Executive dysfunction life hack

feathersmoons:

star-anise:

lemonsharks:

star-anise:

Instead of telling yourself, “I should get up,” or “I should do this,”

Ask yourself, “When will I get up?” or “When will I be ready to do this?”

Instead of trying to order yourself to feel the signal to do something, which your brain is manifestly bad at, listen to yourself with compassionate curiosity and be ready to receive the signal to move when it comes.

Things I did not actually realize was an option

What’s amazing is what happens when you do this with children.  I hit on it when working at the foster home, where nearly all our kids were on the autism spectrum, and they weren’t “defiant” around me because I said things like, “How long do you need to stand here before we can move?” and “Come into the kitchen when you’re ready” instead of saying, “Stop staring out the window, let’s go,” or “Come eat dinner,” and interpreting hesitation as refusal to obey.

I have also definitely found that doing the “okay when I finish counting down from twenty is getting up time” has been useful.

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

My new meds make my skin throw a fit. It’s not terribly bad, just a few things here and there, but it’s bumming me out because I’ve never really had too many run-ins with acne.

My four-year-old sister, however, is under the impression that it’s just “3D freckles”, and that they look very, very pretty. She wants all of my freckles to “pop out”, especially the ones across my nose; they’re her favourite.

And it puts me in this weird position where I can’t say, “No, this is acne, and it’s bad,” because I don’t want to teach her that it’s a bad to have unclear skin, you know?

Because the more I think about interactions I have with children, the more I realise that children will consistently compliment “flaws” until they’ve been taught not to.

Like, a kid at the library, whose sister has vitiligo, saw my scars once and suggested that his sister and I should be cats for Halloween, since I have “tabby skin” and she has “calico skin”. “I can be a black cat,” he immediately added. “It’s not AS cool, but they’re the spookiest.”

When I started losing weight, my little brother immediately demanded that I gain it back, because I wasn’t as comfortable to cuddle with anymore.

And my other little sister always wants to wear her paint-stained clothes to school so that “everyone can tell [she’s] an artist”.

I don’t know. I guess talking to little kids just reminds me that all of this superficial shit we worry about really is 100% made up.