One of the pitfalls I've been struggling with over the last three years while focusing on recovering from ADHD burnout is trying to find stimuli that are enriching and not just distracting because distracting stimuli might feel like it's keeping me from being bored, but really it's just keeping me numb enough so I don't have to process being bored or any of my emotions.

And that's not great when you're trying to heal trauma.

The problem is, I'm not finding a lot of things enriching at the moment. A lot of the things I've been relying on to keep my brain quiet since 2020 now feel overstimulating and are actively making me agitated rather than numb. Which I suppose is progress? It means I'm processing things and actually aware of them again instead of perceiving everything as background static.

It's just an odd predicament to be in. I don't think I've been this 'aware' of my own brain in a long time and on the one hand, cool. Great. Probably a good thing. On the other, aaaaah. Why is it so noisy in here?

As someone who also has ADHD, how did you figure out you were in burnout and it wasn’t just bad? I’m a bookkeeper who works in a CPA’s office, and we just got done with tax season. And my brain isn’t coming back online and it’s scaring me a little.

My therapist helped me realize it after I spiraled into a 3-year major depressive episode that made me suicidal every time I tried to write. (not great when you write for a living.)

Everyone will experience it differently, and you can find some good things to look out for online. (WebMD actually has a brief rundown of it and a few things to look out for)

For me, it started out as extreme fatigue and feeling overstimulated constantly, even when I was doing nothing. Nothing helped me feel relaxed, though with hindsight, that's because I didn't actually give my brain a break.

What I did was jump from one task to another or from one overstimulating distraction to another, thinking I just needed to 'take my mind off things' when what I needed was to take some time off to actually rest and do things that brought me joy, not just things that kept me busy and distracted from my emotions.

Hence why my brain dumped napalm on what was left of my mental health.

After a while, all the hacks and coping strategies I had for my executive dysfunction stopped working, and I was struggling to do everything because I just couldn't figure out what to prioritize. It was like being numb but also on fire at the same time.

I've since clawed my way back to some semblance of mental health, but I'm now very aware of avoiding overwork and prioritizing rest and mental enrichment over keeping myself distracted. If I find myself being task-avoidant, I pause and ask myself why.

Is it simply a low-reward task that I find boring? Or is it causing me some form of distress that I'm not registering because I'm not yet at the point of a total meltdown? If so, why? And what can I do about it? Is it something I can ask for help with?

If you're worried about being burned out, chances are you're already feeling it, and your brain is waving a little flag that says, "Hey, we need a break."

And if it's not yet full-on burnout, your brain is still saying, "Hey, we need a break," and it's better to listen to it than ignore it. Which is easier said than done, I know, but it's vital skill to develop.

If you're up for some reading/listening, a book that really helped me was Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski.

This is just as relevant for tumblr as for twitter, so I share it here. Fully agree

Link to original thread (August 23, 2021)

The fact that this was a big fucking twitter thread was driving me nuts, so I unrolled it:

The Iranian Regime is going to execute rapper Toomaj Salehi for supporting protests of Jina Amini’s murder by the regime in his songs.

Iranian activist Elica Le Bon says, “Iranians in the diaspora picked up on the fact that the regime tends not to execute people who become known to the international community. We have seen many examples of prisoners that were either released on bail or had their sentences commuted through our “say their names to save their lives” campaign on social media, using hashtags to garner attention for their causes, and even before social media existed, through getting the stories of political prisoners to international media outlets. Once reported on, and once the eyes shift to the regime and the reality of its pending brutality, realizing that the action is not worth the repercussions, we have seen them back down and not execute. For that reason, this is part of an urgent campaign for readers to talk about Toomaj as much as you can, using the hashtag #FreeToomaj or #ToomajSalehi. Every comment makes a difference, and if we were wrong, what did we lose by trying?”

LET'S SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE

It is very rare that posting actually is activism.

But in this case, getting this man's name trending on multiple platforms could literally save his life.

Exactly this ^^^

This is one of the very rare cases where the only thing we are being asked to do is make something go viral.

Happy The Missile Knows Where It Is Monday

gotta respect the technique

I can’t decide what’s funnier, the dog, or the guy that’s dying of laughter in the background

Oh my god please watch this I swear it is the best laugh you will ever have ever

I’m the guy in the background

I love that the dog is just like ‘the people are being very weird but I’m getting a whole jar of peanut butter out of this, so it’s fine by me’

i like to call this ‘popular mlm ships with freakishly similar name dynamics’

this means absolutely nothing i’ve simply been observing this for a hot sec

Cocaine was a stimulant used by a priestly caste of the middle period United States called businessmen in order to commune with The Market. [1]

The most cyberpunk thing on your dash today.

This....this is why you do not need to connect EVERYTHING to the internet.

I'm comfused- how much damage could an enslaved toothbrush cause??

The aggressors installed remote control software onto the smart toothbrushes via their unprotected internet connections, aggregating 3 million of them into a botnet: a network of robot computers under remote control.

Next, they would instruct all 3 million of them to attack a website of their choosing, causing a distributed-denial-of-service (DDS) situation where the targeted website was so busy talking to hijacked toothbrushes that it couldn't do the work it was designed for, resulting in crashes and lost revenue.

A DDDS, or Dental Distributed Denial of Service, if you will

(a) Re: the concept: Ow. (This is part of the reason we have no “smart” devices in our house.)

(b) Re: the joke: OW. 😏

What was the toothbrush's internet functionality supposed to do

What possible use could a toothbrush have for the internet

Apparently the hacking didn't happen but that's not important. What I want to know is. Why do these toothbrushes have internet.

Data mining your habits, mostly. Probably has a companion tracking app so that you can "monitor and improve your habits" that also scrapes a ton of data from your device. That's the commercial goal of most smart devices, even if they have actual benefits to some people.

Probiotic Pecan Porridge (Vegan)

Yall I am so sorry but in most of the mythology around blues singers talking to demons, it's just the devil. As far as I'm aware, the idea of the Crossroads Devil as a distinct class of demon is from Supernatural.

Robert Johnson i thought was the first reference to this. SPN writers probably ripped it off from that (or third-hand when the Coen bros made a character based off him for O Brother Where Art Thou)

Have you heard of this show?

Keep Out – WebGL Game

http://www.playkeepout.com/