Anger
Anger, in ADHDrs, arises from a negative event. The event causes our brains to run through a 10,000 node decision tree and tell us that either something is doesn't meet our expectations or something is not fair.
We respond in 5 different ways:
Flight
Fight
Observe & Investigate
Cry
Depression
Provided here is a brief discussion of the concepts listed above and how they affect you. Hopefully, this starts a larger and expanded conversation about how to resolve anger faster.
Expectations
What did you want instead of what you got?
Expectations are a rich ground for which anger or happiness can sprout from. You should never give up on what you expect to happen, it may just be that the way you are going about it won't get you what you want. Therefore, project management is always the best course when managing expectations.
While getting what you want is the end result, how you get there affords many different paths. Some slower than others, so legal, some easy, some hard. But, there are many paths to the goal. No one path is right or wrong, unless you are stepping on someone elses rights.
The first rule in Project Management is .. Manage Expectations .. That means that you and anyone involved in this project needs to communicate what their expectations are, and hammer out how they are all going to be met. Or, if they can even be met. This resolves a lot of anger issues right off the bat.
Fair
Fair is not equal. Fair is not equity. Fair is what works for you to allow you to do the same things that others can do. For example, if you are in a wheel chair, then having a ramp to enter a building that has stairs is fair. There are other examples of fair for executive function, emotional dysregulation, and stimming. Just to name a few other problem areas, but these are internal vs external disabilities. And, it is much easier for the general audience to understand fair based on an external disability.
If someone else is allowed to play baseball in a park, and you are able to play baseball, then why can't you play baseball in the same park? The same goes for any other activity. Voting for example. But, what some people consider equality is that you have your park to play baseball in, and we have ours, and the two shall not cross. Like good and bad neighborhoods. You stay in yours and I'll stay in mine. (I think this is called Segregation.)
Fair happens when everyone has an equal shot at the same spot based on a lot of mitigating factors. It may not seem like it's equal when you don't make the cut, but at the same time, others who where kept out due to mitigating factors who also show promise are let in, get a chance to improve their entire community. This is the impetus of Affirmative Action, and H1B visas, or partnering with overseas corporations to produce American Consumer Products.
Flight
When something doesn't go the way we expect it to or doesn't seem fair, the first response to most situations for NeuroTypcials is to flee the scene and recover. This is a normal and expected response.
You see an angry tiger swatting at people and suddenly you realize that it's coming your way. What are you going to do? Are you trained to wrassle with anger tigers? Because, if not, then you're probably going to run and find shelter until the angry tiger moves on and then come out get to a safer spot.
Fight
ADHDrs come with a built in Challenge Accepted circuit, so most of the times we will engage in a fight for our rights and what's fair. This could be a physical fight or a legal battle or a battle of wills. But, it's that challenge circuit that gets many of us hauled in front of a judge to explain our actions.
Observe and Investigate
Some people when they get angry, use the energy to fuel their curiosity and investigate the reasons why their expectations are not being met. This may result in further actions being taken to resolve the disparities between their expectations and reality. This could be in the form of a letter writing campaign, telling a story, filing a law suite, or taking matters into your own hands.
As always, be careful when being a vigilante. You will find with most Republicans won't be interested in your plight until they have experienced the same trap you fell into and let them complain about their situation to other republicans for sympathy.
The idea here is to repurpose that challenge circuit into an .. I'm going to show you who's right and wrong in this situation .. mode and build a case that enumerates why your expectations are correct in how something should be handled, and how the other guy's expectations / response was not or inappropriate.
Cry
Crying is the physical expression of feeling helpless in a situation while you try to think of a way out of your situation. There is a difference between crying to alleviate emotional stress and using crying to guilt someone into doing something for you.
ADHDrs can handle kaos. ADHDrs can't handle stress.
When the stress becomes too much for our brains / bodies to handle we start to cry. There is nothing wrong with this. Have the cry, let your system reset and begin to move on. It's ok to let others see you cry as well. Nothing to be embarrassed about.
Crying becomes a problem when it's used to manipulate others to get what you want by guilt tripping them into changing their mind. Most of the time, all it does is annoy others who are trying to help you.
Depression
ADHD depress is not like NeuroTypical depression. ADHD depression is caused by a singular negative event that causes a chain reaction or cascade reaction in our brains. A thought storm is created when our brains start looping through all the negative events from our past, the inner monologue becomes negative, and all our thoughts about our self become negative.
While Depression and Anger are part of the 5 Stages of Grief.
Denial
Isolation
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
AHDrs need to reframe the original negative event in order to get out of the depressive state. Or, we need so many happy events that no negative thought has room to create a new negative emotional response and kickstart the whole process over again.
There is nothing wrong with being angry and depressed about a situation that hasn't gone the way you expected or needed it to. Whole drama series are written based on this concept. People make decisions hoping for the best outcome, but instead get the worst outcome and have to work their way out of it. It makes for great theater and entertainment. It's not so good when it's real life.
You were hoping to get into the college of your dreams and it didn't happen. Or, you lost someone special to you, even before you hand a chance to say good by or understood what it meant that you would never see them again.
Sometimes it takes time to process the emotional attachments you had to an expectation.
Resolving Anger
There is a better way. And, either you will find it, or your ADHD associative brain will find it for you.
Remember to take into account all the possibilities of a situation where the answer could be NO! The NO! may be to the specific path you are taking. So, remember there are other paths. They may be longer, harder, and cost more, but they do exist.
