aeiou

[aeiou]

[aeiou]

Link to thread

Link to news story

[aeiou]

Psychologist Katharina Bernecker and her colleagues measured participants’ tendency to engage in self-control as well as their hedonic capacity, in other words, their ability to experience pleasure. As the design of this study implies, people vary in their ability to enjoy things! Some people just experience pleasure more readily and are more motivated by pleasure than others! This alone should lend you some comfort, I think. If you are not an especially pleasure-wired person, whether by trait or by trauma, you are far from alone.

People high in hedonic capacity were people who tended to agree with the following statements (note, some at the end of the list are reverse-scored):

I am good at pursuing my desires. I can follow my desires in the here and now. I often do what I feel like doing. In my spare time, I can relax well. In my spare time, I can "switch off" well. In my spare time, I find it difficult to turn off thoughts about what is still left to do. Thoughts about my work sometimes prevent me from enjoying pleasant activities and moments. Sometimes I cannot stop myself from thinking about things I still need to do. I often think about my duties even while I am enjoying a good moment. I often think after the fact that I should have enjoyed the moment more.

These high hedonic capacity pleasure-seekers were compared with people high in self-control, who tend to agree with the following items (or to disagree with the reverse-scored items, which are marked with a minus sign):

1. I am good at resisting temptation. 2. I have a hard time breaking bad habits. - 3. I am lazy. - 4. I say inappropriate things. - 5. I do certain things that are bad for me, if they are fun. - 6. I refuse things that are bad for me. 7. I wish I had more self-discipline. - 8. People would say that I have iron self-discipline. 9. Pleasure and fun sometimes keep me from getting work done. - 10. I have trouble concentrating. - 11. I am able to work effectively toward long-term goals. 12. Sometimes I can't stop myself from doing something, even if I know it is wrong. - 13. I often act without thinking through all the alternatives. -

If you are a person who has masked your Autism traits for a long time, or otherwise carefully regulates how you present yourself and the choices you make about your behavior, then congratulations, you are probably a very high self-controlling individual. And if you find it very difficult to slow down in the moment or experience pleasure, you probably don’t have a very large hedonic capacity.

In a series of three studies, Bernecker and colleagues looked at how high self-control and high hedonic capacity individuals approached spending their free time. When given an hour to spend however they liked, participants who were high in hedonic capacity (in other words, the ability to enjoy pleasure) preferred to pursue activities that they ranked as highly pleasurable, including baking, eating, napping, talking with a loved one, or taking a walk. Conversely, individuals who were highly self-controlling were more likely to spend their time doing activities that they ranked as meaningful (such as reading, working, gardening, doing chores, or working out).

It might sound pretty self-evident that people who are interested in pleasure choose to spend their time on pleasure and that people who exert a lot of restraint over themselves choose instead to take part in activities they find meaningful. But what’s really interesting here, I think, is how much participants enjoyed the activities that they selected and found them satisfying.

It turns out that high self-controllers didn’t just decide to spend their free time doing laundry or working because they felt they should do so. They also got more satisfaction from meaningful tasks, more than if they had chosen to spend their time on supposedly ‘pleasurable’ activities. They were not motivated by the pursuit of straightforward pleasure. They ranked reading a book, knocking an item off the to-do list, or lifting some weights as more enriching, fulfilling, and motivating for them, and they cared more about these aspects of life than they did about pleasure! Individuals high in hedonic capacity, in contrast, preferred and were more satisfied with activities they said left them feeling soothed, amused, relaxed, indulged, and so on.

This study points to the fact that happiness is not everything, and people actually differ quite dramatically in which ways of spending their time make their lives better. And that means there are no recommendations for leading a good life that are one size fits all.

If you are someone high in self-control and low in hedonic capacity, you may have had the frustrating experience of trying to lay back and relax on your day off and being unable to quiet the whirring of your brain. You take a bath, but you can’t keep your eyes off the soap-scummy grout that needs to be scrubbed off. You share a languid restaurant meal with a best buddy, but through every course you can’t help but think about the items on your to-do list and grow panicky and bored.

Now of course, an inability to enjoy activities can come from burnout, depression, or excessive pressure to be productive. But you also might feel frustrated when you seek pleasure because you are just not wired to enjoy pleasure right now, and would find it easier to let go and enjoy yourself if you had an interesting challenge to keep you busy instead. Many Autistic people find working on a project related to their special interests to be a far better way of recharging their energy and lifting their mood than attempting to “relax” or have fun in neurotypical-approved ways. You may find, Anon, that the same is true of you.

