Sonic technician is here! It looks like the fiber installation is going to take a couple of hours.

I have made the astounding discovery that kale tastes much better if you fry it in bacon grease for a couple of minutes. Who could have guessed?

Also delicious when you cook it in the same pan with Salmon (and garlic and lemon).

On her second day of work, Matilda just called me and asked to hang out after work with her new co-worker, Savannah! Wooot! Here's to new friends!

shrift, I get what you are saying about the ADHD questionnaires because I was like that with the stuff for autism. I used to do certain things but I trained myself not to.. or sometimes I do that but only when I can't stop myself..

but having a lot of coping mechanisms means you have something to cope with .

I was really into tiktok and then ended up getting away from it. I didn't want to but it's just too much sound/visuals for me to deal with. Especially when I'm already trying to combat all the noise in the house. There are some really great people on tiktok

YAY for Matilda's new job and for new friends.

brenda your dad is adorable.

Yay, new friends!

My excitement for the day was adding a House Finch to my life list. It's the little things. And not falling asleep at 6p for three hours like I did yesterday.

Good for Matilda. I hope this is a great summer for her.

I have never tried TikToc, and so far have not been tempted. Hours in the day and all that.

New friends! What a concept. I admit that the lockdown wasn't as painful for me as for others, since I stayed in my sister's pod and saw a fair amount of my nieces outside. The hard part is being social with people outside my immediate family unit!

I was lucky enough to have enough to cover the fee: thanks, Dad, for investing so aggressively in the last years of your life! J is recovering well, although she's going to get cranky about not being allowed on the couch.

Today I discovered heartburn. Boo, do not like!

Thank you for sharing, askye! I've heard of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria because I've been looking into symptoms of inattentive ADHD for "it me?" reasons, so I'm really glad that you're talking about this here. I hope you'll feel comfortable telling us about your progress, mostly for your sake, but also for those of us here who may learn from your experiences. I've been going through some AHDH quizzes and struggling with how to answer certain questions because I've developed some labyrinthine coping mechanisms, and I had been dismissing RSD as a symptom until I recently started thinking about it in terms of things I'm not doing like you mentioned with isolating.

I agree. I have never pursued a diagnosis because I think that it doesn’t effect or change my life, but COVID working from home destroyed my elaborate coping mechanisms in a big way. I was saying to a friend on Facebook that maybe no one is “neurotypical” and we are all just elaborate coping mechanisms away from being “normal” and Covid isolation just exacerbated that.

I remember in my 20s seeing a therapist for depression and not paying my bills, and she suggested making a folder and checking off the bill paying. And I was like… you do not understand- I get that that would be a thing to do, but I literally can’t/don’t do it. And then came auto bill pay, and I suddenly had a mechanism that worked. But it put me off therapy because it was unhelpful.

Also Sulla, I am so glad your dog is OK and that you can afford it.

I woke up with a bit of a sore throat and I'm sure we all agree that I surely CANNOT be sick, so I'm just going to ignore that for a while. Maybe it's a reaction to being home for a week with different allergens.

Sophia and shrift..yall are not alone in wondering and having elaborate systems.

Sophia rhere are a lot of people who have been getting by for most of their lives and then the pandemic happened and their structure and coping mechanisms was disrupted. I've seen this on tiktok and in some FB things as well where people are suddenly realizing why they have all these systems in place.

It's never too late to get a diagnosis and see a doctor and try medicine if you want.

Turning 48 is what spurred me to really do something about the RSD. It was a rough birthday for me. I still get caught in the trap of looking at other people and feeling bad because it doesn't seem like I'm doing as much or as well. There are other people who are autistic and have ADD and have trauma and also have careers or do significantly more than I do so why can't I?

But I'm finally understanding and accepting that I developed coping mechanism that were based mostly on avoidance,.repressing feelings, and escape and for a time it helped with the emotional pain but it put roadblocks in the way. I'm not a bad person for that , it's not even really a failure because it kept me from a lot more self destructive things. I've also learned to make space and time for the anger and grief I have over all the opportunities and experiences I lost because of that. Giving myself that means I can move forward and do things I couldn't before. Not everything obviously but probably more than I realize and new stuff as well.

I'm also becoming more aware of how my feelings of failure and rejection push me into these emotional spirals. Which have also held me back from things. In the past at other jobs I've been given more responsibilities and acknowledgements for my work and I haven't been able been able to build on it. I've known that but I've dismissed the positive (I had everyone fooled, they would have figured out I was faking it) and obsessed over the negative. It takes a lot of work for me to be proud of what I was able to do and start to believe I was worth it but that had meant I feel ok about asking for more responsibility at work. Even though dealing with constructive criticism is going to be a battle to remember it's not rejection. Which is another reason I want to try medicine for RSD. I can work through the feeling but not having the feelings or not feeling as strongly means I can use that mental energy for something else.