Remember that ADHDrs have event driven emotions. One negative event can cause us to spiral into a negative thought storm where our thoughts, inner monologue and memories constantly dredge up all the nasty shit that has failed in our lives. There are two ways out of this .. reframe the original event, or curate so many positive events it leaves no room for the negative events to continue.
Remember to remind yourself that you are no longer in the situation that made you angry the first time. The anger will be triggered over and over again, by similar issues. That current issues, is not the previous issue. Don't let it suck you back into the old issue. Remind yourself that you're not there.
If you don't find a way to resolve your anger, and it's getting in the way of your brains ability to function, your Associate Brain will wrap up all the memories, tie them into a bow, and seal them off from you. It will be as if the entire experience never happened. This is what happens to children who have experienced very traumatic incidents in their lives.
Conclusion
As I wrote this piece I thought of many different ways that ADHDrs could become angry. Suffice it to say, this piece focused on having the expectation of not getting financial aid or some other subsidy vs loosing a loved one, or the many other issues that could cause anger to arise. Each has it's own unique flavor on how is should be handled. But, in looking at these other situations, I the general principle on dealing with anger still holds true. Manage your expectations, have back up plans in place, reframe the issues causing anger, and remind yourself that it won't matter in time.
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(One thing I find peculiar and unfortunate in current fandom business is the seeming lack of pointed discussion, so here is a humble attempt to spark a conversation and I more than welcome commentary.)
I came across someone in the notes to a post somewhere talking of how Jillian had been better styled in season two than in season one and I agreed, already seeking the justification for it in my mind. My observations are as follows:
S1 Jillian is Arq-Tech's mastermind and public face. Even though we first meet her in Morocco, in her explorer, Indiana Jones-like garb, it's the image of her running her company that sticks with us, her statements to the press, her corporate persona opening metaphorical fire upon the Church. A "powerful woman" as mainstream media constructs for us everyday, in subtle but visible makeup so as to diminish the effects of age on her face, in heels so as to peek at the rest of humanity from above, with controlled gestures meant for the inherent theatricality that comes with introducing life-changing technology to society. It is a role she plays—well, but a role nonetheless.
The scene she shares with father Vincent is worthy of mention, for while he sits without taking up much space, his body restrained to the side of a couch, his legs crossed in what is deemed a more "feminine" posture, Jillian takes up the traditional "masculine" attitude: she commands the room, her body expanding upon her seat, in the broad pose where an ankle rests upon a knee, complete with a generous glass of alcohol in hand and talon on foot. Yet this is also for show—it's a little too calculated, a dance that was so perfected in exhaustive practice that it lost its dynamic.
Our glimpses into the more authentic Jillian come in the scenes with Michael—not only because (coded in white and blue as the Virgin Mary of immaculate conception) she plays the part of mother, but because, in her intimacy, far from journalists and employees and the public's prying eyes, she can be more herself within the areas where she conducts her studies. Starting from when Ava asks Jillian to "science her", we never see the doctor in uncomfortable shoes again, as she retreats from entrepreneurial life and into the lab.
This is clearer in season two, for, as Kristian says, she is on sabbatical, thus isolated from general view; S2 Jillian has nobody around her, nobody to impress. Locked away in her Spanish villa, consumed by her son's disappearance, she need not wear a mask. There are no more tellingly feminine accessories, no staged stunts; her clothes and footwear are even more practical, her movements less grand but more human, more expressive (here, of course, we owe it to Thekla Reuten's underrated range). Even as the OCS invites itself into her house, making it a makeshift HQ, she doesn't fall back on the act we saw in the first season.
Jillian's stepping back from the head of her company is not just in name and contract, but in body, too; she leaves the CEO role in her office and comes home to her science and her cause, to her limited inner circle of which only Michael was privy to and into which the OCS nuns end up finding their way.
Colours also indicate a shift—we begin the series seeing her associated with light hues such as white, beige and baby blues, but when season two comes in, Jillian's striking all-white attire is nowhere to be found. The Holy Mother parallel is in shambles after Michael has gone through the ark's portal, the intangibility of this "saintly", aseptic rich genius broken down, her person brought back to Earth after flights of fancy trying to open a gate to Heaven.
We see her in a darker palette, in greys with dashes of white, yes, but never again in full white. It is not just the authorisation to be herself rather than her company's face while in her private world, but also the reflection of her inner darkness and her loss upon her very appearance.
What a more definite loss could mean, now that her son is gone for good, remains a mystery.
For instance, unlike the nun who served as her superior, our Suzanne rejects the characteristic blues of the Order of the Cruciform Sword to don a heavy all-black outfit, more reminiscent of Orthodox priests than it is Roman Catholic nuns; her resurrection through Ava does not lighten her habit, if it does lighten her burden, so we can only assume, going forward, should there be any relation between how each character expresses their inner workings through clothing, that Jillian Salvius would keep the mixture of white and grey that season two brought along... Or go darker still.
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I observed a few details about Gumshoe and I'm not sure if this is intentional, but...
(Spoilers ahead for the Ace Attorney trilogy and Investigations)
It's established in Ace Attorney that the police have guns.
It's also established in the first two mainline games, as well as the Investigations games, that Edgeworth and Franziska have gun-related trauma and Gumshoe works closely with both prosecutors.
Throughout the series we never see Detective Gumshoe draw his gun. He would rather fight hand-to-hand.
And it's possible that it's on purpose, so that he doesn't trigger those negative memories in either of the prosecutors he works for.
Also if my memory serves, Gumshoe was there in the flashback case of Investigations 1 (where Calisto Yew pulled a gun outta nowhere and threatened Edgeworth with it), so he's got his own negative experience with firearms too.
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