lizardho

[lizardho]

[lizardho]

The anti-simp crowd just doesn’t know the joy that comes with hearing your wife squeak while she stretches. I am seeing stars and cartoon birds fly around my head while they are angrily tweeting about The Bear for the 7,000,000th time today.

[lizardho]

SO CUTE OMG

Artfight attack on @cintailed's Figjack!

[lizardho]

In response to "The Liz Show" / unmasking: Do you have any advice on learning to unmask? Because to me it kind of feels like trying to roleplay the version of me that someone I am talking to expects / wants from me has become somewhat instinctive, since for quite a while that was the only way I found to somewhat successfully survive social interactions at all. I am now aware that this miiiight not be a reliable long term strategy, but I am not quite sure how to... start stopping it? More often than not I am not great at accessing my own emotions, which makes identifying my unmet needs difficult and communicating those needs effectively pretty much impossible.

So, any tips and tricks you can share?

(PS: despite all the above, I am aware that you are A Therapist, but not MY Therapist, so no, I am not expecting you to suddenly have a solution to all my issues, sorry for dropping them on you :D )

Thank you for sharing that at the end of the Ask, and I’ll reiterate it here just to be safe. I’m a therapist but not YOUR therapist, dear reader, so please take all of this with a grain of salt and trust your own intuition about these tips.

One tip I like to share with my patients is where I’ll start: Things like ADHD and Austism are disabilities and as such are disabling. Of course, most people have been told to “power through it, grow up, don’t let it hold you back, don’t give me those excuses” so it often doesn’t feel like you have permission to feel the weight of the knowledge that you’re disabled. So start by being twice as kind to yourself as you feel you deserve. Rest twice as long. Celebrate your wins twice as much. Be twice as patient with yourself. Because we’re starting from a deficit, and that deficit is often maintained by shame and exhaustion, and so as a result if you’re doubling up on kindness you’re probably just barely breaking even.

Some other things I like to do are look for examples of things I do in others, including non-human others. If you see a dog run past a ball, then find it when they double back, they don’t go “oh, stupid, I’m such an idiot. I’m a joke. I don’t even deserve the ball, I walked right past it and missed my opportunity,” they pick that fucker up and party about it. If you notice something you could use help on after someone asks and you said “no,” don’t treat it as a failure or a missed opportunity, see it as a present opportunity to ask for help now. Neurodiverse people often need more time to recognize and understand feelings. If you let people know that’s a part of your experience, it helps make it easier to circle back on things and say “Hey, yesterday when you asked if you could help I couldn’t think of anything, but I have some things you could help with if the offer still stands.” Do this for anything it applies to - asking for clarity, asking for help with daily tasks, asking for patience, asking for more time to rest, etc.

Another thing that is helpful is to keep in mind that YOU are the sole arbiter of your experiences. If something bugs you, it just does. You don’t need to wait until you can explain it to someone else effectively enough for them to believe you for it to be real. The same goes for joy - you don’t need to be able to justify why you love things to love them as deeply as you do. If flicking your fingers helps you calm down, do it. Nobody can really explain why anything works for them, you don’t have to be any better than them.

The last tip that comes to mind as a broad, generally applicable tip to anyone, is get curious, but don’t ask “why?” Ask “What?” “How?” “When?” or “Where?” Why is an OFFENSIVE question in a literal sense - not that it is rude but that it forces the responder to be on the DEFENSIVE. You have to justify it, and we just covered how difficult that is in the best of circumstances. By asking other questions, it helps you to reflect on things without having to justify them, which gives you more of a chance to really think about them without the pressure of defending something. Don’t ask “why am I like this?” ask “what happened to bring up this feeling?” or “where do I feel this in my body?” or “how did I get this tired so quick?”

