Did you know they just let you add anything you want to canned soup?

I just had a hearty tomato stew by adding fresh mushrooms, tomatoes, frozen chicken, and frozen chipotle potatoes to a half can Progreso tomato basil soup, topped with crispy onions from a can, all made in the microwave.

I did have to spice up the flavorless base soup, but with some salt, garlic powder, cilantro, and bay it tasted pretty good.

Ed. for context:

For many AutDHD, those with poor executive function, or other disabilities, especially those of us who are bad at or hate cooking, the false dichotomy is between hard-to-prepare healthy food with high risk of failure and food waste vs something easy that will probably taste like crap and leave me feeling weaker and hungry if that's all I make for days.

Canned soup + healthier ingredients breaks that dichotomy with a secret third way.

#ActuallyAutistic #FoodTips #recipes #AutDHD #LowEffort

On the role of shame in autistic burnout.

https://www.dralicenicholls.com/the-role-of-shame-in-autistic-burnout/

🧵

#ActuallyAutistic #AutDHD #burnout
#Recovery2025 #MECFS #ChronicIllness

On the upside, I'm not facing severe pain and brain fog today while trying to work. So my efforts to heal are working.

Now I just have NORMAL problems, like being ADHD.

There's a paradox in being an ADHD writer. There are certain tasks in writing which involve letting your mind wander... like revising the thematic elements in an opening chapter.

The problem with this is when your mind wanders a bit too far afield.

These are problems that I used to have before I got incredibly sick.

So I'm trying to take that as a win, but it means clocking out a lot and burning my still-limited energy on not getting paid.

On the upside for you... more shiteposts!!

#AutDHD #WritersCoffeeClub #MECFS

Also what it's like to pace with MECFS or other fatigue disorder.

I have to just do the one thing in front of me today, then work really hard to not stress about the very extremely important timely tasks that are building up, which would be easy to knock out if I weren't so broken. 😅

#ChronicIllness #MECFS #AutDHD https://jorts.horse/@mel/115193805211838927

Alright, I managed to work another hour, and finished a chapter that had taken way too long. Not my 2.5-hour-per-day work goal, but much much better than last week.

Caffeine helped. I'd forgotten that I'd switched to green tea this week as part of the whole energy recovery thing, and that I'm used to working with black tea or sometimes coffee. I had a leftover latte from town a few days ago that I'd avoided drinking for the above reasons, and that got me right focused.

The video cautions against stimulants when recovering from burnout, because it masks how much energy you're using. But that doesn't mean I can't do it, just that I need to be sure to watch myself as it wears off, that I don't over-spend. I don't have any big plans for the rest of the day, so that should be easy so long as I keep myself under control.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

I had a good workday yesterday for the first time in weeks. Was able to focus and be clear about what needed to be done, and do it with confidence.

Today I've got some energy, but having trouble maintaining it in any focused sense. This is where, I think, I often bleed off energy and end up back at zero. I'm finding myself wandering around cleaning up email, revisiting Mastodon settings, back on social media. These *will* all be good and doable things eventually, but I'm still in a fragile zone. I worked *more* yesterday, but didn't work as long as my goal is, and I run out of energy very quickly still. (I'm learning that laying down for 10 minutes can restore me really well! But I hate doing it.)

Basically, I'm losing the marvelous levels of self-restraint I had for the first near-week of this reset. That takes energy, too: willpower. I clocked in for 7 minutes, actually got a lot done in those minutes, then clocked out because I got bored and started meandering, and now I'm here.

So, it's progress, but I'm scared of losing it. Fear of failing at work is one thing keeping me from diving in to work. Work is normally restorative for me, unless I'm full of self-doubt and mental fatigue symptoms, something I've had for way too long now, and having more of that after all this work to get better will emotionally devastate me.

Anyway, back to it.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

When I left my abuser (ten years ago!) most of these slower activities were impossible. Part of it was the usual tech craze dopamine cycles we were all caught up in. But part of it was the extreme anxiety-attack levels of anxiety I had *constantly*. These obsessive "always on" habits formed out of that.

At the time, if I was still for 5 seconds, I'd churn. I couldn't lay on my back at all because my belly felt exposed and I churned. I couldn't meditate or nap or even just watch a movie without churning. I needed constant stimulation or I couldn't stand it. It was simply pain avoidance that turned into compulsive patterns. Social media was part of that. I was aware of all of this, but helpless to do anything else.

The anxiety has been more under control for a few years, but even then, it wasn't really, because politics and living with my mom. At least then, the anxiety was associated with real things, whereas when I formed these habits, it was ghost anxiety, and really intense all the time.

So this is really the first chance I've had a stable enough situation to really start setting healthier rules for myself.

You know, that and hitting rock bottom.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

I focused hard on the Great Reset over the weekend. Total habit change.

Rules:

1. Only allowed to do one thing at once. (No idle games while watching YouTube.)
2. Longer-form and more analog activities:
- Less Doomscrolling
- Less posting (don't post every thought!)
- Less YouTube, more TV shows and movies
3. Stop thinking!

I did that on Friday and Sunday with Super Rest Days. Did some reading (from real books, actually finished a book!), watched some shows, did some ZenTangle (it's a doodling technique), meditation, naps, walks, other things.

The first day was super hard. But by last night, I was like, hey you've done enough, you can binge YouTube while playing idle games if you want, and guess what? *I didn't want*.

Saturday, I went to the farmers market and to the grocery store because I had to. It was a little too much, but I'm just glad I was finally able to go to the market.

