i know this will make me sound old and boring but once i’m home for the night i’m home. i don’t like upsetting my plans even when i don’t have any. yes it’s only 8pm but i spent the whole evening believing i’m not going anywhere, i cannot perceive or be perceived right now, try again later
Spouse [whispering]: He does EEG and he’s read Animorphs, you should ask him.
Me [with elbows]: We met him like 10 minutes ago…
Spouse: Okay, so you know yeerks?
Guy We Met 10 Minutes Ago: Like from Animorphs?
Spouse: Yeah. Could you detect one on an EEG?
Guy: It depends — how do they communicate with the host brain?
Me: That’s a little vague in canon.
Guy: I always assumed they had to make their own pluripotent neurotransmitter — one that fits all the receptors?
Me: I mean, why the hell not.
Guy:So a straight MRI would spot them right away…
Me: Of course.
Guy: But an EEG? If you knew it was there, definitely. If not, you’d know something was going on. The real question is, what would happen if you gave an EEG to a chimpanzee that was really a human in chimpanzee morph?
“i don’t understand how you just get so much stuff done under pressure and like don’t freak out” i just go into autopilot bro like i genuinely do not know what happens in high volume situations. i let my body deal with that shit. not for me
if you completely block off a whole portion of your mind you’ll find that it is actually quite peaceful and you can move very fast, almost ungodly so, and achieve a lot while feeling absolutely nothing
i have been informed that this is not how normal people process and handle stress.… . dam that shit’s crazy. sorry y’all have to deal with it in like a rational healthy way
So for the record as both a long-term user of this feature and someone who had what I’m about to talk about happen to her:
If you rely on this too much you are at ever increasing risk of it not working anymore, very abruptly, at a really horribly inconvenient time.
You are also at risk of it working less and less over time when you have no other coping mechanisms in place.
And finally even if it continue to work, you are doing continual damage to your ability to handle non-crisis situations! And increasing the chance that you will start unconsciously turning everything into a crisis.
All three of these options are Sub-Optimal, to say the least.
(this is because this method is essentially harnessing the dissociative capacity of the brain for moments of extreme trauma more or less At Will except the will involved amounts to convincing your amygdala to let go of the right juices by convincing it that the tiger is in fact right there. It can be a superpower! But it’s also, well. Risky. If you find yourself literally doing it for everything, be aware that it’s kind of like running an engine at max at all times without ever really replenishing the oil. Eventually you will start burning shit.)
I think there’s potentially one more option that occurs if you’re *especially* good at this, and it’s that your threshold for “crisis” unconsciously becomes higher and higher.
Oh, you wrote that paper in a week no problem? Now it’s not a crisis until three days before.
That worked okay? Now it’s not a crisis until the day before.
That worked out too? Hey, now the crisis point isn’t until *the day of*.
This is how I ended up writing a 30 page PhD level literature review in 12 hours—and presenting on it the next day—during finals week. And you know what? That sucked! It almost just didn’t happen!
Because at some point, your brain is going to just believe nothing is a crisis anymore. It fails to recognize pain. And pain is important, because it’s a sign that something has gone deeply, deeply wrong. If you believe that nothing is a crisis, *you will not know you’re in a crisis situation until you’ve fallen off the cliff of what is possible*. You will not recognize the pressure you’re under until it’s crushing you, and possibly not even then.
And this doesn’t just affect your work or school; you don’t recognize these signs in your relationships either, and it primes you to be able to take whatever others may do to you. It’s not even that it lowers your self esteem and makes you believe that you deserve it—you literally just cannot recognize when situations are harmful anymore. Have you ever told someone a “funny” story from childhood and they look at you and reply “holy shit, I’m sorry you went through that?” Yeah, that’s your whole life now.
If this sounds dire, it’s because it is. Do NOT let yourself get to this point if you can.
