hey there hexbear nd gang! it's that time of year for the first time ever!
here we are once again approaching the end of the year according to the roman imperial calendar that we all have to use for some reason. it's the winter holiday season in the global north, a time of great symbolic significance to many people.
and so, i want to solicit your thoughts about this community, what it means to you, how you'd like to see it evolve, changes in moderation policy, suggestions for thumbnail and banner images, or anything else related to the comm or neurodiversity in general.
or just come hang out!
i also want to invite applications for new moderators for this comm. what would you like to do as a moderator for c/neurodiversity?
personally i've largely been a placeholder, but i do love this community and i want to see it grow as a shared and safe space for our neurodivergent comrades to talk about ourselves and with each other. i also want to do better and want your input about what that means.
c/nd has a well behaved user base so we don't need extra mod help for enforcement or anything like that. what i'm mainly looking for is fresh perspectives on community engagement and growth.
there is absolutely no requirement to disclose any personal information about yourself, just to make that clear. but if you're interested in moderating this community, please contact @CARCOSA@hexbear.net, myself, and/or the other nd mods with an application.
if deadlines help motivate you, you have 3 days from the time you read this.
if deadlines harm your motivation, don't worry about it. if an application comes in a month or two from now of course we'll still consider it. this isn't a job, i'm just asking for volunteers to help moderate a small internet message board.
Application
What is your Hexbear username?
Do you have any preferred pronouns?
What are your thoughts on capitalism?
What are your thoughts on imperialism?
What are your thoughts on trans rights?
What are your thoughts on racial justice?
What are your thoughts on neurodiversity?
What do think about current and previous protests around the world?
What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation?
Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities? What did those experiences teach you?
What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams?
How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it?
Do you have any ideas for c/neurodiveristy community engagement?
What is your general time availability? (amounts, common browsing times, etc)
Element information
Element is a messaging app that lets you talk to people over the Matrix protocol.
To get started, check out this link, where you can choose to either download Element for your platform or, if on a computer, open it in a browser ("Launch Element Web").
The instructions that follow are for the desktop application and the web application, but the process is similar on all apps:
- Press "Create Account"
- We host our own Matrix server, so if you want you can change
matrix.orgtochapo.chat. This is completely optional; users who sign up with amatrix.orgusername can still talk to people withchapo.chatusername. (Note: It ischapo.chat, nothexbear.net. Also, registrations aren't always open onchapo.chat; if they're not, just create an account onmatrix.org) - Fill in a username and password
- Hit register, and you're done!
what would you like to do as a moderator for c/neurodiversity?
i would first permanently ban everyone who isnt gay
then i would ban everyone who is gay
then i would ban myself
thank you for coming to my tedx talk
listening to remain in light for the 56th time and i have never felt more seen by an album. the way the music jumps around, the lyrics, the way david byrne sings. it all is just perfectly designed for my brain to latch onto and not let go
idk if this is neurodivergent but david byrne is autistic and other autistic people seem to get it while the neurotypical people i've recommended it to are mostly kind of put off by it. it's a well respected album though so that's probably outliers
I saw the “side tour” of that last night. I don’t want to spell it out but you prolly know what I mean. The audience was super into it.
I just want to get done with studying, pass these exams, get a job (I don't really want this one), get a car (don't really want this one either), and start dating again. It's all taking too long and I'm antsy as fuck about it. I'm 31 y'all. Don't drink alcohol to handle social situations, it's not worth it.
Frankly, this community has been so damn important to me. It’s literally the only place Incan go to feel somewhat understood/not mocked or told I’m overreacting. I’m incredibly thankful that I found it and seriously cannot express my gratitude enough 🥹 I can only hope to find some people like y’all irl ❤️
Hey everyone! Anyone have any good new years resolutions?
Read more books (will try 1-2 per month). Start lifting again. Meet some of my old and new friends more in 2024. Try to paint miniatures for at least 30min each day. I really started to connect more with people and do things I really wanted to do. I basically just want to do more of that.