In Bernecker and colleagues’ paper, participants high in self-control tended to appreciate activities that they described with the following adjectives. Why don’t you take a moment to read through this list, then write down what life activities feel this way for you?

What Activities Feel:

Meaningful?

Worthwhile?

Fulfilling?

Productive?

Important?

Purposeful?

Inspiring?

Elevating?

Motivating?

Enriching?

An interesting challenge of Autism unmasking is figuring out what a worthwhile life even feels like for us, and abandoning the expectation that such a life will feel the way it does for non-Autistics. Our best lives might not look happy, outgoing, energized, extroverted, or anything else that we have been taught it has to be.

I wrote all about the inability to experience pleasure, the fact that we evolved to be anxious more than to be happy -- and how to make life worthwhile in spite of it all. You can read the full article for free on my Substack.

[aeiou]

I’ve been waiting since March to post this...

[aeiou]

you know a joke that never EVER gets old is when a character says smth like “I will NOT go to [place] and that is FINAL” and then it cuts to them in that place I eat that shit up every single time

[aeiou]

Got some accessibility feedback for the creators of my nervous system:

"Tired" feels way too much like "depressed," leads to insomnia and chronic fatigue. Needs tweaking so these two signals are more distinct for players with sensory processing disorder.

Similarly, "hungry" feels too much like "enraged," please adjust so bystanders don't wind up getting shouted at.

"Thirsty" is straight-up too weak and not obvious enough. I'd recommend reworking this one from the ground up. Thirst is a critical mechanic, even more than hunger, and it NEEDS to be obvious at all times or the player will be constantly debuffed without knowing why.

Background volume of the world is simply too loud, leading to confusion (unable to distinguish important foreground sounds from background ambience) and ear pain. Ideally you should have built it from the ground up with the levels in mind, but even just having separate volume sliders for different types of sound would go a long way to alleviating this.

Bones itch. I have no idea how to fix this one but please investigate.

[aeiou]

It’s in Welcome to the Horizon, too! In Trinkett’s Trip when Frank is asking Verge to help check on people. “You have decided, at least for now, to make a home amongst people, and that implies certain things, things like helping them out in a jam…”

“Make yourself a home among people.”

This line is hitting me more on this relisten than before for some reason. I’ve relistened to the mbcu (Midnight Burger Cinematic Universe) almost perpetually since January, and I hear things in different ways every time. Maybe some day I’ll actually take notes like I keep meaning to, organize my thoughts more than just a random tumblr post here and there.

[aeiou]

Is Ashley the asteroid the same thing as the Wayfaring Stranger?

[aeiou]

The Frank of Theseus

[aeiou]

“Make yourself a home among people.”

This line is hitting me more on this relisten than before for some reason. I’ve relistened to the mbcu (Midnight Burger Cinematic Universe) almost perpetually since January, and I hear things in different ways every time. Maybe some day I’ll actually take notes like I keep meaning to, organize my thoughts more than just a random tumblr post here and there.

[aeiou]

how do Shel’s spores affect the radio/recorder? like, she says the spores interact with the brain’s language center and report back to her, but how would that work with technology? like I kind of get the Mucklewains are weird and an exception in a lot of ways, but wouldn’t BertBert’s recording just be her side and then silence when Shel was talking?

[aeiou]

A circulating video of sisters who bought the same clothes for their husbands 😂❤️

[aeiou]

while megacorporations profit off of exploitation of queer people and using pride flags for their tshirts and mugs, the creator of the lesbian flag, emily gwen, cant afford basic necessities and has to rely off of donations

if you have something to spare or can share, please do so

link to k0fi: https://ko-fi.com/emilygwen

link to carrd, where they have “official” merchandise: https://emilygwen.carrd.co/

[aeiou]

my therapist suggested i imagine my intrusive thoughts in the voice of donald trump bc i do not possess an ounce of respect for him or trust in his competence. going thru it today so i made this. hope this helps

[aeiou]

Mucklewain’s Barn Church Community Social: potluck, hoedown, weddings in under a minute, petting zoo featuring Pansy

just an idea for the next Burger-con

[aeiou]

[aeiou]

I want to learn French but specifically with Zebulon’s accent, then go to France and insist on speaking only French. It seems like a very long commitment to a bit, but it could be totally worth it…