Common Phrases Said To You Before You Realise You Have Adhd

you might have seen this bipolar flag around and i really liked the concept but i thought i’d take a spin at it and recolor/redesign 

whats the ice cream bar approach ?

So, @bipolarings has a post talking about this a little already, but I'm always happy to be given an excuse to blather about brains :D

The ice cream bar/sundae bar metaphor was originally created to describe the autism spectrum, but it works really well for other things too, including bipolar disorder. I'mma adapt it a lil bit here, in fact, to make it work even better. Yay me.

The principle is this: instead of trying to divide up bipolar disorder into I/II/NOS/etc, or classify it as 'severe' or 'mild', picture it as a sundae bar.

Now, every day, you make yourself a sundae. You can take as many toppings as you 'want' and as much of each topping as you 'want'.

There are some toppings that go well together, so, for instance, if you take a lot of euphoria there's a good chance you'll also get some hypersexuality, some delusions of grandiosity, some creative drive, some ambition, some psychomotor agitation. And that would be called a 'manic episode'. You could get somewhat less of each, maybe leave off the delusions of grandiosity, and people might call it a 'hypomanic episode'. Even less and people might call it 'euthymia'.

But the thing is, you don't have to get it that way, and you can take any amount of each! So you might get low mood but a lot of psychomotor agitation, irritability, and disregard of consequences. Or you could get a huge amount of emotional numbness but combine it with the stuff other people like to put with euphoria. Or you could get just a bit of low mood but spice it up with hallucinations and delusions (other). Or you could get a lot of delusions of grandiosity but only a tiny amount of euphoria.

And what you get one day doesn't determine what you get the next. You could spend years getting nothing but the 'hypomania combo' and the 'depression family-size' and then one day decide to dump the entire bowl of euphoria in your cup and top it with so many delusions it starts to spill over the sides. Or maybe you've only ever gotten small, carefully curated sundaes with a healthy amount of two or three toppings but today you just tell the server 'fuck me up' and get some of absolutely everything.

Without all the metaphor:

While certain sets of symptoms commonly appear together, and are then labeled 'mania', 'hypomania', 'depression', or 'euthymia', symptoms don't have to appear in those particular combinations. (Also the DSM isn't necessarily even right about what combinations are common.)

You could also have different proportions of symptoms than someone else does. (And that doesn't necessarily make your disorder or theirs automatically more 'severe'.)

Even if you do only get common combinations of symptoms, that says nothing about how 'severe' it is. If you get an enormous amount of emotional numbness, lack of motivation, executive dysfunction, suicidality, paranoid delusions, and disregard of consequences, continuously for 98% of your adult life; and someone else gets one (1) single 3 day long episode with a medium-sized serving of delusions of grandiosity, hallucinations, and disregard of consequences; they'll probably be diagnosed with Bipolar I and you with Bipolar II, but your life is probably being affected a lot more.

What symptoms you get can also change, which can include changing from what a psychiatrist might call 'Bipolar I' to 'Bipolar II', or 'BP-II' to 'BP-NOS', or whatever. You haven't magically gotten a new disorder. You just got a different sundae today. You're still eating at the same sundae bar.

Simone Biles saying “Mental health is more important than sports” on the biggest platform she could have possibly done it from is why she’s incredible, actually

please dont use spoon theory terms unless you have physical disabilities / chronic pain/illness. the woman who came up with it used it as a metaphor for what it’s like to live with lupus, and as far as I know it’s not applicable to people who do not have physical disabilities or chronic pain/illness. if you do then carry on but otherwise please don’t.

shit, sorry, didn't know. that's my bad, i'll edit or delete my last stuff that used it. sorry!!

No truer words ever spoken

ADHD moodboard

No truer words ever spoken

I'm in a support group for queer adults with disabilities (before I joined i didn't even know there *were* groups for that overlap, it's amazing and I love it) and we had our digital meeting on Monday. I shared your most recent flag update, where you had moved the new version to the public domain. Especially since we were talking about the ADA and its anniversary, it was very fitting. Everyone really liked it! Several people commented about the symbolism, in particular. So, just letting you know of some responses from outside tumblr. Thank you for putting it out there!

Thank you!

(Confession: At the time you first sent me this ask, the new version of the flag was not yet in the Public Domain. But it is, now! 🏴🎇🏴)

Shamelessly plugging the new version, again – especially since I want it to eclipse the old one:

To the extent possible under law, Ann Magill has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Visually Safe Disability Pride Flag. This work is published from: United States.

And for those who want detailed ‘specs’:

The ratio of overall breadth to overall length is 3 to 4. The ratio of the flag’s overall length to the width of each stripe is 10 to 1 (So the ratio of the overall length to the width of the combined stripes is 2 to 1).

The Hexadecimal codes for each of the colors are:

The Field: #585858

The Red: #CF7280

The Yellow: #EEDF77

The White: #E9E9E9

The Blue: #7AC1E0

The Green: #3AAF7D

Now, as to the symbolism: in the original flag, the zigzags were meant to represent “navigating around barriers.” But instead, they were the barrier – so they were removed.

So let me put the story of the new symbolism into words – here and now– and thereby bring it into being:

The Black, as it was from the beginning, represents rage and mourning for those who’ve suffered violence and abuse because of their disabilities.

The five colors, in order from left to right, represent bodily disability, neurodivergent disabilities, invisible and/or undiagnosed disabilities (always in the center, because any disability can be invisible at any time), mental illness/emotional disabilities, and sensory disabilities.

The colored band starts at the top of the hoist, which is a starting place of honor, and ends at the fly, which represents moving outward into the world.

Walls and locked doors (behind which Disabled People have been hidden for too long) are right angles, and square. And so the colored band is a diagonal that cuts across those right angles, in defiance.

The five stripes are parallel, to represent our solidarity.

There! How’s that?

A while ago, I made up the word bipolarian to mean someone with bipolar disorder.

There's nothing wrong with "people with bipolar disorder." But it takes a lot of characters, and sounds too much like person-first language.

Bipolarian amuses me because it sounds like "planarian." Cut our heads in half, and we'll become one body ruled by two heads. Seems appropriate.

Here's a plushie two-headed planarian. Aww, such a cutie