The lighter side of ADHD
I've heard of therapists recommending you name your brain - particularly someone you dislike - so that you can separate yourself from the part of you that runs amok.
Fuckin' Greg's at it again, won't let me sleep until I check to see if the door's locked for the seventh time. Boy, I hate that guy.
Idk if making my brain a literal antagonist isa smart move. Maybe try to accept it, like with Badeline in Celeste?
My level of antagonism depends on how self-destructive brain wants to be.
Brain wants me to eat a whole cheesecake even though lactose doesn't always agree with me. Okay, well, Brain wants me to be happy and also acquire those sweet, sweet calories, I respect that.
Brain wants me to vividly imagine sticking a knife in my belly while I'm chopping vegetables for dinner. Sorry Brain, you're kind of a dick.
The call of the void...
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.
The brain runs predictive models like this as a diagnostic self-check. The fact that you react with disgust and disdain to its hypothetical presentation means you are functioning within operational parameters. Ideally, one might still have sufficient agency and executive function to recognize it's NOT okay if you DON'T recoil in revulsion from these ideations. Like, when I checked myself into a psych ward 11 years ago after recognizing "Wait, picturing killing myself started feeling GOOD? Uh oh..."
Imagine it's a kitty that sometimes bites out of instinct, because it doesn't know any better. But definetly not due to malice.
I love seeing Celeste referenced casually in conversation <3 Lemmy fuckin rules
I personify my ADHD symptoms as “the goblin”
The ADHD goblin steals memories, tells me to eat when in bored, tells me that every minor rejection is a major judgement against me, and all the other symptoms I can’t think of right now.
Fucking Greg sharing extremist views and explicit calls for violence on the internet again, ugh
Ooh, I'm gonna call mine Brian!
Have you ever thought... What if Greg is the one who should be here and this is how he tries to fight for control while the concept of self you have is the extra one?
I don't like this naming your brain idea at all.
I think most cognitive therapy is fundamentally about separation of thought and action, which I suppose might naturally lead to feeling like your brain (thoughts) are a separate entity, because you have to detach from them.
I have OCD; If I were my thoughts, I'd be a terrible person.
I don't think this is an ADHD thing. Brains delude us into false senses of control in all kinds of ways. For example, withdrawal reflexes like jerking a hand back from a too-hot surface are carried out by neurons in the spinal cord before the too-hot signal has even traveled to the brain - but we feel as if that jerk was a conscious decision. Recognizing that fake sense of control is an illusion is helpful in figuring out what few levers we do have and learning to use them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflex_arc
The brain will receive the input while the reflex is being carried out and the analysis of the signal takes place after the reflex action.
Yeah. Everyone I ever talked to refers to their brain in third person.
Most of my friends have at least a touch of adhd, autism, or usually both.
Book 2 in the Children of Time series has a civilization of genetically modified octopuses. They have a sort of dual intelligence, with their more conscious mind handling big ideas and emotions while their arms host a distributed intelligence that handles stuff like math and problem solving, and the two function independently and are only somewhat aware of each other.
They are incredibly alien and yet so very relatable. It was weird listening to the description of how their minds work on two different levels at once and realizing that this was coming from an audiobook that I was using to keep one half of my brain occupied while the other half gets work done.
The brain has chemical issues that do stuff against our will.
When your leg gets a cramp, you aren't doing that.
It's doing stuff that we don't want.
We are DESPERATE TO STOP IT, BUT IT STILL HAPPENS, NO MATTER WHAT WE DO.
Of COURSE it doesn't feel like it's us. We exist in spite of the substrate upon which we exist.
We are no more our brains than we are the dirt our bodies live on--and those who DO believe that soil == personal identity are literally fascists so let's not even pretend to entertain that fucking bullshit.
Uhm... Hate to fit your strange definition of fascism, but you absolutely are the dirt, and the oxygen in the atmosphere, and the food you have eaten and are yet to eat.
I recommend you read about Alan Watts' Organism-Environment theory. It posits that you cannot separate the biosphere an organism lives in from the organism itself. That the entire system as a whole is one unit and that each organism within it is as an organ is to said organism. The air, breath, food, waste, chemical processes, etc. do not exist within a barrier contained by skin. You are more than a meatbag propped up by bones sustained by external fuel.
Now conciousness... That's another beast, and those who tie individual conscious agents to a national identity or some other arbitrary box do absolutely have ulterior motives. Namely control and oppression.
Edit: After re-reading your argument, I agree. Personal identity is a product of conscious agents, not the physical makeup of our biosphere, thought physical observations of the world do play into personal identity.
Anyone who meditates realizes they don't control their minds anymore than they can control the sounds their ears hear.
Exactly!
i don’t believe in free will so i’m not certain we control much of anything. i’ve always thought of myself as the only supervisor in the panopticon that is me. i can observe and understand and process and form connections, but choices are made for me at the subconscious level before i am even aware of them. as the supervisor i can influence the operation of the panopticon but i cannot control it. i obtain information based on experiences and use logic and reasoning to take it apart.
anyway, fuck my dumb brain. that dude sucks.
Tor Norretranders agrees with you. You should read The User Illusion if you haven't already.
ah cool. i was certain others came to a similar conclusion but no, never heard of that book or its author. thanks! i’ll check into it first. i’ve enjoyed consuming information about consciousness and neuroscience.. just feel this way based on all i’ve learned and even experience.
I don't think anyone is in control of their brain. Ever tried to decide what your next thought was going to be? They arise as a consequence of conditions, not from volition.
Edit: grammar
Yeah I'm totally not. Inside me there are two arguing ducks, one of which is in command of my body at a time.
I tend to journal or write about experiences in the second person "You noticed how x...".
My brain may be an asshole, but it’s not nearly as bad as past me. That guy’s a real dick, always leaving all this work for me to do. Fortunately, I can just leave it all for future me.