Some other things I can recommend more specifically for recognizing emotions are; pay attention to the physical sensation that accompanies the emotion, and eventually you can learn to recognize emotions by reading your body like a map. Also note basic impulses that accompany emotions - if you don’t know what you feel but you notice you wanna stare at your shoes and hide then it might be embarrassment or excitement. If you notice the impulse to put something between you and someone else you may be feeling a little uncomfortable with them. Noticing physical and behavioral reactions to feelings can help identify them more clearly. It can also help to detach somewhat from emotions - if you feel something really strongly and it’s confusing see if you might be feeling 2+ things at once (like angry because you touched wet bread and excited because your favorite movie is starting and tired because it’s been a tough week and and and…) Noticing emotions as parts of you and not the entirety of you can sometimes help people with this. There are lots of practices from ACT, IFS, and DBT that can help people develop these skills but some of my faves are the chessboard analogy from ACT, Parts Mapping from IFS, and the STOP skill from DBT. If you don’t know what these are, you should be able to look them up and find materials to help you practice them.

Ask for help often, masking often leads us to stretch ourselves thin and wear ourselves down to the bone trying to do more than we can. And help yourself as often as you can. If you can’t go to class in an outfit but CAN go in your jammies and with sunglasses on then do that, because you need it to be yourself.

And remember that you don’t HAVE to do anything, and that includes unmask. Masking has some benefits, and can be valuable if done appropriately. Just recognize that either way there is a cost involved. Masking at a work meeting may mean you’re dead tired tonight and can’t take engage in interests, but unmasking may make other people at the meeting think you’re strange. This is not a moral failure, it’s a cost-benefit analysis. Making eye contact with your bestie at lunch may mean you appear more conversational and she feels more heard, but may mean you retain less because you’re monitoring your facial expressions and reactions more consciously. Take care of yourself, trust your intuition, be gentle with yourself, and as always, be gayer, read more Terry Pratchett, and take more naps.

I can ALSO highly recommend the Unmasking Autism books by Dr. Price @drdemonprince for learning to unmask. He has made some great worksheets that have helped me and my patients a lot.

[lizardho]

Following both you and your brother is funny because about 80-90% of your posts come across my dash twice, and a good chunk of your brother's non-shitposts do as well

Omg I’m so sorry, my posts are SO long 😭🫠 My wife keeps reminding me to add page breaks and I never remember until it’s too late and I’ve already “color of the sky”ed you with a trauma dump about my kickass neighbor or something.

[lizardho]

I'm really glad I found your blog. Recently I've been considering coming out to my religious parents as transmasc, and I'm thinking of writing them a letter. I can only hope they'll take it half as well as your parents did, but reading about your experiences has me thinking that maybe I won't get disowned and maybe it will all be okay, somehow.

I think it will all be ok, somehow. Idk how, but it will work out. I can also say, in retrospect, that coming out to family without an escape plan was not a smart idea. It worked out, it worked out WELL, but if it hadn’t worked out I’d have been well and truly fucked. Before coming out, make at least a semblance of a plan for what to do if it doesn’t work, then fully trust that it will work, then be patient if it lands somewhere in the middle.

[lizardho]

Realized I forgot to put the picture. Fingers together, palm towards your face, at face level or lower, means “thank you” in Mexico City sign language. If it goes above your face it means “fuck you,” with varying degrees of intensity depending on how much “oomph” you add to the gesture.

i can be quite charming in short bursts, but it really tires me out. like being charming isnt quite as mentally taxing as, say, chess, but its maybe like playing very aggressive checkers with someone who cheats. so i have to pay very close attention. and while the irony of the cheating thing is not lost on me, this is still my post, goddamnit, and if the universe is fair against my favor it is my constitutional right to complain about it.

anyway, i can feel a little guilty sometimes because i will crank my charm up really high for strangers, because i want them to like me. but ill take it a lot easier when around people that i like because

i really cant do that all the time

they already like me. it worked. i tricked them.

okay i didnt trick them but it can feel like that sometimes and it can give me weird friend guilt

my wife, bless her, pointed out that i was actually reversing on this: that i was calling my parents, and really Performing Babs while pacing around the living room, and then ending the call and immediately worrying that i hadnt done a good job. and she was like, babs, they're your parents, you can relax. they already like you. and i was like yeah, they do, but they're far away and i havent seen then in a while and i cant just see them at will and i only call them once a week and i want to Perform Babs to the best of my ability every time and it upsets me when i dont.

but she told me to chill, and i called my parents this week, and it felt a lot nicer. it turns out that sometimes its easier to be a charming person by focusing more on the person thing than the charming thing. they also sent me pictures of elk eating someones flowers which i really appreciated. my parents do like me, i just miss them quite a lot.

