#dysautochromia

[brightlotusmoon]

[brightlotusmoon]

Stop forcing your mindfulness on me

Mindfulness as a practice today is loosely based on the Buddhist concept of Sati, as described in the Buddhist text the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. But as journalist and author Robert Wright points out, there isn’t a single word in the text that translates to “now” or “present,” which is central to its modern application.

“You won’t find anything about living in the moment, which is one of the main phrases used to describe [modern] mindfulness,” says Wright, who published a book on the topic, titled Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. “On the other hand, I would say the way it’s taught today complies with the spirit of the early texts, more or less.”

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[brightlotusmoon]

[brightlotusmoon]

Me: Shit, why did I sleep all day? I was supposed to be getting better about that.

Roommate, eyebrow raised: Yesterday you walked around three times as much as you were used to because you were so well medicated with the right blend. Also, you got a flu shot. That can make you tired especially.

Me: Ohh that's why the band-aid is there!

Wheeeee, time agnosia! Between the fibromyalgia and ADHD, it's wild.

[brightlotusmoon]

PS, shout out to my allistic friends with all the same hyper- and dys- disorders but without the autism or ADHD.

@fire-fira

[brightlotusmoon]

Random discussion in the world of my marriage:

I was trying to explain a thought on the interconnections between human neurology and animal brain structures, so husband helped out by supplying information about the physical structure of a brain.

But I wanted to include a talk about the evolution, so he veered off into the first organisms to have central nervous systems, like starfish, and suggested the brain would be like cutting open the starfish and wrapping it in fish with more advanced nervous systems like scallop, then tuna, and so on, so the stack resembled a brain. And suddenly he suggested different cuts of meat wrapping around each other, and wrapping it all in bacon, so now the neocortex is bacon.

And for some reason this was really funny. We considered a dish like that would go over well in gastropubs. Food metaphors. Have your brain on a skewer.

Since we are different styles of ADHD and autistic, and we've been together for wow over twenty years now, we can easily ride each other's thought tangents all the way through and especially when our special interests match up.

So suddenly this inside joke about literal brain meats that came out of a discussion about instinctive reactions and where in the brain they are and then why are they named like that and then how the brain all works together is my new go to explanation for how my ADHD brain works all the time.

Now I want seared ahi tuna, damn it, he cooks it in the cast iron skillet with scallops and it's amazing and I want to add bacon and call it a deconstructed brain structure.

At least the migraine is wearing down. Medication is good.

[brightlotusmoon]

Math Ability Can Be Predicted by Neurotransmitter Levels in The Brain, Study Finds

"...In the research, two neurotransmitters were analyzed: glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) – already known to relate to brain plasticity and our ability to learn – with researchers looking closely at the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) part of the brain in particular.

Glutamate and GABA actually have complementary roles in the brain, because glutamate excites neurons, whereas GABA inhibits them, a balance that is thought to be important in taking on board new information.

What's more, the IPS has previously been linked to skill in mathematics, but here the team wanted to study this brain location and these neurotransmitters over a longer period of time, and in people rather than animal models.

"In contrast to previous studies on humans or animals that focused on narrower developmental stages, our cross-sectional-longitudinal study suggests that the link between plasticity and brain excitation and inhibition across different stages is unlikely to be immutable," says neuroscientist Roi Cohen Kadosh from the University of Oxford in the UK.

In other words, the relationship between these neurotransmitters and cognitive ability seems to change over time – in fact, it completely flips.

In the study, a total of 255 young people aged from six years old to university students were recruited as participants, with follow-up tests at a later date carried out by a subset of the group.

Combining the data from the first and second math tests with MRI scans showed that neurotransmitter levels recorded at the earlier date could predict math skill on the later date, an average of 1.5 years later.

In children higher GABA levels and lower glutamate levels were associated with being better at arithmetic, but in the older, adult volunteers it was those that showed lower GABA levels and higher glutamate levels in the IPS who performed the best at the math tasks they were given."

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I...

What...

I mean, I know my GABA levels are so low I take supplements, and my Dyscalculia, Dysgeographica, and lack of spatial perceptions are extraordinarily serious, but-

[brightlotusmoon]

[brightlotusmoon]

I'm tired of sleeping.

(I will mention this to the specialists. Tomorrow is chiropractic, Monday is orthopedic as well as pain clinic.)

Could be fibromyalgia. or ADHD. Or both.

I have to wake up around eight in the morning, which for me is early, so I'll see how my systems respond. I do have to walk that mile to the Metro. If I leave early enough I can hobble slowly without worrying.

[brightlotusmoon]

Time Agnosia, aka, Time Blindness.

Example: Yesterday morning, husband suggested I finish the ube pancakes, and I legitimately startled and was highly surprised we still had leftover pancakes.

"Honey, I made them three days ago."

"Are you sure it wasn't two weeks ago? I have absolutely no memory of eating ube pancakes the other day!"

"You asked for them five days ago because we had extra purple yams!"

"...we did? When did we get yams?"

...and so on.

[brightlotusmoon]

ADHD autism executive dysfunction mood. Time blindness, aka temporal agnosia, it is super fun. Super fun.

[brightlotusmoon]

How Time Agnosia Works: Real Time

1 Wait, how is it Thursday? Wasn't it Monday?

2 I had a burrito, but it could have been three days ago or two weeks ago. Oh hey, there's enough ingredients to make more burritos.

3 I have ignored every alarm on my phone because I was writing my novel and my fanfic that inspire more scenes for my novel.

4 There's how many missed calls?

5 Did I take a shower today? Is today even today?

6 Go away, I'm working. (I write fiction and disability advocacy blogging. Writing is working, though I'm on SSDI.) Wait. What do you mean it's been six hours.

