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
someone just literally interrupted me mid conversation to tell me “what wonderful big dark eyes i’ve got” and on the one hand extremely flattering that she couldn’t even wait until the end of my sentence to comment on this, on the other hand did she have to say it like im the big bad wolf
seeing all the 14-17 y/o queer kids who don’t know what v for vendetta is…. u mean the blockbuster film written by two trans women about a masked vigilante who decides to singlehandedly take down a fascist alternate version of england set in the distant year of 2020… and his driving force was getting justice for a lesbian who he never met but whose diary he found, who was separated from her wife before being killed by said fascist gov…. and it stars natalie portman…. okay
and they’ve never been more relevant
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
There’s strong subtext that V is a trans man and A)the lesbian from the diary or B)her wife.
frankly I prefer the movie over the comic, for three reasons:
1) lewis prothero as a rush limbaugh/glenn beck/bill o’reilly type is both more applicable and way funnier than a 1940s radio propagandist
2) it has stephen fry as gordon detriech, and makes him explicitly gay and pretending to be attracted to evey as part of being closeted than actually attracted to evey and having sex with her while she hides in his home.
3) the movie came out in 2005; that is, only four years after 9/11, while the Iraq war was still in full swing, and while xenophobia and Islamophobia were not just acceptable, but tacitly encouraged by the administration at the time. which makes the following exchange even more poignant and sweet:
Evey: [seeing a book in a glass display case] What is that? Gordon: It’s a copy of the Qur’an, 14th century. Evey: [shocked] Are you a Muslim? Gordon: No, I’m in television. Evey: But why would you keep it? Gordon: I don’t have to be a Muslim to find the images beautiful or its poetry moving.
just… the easy acceptance of it. the idea that a religion that he doesn’t believe in and that has been explicitly outlawed in-universe is a source of beauty. I’m not Muslim, either, but that particular moment really stuck with me emotionally.
Love this movie
“…I remember how different became dangerous. I still don’t understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn’t long till they came for me.
It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses, and apologize to no one.
I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An Inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie”
SOBBING
Thi movie changed me so much. So so much.
Honestly V’s acting is some of the most top notch stuff I’ve ever seen.
“No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I am no longer standing, because if I am—you’ll all be dead before you’ve reloaded.”
The film (which I saw in the theater opening night) was EXPLICITLY made as rebellious pushback against the political environment in the US post 9/11. All of the evil politicians in the film INTENTIONALLY look like US right wing political figures, including Bush, Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh.
It’s not, like, subtle, if you were there at the time. Especially if you compare it to the original novel. (I also prefer the film because it gets rid of the weird sexism.)
However I have to say Natalie Portman’s accent in that movie annoys the fuck outta me. It’s not great. BUT Hugo Weaving is magnificent.
It’s very unfortunate that it’s major cultural impact was through a series of unlikely turns, getting the Guy Fawkes mask adopted as an alt-right symbol. Because like the Matrix, right wing people SUCK at picking up on films themes.
Well today is November 5th! This has been my favorite film for as long as I can remember. This movie definitely had an impact on me and the way I view things.
btw if youre young and scared of doing adult things without your parents ive learned that like 90% of the time you can just tell the doctors office or the dmv “haha sorry ive never done this without help before… can you show me how to do this?” the employee will not care. if that means anything to you
anyone else feel like there will always be a veil of separation between them and the rest of the world and that they’ll never actually be understood or is that just me