@optimisticdad-blog hope your trip to keeps being awesome. very excited to have you and mom visit utah this summer :)

[lizardho]

This is a thing I have noticed in my clinical training - I learned at my first practicum placement that when I’m nervous I put on what I call “The Liz Show” to entertain supervisors. In reality, it just hid certain needs I had from my supervisors, and those needs were never met at that site. I noticed me putting on The Liz Show again sometimes during internship (my equivalent of residency) and it was definitely impeding my ability to benefit from supervision. Fortunately, this time I was able to catch it, and this time it was happening with a supervisor who is an expert at working with neurodiverse people, so she was able to adapt REALLY quickly once I told her what was going on. The result was that I learned SO much more - about myself as a therapist, about how to implement specific skills, and about how to begin unmasking around others (especially those who have seen me masked previously). It’s REALLY hard to do, and I would never fault anyone for not doing it, but unmasking and being my full freak self made me a better therapist and a better wife and friend if nothing else.

As part oft brand, I feel compelled to share a story. I know it’s not an actual expectation, but I feel it amyways, and I’m gonna share it regardless. Learning how to unmask, I am reminded of a time on my mission when we were waiting to cross one of the many many many many many many many busy streets in Mexico City. It was hot as hell, we were late for a lesson, I was sweating, my garments were new and itchy and I hated them, and I just wanted to Cross The God Damned Street but I couldn’t because there were ALL these fucking cars, and then suddenly a kind bus driver saw me and my companion and took pity on us. He pulled into the middle of the two lanes on that street and stopped his bus, allowing us to cross.

In Mexico City if you keep your fingers close together and raise your hand, with fingers extended (see pic below) to face level or below, it is understood to mean “thank you.” If you raise it above face level, APPARENTLY, it is the equivalent of the middle finger. I had no idea. Nobody had ever told me, because why would anyone ever teach a missionary to flip someone off? That’s just dumb. So, back to my predicament, this guy has just cut into his earning, delayed the arrival of his passengers, and stopped traffic so my dumb gabacha ass could cross the street, and I say “thank you” as emphatically as I can and BWOOOOOOOOMP he lays into his horn and I hear angry chatter from the bus’s passengers and my companion grabs me HARD like I just did something bad so I ask what his deal is and he asks why I did that and I say “I was saying thanks, he’s letting us cross dude, duh” and he actually fully facepalms and yells to the driver “SO sorry, she’s American! She thought that was ‘thank you.’”

I still didn’t know what I did wrong, but suddenly everything was hilarious and everyone who WAS yelling at me was laughing at me, not like in a mean way but in the way you laugh at a puppy who is confused by a doorstop or a baby who doesn’t know what a word means and uses it wrong. And my companion wouldn’t explain the joke until we arrived at the lesson and he tells the investigator about what happened and the investigator told me the difference in hand gestures.

And this is was being neurodiverse is like. Your brain is speaking a different language and when you do it wrong people get mad at you sometimes, and sometimes it seems like it’s for NO REASON, so we learn to mask our confusion and language barrier with humor or silence or austerity or whatever and it WORKS but then we never learn the language right AND nobody else ever learns to speak OUR language even a little bit.

By unmasking at work, I learned the language of a trainee therapist and GOT BETTER AT WHAT I LOVE DOING. By unmasking with my wife I GOT BETTER at communicating with her and she got better and understanding me. By unmasking with friends they have learned to speak to me about as well as I can speak to them, and the occasional accidental middle finger to the proverbial bus drivers in my life stopped being a source of secret shame and self-punishment and became a genuine way to learn about other people and their ways of functioning.

Just like transitioning, just like leaving the church, just like changing majors, just like most things, taking a step to be more genuine about my own experiences with neurodiversity has made me happier, and has made it easier for me to understand others and for them to understand me.

