#associative memories

[angermgnt]

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.

[shakingparadigm]

NOBODY is allowed to be happy and EVERYONE is doomed

[equill]

The Warden

Panel: No escape.

Ok, now just some silly ideas to share (playing around with the au)

Comic 1: Invading dreams

Extra: no thanks.

Comic 2: Unwanted attention

[valfeathers]

BENS!! i forgot how fun drawing/designing pastas can be,,, i’m re obsessing

ramble down here btws,, //death mentions since he is a ghost

ok so ben is an old fave and i have thoughts. this first new hc design isn’t that remarkable except for the fact that instead of trying to make ben look like a dark/‘corrupted’ link, i tried to draw him like a kid in a hand-stitched link costume.

i will be drawing/writing(?) ben as a kid btw, specifically a ghostly 12 year old kid whose hobbies include trying to stress his cohabitants into early retirement.

the ben fullbody on the left is a slightly more corporeal form that he uses when out in the open and interacting with people in person. while still ghostly (like. swipe at him and your hand will go straight through him kinda ghostly) it’s more solid and has more of his features that he possessed before his death. he floats!! that’s his main mode of transportation in the open. he floats.

the one on the right is one that you’d see onscreen! he’s quite literally ‘rendered’ differently giving his victims that patented dread associated with ben. uncanny valley yk

when scared or upset his pupils vanish leaving you with those empty dark scleras. this doesn’t happen often though!

anyways that’s all for now!! an anon asked me to draw hoodie so i’m off to go do that :)

[mobius-m-mobius]

LOKI APPRECIATION WEEK 2023 | for @dailyloki Day 5 : Favorite Loki's clothes : The God of Stories suit

[sp1resong]

remember my name - mitski

[haunted-xander]

Started this months ago but procrastinated hard bc I didn't want to draw backgrounds </3

[mydotguy]

I loooove Susan

[pineapple-frenzy]

Hello! If you are still taking prompts, literally anything from your flower soulmate au for Zutara 👀💜🌸

Aahhh this took quite a while but I had too many thoughts and ideas for what to draw

I went ahead and made another comic and I'm just gonna ramble for a bit qlfjlqkwqk

I think I mentioned this before, but Katara didn't like her soulmark flowers for a quite some time because they remind her too much of painful memories and her inability to protect those dear to her. So for the longest time she would pick them off her face and pretend they weren't there. It wasn't til she worked things out with Zuko that she started to accept the flowers as a part of her and she didn't feel the need to pick them anymore

[anistarrose]

This isn't something I would describe as a prominent or even intentional theme, but there's something fascinating to me about how TAZ Balance characters associated with composing and performing music are almost entirely correlated with either being forgotten, or having an incredibly warranted fear of being forgotten.

Johann is obviously the latter. I have an ongoing fic about his parallels with Barry — who plays piano, and who is the character we see spend the most time knowing he has been forgotten by people dear to him, and grappling with it. And I've seen the Johann and Lup dynamic get well-deserved attention in AUs where she lives, and they get to relate to each other as violinists — yet the parallels are at their strongest in canon, where Lup is the "most" dead of all the undead characters, the "most" forgotten, the most reduced to a near-invisible specter haunting the narrative, and the most like Johann's worst nightmare.

There's even a parallel with Davenport, who is a beautiful singer, and whose life story and dreams and achievements are all completely erased. So that's three different characters whose forgotten stories — which Johann obviously does not know — still serve to silently justify Johann's fear of the same fate, emphasizing just how likely it is that it could come to pass. How yes, it would be that horrifying.

And as a non-musician, but an artist of a kind myself... it all resonates. The fear of one's legacy being forgotten is a common fear in general, but it has a particular type of teeth to it for us creatives, who shudder in terror at the thought of a masterwork — that feels like a piece of one's soul — being forgotten, let alone cut short by untimely tragedy.

But that's why I treasure, so dearly, that all of these musically inclined characters — Barry, Lup, Davenport, Johann — are not forgotten permanently, but instead immortalized by the Story and Song, no matter the varying degrees of alive and dead that they wind up in the end. I treasure the parallels between these characters that say being forgotten is a grounded, reasonable thing to fear; that it is scary — but that no matter what, memory will still find a way.

[alicent-archive]

“Rhea Royce should haunt Daemon-” l’m gonna be real with you guys I don’t think he even remembers she existed.

[dovewingkinnie]

im going to revisit an old oc story from like 2020 wish me luck

[macksartblock]

Chosen One // Eldest Daughter

[chirpsythismorning]

S5 opener REAL

[thecruellestmonth]

Jason's feelings about Sheila Haywood

Batman #427 (1988)

"God, it must have been hard for you."

"...I'll save you... Mom..."

Batman: Gotham Knights #44 (2003)

"...I love..."

Batman #428 (1988)

"He threw... himself... in front... of me... in front of me... He took... the main brunt... of the blast... Such a... good boy... Must have... really... loved his... mother..."

Deadman: Dead Again #2 (2001)

JASON: "It's weird--she betrayed me to the Joker. Got us both blown up--but I'm not mad at her. It wasn't really her fault--her whole life was screwed up. Things just... happened. [...] You gotta tell me--is she going to make it?"

DEADMAN: "She's fading pretty fast, kid--"

JASON: "No, I mean-- her soul. What's going to happen to her... afterward?"

DEADMAN: "That's not for me to decide."

SHEILA: "Jason tried to rescue me... We almost... made it... So close... He turned out to be such a good kid..."

JASON: "Thanks, Mom..."

Batman Annual 25 (2006)

He remembered most of what happened. The search for his mother. Her betrayal. Joker. And his own murder.

Task Force Z #8 (2022)

"I died trying to save someone I cared about."

[nyatbinary-81]

@vulpixisananimal sifstem art jumpscare!! more specifically i got bored and decided to mess around with sif and mal's outfits.