one of the signs that i’m emerging from a depressive phase to a normal-to-slightly-hypomanic phase is i spontaneously think of specific people i want to reach out to, to either: 1) catch up, 2) thank them for something they did, or 3) apologize to them for something i did
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i reflect on this as i think of the common ADHD thing about being bad at keeping up with old friends. the standard explanation appears to be that this is due to “bad memory” but actually i generally find that my memory is very good as long as i am not “clogged up” emotionally
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it feels like i have sort of an “internal queue” of things that it occurs to me to do, and this queue is actually perfectly capable of handling all sorts of things, including normal life stuff and friendships, *unless* the current item brings up feelings i am blocking out
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when that happens the queue stops functioning. i can’t easily skip the current item to get to the next one. my emotional and cognitive capacity get partly taken up by a conflict between “hey, this is the current item” and “aaaah no bad item go away”
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like for a hopefully pretty relatable example, during tax season it’s pretty easy for “do my taxes” to become the current item and for me to be like aaaah no do not want to think about money too many feelings, and that just kinda sits in me preventing me from using the queue
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when i can’t use the queue in a natural way then i need artificial ways to get to other items in the queue, hence to-do lists and explicit reminders to drink water or w/e and other external tracking tools. but i can also instead sit down to process my feelings about taxes
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(which i did last tax season, and a lot of stuff came up related to my parents (naturally) that ended up feeding into the acid thread)
anyway very curious to hear from other people if they’ve noticed stuff like this or if it occurs somewhat or very differently to them
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yes adhd is often characterized as forgetting what needs to be done but actually I always know exactly what I ought to do and that’s why I feel so awful and it makes my agency into a fucked up tangle of self-loathing and escapism
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