I love y’all, and I especially love @inbabylontheywept @cintailed @flowerologists and @optimisticdad-blog for showing me how to live as someone who’s brain was installed upside down and backwards or something. Be good to each other. Be curious about yourselves and each other. Be gayer. Read more Terry Pratchett. You are deserving of all the love you feel towards your special interests or hyperfixations, and you are deserving of all the understanding you give others when they misunderstand you.

i can be quite charming in short bursts, but it really tires me out. like being charming isnt quite as mentally taxing as, say, chess, but its maybe like playing very aggressive checkers with someone who cheats. so i have to pay very close attention. and while the irony of the cheating thing is not lost on me, this is still my post, goddamnit, and if the universe is fair against my favor it is my constitutional right to complain about it.

anyway, i can feel a little guilty sometimes because i will crank my charm up really high for strangers, because i want them to like me. but ill take it a lot easier when around people that i like because

i really cant do that all the time

they already like me. it worked. i tricked them.

okay i didnt trick them but it can feel like that sometimes and it can give me weird friend guilt

my wife, bless her, pointed out that i was actually reversing on this: that i was calling my parents, and really Performing Babs while pacing around the living room, and then ending the call and immediately worrying that i hadnt done a good job. and she was like, babs, they're your parents, you can relax. they already like you. and i was like yeah, they do, but they're far away and i havent seen then in a while and i cant just see them at will and i only call them once a week and i want to Perform Babs to the best of my ability every time and it upsets me when i dont.

but she told me to chill, and i called my parents this week, and it felt a lot nicer. it turns out that sometimes its easier to be a charming person by focusing more on the person thing than the charming thing. they also sent me pictures of elk eating someones flowers which i really appreciated. my parents do like me, i just miss them quite a lot.

@optimisticdad-blog hope your trip to keeps being awesome. very excited to have you and mom visit utah this summer :)

[lizardho]

i love your writing so much!!

as an undergrad thinking about going for a doctorate (but physics not psychology but anyway), i was wondering if you had any stories from grad school that you're willing to share.

i know theres probably stark differences between fields of PhD study but im super interested about the Experience in general

have a nice day!!! thank you!! :)

In my first year of the program there was a TA who was 1) a huge pervert, 2) a married dad of 3, and 3) barely literate. He taught us how to do IQ tests using sexually inappropriate jokes, and his go-to pickup line was “so are you wearing any underwear?” He was a member of some weird shitty church and he had a HUGE issue with my gender identity so he only ever referred to me by my name on the class roster, which was my chosen name. Hearing a middle-aged porn-addled evangelical loser say “Lizardho left lizardho’s book by lizardho’s backpack, can someone give it to Lizardho?” Was actually a highlight of my day because I think it’s fucking hilarious to get transphobes in such a spot where they have to be professional but can’t seem to handle the task of being a little nice to someone they don’t like. I think it is especially entertaining to see how far they go to avoid saying pronouns because they’re afraid they’ll be damned for the rest of time for saying “she” to someone with a (frankly disappointing) penis.

For a helpful story - I had to turn in an assignment late. It was when @cintailed and I were long distance and I forgot about the time difference. I sent an email to a professor with a full screenshot of my documents folder including a screenshot of the current time AND the last time the document was edited. She made an exception for me to turn in the document late and that was a life saver for my GPA.

My last bit of practical advice is be as gentle with yourself as you can. Grad school is vicious and demanding and it takes parts of you with it along the journey and being gentle with yourself is basically the only way to make it out of a Ph.D. program without a substance use disorder.

[lizardho]

Someone from the babylonverse followed me back :o you are practically celebreties :P

That’s kinda cool on my end imo. I’m a little histrionic so I like it when people think I’m cool. I’m actually a HUGE dweeb fwiw.

[lizardho]

I am not Mormon and I never was, but an also not-Mormon family friend introduced me and my younger siblings to Studio C, the BYU comedy troup. Most of the sketches weren’t about being Mormon, and I didn’t realize they were Mormon until years after the obsession had tempered a bit.

