Always a relevant Simpsons quote

Kid: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the Constitution?

Amendment: Then I'll crush all opposition to me, And I'll make Ted Kennedy pay. If he fights back, I'll say that he's gaaaay

This wasn't maliciousness to my mind so much as it was pure selfishness, but our school guidance counsellor fucked up in a vulnerable moment (particularly for me, but pretty much everyone who had to witness it as well), then doubled down on it and somehow made it worse.

One morning I came to school and my class was really somber. I found out that a girl's mother had died yesterday- that girl was part of my friend's group and I'd just met her mother a few weeks earlier at friend's birthday party; she was lovely. A drunk driver had hit her on a roundabout at 12 midday, of all times, and she'd passed before they'd even gotten her to the hospital.

This was traumatic for my friend on every level, I'm sure, but it was my first experience with second hand grief, so you can imagine it was a bad time to go ahead with the scheduled guest that morning who was there to do a very graphic presentation about drunk driving involving sound effects and acting out a car collision.

I feel sorry for the guy, in hindsight, because he probably hadn't heard a chorus of horrified screams and spontaneous sobbing in response to one of his shows quite like that, before, but that was on the school admin, anyway. What the fuck were they even thinking? "Yes, yes, we're all sad about Jessie's mum ... So anyway, this is how she died, in real time!"

So, moments before this bloody show started up, another close friend of mine turned up late and was confused at our dismayed faces. No one had taken her aside to tell her (the bastards. Why would you not take the girl's close friend group aside to tell them first? Jessie's mum was like a second mum to some of us), so I found it was on me to convey it. That really sucked. A lot. I was clumsy, friend was distraught, you get the picture.

This bitch counsellor, though... When the completely inappropriate presentation got to the graphic bit, my friend took off crying down the hall 'cause fuck all that, and I made to as well. The counsellor stopped me (like she thought I was trying to go after her), and fucking made me sit down and watch the rest of that show, clinging to my other friends trying to sob as quietly as possible and not imagine poor Jessie's mum at the moment her death. We were like, what, 15, 16 years old?

I don't know how the hell my feelings about this bullshit got back to the counsellor, but I think my mum must've called the school after I came home in floods, because again, this fucking bitch called me aside right as the bell rang to go home to (figuratively speaking) pin me down and explain to me why she was totally right to do what she did and she hoped I understood that she did the right thing, blah blah blah.

I just nodded along desperately, getting more and more anxious because my one bus out of there had a very narrow window to get on, and eventually had to interrupt her to beg her to let me go home. I got to enjoy the sight of it driving off without me and had to call my mum to pick me up over an hour later (side of the road on a hot Aussie afternoon- no there was no bus shelter, no the school wasn't open to let me hang around 'til my Mum got in).

Goddamn, I still think about that sometimes. It's not even close to the worst I've heard of teachers, but it's just so petty and unkind it somehow pisses me off more than overt cruelty. Like fuck off, you can't gaslight me into believing you had my best interests at heart with bullying tactics.

Oh yeah that's right, that same counsellor told me I had depression, too, when a) at that point in highschool I absolutely did not and it came out of left field completely, and b) when I did start to suffer from anxiety and depression she was as useful as a cat flap in an elephant house. Shocker.

Fuck you Mrs Whatever-your-face-was. I only remember you by the dumb nickname everyone gave you and that's fair enough because you're also dumb.

I learned in a video that cats can read our facial expressions just fine, we're just crap at reading theirs because their facial muscles don't allow for the same movement as humans (and dogs to some extent). They'll become more anxious if we show a fear expression around them in a new environment, or become more relaxed and cuddly if we smile at them in a new place. They look to us for reassurance as much as dogs do.

Once I learned that they do a lot of their communicating with their tail, I started paying attention to my two cat's tail movements and now I can't unsee it. It's as obvious as a waving hand, and they'll talk to one another this way as well as with us.

For example, they lift their tail as a greeting. If I say their name as they enter a room, I might think they'd completely blanked me if I didn't see their tail lift 'hello' every single time. Once my older cat, Bartine, didn't bother to tail lift, and I said "Oi! Barty! Rude?!". She then gave me a quick, half-hearted lift, like she couldn't be bothered with more than half wave, lol

Their tails quiver with excitement if there's a very interesting treat up for grabs, or my favourite is a coquettish swirl which is 100% "I love you" because it's always followed up with an approach to snuggle or headbutt. They also understand me when I say I love you, but particularly now because I see the swirl tail and say "I love you, too!" followed by indulgent pets.

'Tis a silly one, but it's hilarious when it stumps people. Best used verbally:

There are thirty cows in a field, and twenty-eight chickens. How many didn't?

There's no part of the mechanism by which the neocortex is impaired in ADHD that explains "justice sensitivity" except dysregulated emotional control, which is present in myriad disorders and may result in hundreds of psychological pathologies.

If you've any sense of justice at all, you may feel it to a greater intensity than the average person but have less chance of directing it towards useful action. If you get so far as to take action, tendency towards impulsivity also dilutes the utility of such a trait.

You've got the best chance of taking thoughtful action if you're also intelligent, but in ADHD, all that's going to do is add a layer of imposter syndrome to a positive outcome because a part of you knows you weren't in full control when you leapt into the fray.

I'll also point out that the second result of the search you posted is a study that attempts to quantify the phenomenon of 'justice sensitivity', and concludes by suggesting "that higher justice sensitivity in people with ADHD is a coping strategy to prevent the impression that they do not care about social norms and thus to avoid social conflicts and denigration." I don't think that's the the only possible interpretation, but it does speak to what I've described.

Nah, solidly a feature of either/both.

Technically speaking, it's both of these things. The melanistic changes to skin tone are a direct response to incoming UV damage, and is intended to be a protective mechanism.

