Blue Lagoon Iceland From My Recent Trip To Reykjavik 🏔️

my ocd has absolutely gone off the deep end where now i am also obsessing about the ocd itself.. like if i am having rocd doubts, like do i really love my bf, am i too young for this, do i even want to be in a relationship? my ocd just snowballs wondering if these doubts are even ocd, or if they are real and i should listen to them. like maybe i really just don’t love him anymore and i’m just afraid to admit it to myself? i hate it i hate it so much i wish i could trust my own feelings .

my therapist tells me it doesn’t matter if the doubts are real, it doesn’t matter if i don’t actually love him. because i will never know the truth, i’ll never know for certain if we “should” be together. life just doesn’t have certain answers for these things and i need to accept that uncertainty. recovery is so painful

アトリエ☆どんぐり

When I listen to my mother talk about me as a child, I feel such an overwhelming confusion and disconnect. With the way she remembers me, it would seem as if I had no clear personality of my own. I hardly cried or laughed as a baby, I never got into trouble to the point that I'd never even been disciplined, I followed all the rules, I excelled at all my schoolwork but never boasted, I had vague interests but nothing intense, I was kind and friendly but I didn't push for friends, etc.

The perfect child. Perfectly average traits.

I read "The Divided Self" by R.D. Laing recently.

One of the things that gave me the greatest feelings of validation and relief from that book are the childhoods of the patients he talks about- before this, I've never seen such a clear example of my own childhood painted in a light that resonates with me.

None of the patients he provided had explicitly abusive childhoods, and none of them remembered their childhoods as particularly traumatic. Of course, most recalled their parents as some mixture of distant and unpredictable, and in some cases there was definitely emotional neglect and verbal abuse, but it was passing and not incredibly eventful. (I am not making light of anyone's experiences, I'm speaking only about the example patients' own accounts).

Many of the patients and the patients' families tell tales that mirror my own: "Julie was never a demanding baby. She was weaned without difficulty. Her mother had no bother with her from the day she took off nappies completely when she was fifteen months old. She was never 'a trouble'. She always did what she was told. These are the mother's basic generalizations in support of the view that Julie was always a 'good' child."

Most interestingly, the author hears these accounts both from the patients and the patients' family, and he sees them as negative. In contrast to literally everyone else I've opened up to, he says, "I have come to regard such an account of the earliest origins of behaviour as especially ominous, when the parents sense nothing amiss in it all, but on the contrary mention it with evident pride.”

The author goes on referring to the patient Julie, "This is the description of a child who has in some way never come alive: for a really alive baby is demanding, is a trouble, and by no means always does what she is told. [...] The crucial thing seems to me to be that [Julie's mother] evidently takes just those things which I take to be expressions of an inner deadness in the child as expressions of the utmost goodness, health, normality."

Complete and total compliance and obedience is NOT normal from a child (nor from anyone, I would argue but that's not the point). Children have to make mistakes and cause problems and stand up for themselves in order to learn how to live and be their own person! If a child doesn't do that and is only ever praised for their lack of autonomy, they're not going to grow into a secure personhood.

It is very important to me to hear this for the first time, especially from a credited psychologist. For years I've felt I was crazy for thinking that my childhood was so dreadfully abnormal and concerning whilst everyone assured me I was as healthy as could be (and side-eyed me as if I was exaggerating for attention).

I've always considered myself to be afflicted by "gifted kid burnout", which I am going to assume my small audience is familiar with, but the concept of "ontological insecurity" Laing discusses in this book fits even better, which I didn't think was possible.

It's rare that I feel someone completely understands even a small part of myself, so I am very glad I read this book and I would recommend it to anyone else interested.

To end this post, here's three additional quotes from the book, each referring to a different patients' childhood, yet all I can relate to:

“There was no open neglect or hostility in her family. She felt, however, that her parents were always too engrossed in each other for either of them ever to take notice of her. She grew up wanting to fill this hole in her life but never succeeded in becoming self-sufficient. [...] [H]er abiding memory of herself as a child that she did not really matter to her parents, that they neither loved nor hated, admired nor were ashamed of her very much.” pg54

“What she called 'unreliability' was a feeling of bafflement and bewilderment which she related to the fact that nothing she did had ever seemed to please her parents. If she did one thing and was told it was wrong, she would do another thing and would find that they still said that that was wrong. She was unable to discover, as she put it, 'what they wanted me to be'.” pg59

“His father's account of him was very meagre. He had always been perfectly normal, and he thought his present eccentricities were simply an adolescent phase. He had always been a very good child, who did everything he was told and never caused any trouble. His mother had been devoted to him.” pg70

the worst part about ocd is no matter how much work you do, some days you just can’t get your brain off of a sticky loop of rumination

LAIN IWAKARA ICONS

guess whos back

I try to fight it, but some days it is really hard

Some apps that helped me with ADHD functioning/adulting.

TL;DR at the end!

EDIT: I still heavily struggle with keeping up with everything and it can be overwhelming, but I'm trying to figure it out and hoped that this could be some help for you guys.