Excellent addition.
it can also make you permanently physically sick. constantly going through high stress situations causes a repeated cascade of stress hormones, which in the long term can affect the immune system, sleep, GI system, and by extension basically all your body’s functions.
this can wear you down, and it can also make you more vulnerable to other factors. like if you are already worn down and then move into an apartment with a mold problem, or catch a virus.
we’re all familiar with ‘long covid’ now, but even relatively benign viruses that most people recover from completely, like mononucleosis, can trigger long term or permanent illness with severity that ranges from ‘can work full time but not socialize’ to ‘bedbound in a dark room.’ you can look up ME/CFS and dysautonomia for more information.
you are FAR less likely to become permanently sick after a virus if you rest completely during the acute phase. and by ‘rest’ i don’t mean 'studying, but in bed’ or even reading, watching TV, or socializing. i mean lying flat, eyes closed, in the dark, as much as possible and more than you think is necessary. if you can’t tolerate silence, calm music or a podcast or audiobook is better than more stimulating activities like TV.
it sucks, but ~6 weeks of doing a lot of nothing is better than a lifetime of that.
this also ties in with the above mindset because, in addition to becoming more vulnerable due to the physiological consequences of prolonged stress, people who are deep in that mode of operation are much more likely to push themselves to continue to work/study/socialize etc while they’re sick with an acute illness.
so yeah. if you recognize yourself in the above posts, try to get out of it before you experience permanent harm.
how to do that is more complicated and i think inherently individual. therapy may help if that’s something you vibe with. i hate to say it but i’ve found meditation helpful with learning to step out of emergency mode brain, but it took a lot of experimenting to find techniques that didn’t just stress me out more.
i think whatever practices you can cultivate to prioritize taking care of yourself, learning to ask for help, and slowing down and prioritizing comfort and rest may help.
sign up for the gold package of ADHD today and experience the following moods:
The Loop - opening and closing the same three websites in succession for 15 minutes at a time before realizing that there’s not going to be anything new or worth doing on those websites (my three are Tumblr, Youtube and Wikipedia)
The Ack - seeing you have a new message and, though you have no evidence that it’s anything even remotely noteworthy let alone negative, feel intense dread and procrastinate looking at the message for 30 minutes/5 hours/a week
The Shimmy - changing sitting/laying positions every 5 minutes because god dammit i’m not going to be able to focus on whatever task i need to do if I feel any unwelcome physical sensation
The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle - making a hot beverage for yourself and then putting it down slightly out of reach and then not drinking it until 45 minutes later when it has already gone cold
The Bellwether - scrolling on Tumblr and getting the urge to google something/look up something on Wikipedia, but you keep scrolling and forget what you wanted to look up so you frantically scroll back to the thing that prompted you to think about looking the other (un)related thing up in the first place
The Bop - earnestly insisting that you’re not anxious because the other person sees your leg bouncing and thinks that you’re about to go postal
The Poison Dart - hearing someone say something problematic out loud and freezing because, while you want to correct them gently, you also feel intense dread and RSD that if you even so much as suggest dissent the person will immediately and commensurately stab you to death or snap their fingers and open a trapdoor to hell beneath you
The Ghost Breath - realizing you haven’t texted your friend back/at all/in 3 weeks and thinking “Hmmm, I need to do that” and then you don’t do it and much more time passes by
The Stim Package - eating an entire family-sized bag of chips in one sitting because having something to chew on helped you concentrate, at least a little
The Bullfrog - going to get something that you don’t use often but you know exactly where it is and then it’s not there and you just keep going back to that spot 5 more times before realizing you lost it or it’s somewhere else completely different (like, not even in the same building)
The Morning Mist - regularly forgetting what recent life events actually happened and which ones were from extremely vivid dreams
The Seesaw Rivet - feeling like a wounded child who is about to get in trouble during every interaction you have even as you are entering your mid-to-late-20s and genuinely wondering when that pattern is ever going to stop if ever
The Pull-Apart Muffin - having ADHD and about 3 other diagnoses and wondering what is even what anymore
