In contrast to all my frustrated ranting on the Peeves board, my therapist gave my some resources about Rejection Sensitivity Disorder, how it works, and how it is a very common in women with ADHD and it has been so freaking validating. All my life, I have thought myself over sensitive and a lot of other really bad thoughts because I have hurt my own feelings over someone inflecting on a different word in a sentence than I expected.

I have spent years masking and beating myself up for these types of reactions and feeling very ashamed over crying over dumb rejections or reading too much into conversations. I thought this was something intrinsically wrong with me as a person and to find out that, actually, my gift for pattern recognition also means that I look for patterns where they don’t exist.

My brain is still fucked up but at least it’s not because I am at my core a terrible person? rofl

@hellfrog YES. And it is really hard to figure out how to express how the lack of executive functioning and the memory lapses have really fucked up my life in a lot of ways. I can be positive and gentle with myself and I am in therapy right now because my harsh inner critic was leading me down some dark roads, but all the mindfulness and gentleness and meds and self-accepting in the world doesn’t change that this sucks and I wish it were different.

My head getting that something isn’t personal and my ego not getting that memo.

@hellfrog said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:

I am seventeen creepy frogs from the abyss in a cardigan.

I know that it certainly refutes any claims made about you when you come in and make situations in unrelated threads a chance to once again make it about you for sure.

@bear_necessities

For real, I wouldn’t waste the time responding over there, even just spitefully. Interacting over there at all just validates them that their opinions have weight and value in this community and they just… don’t. Just like how no ‘conservative Twitter wannabe’ has been able to succeed, they only want an echo chamber as long as they have an audience to show it off to. I just don’t see any reason to be that audience for them.

@TNP Right? Which is why I have no desire to even look over there. There is no one left there that isn’t also here that I really care about what they have to say.

@Meg said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:

Yeah, the thing that these people don’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t matter who you are doing it to, but what you are doing.

I think it’s pretty telling when people make this assumption that only ‘perfect’ people can be victims. Being a victim doesn’t mean you cannot be an abuser. Being an abuser doesn’t mean you can’t be a victim.

Aww, I think the manipulative creep got her feelings hurt because we pointed out she’s gross. We are such bullies! To be safe, I think she should just never join any MUs run by or played by anyone here. Just for her safety, of course.

@Roz Just when I think that I cannot dislike this person more, I hear more stories. I’m sorry that was ever said about you. It’s revolting and cruel.

@mietze said in RL Peeves:

I wish I could have the whole package and always have been aware that I have the skills to do lots of things while also being aware that I lack the capacity to tie it all together. This isn’t something that other people see, usually. It’s internal. And it’s hard to explain to people who don’t have that similar feeling.

Thank you for this because this put into a few sentences the very feeling that I’ve been writing PAGES in my journal just struggling to figure out how to express.

You are right. While knowing others feel like this makes me sad because I KNOW how much it just wrecks one’s confidence and self-esteem, there is some comfort in knowing that I’m not the only person in the world feeling like this.

@Testament I’ve wondered a lot if maybe there has been some depression there all along that was masked because my ADHD have been out of control for YEARS. Now the ADHD is being treated and my brain is a little quieter and now depression is just like “Yo, what’s up?”

@Meg I wasn’t seriously saying that anyone who asks me about what character they should pick up has decision paralysis. I was just trying to make a self-deprecating joke.

@Testament I’ve tried tying these things I want to do to an external thing, a person or an obligation, to try to jumpstart the motivation, but all that usually ends up happening is that I just end up disappointing the other person and am wracked with guilt. Feeling unmotivated and uninspired is bad enough, but feeling like I am letting someone down on top of that is a sure way to tip me into a crisis.

It’s a good tip and I can see how that could definitely work, but the lack of motivation is the basic problem not a symptom of the real problem. The real problem is that I was born without the ability to make the hormone cocktail for intrinsic motivation. For the first time in my life, I am medicated well enough that I realize how much this really, really sucks.

I am getting into my own head about my ADHD. I am finding myself unwilling to invest time or money in new hobbies because I just assume that I will enjoy it for a month and then never pick it up again so what’s the point?

Working out? This motivation is only going to last a couple of months at most so what is the point of putting effort into something that I’m just going to quit?

I rarely watch new TV series or movies because it feels like too much of an investment of time into something I won’t remember in 3 months anyway.

I’ve even gotten to the point where I am letting holds on library books that I really want to read lapse because what is the point if I’m never gonna finish it?

I don’t know if this is a weird form of depression or just a lot of frustration with my condition. I am well medicated for the first time in my life with stuff that doesn’t reduce me to sleeping only 3 hours a night or make me feel so lethargic that I cannot get out of bed. I am mostly functional!

But it feels like there is a ceiling to that functionality and I’m starting to wonder what the point of even trying to reach it is.

In my experience, I have found that it doesn’t matter how I answer the question of ‘What does the game need right now?’ in terms of characters because my answer has no effect on the longevity of the character or the quality of the game experience. I have given players really important and interesting (to me) hooks that they then never did a thing with. I’ve seen people pick up characters that have no introductory hooks and play them for years.

It’s why I rarely answer questions about which roster a player should pick up because it never seems to matter how many hooks a player has if they cannot connect to the character. If I don’t know you or know what you like to play, then any suggestion I make isn’t really going to be that valuable to the player, so I answer that question with exactly “Play whatever you find interesting and we can make story for you.” Also, it feels like putting a degree of the mental ‘labor’ of making the choice of what kind of character to play on me with a lot of expectation about what their experience is going to be like. It feels like a set up for a bad time for both of us.

Also, I have ADHD. I can barely deal with my own decision paralysis much less anyone else’s.

@farfalla said in Log Posting Standards:

It’s all logs or no logs.

This is my exact stance. Either we allow logs to be posted or no one can post logs. While I definitely like and trust the admin team of BMD, and this is no slight to them or their work, I think it sets up some pretty untenable situations that could possibly favor the abusers over those who have been abused.

@bear_necessities I think I come down on this side of it, too. If we are removing a log because it might read as harassment, I don’t think we should have that log on the forums at all. I don’t see how it fundamentally changes the potential for discomfort and hurt just because Cobalt posted the log rather than a new forum user. In fact, maybe logs just shouldn’t be posted by forum users at all because of the potential for harassment.

@Roz said in Enjoy the Reads!! (Admin: ETA a content warning. It's THE LOG from The Pack thread.):

A thread like this is probably making her furious.