I've noticed that today, yes, I'm tired, but it's not pain-tired. It's normal sleepy tired, a kind of tired I'm not used to feeling the past ten years. The kind of tired that, when I say "I'm tired," and the other person says, "Oh me too, I could sure use a nap," that's the kind of tired THEY feel, while I was feeling a deeply painful kind of tired that's beyond their comprehension.

But as I go through the day, I'm starting to feel the edges of that deeper tired again. So I'm going to try to bill one hour, but stop there. I need to be billing 2.5 hours a day! But getting permanently better is more important for now.

I'm learning what not to do, but still trying to figure out what activities give me energy when I'm so deep in debt I can't do the really fun stuff (like thinking, or hiking, or partying).

I've noticed that when in doubt, laying down, with or without a nap or meditation (I usually can't really nap), works well.

#Recovery2025 #MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

A lot of this is stuff that I've secretly suspected to be a problem for awhile now, but haven't been in a good position to address it.

Willpower also takes energy. Major habit changes take energy. And many of these things are or were copes for worse things.

Getting out of my most recent toxic situation was necessary to reach this step, where I'm reducing my social media usage, disconnecting from thinking too much, and ceasing to do multiple recreational activities at once (like I'm doing now, sigh... mid-video, idle game on the iPad, posting), these are all obsessive copes, to the point that the zinging mild pain I get from overstimulating myself is a crave that I'm seeking...

But it's also what's keeping me sick. And I'm safe now, for the moment, and can cut that crap out.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

I'm watching a thing about recovering from autistic burnout, specifically how to manage energy. It's helpful. In fact, seeing a short clip from this earlier this week inspired my break from thinking (as much as possible, because here I am, writing a twoot... and I can feel it draining me).

Really helpful stuff in here. Probably also applies to allists with fatigue.

#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

https://youtu.be/GjWpCV6on88

Hat irgendwer Empfehlungen zu guten Fachbüchern, die AHDS *und* ASS in Kombination gut aufgreifen?

#AutDHD #ADHS

My son is going to try using a Rolodex as an executive function system. What a great idea! I wish I'd thought of it.

#ActuallyAutistic #AutDHD #ADHD

A player who just won a thing would not say, “What a shitty game.” She clearly said, “I’m shaking.”

Please hire me and other autists/ADHDers with super hearing who use subtitles to help us pay attention. We will FIND THAT SHIT.

#ActuallyAutistic #AutDHD

Move over Sherlock's "mind palace"! I'm experimenting with building a mind HUD! Why can't we each have our own mental head's up display?

I'm starting by putting pictures of short-term things I need to remember to do as icons in the upper right. It did help me remember to take a medication today, one that I tend to forget because it's outside my routine.

I'll see how that works and go from there.

#MadScientist #MindHacks #AutDHD #ADHD

Filter is also on the fritz these days.

Filter. The ability to test all combinations of how what I'm saying might be taken to avoid unintentional insult.

Probably some more but that took all my spoons and now I'm really in for it.

For most of these, I can usually compensate by overworking one or more of the other functions to make up for it. Probably what's happening now it's that they're most all of them depleted and this coping strategy isn't enough. I'm probably still knee deep in #burnout, which sucks because it's time to get going again.

#AUTDHD #autism #ADHD #DarkSojourn #Recovery2023

Here are some of the types of energy and function I track which are necessary for full functionality. When all these come together, I'm amazing. They rarely come together anymore.

Spoons.

Splines, or energy related to loading many details into my brain. I need the details or I can't function.

Willpower and gumption, the ability to push myself into doing things I don't want to or that are difficult. (I am so far in debt on this one this year.)

Zen. The ability to remain tolerant of suffering and patient with frustration. (When this is gone it happens suddenly and I lash out or melt down.)

ExeFunk, or the ability to organize tasks.

Dex. The ability to hold things without dropping them. (I really miss that dish I broke.)

Working memory, short term memory, object permanence, long term recall: all the types of memory function which I can have to various degrees. (My working memory is trash rn which is a barrier to writing.)

#autDHD #autism #neurodiversity

Back to ExeFunk, though. It's kind of cool because I have this one major ExeFunk list for the whole project (it's a ghostwritten memoir), and then when I'm done with the thing, I change the + to a √ and later I can copy all the √ items to a log. That way, if my client ever wants to see how I've been spending her money, I've got it all right there.

(Scrivener really helps with this because I can just do it as two documents at the top of the larger project and don't have to manage a bunch of different apps and files.)

#ExeFunk #Autism #AutDHD #ADHD

I was a bit of an autism advocate on Twitter and my blog for a few years, maybe like 2012-2015 or so. I made some contributions to the movement. (Ever hear of Splines Theory? That was me.)

I haven't been able to do much since, but I miss it, and still have lots of great ideas and information to share. I just need ability, time, and energy to work on all the many big ideas and interests I have. I haven't even been able to maintain and update my old blog posts, even though the Splines Theory post still gets a lot of hits.

#ADHD #AutDHD #ActuallyAutistic #autism

There's a term I made up that I've been using for years. It's a shortening of "executive function," and the shorter version makes it easier to break down large tasks into snappy yet appropriately named lists, plus I can talk about my deficits without cluttering each sentence.

The term is "exefunk."

Example usages:

"I'm having a terrible time with exefunk today."

"Before I begin today, I should clean up my exefunk for this project to be sure I'm working on the right thing."

"Chapter 4 ExeFunk:

1. Research X & Y.
2. Read notes.
3. Write chapter."

#ADHD #ActuallyAutistic #autism #AutDHD #ExecutiveFunction #Neurodiversity