There's a limit on how protective melanin will be for you, though, and it does not protect from every type of damage that the sun does.

UVB rays, for example, does the most DNA damage, but can be less obvious in its immediate impacts than UVA, which cause the bulk of the tanning (and burning) effect.

It remains to be seen if the negative impacts of sun exposure will outweigh the positives for each individual.

Every person will be better or worse at different aspects of compensation; regenerating collagen, scavenging free radicals and removing damaged cells are all governed by myriad factors like genetics, behaviour, environment, and so on.

It is actually important for your skin to get direct sunlight touching your skin in some way shape or form, but it's prudent to be in control of how long you do so for, what part of your body you expose (arm and leg skin is generally more durable than face and chest), and at what intensity.

As I understand it, a light tan is good if you can maintain it (relatively) safely, but a very dark tan stacks the odds higher on the side of cancer. No tan at all, though, leaves you very vulnerable to other forms of cancer- some things have to die to be renewed, after all- so I encourage any behaviours that limit overexposure of sunlight, and encourages cell turnover.

There are topical creams, supplements and behavioural changes you can try to encourage more cell turnover in your skin.

You might choose to use a light daily sunscreen for your face, neck and hands, but leave the rest of your body if you're just running a few errands outdoors that day.

Or you might wear a hat with a mesh covering when working outdoors that allows filtered light.

You might check the UV rating on your phone's weather app and choose to cover up with sunscreen if it's high, and so on and so forth.

Lots of info, I know, but I hope I've helped.

You gotta think diabolically.

My psychiatrist here in Australia cautioned me when doing online research into different ADHD medications to check the country of origin and avoid American sources where possible, as there is a huge anti-drug bias in US public and medical literature, and to stick to European/Australasian/other resources for more accurate information on mechanism of action and potential side-effects.

Boy, he was not wrong. If you go on many American websites that talk about the pros and cons of one stimulant or another, it'll overemphasise its propensity towards abuse and extensively list the side effects without bothering to explain how the drug actually works in the body.

You'll think it's an unbiased source, at first, because the website itself only seem to contain basic drug information (at a cursory glance) only to scroll to the bottom and find that the website is owned/sponsored by a rehab facility, of all places.

It'd seem like there's money to be made off of dx and prescribing ADHD meds, but we all know how fucking hard it is to dx'd in the first place, let alone prescribed something that works. It's not wildly profitable to prescribe drugs with heavy federal restrictions on it.

What is profitable, however, is to give someone 6 other psychiatric medications to treat ongoing mental health issues from undiagnosed ADHD, and the half dozen other co-morbid issues like substance abuse disorders, PTSD, anxiety/depression, bipolar disorders, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and so on- none of which you'll get much traction in treating without also addressing ADHD, and some of which may be misdiagnosed or more effectively treated when identifying the core disorder.

Why treat 1 condition when you can treat 7 ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Better yet, you can do that in an inpatient facility that their insurance can pay for, where you can convince them that their substance abuse issues are due to moral failing rather than an attempt at self-medicating a (widely speaking) treatable disorder, yet hypocritically prescribe them a cocktail of other psychiatric medications for their "moral failing".

That being said, I'm not saying all rehab facilities are bad or operate in this manner, but it is just one of many ways that the medical and pharmaceutical industry inadvertently or directly discourages appropriate ADHD treatment, additionally fuelled by the government's bigotry-fuelled war on drugs.

Idk about where the original poster is, but here in Australia, yeah there are different energy providers. They all take advantage of the same infrastructure (which is run by a singular company, by and large- Energex), but different companies will offer different rates or deals for your energy needs and your service area. It's supposed to provide some competition for the consumers, although I don't know how that works out on the vendors side of things.

Additional unfun fact, in case the implication goes by anyone; some few folks have discovered exactly how much it sucks when your immune system discovers your eyes and have, indeed, gone blind because of it :(

It sure is; here's a video demonstrating the effectiveness. Shutting your door can mean the difference between life and death. I encourage anyone to watch or re-watch this, just to hammer it home.

Unfortunately, my cats can't deal with shut doors, so if there's ever a fire in my apartment, at least we'll all go together 🙃

Yeah, same here (same med and dose, too, lol), but it got better with therapy. I was used to being at the mercy of my mood my whole life, so when I became chipper and productive almost all of the time, I felt an an unnatural sense of urgency to 'make hay while the sun shines', so to speak.

I couldn't feel comfortable sitting down and relaxing when I could still see so much to do and I had the ability to do it.

What I learned in therapy was that, whilst having been given ability to action my goals, none of my old self guidance techniques really applied.

If life is a raging river, all I could do in the past was try to yank my raft towards rocks to block or divert myself, with my bare hands. Hard, painful, rarely successful and never without consequences.

Now that I have medication, I've been given a oar, but I kept using it to refine my existing techniques under the false assumption that the rocks need to be hit in order to get anywhere- but hey, at least I don't have to use my hands anymore, right?

When I get to a calm bit of river I should use that time to rest, "-but why? I have a paddle, now! I should go hard whilst I still can, I'm so much further behind everyone else, and soon I'll be too exhausted to use the oar so I should use my energy while I can."

I'm beginning to learn that I can use the oar to guide myself before rocks and turns, to not exhaust myself early, and to know that the river winds as it will but I don't have to meet it with a headbutt (lol).

Lol that was a big ol' metaphor for cognitive behavioural therapy, but honestly I wouldn't be where I am today without it.

I take medication but I also suffer from chronic illness- many times my health issues render my medication barely effective, so when I first came to my psychologist 2 years ago to work with him, I told him that I wanted to learn behavioural patterns and frames of mind when I was well that would still help me when I was sick.

It's working very well, I'm proud to say 🙂