I got some yes. That said I want to wait till I got a bit more practice next year. Will probably upload some of it in the hobby and tabletopcom
I want to be more honest - I want to work on building space between me and the mask and conscious honesty is a good first step (when it feels safe for me.)
i am worried about grad school. so many things come easy to me i dont have any skills to deal with things that dont come easy.
ah the curse of the gifted child. i found grad school depends heavily on your relationship with your advisor, pretty much everyone i've seen quit over the years it's been because their advisor isn't supportive. like so many things it's less about how hard the work is and more about the social constructs built up around gatekeeping academic credentials.
so many things come easy to me i dont have any skills to deal with things that dont come easy.
That was my downfall exactly. Or at least, my derailment- I took a very circuitous route to building up a life story. Yet I still often wonder how things would have turned out had I emerged from the standard college years with a graduate degree.
college was 10 times easier than highschool thank god.
Exact opposite experiance for me. Coped very well with highscool. Got doing everything the night before down to a science. Made it through with solid As ans Bs with only a couple Cs, one in freshman gym of all things. Fell apart sligtly senior year as shit started to catch up with me, but mostly held if together.
Fell apart completly in college. Too much reading, where I pathologically cannot skim. Big projects couldnt be procrastinated the way they were before. And i was halfway across the country from parental support/supervision. Coped so well in highschool without it that i had no ND safety bars, plus regious nature of the school meant they probably wouldnt have recognized it anyway. Stopped taking care of myself. Flunked 4/6 classes in two trimesters, one pass was only because of a very kind prof. No easy busywork homework to keep my grade afloat. Tests werent the type i was good at anymore, plus i couldnt handle the reading and just got internet addicted. Complete disaster.
Got accedmically suspended. Got kicked out by mom for it, moved in with dad. Took a couple single classes that i passed, but honors Sociology 101 i only passed because my teacher was kind enough to give me an incomplete and give me a whole semesters worth of time to do the work. Signed up for a full semester of four classes and actually somehow passed everything. But got depressed over Christmas break. Started missing classes, dropped out of two of four classes. Dad kicked me out over it and i withdrew entirely. Havent been back since.
Good luck getting Vyvanse lol.
So if you want to know the low-down on the Vyvanse shortage it's because Takeda, the pharma corp that previously held the patent over Vyvanse, had the patent expire early this year (Feb I think.)
The DEA strictly controls stimulant meds and their precursors in the US.
Takeda happens to produce Vyvanse in the US through it's American arm.
This time around, instead of the DEA providing its usual allocation of Vyvanse precursor entirely to Takeda (which I believe happens around every October) as has been the case since it came into manufacturing, the allocation has been divided across multiple pharmaceutical corporations who are producing generic Vyvanse as well as some going to Takeda, although significantly less than what they got this time last year.
The only problem is that to establish manufacturing processes, stock levels, and the necessary distribution chains for a strictly controlled substance like Vyvanse isn't easy. So essentially there's about the same Vyvanse to go around as there was last year but due to manufacturing and supply chain issues there's currently a global shortage.
All of this boils down to the razor-sharp efficiency in the market as it awkwardly staggers its way through producing multiple facsimiles of already-existing manufacturing processes and supply chains that are so similar they might as well be identical.
God bless capitalism! May the immaculate rationality of the market touch us all!
Establish a sleep schedule. I just have to accept how important it is to everything I do.
Work on my new relationship. It's my first open one and I got to learn a lot of stuff about communication and acceptance.
I'm considering trying to finally give up drinking since I recently learned that it's a mask of sorts and is also absolutely not healthy, especially mentally.
And after talking with my therapist, I might be seeking medication again for my severe depression and anxiety. I want a promise that I won't have to jump through hoops when my SSRIs are almost out just to get more and I have developed a dependency for them because that super doesn't fucking help with the anxiety part. Looking at you amerikkkan healthcare system.
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Ditching Red meat and alcohol to start my multi-year plan on improving my diet.
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Lose the last ~35 lbs to get to an ideal weight.
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complete a half-marathon, start training for a full one.
Nah, oysters are delicious and literally don't have a brain so I'll never be vegan. Plant level sentience means I can morally eat them.
Actually oysters are vegan, they all converted to Buddhism so they're ok to eat
They can sense damage but have no consciousness on which to inflict pain. They're similar to plants in this regard. If oysters feel pain then so can carrots and other vegetables. Just because the nervous system of a plant is different, doesn't mean it isn't worthy of life. Or we can just admit that once we've reached a certain threshold of development you can't hold the same moral standards anymore.