I made it look overwhelming with all the colors, but I promise that they're a lot more accessible and easier to use than it seems. Edited for accessibility on August 6th.

📋 1. There's an app called TickTick

It has...

🍅 a built in POMODORO (with customisable timers, a strick mode with an app and site blocker, and a whitelist),

⏱️ a TIMER that you can set on specific tasks or subtasks,

📅 it has a CALENDAR,

📚 LISTS, TAGS, an Eisenhower-matrix, Kanban Board,

🤩 you can endlessly CUSTOMISE it with colors and emojis,

🚩 you can set PRIORITIES and set the lists to show the items SORTED BY date or priority or name or custom, etc.,

🏡 you can create SECTIONS within the lists too,

📮 you can set NOTIFICATIONS that POP UP ON YOUR SCREEN giving you the option to start a timer, postpone it for later, check it off, or skip it.

📈 You can create both SUBTASKS and checklists for your tasks, and it shows a tiny PIE CHART with the prescentage completed. It also shows how many days are left.

- With school tasks, I've listed everything I had to get done for the exam and added all the information and details, e.g. for all my readings, I included the link/where to find it in the library, the pages I had to read and the number of pages for quick access.

- To make it more fun/gamify the process, I added a little emoji (e.g. a waterdrop 💧 or a colored book 📙) before the name of the thing I have just completed and e.g. a bucket 🪣 or river 🌊 or plant 🌱 for the raindrops, or a bookshelf 🗃📚 emoji for the books, and as I complete an item, I collect the books/drops, etc. in there.

For example:

✉️💌📧📦🗞 >> 📬📮

🌧💧 >> ☔️ or 🌊 or 🪣 or 🌱 or 🪴

📕📙📔📗📘📖📚📒📑📜 >> 🗃🗄📚

🌟🌙🌠🪐🚀🌕☁️ >> 🌌

Etc.

🪣 2. Then there's Tody!

🧹 An app for HOUSEWORK,

🙌 it REJOICES when you complete a task,

💦 it puts little SPLASHES on the area where there are tasks to be done

🙆 you can set "EFFORT LEVEL",

✉️ it also sends you a NOTIFICATION

and meassures how dirty one thing might be based on the last time you cleaned it.

You can RESET it.

🍽 3. Then there's WonderFridge!

It's an app to keep track of the CONTENT of your fridge and pantry, it has plenty of beautiful ILLUSTRATIONS for every sort of drink or food. It keeps track of the EXPIRATION DATES of foods and sends you NOTIFICATIONS so you can eat/use them up before they go wrong.

🕑 4. Then there's Boosted!

Boosted is a very SIMPLE app, originally created to MEASURE the time spent on different projects and their subtasks. I personally use it to break down tasks in the moment and do a speed run doing them as fast as I can. (Especially when I'm about to hit a deadline.)

🐦 5. Then there's Finch!

Finch is an adorable SELF-CARE app in which

you hatch a LITTLE BIRB and as you do your tasks, you give them ENERGY to go, explore and every day come home with a new thing explored, CHAT with you about it and GROW a little.

💡It has TASK SUGGESTIONS,

📓 a built in JOURNAL with or without prompts,

❤️‍🩹 breathing and grounding exercises, an S.O.S. mental first aid box,

⏲️ timers, reminders, lovely messages,

🤗 acts of kindness, and many more.

You can also group your tasks into JOURNEYS.

🙂 6. Then there's Daylio!

Daylio is a very SIMPLE JOURNAL/DIARY to KEEP TRACK OF THE DAYS ('cause I rarely remember what happended yesterday or which day did something happen.) You can set up little BUTTONS for activites, moods, symptoms, the weather, or anything you fancy and just tap over the ones that fit the day. You can also freely ad text, photos, or create a sound entry.

It's fully customisable (even the colors and moods) and makes you plentiful of different STATISTICS so you can check long term tendencies. It's super useful for monitoring mental health.

⏳️ 7. There's also Tiimo

Tiimo was developed by and keeping in mind the needs of neurodivergent people. In it you can set up routines and tasks with their duration and an emoji (they have a beautifully colored emoji set!). You can schedule your tasks at a specific time or set them "to do anytime" and set them to repetition. Once the scheduled time comes you get notified and the app starts a visual timer (even if you don't start the task...) and once done, you can check it off.

TL;DR

TickTick is a cool to-do app where you can make colorful lists, tag tasks and it helps you sort them by priority. Tody is a chores app that measures the dirtiness and is happy for you when you complete a task. Wonderfridge is an app where you can keep track of your food and their expiration dates and has nice icons. Finch is an adorable self-care app where a little bird grows with you and that suggests you self-care activities. It is a 100% mental illness/disability/neurodivergency friendly. Boosted helps you break down tasks and measures time. Daylio is a low-effort diary to keep track of the days, especially useful if you have memory issues. It makes statistics too so you can see how a thing might affect your mood. And Tiimo, a visual timer for tasks and routines.

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I hope I could help some!

If I made any typos, let me know!

*friendly salutes* Until next time! 🫡

dead fairies