7 I'm not hungry. Why am I dizzy?

8 Still not hungry but I just ate an entire bagel!

9 I'm not tired but it's two in the morning and zzzzzzzz...

10 I'm awake I'm awake! What day is it??

11 I have a doctor's appointment next Monday? I didn't know there's a next Monday!

12 I slept 14 hours and then I slept 4 hours and there's no difference haha.

[brightlotusmoon]

I admit, sometimes I just don't check my phone.

Usually when I'm not in the kitchen or bathroom, I've been writing my fiction and got pulled into my writerbrain and whoops it's five hours later, even with phone noises and alarms.

Several times a week I take walks around the neighborhood and sometimes I just don't take my phone. Sometimes I just want to walk silently around the block, because because having two dozen disabilities (including cerebral palsy, Fibromyalgia, autistic dyspraxia, hip pain, sciatic and sacroiliac pain, tendinitis, chondromalacia patella plus arthritis) means that my body wants to move and specifically walk despite being in constant agony, and this also means that I will do an ADHD hyperfocus on my environment and plus I do that autistic thing where I count all my steps, and I daydream in a lightly Maladaptive way even as my brain cleverly keeps tabs on my surroundings and foot placement because of the shaky palsy limp and the shorter lame left leg so I don't hurt myself, and sometimes that spastic ataxic hemiplegic leg knocks into my right leg and I trip over my feet but usually I catch myself, especially with my cane - unless the cane gets in the way, then it's just fuckin hilarious when I fall and crash.

(That happened last autumn, in the street near my bus stop, I cracked two ribs and bruised my arm with nerve damage and caused a traffic jam when three people ran to help me stand up and one person helped me start walking home; it took a week for me to reluctantly see the doctor. And a few months later, it happened around the corner from my townhouse on the pebbled sidewalk, where I tore up both knees, my left hand, and the side of my face, plus bruised I my left temple with bruising under my left eye along with my plastic glasses frame being broken, but that time I was carrying mail, not a cane, and I was not watching my foot placement, which is a vital thing that I need to do when I'm walking without a cane. If I don't have a cane my gait is like drunken shuffling or horse stomp. People have complained that I sound like a baby elephant because how could such a tiny person make so much noise when walk down stairs etc. Cerebral Palsy is weird. One spastic diplegic friend is more like a kangaroo rat with her hopping shuffle and another friend with spastic diplegia has a more gentle shuffle. I always made noise because I'm really short and until a few years ago I was very skinny and some of my tallest friends couldn't see me. And now I'm criticized for making noise. It's odd: my husband is six feet and due to his ninja style MMA training through his life he is cat-like and silent, and due to chronic back pains and slipped discs and spine injuries, he imagines balancing tea cups along his spine and he applies meditation techniques that Master Splinter would envy to soothe pain, heal his own wounds faster, and relieve muscle and nerve pain in ways that make me envious. He's teaching me. It's like a kind of magic as its own branch of physics, thus its own branch of biophysiology and neurophysiology Clarke's law applies since magic is a science, art, and craft).

I think my point is that almost all of my friends are online and can check my social media, which I update regularly, and I always mention when I have even a minor injury whether or not it's related to one of the two dozen plus medical conditions. Every epileptic seizure, every fall down bruise, every time I bang against a wall corner or cabinet, because I need time stamps and records since I now officially have Dysautochromia (and hey speaking of Dysautochromia, that Sci Fi show about the woman with Dysautochromia really needs to change "temporal dysplasia" to Temporal Agnosia or Time Agnosia, the layman term for Dysautochromia, because dysplasia is uhh totally not what they think it is LOL, I cannot take that show seriously) and I need to take notes on my own every day life since I no longer have an internal sense of time.

The other point is that if I don't return a call or text or email within a day it means that I've been busy and I'm still alive and despite the fact that I am not working out of the house it doesn't mean that I'm not busy. I've been writing. I've also been doing house chores poorly but I'm doing chords every day, it's how I am keeping track of time in a weird way.

My favorite franchise and biggest autistic special interest is launching its newest television iteration on Monday the 17th and I pasted a note on the wall with the date and time and channel because I know that no matter the fact that the Tumblr fandom will be yelling joyfully about it all day I will forget because ADHD plus Time Agnosia plus autistic memory glitches plus fibro fog will guarantee that I will forget and be on Cartoon Network or FFX like always, and I will need physical reminders to remember that Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will air on Nickelodeon on Monday evening.

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Cartoon Network: Go watch Star Vs The Forces Of Evil! Right the fuck now! And Steven Universe! Neewww eeepisodes!

Me: WHERE

Also Me: I did download the cartoon network app and promptly forgot.

My tablet: AHEM

Me: I am very upset, where are these new episodes

Also Me: what do you mean I downloaded the app.

...

Fun with Temporal Agnosia!

[brightlotusmoon]

In one of my ADHD groups, it was mentioned that we rarely experience relationship decay because our dysautochromia, aka time blindness, keeps us refreshing our friendships and connections in our minds even as people become distant.

Here was my comment:

At this point I am a person-shaped collection of rambles on Ninja Turtles, neurology, and disability activism duct taped together wobbling around in an old peacoat, and my loved ones have completely accepted this.

[brightlotusmoon]

Me, giving my favorite canon character a few of my own medical conditions like epilepsy, fibromyalgia, dysautochromia. Me, lovingly making their family treat them at home like a fully stocked homemade infirmary full of concern and apologies for past shitty behavior, and later they still have their sibling fights that no longer feel like domestic abuse, because the main source of the manipulation is gone. Me, trying to encourage others in the fandom to read and tell me their thoughts. Me, staying up far too late, a little drunk and a little high, grinning as I apologize for hurting them again: