name, DSP- Delayed Sleep Phase, (I can rarely fall asleep before 2am, and sleep till 10) and I’m a veritable alphabet soup full of neurospice. I’m kind of loving it right now, and think that’s my new favorite word! Neurospicy! :)

@ohdeer 7w

Here I am. On my sofa with a cat on my lap. Telling myself I should get up to start my FAWM 2023. But I don't. I'm scrolling. I can't he bothered. Mainly because I don't think I can concentrate long enough to produce anything useful anyway, and secondly because I think it will be shit. ADHD and Rejection Sensitivity... It is a FECKING horrid combination.

Instead, I have cleaned the house and done laundry. Because my brain sees sitting down and concentrating on a task as boring work. Even if the result will be a song. Ugh. Can't wait for a Skirmish tonight so I can feel some pressure.

@karan 6w

I was diagnosed with ADHD last summer, after many decades of suspecting that I had it. Now I am finally dealing with it, and it does make things easier.

Apparently, it's quite common for older women that ADHD symptoms increase during and after menopause. That's what happened to me, and I suspect there are many out there who never assume that their problems result from ADHD and take hormones instead. It's so worth to get a proper medical assessment and diagnosis!

@sentense 5w

@davidbreslin101 here. I'm undiagnosed autistic and know that only for some years now (means, i didn't know it for 50 years). I always struggled to comment on songs simply because i don't know what to write. I envy everyone who is able to express in words what a song does to people. "Oh, this is so nice, i really like that" falls flat whenever i try to write something under a song. It doesn't help that english isn't my native language but that doesnt matter too much because in my native language i still don't know how to say what exactly it is what i like about a particular song. It's not that i don't feel something (i wouldn't make music myself if that was the case) but it seems to be impossible for me to describe these feelings with words because i can't find any that fit. Finding out about the autism running in the family at least helped me understand why i struggled with things like that for my whole life. But it doesn't help to solve the problem. So i still listen to many songs and then sit 30 minutes in front of an empty comment form wanting to write something down and leaving the page in the end without hitting the submit button because there's nothing to submit. Makes me feel really bad.

@sheilerk 5w

@ohdeer @davidbreslin101 @sentense You're not alone, I also sometimes listen to a song, I'll even really like it, but I can't find the words I want to describe why. It doesn't help that I don't have a great musical vocabulary, since I'm primarily a lyricist (you'd think I'd have all the words, right? Doesn't seem to work that way). But, when you say that you believe saying "nice song" or "I enjoyed it" is pointless I don't agree with you. It tells someone that you have taken the time to listen to something they created and that you enjoyed it. What more does any of us need? Especially during FAWM. We all know time is tight and there are thousands of songs you could have chosen to listen to. So, I think even a few words can mean a lot. It doesn't need to be a dissertation. ;)

@jtsteam 5w

Pretty sure I'm on this team, and only just realising now. Though undiagnosed (autistic) it would explain an awful lot. Just joining in here to say that I have the same problem with commenting... I see all these wonderful helpful comments and don't think I can manage that, whether it's a lack of musical vocabulary or just out of fear that I've missed the point of a song somehow and will horrify everyone. For what it's worth, if I get a comment that merely says someone enjoyed one of my songs then I'm thrilled, so in the end I don't worry too much about saying so myself in return. Although I'll still try to say a bit more if I can.

@arthurrossi 5w

If this world around us is regarded as being "normal", one can only count oneself lucky not to belong to this concept of "normality". For sure, psychological issues are way underdiagnosed and as some here already suspected, I would also agree that for being creative, a certain deviation from the "average standard of normality" is mandatory... That "deviation" may go hand in hand with minor or major restrictions in everyday life, but on the other hand, a different, wonderful world opens up for us, which probably very few of us would exchange for an "average status of so-called normality" - if we had the opportunity...

Neurospicy FAWMers

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