Since you went to BYU, was this around when you were there, or on your mind at all at the time?

I went to BYU the year the Lobster Bisque set came out and I didn’t get the appeal so I was always a little bewildered by the love for studio c. It was a weird bit show.

[lizardho]

It’s hard to do things that matter to us because they matter so much. It’s hard to care. It’s hard to love. It’s hard to create. I love you so much, my wifey. I hope it feels better, because creation is something that makes life so joyful.

My brain has been so squirrelly and weird around art lately, but i’ve decided to believe it’ll feel better over time

[lizardho]

My wife is so cute and good at art!

My artfight card! I’ll see y’all there :3

[lizardho]

I took a human development class at BYU. It was a good class. The guy who taught it did a great job with it, he was passionate, he was curious, he was kind, and to top it all off he was a fabulous Mormon. I had to sign up for his class the night it opened and I only barely made it into his lecture it filled so fast. I cannot for the life of me remember his name, but I remember how he challenged the class in some peculiar ways.

A funny experience of challenging the class was when we had our lecture on conception and development in utero. He taps the microphone like a comedian who just bombed a set, asks if we can hear him, get’s a resounding and excited “yes!” and says “Ok! Ok! Y’all sounds excited! Let’s do a chant, see if that helps with some of the other energy. Are you ready?”

Of course everyone cheers yes, we’re Mormon, being in a room of people saying the same shit over and over is our jam. So he nods, gets a beat going by clapping, and starts chanting the word “sex” into the microphone. The claps die. The chant doesn’t start. But he keeps going, and going, until he gets half the class chanting with him by brutal shameless persistence. Then he changes the word. “Vagina!” And resumes until he has half the class. Then “clitoris!” then “penis!” then finally when he has half the room chanting he stops the chant and says “I only ever go until I can get half of y’all chanting because this is BYU and I’d be here all day if I waited for everyone to be comfortable even saying the word “sex” out loud which is INSANE because today we’re talking about how life begins and I guarantee you almost every woman who flinched away from chanting “penis” wants to have kids and most of the men who couldn’t pronounce clitoris want to have at least two kids and that does not work out in my head! We need to get over this fear to talk about conception openly.” He talked about sex as a biological phenomenon and as a fun thing to do sometimes and it was a transformative experience for me, and it was very funny as an opener.

He challenged us academically too, though. He assigned us the task of observing children at the campus daycare and told us he wanted to know who we had observed just by our behavioral observations. He meant it, too. He didn’t want us to just know about kids he wanted us to be able to see kids as distinct people and that was amazing. He pushed us out of the mindset of “how do I pass this assignment” and challenged us to internalize “how do I learn to do this in real life?” and he pushed us to observe children as people and not as science experiments or obedient joyful output machines.

Another way he challenged the class, and this one sticks with me tbh, is he told us stories. His technique is one I often utilize as a therapist. He tells a story that’s related *enough* to keep you aware of how your question or need is related, but just unrelated enough distract you from the question so when he brings it back to you it hits as an experience instead of a verbal response to an inquiry. He did this sometimes in response to questions from students and it was always an interesting way to experience learning. One day a student, a worried newlywed man who JUST found out his wife was pregnant, asked what he could do to help her because he felt so excited and overwhelmed he couldn’t think clearly. And the professor stops the lecture and thinks about it, like, REALLY thinks about it, and he leads into his story - it starts with a brief discussion on the complexity and uniqueness of fingerprints. Then he tells us about how one of his graduate students a few years back came into his office complaining that his wife was getting lazier. Him, being a therapist and a curious man by nature, asked the student what he meant. The student responds by saying that he felt “duped” by his wife because she’d been energetic and motivated and passionate and attentive until she got pregnant and now she “doesn’t do anything” and “has no ambition” and “doesn’t even cook dinner anymore” and “always says she’s tired even though she hasn’t DONE anything” and how he felt like it was all an act to pretend to be a good wife until she got pregnant and had him hooked forever.