The question is how to reduce the suffering of creatures with consciousnesses. Oysters do not qualify, lest you open up a can of worms that makes plants non-vegan as well.
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Stretching is mine too. We'll only get older so might as well start sooner.
Getting the damn business up and running!
Hopefully, making 500 regular customers.
Find a way to overcome my executive dysfunction sans medication. Sounds impossible when writing it out like this…
A hunch, yeah. Not diagnosed yet 'cause I don't have access to mental health professionals in my third-world homeland (yay!)
I am curious to know how you managed to break the cycle, though
I was diagnosed as a child and yeah I very much have ADHD. Tbh it sucks and doing things like keeping todo lists, staying on top of cleaning even when it sucks, using schedules (I hate doing all these things lol) helps a lot. But I also can't really deal with the medications that come along with ADHD because I was medicated heavily as a child and now it just gives me crazy anxiety
Oh yeah, I’ve tried the planning stuff, but I’ve never quite gotten around to doing it consistently. Quite frustrating, really, I’d have a nice setup going and the tiniest of inconveniences would derail it in a single moment.
Yeah I feel rhat. It is a constant struggle for me too. I just donr feel like I have any other options
continue steadily taking my lithium, which has helped me immensely so far, and I also hope to go back to therapy
continue my transition from teacher into professional woodworker
still on that topic, I want to see how much quality furniture I can make for my apartment over the year
start studying classical guitar again, as soon as my fingernails grow again - I broke my index fingernail in a very bad way and had to cut it all the way down to the flesh, and it's been taking a long while to regrow
overall no big resolutions, I just want to continue doing what has been good for me throughout this otherwise very nasty year
I'd really like to get out more but I need to get over the initial social anxiety. I make friends but I always assume they secretly find my company annoying so I keep my distance until we lose touch. It doesn't help that everyone's busy all the time.
When I met with a psychiatrist he told me that I'm hard on myself. I think about sometimes, but forget about it when I have negative thoughts and there's no one around to correct me and I end up spiraling a bit before going back to my regular depressive state.
my first year with a diagnosis and on stimulants and it's probably been my best year since like childhood or something.
Still feel like shit most of the time but at least the spiral is going up instead of down!
community is great
what do mods do, really?
what do mods do, really?
for c/nd not very much, mostly deal with the rare report. but we could do a little more like someone's suggestion of a periodic social anxiety check-in post, that kind of thing.
Ok. Im actually kind of mad about this, but i dont want to cause problems in whats been a peaceful, positive thread.
But i have to ask, as politely as possible, why is the veganism question part of the mod application for the neurodiversity comm? Would i be rejected for not following the hexbear party line on the subject?
Because while i think veganism is a good thing to practice, ive been constantly put off by the way vegans on this site seem to not give a damn about the fact that a vegan diet can be difficult to literally actually impossible for autistic people. Whether its just difficulty changing habits like me, or whether its extreme cases of people with asd only being able to stomach a short list of foods like my friend. This is a neurosdiversity issue id like to discuss. But i frankly do not feel safe doing so here, not even in the ND comm. To see a question i feel is irrelevant to a person's ability to moderate an ND comm on the application makes me more certain of that. Seems like a way to filter out disent like that.
Also without bringing up meta drama specifics, i know of other ND users who share my discomfort with the veganism discourse on this site, and the behavior of certain vegan users.
why is the veganism question part of the mod application for the neurodiversity comm? Would i be rejected for not following the hexbear party line on the subject?
hey autismdragon, the shortest and truest answer is that it's a question on the default application that i copied and pasted, and i didn't remove it despite making a couple other minor nd-specific changes. approval of applications isn't solely up to me, although the nd mods are also given broad discretion to appoint mods we vouch for. so i think the real answer regarding approval is it will simply depend on who's reading it and deciding. site mods and at least some of the nd mods will surely want to see some kind of answer to that question consistent with hexbear policy.
my understanding of hexbear policy is that while it's a pro-vegan and animal liberation site, what gets enforced is prohibiting anti-vegan sentiments.
