I'm Still Learning About Addiction And All The Different Ways It Can Cripple Someone, But From What I've

REBLOG IF YOU LOVE YOUR HEADMATES!!!!

One of my favourite parts about autistic people is how you can use other peoples' reflections of them like an echolocation bullshit detector. Like they personally do not need to do shit for this to work, they just passively emit their own autistic vibe that bounces off every surface around them, and you can assess another person's level of self-awareness by how they reflect it back.

"Autistic people do not understand social hierarchy" nope, they understand you're supposed to be an authority here, but they won't politely pretend to respect you if they think you're incompetent.

"Autistic people do not understand humour" nope, they just don't politely pretend to laugh to humour you, and you are simply not funny.

"Autistic people are rude" nope, they just don't think it's polite to lie to you, and don't care about trying to tell you what they think you want to hear instead of telling you what they think.

"Autistic people sometimes have emotional meltdowns for absolutely no reason" nope, you're just insufferable to be around and the person with the lowest tolerance of your shit is simply the canary in the coal mine who breaks first.

Okay so when I got sucked into the phantom zone last week while watching youtube shorts a lot of the content it fed me was ADHD tips and a lot of it was either useless for me or redundant but there was one REALLY good tip about taking breaks that wasn't about taking breaks it was about RETURNING from breaks and the tip is: when you are about to go on a break, before you step away from your task (work, craft project, school stuff) decide what you'll do as the first thing when you sit back down at your task and set up your workspace to do that thing.

That means you've got an easy re-entry point to go back to doing the thing instead of sitting back down and having to make a decision or having to reorient from break mode to task mode. You have pre-reoriented and can just go back into working mode.

I've been doing this by circling what my next task on my tasklist is and bringing up the windows that I'll need for the task before I step away from my desk.

Brilliant hack, works great for me, hope it works great for you as well.

to have failed is a sign you tried…. the mistakes, the relationships that didn’t make it, the job you didn’t get, the plans that fell through…. you tried, you lived, you loved.

Socializing as someone who is extremely strange has gotten a lot easier for me when I realized that the people who's opinions really matter to me aren't going to leave me or be mad at me just because I used the wrong phrasing or didn't have the right expression on my face when I said something and whatever other stuff like that. The people that really matter will stick around and celebrate the way we exist together, goblin noises and all

— Rudy Francisco

I'm so fascinated by languages with different levels of formality built in because it immediately introduces such complex social dynamics. The social distance between people is palpable when it's built right into the language, in a way it's not really palpable in English.

So for example. I speak Spanish, and i was taught to address everyone formally unless specifically invited otherwise. People explained to me that "usted" was formal, for use with strangers, bosses, and other people you respect or are distant from, while "tú" is used most often between family and good friends.

That's pretty straightforward, but it gets interesting when you see people using "tú" as a form of address for flirting with strangers, or for picking a fight or intimidating someone. In other languages I've sometimes heard people switch to formal address with partners, friends or family to show when they are upset. That's just so interesting! You're indicating social and emotional space and hierarchy just in the words you choose to address the other person as "you"!!

Not to mention the "what form of address should I use for you...?" conversation which, idk how other people feel about it, but to me it always felt awkward as heck, like a DTR but with someone you're only just becoming comfortable with. "You can use tú with me" always felt... Weirdly intimate? Like, i am comfortable around you, i consider you a friend. Like what a vulnerable thing to say to a person. (That's probably also just a function of how i was strictly told to use formal address when i was learning. Maybe others don't feel so weird about it?)

And if you aren't going to have a conversation about it and you're just going to switch, how do you know when? If you switch too soon it might feel overly familiar and pushy but if you don't switch soon enough you might seem cold??? It's so interesting.

Anyway. As an English-speaking American (even if i can speak a bit of Spanish), i feel like i just don't have a sense for social distance and hierarchy, really, simply because there isn't really language for it in my mother tongue. The fact that others can be keenly aware of that all the time just because they have words to describe it blows my mind!

this one liberal dude on twitter made the (correct) take that parents have overwhelming power over their kids and very often abuse it and restrict children's rights and he was ratio'd by conservatives, communists and liberals alike who made comments like "my kids will have rights when they pay the bills" to "aw are you upset mom and dad didn't you get you a lega set for christmas". way to prove his point lol! any criticism of the power dynamics adults and particularly parents have over kids and how it is often used to abuse kids or refuse to let them exist as themselves is drowned in mockery and the idea that parents have absolute authority over children and that any less than that is actually spoiling them.

i said it before: people only care about Children as an ideal. as property. as something that is Innocent and deserving protection From Evil Traffickers but also something Dumb that barely deserves the status of human with autonomy. and its fucking wild how even the staunchest communists think of this as normal, and how people refuse to understand that this dynamic is how kids are emotionally, physically and sexually abused, as well as robbed of their voices and too scared/ashamed to talk about it.