And this guy is reacting to this in real time - he goes point by point through this graduate student’s complaints and nods patiently, curiously, then sinisterly as he understands the situation. He tells the grad students to come a little closer so he can show him something in a book, then whaps him upside the head with the book.

The grad student of course reacts with shock and anger and demands a justification for being whacked with a book and the professor responds with “how far into the pregnancy is your lazy lazy wife?” The grad student gives a response to he opens the book and slaps it on the desk and says “at that point in pregnancy your child’s fingerprints are developing. Do you know how complex and detailed fingerprints are? Do you know how much time and energy it would take to make that from nothing? That is what your wife is doing all day. She’s making your child’s fingerprints. Get that in your head and get over yourself.”

He then stops the story, looks at the guy who asked the question, and asks how far along his wife is? And the student responds, and he says “if you go home today and your wife is tired, it’s because she was growing functional kidneys for another human being all day. So tell her you’ll do the dishes, and don’t whine about it. And remember that any time you’re doing any chore or task you’re not accustomed to for the next few months, any time you’re eating an uninspired dinner, any time you’re rubbing her feet or helping her get to sleep and thinking “oh geez she’s so dramatic” remember she is growing another person and ask yourself if your dinner or unfolded socks are more valuable than a functioning kidney or a distinct fingerprint because I guarantee you it is not. She is engaged in the act of creation, fold your own socks.”

Y’all I mean the fucking CRICKETS in that room. My ears were ringing from the revelation he had just unleashed into my brain. There was not a single body in that room that was not GRIPPED by the response to this question. And I fully recognize that he was asking for fairly little, like, yeah, you should be an involved parent and partner because “for time and all eternity” means “even when she won’t have sex with me,” but he was saying it as a Mormon man talking to another Mormon man and that was so exciting and new to me that it stuck with me. I remember this story in a myriad of ways - it’s a good example of using privilege to challenge privilege, for example. It’s a good example of “lifting where you stand,” so to speak, by making a difference where you are instead of making a hypothetical “bigger” difference elsewhere. It helps me remind myself that neutrality is progress, too, and that the best time to do something I should have always been doing is now. It also helps me be patient with myself when I am sick - healing is work, recovering is work, resting is work, even if the demanding husband in my head can’t see it yet.

If y’all are struggling to get better and feel your frustration building as each possibility of action passes you by while you’re stuck healing, you can ask yourself if making an amazing dinner is more important than having a healthy body, then eat your “guilty”/“easy”/“uninspired” Mac n cheese or delivery pizza or peanut butter and jelly sandwich because it’s not. If you find yourself struggling because your body is not behaving like a successful experiment or an obedient joyful output machine, try seeing yourself as a full person and not an assignment you’re failing. And if you’re embarrassed about sex, chant “penis” over and over again or something. The metaphor’s falling apart, so I’ll end with my typical advice: Be gayer, be good to each other, read more Terry Pratchett, and treat people as people.

[lizardho]

This ad just popped up on my FB and I am SO baked and this is fucking S E N D I N G me my brain literally stuttered trying to comprehend the unbelievable fuckshittery involved in this enshittified ad. It’s time to smell wumbo.

[lizardho]

hey, sorry if this is weird or too heavy, but i am a lesbian minor stuck in a deeply conservative country slipping further and further into fascism and queerphobia, aided by the usa's slide into fascism, and dealing with the heartbreaking realisation that i will not be able to invite anyone in my family to my future wedding besides my bi sister.

that post you made in april about how youre in love with your wife, and esp that last para about how it gets better, made me cry. i needed hope badly, thank you op.

I’m so sorry for how alone you must feel right now. I wish the world was kinder to people like us, and I hope SO badly that you can get to a place that is safe where you can open your heart and find the love you deserve. I promise it gets better, but I can’t promise it gets better right away. Please feel free to DM me if you ever need help connecting to resources.

[lizardho]

Hi, I found your stories from your brother and both of you are absolutely wonderful writers. Thank you for sharing them!

Thank you! I’m planning on writing more soon, I’ve been in a weird place lately with the end of my doctoral internship coming up, but it’s stuff like this that helps me stay motivated to write more 🥲