Volunteers, comments, and posts, should not be anti-vegan, although users and volunteers are not required to be vegan.
per the code of conduct.
i feel like there's plenty of room within that for you and others to discuss your own diets and habits. the discussion elsewhere in this thread has so far been one comment from a vegan encouraging another user to go beyond ditching red meat, and then a few follow up comments from other users about oysters. looks pretty well behaved to me and i have not received any reports about any of those comments.
i hope this addresses your concerns. we're trying to curate a safe and comfortable environment for our neurodivergent users, but this community is on hexbear and the hexbear code of conduct applies.
Thank you for the response. I appreciate it and understand about the application.
I did leave an angry comment on that one post you mentioned though. Which was mostly me being annoyed about the situation already. I think ill delete it after writing this.
But i do think Venus's reply was out of line for the situation at hand. Sharing new years resolutions among ND users, and someone shares that theyre giving up red meat, a net good for themselves and the world, and Venus chimes in that thats not good enough?
Dietary changes are very difficult for a lot of autistic people in the best of circumstances. I think it was inappapropriate for the context.
i appreciate your input and will try to be mindful of it.
I am also autistic and think veganism is right but I can't transition yet, because I can't stand raw vegetables for shit (and that's the way they are commonly eaten in my countries).
However I have found that stir frying some "safe" veggies like carrots, peppers and onions makes them edible and tasty. Also adding them to sauces or curries and eating them with pasta and rice respectively. Some other vegan foods are very tasty, like lentils or falafels.
You might not be able to eat most of the above, but they are worth a try I guess
I personally dont have problems with limited pallete, just with habit changing.
I understand. I have that too but probably at a smaller extent than you. I guess the only way is to gradually do it, like turning one more day of the week to a vegan day each month or something. But that truly takes work, when we have so many other matters to attend to and that's the hard part for me. Any time I try to do something healthier like exercising, it comes crashing down when I enter into an intense period of my life and I have to rebuild it afterwards
Yeah, i have a lot of habits i need to change in my life right now. I dont even shower regularly.
I'm just happy vibing here and occasionally dumping effortpost-tier comments in reply to people where my knowledge or experience is applicable.
It's probably obvious that I've spent time on R*ddit doing the same thing but I've pretty much cut myself off from that shithole and it's nice to be in a space where I don't have to tie myself into knots just to talk about a particular subject like medications - I get that social media is not the space for providing official medical advice but it's not some gross violation of laws or some major transgression to convey information which anyone could find on the internet themselves if they put enough effort in.
It's kinda a big equity thing for me, really.
Neurodivergent people are much more likely to be unemployed and living in poverty. Accessing the care that neurodivergent people often need is usually extremely expensive, not to mention treacherous, to the point that it's prohibitive and the public healthcare waitlists, if they exist in your country, are often years long.
Worse yet, specialist knowledge in autism and ADHD is extremely rare and most clinicians are sorely lacking in this regard.
So it's like "Bro, just use all that money which you don't have to test out a bunch of clinicians who you can't vet prior to an appointment with them who will probably make you wait 6 months each before you can see them in order to figure out if they might happen to be suitable to provide you with a baseline level of care so that you can live a good life and maybe hold down a steady job too. Or you can wait and rot in a public healthcare waitlist for a few years, if one happens to exist, to get maybe a couple of appointments before you're ejected from the system entirely, after which you're expected to simply make do."
Fuck that. What a shit system.
If I am providing any information then it's either stuff that I have read in medical journals, it's come from experts in their field through things like public lectures, or it's stuff which I've had to figure out for myself by being halfway abandoned by the system.
I ain't selling shit, I ain't promoting misinformation, and I sure as hell ain't trying to pass myself off as a doctor. I'm just stuck in this same vacuum of expertise and professional support that the rest of you are, with the only potential difference being that I've probably been at it a while longer and it just so happened that I managed to bend my interests into learning about stuff like medication as a survival strategy. In an ideal world I wouldn't need to be doing this at all. But until then...
It's been nice being able to talk about my experiences and thoughts here. A lot of pieces have started to fall into place as I'm understanding myself.
I appreciate the space Hexbear and the mods/users have cultivated here.
I like being able to ask questions here without fearing judgment.
I've thought about making posts like, 'What's a niche topic you want to talk about?' and making space for people who've done a lot of research about something, but had no space irl to talk about it.
Another post idea is like a weekly check-in to get a sense of perspective on situations that might seem ambiguous.
However, that sharing certain quirks around our experiences or special interests could offer too much identifying information or that such posts might turn into a therapeutic space instead of a community if that makes sense.
I've thought about making posts like, 'What's a niche topic you want to talk about?' and making space for people who've done a lot of research about something, but had no space irl to talk about it.
Ooh an infodump thread! That sounds like fun.
This year I fully accepted myself as autistic as well as ADHD. Got depression and anxiety on top of that. All part of the fun, I think.
I had a big long thing written out about trauma and whatnot but I'm fucking tired. Once again stating my intent to do a book club for Unmasking Autism, and it'd be easier to manage that if I was a mod here, so why the hell not? I'll throw my name in the hat.
The fun(?) part is trying to work out which of the depressive symptoms are actually ADHD symptoms of inattentiveness (i.e. the non-hyperactive side of ADHD, but they really need to have different terms for this tbh because it doesn't really fit), which are symptoms of executive dysfunction due to the ADHD/autism combo, whether some of the depressive symptoms might be catatonia, and if the anxiety is due to a lack of norepinephrine or because you're basically winding yourself up psychologically as a compensatory strategy to deal with ADHD symptoms.
I think it's mostly that I'm incredibly lonely and I feel like such a fucking weirdo that I don't fit anywhere I go and any sort of sense of belonging is entirely alien to me. I feel like an outsider even here. I don't really know how to form deep relationships with human beings and it haunts me.
Sorry to hear that comrade.
I'm not sure about your circumstances but as general advice, especially to late diagnosed and late self-identifying folks, is that people who are autistic in particular form relationships in a different way from allistic folks (this also applies to a certain amount to ADHD folks but it tends to vary in degree) and to develop ways to embrace this.
If you are high masking and you put in a lot of effort trying to force yourself to fit the allistic mode of forming relationships then it's going to have some significant impacts on you (please don't take this as a beatdown btw, this comes from a place of sympathy and solidarity):
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You can find yourself putting in a ton of energy which can lead you to burning out and this alone can really disrupt efforts to have longer lasting connections with people if you're dropping off frequently or for long periods of time.
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Putting in a disproportionate amount of effort into a relationship by masking and trying to fit can lead to feeling unappreciated which can lead to you developing feelings of resentment as well as them being far less invested in the relationship, which can set you up for being abandoned and potentially even exploited or abused due to the inherent asymmetric nature of the relationship.
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You can find that all of that effort you put in means that the other person connects with a very "curated" personality that you have developed for them, rather than connecting with a more authentic version of yourself. This can lead to them feeling disconnected from you but moreso that you will feel unsatisfied and alienated in the relationship because they're not really connecting with you as a person but instead with a performance. And when that performance slips - when you need to be you - often people feel put off or deceived to see behind the mask and that can lead to them rejecting you. Also, on your side of things, when you have a connection to someone which is based on the curated version of yourself it's much more likely to feel superficial to you which makes it extremely difficult to feel genuinely connected and it becomes very easy to lose contact with people.
To elaborate a little more using an analogy, if you've ever worked in a customer-facing role then there were probably a couple of customers who you genuinely liked and looked forward to seeing, who you could be a bit more "human" with. Then there were probably the vast majority of customers you had that you felt largely indifferent to - ones who you would say the right things and put on the right smile with but you probably wouldn't even notice if they never came back through again.
That's a lot like how masking functions in a deeper sense with our relationships to others - if you're putting on something akin to a front that a customer service worker uses, you're going to come across a lot of people who seem nice enough but if you're only ever on that superficial level of connection then it's extremely easy for them to drift out of your life and for you to drift out of theirs without a second thought.
Also high maskers generally tend to have a high level of shame and social rejection, at least in their history, and this can be really corrosive to your sense of self-worth. ("Toxic" shame, if you want to use the modern lingo, but I'll spare you a dissertation on why I'm less than keen on that term because it's useful here as a conceptual distinction.) It's really difficult to form relationships when you are experiencing a high level of deep/chronic shame and low self-worth. If this is something that you deal with then neurodivergent affirming therapists and trauma therapists are going to be particularly important to help you work through this because, unfortunately, there's no simple bullet-point comment that can resolve this stuff as much as I wish it could.
With all of that said, I'd recommend that you seek out a setting where your niche interest(s) are likely to attract other neurodivergent folks. Think the nerdier stuff and the spaces which attract the diehard fans. It could be volunteering at a museum or it could be going to particular conventions or a local DnD group or a knitting circle. Whatever happens to be either something that you just love to be engrossed in or something that you could see yourself participating in which is likely to attract other neurodivergent folks to.
Generally speaking neurodivergent people are going to be easier to get along with, much easier to unmask around, and if you're like "Hey, sorry I haven't been in contact with you for the past 6 months" they're gonna be like "Eh, that's cool" or "Shit, has it been 6 months? I was supposed to have written my thesis by now and I haven't even started on it..." and you'll tend to pick back up right where you left off. (Of course neurodivergent people are people and that means you're guaranteed to find some duds too.)
Final thought: it might be worth hashing this one out with yourself or with a therapist but there's a big difference between being different/an oddball/whatever and in being an outsider. You can be a complete weirdo and still belong, even within a group of normal people. It's extremely easy to conflate your experiences of social rejection with being unconventional and to pin all the blame for the rejection you've experienced on that. The paradoxical thing in that situation is that the more you blame being unusual for social rejection, the harder you try to be normal to fit in and the more difficult it becomes, meaning that you can end up caught in a cycle that looks like:
Struggle to fit in > Get rejected > Blame being unusual > Try harder > Struggle to fit in even more > Get rejected
in an endless cycle.
If this is something that resonates with you and you feel like you want to work on it then I'd recommend finding a good narrative therapist for it because imo their practice model is much more compatible with neurodivergent people compared to something like CBT or, in this example, DBT and it's something that would be right up their alley.
Hi, I'm not FourteenEyes but this comment is a day old and speaks to my soul and I hate it:
spoiler
You can find yourself putting in a ton of energy which can lead you to burning out and this alone can really disrupt efforts to have longer lasting connections with people if you're dropping off frequently or for long periods of time.
This is me
Putting in a disproportionate amount of effort into a relationship by masking and trying to fit can lead to [...]
This is me too
You can find that all of that effort you put in means that the other person connects with a very "curated" personality [...]
This one is me also
Thing is, A) obviously nobody wants to genuinely connect with the whole actual me because I am insanely weird or something, B) there have been cases where I have poured my entire guts out to someone and had what I thought were really good conversations, discussions of trauma, real bonding over hardships and discussing how to handle them type stuff, except that the above ends up happening again anyway. They just don't wanna talk about anything I'm interested in, and also frequently are incapable of sharing anything about themselves.
Also high maskers generally tend to have a high level of shame and social rejection,
This is me too wow, incredible! No attempt at speaking to a person has ever gone truly well for me save one, so how can I not have these things?
seek out a setting where your niche interest(s) are likely to attract other neurodivergent folks.
Where and also lmao. There often aren't spaces for my weird insufferable interests, so I'm usually left screaming into the void in places tangentially related to the stuff I like, always online. Also worth noting I just do not fuck around with neurotypicals anymore if I can help it, which sadly has not helped much.
I generally resist trying to fit in which just makes me feel like an aberration everywhere I go and it's so incredibly fucking frustating holy shit. By rights I am not all that weird, certainly there must be people like me but they also must not be anywhere near where I am or the spaces in which I speak.
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I actually started reading Unmasking Autism and I'm absolutely on board for a book club for it. It's really good.
I've been struggling trying to navigate the world as autistic this year and reading a few pages of unmasking autism helped me so much. I didn't get far so I'd be down for a book club with other comrades
Currently too tired to say anything much, but wanted to say I appreciate the post and the community.
I don't have any suggestions for changes, I'm satisfied with everything the way it is! This place has been a wonderful resource, thank you very much for making it available.
The only thing I feel compelled to comment on is what it means to me - it's special to me. It's a compassionate, supportive, and informative place. I genuinely don't know what more I could ask, everyone is lovely and the diversity of approach and thought is always helpful.
Thank you all. ❤️
tough but fair
