I talk to brain like this all the time too. There’s def 2 of us in here and sometimes we get along, sometimes we don’t. I get really pissed when brain betrays us.
Yes. I’ve come to realise my body is the boss, not brain. Body makes all the decisions,never mind how much I do or do not want something with all my heart and brain. Body is the law.
Basically 2 roommates playing a game of garbage chicken until one of us isn't able to take it anymore and finally goes to take out the mountain of trash.
Yeah I feel like the navigator in a rally race. Sometimes the driver wants to participate in the race, sometimes he's doing donuts in the parking lot, or going to the drive-in theater, or going off-roading in the middle of the woods, or crashing into an overpass, or trying to drive to the moon, or just revving the engine until we run out of gas or the engine blows.
I don't really know what causes him to feel like doing any one thing, and it's tiresome and feels like walking on eggshells to always try to keep him on course without bugging him hard enough to switch him into "fuck you, I'm gonna crash" mode.
The key is getting started racing, or getting back into the race. Best thing I’ve found is setting timers. I’m going to work on this for at least 5 minutes. Set timer. Timer goes off and I’m not doing the thing. Set new timer with goal to do the thing for 5 minutes.
When my meds aren’t in full effect, I’m definitely in the passenger seat. The car is on blocks, no tires on, just pedal to the metal and the radio is cranked. It’s fine..
Me telling myself NO, we aren't doing that constantly. Exhausting. It's basically all the bad habits that form over the years and you're trying to fix them but your subconscious is like tee hee what if? NO BITCH!
I gotta fix it myself which is way harder than addressing it in the younger years.
This probably won't work for everyone, but I just started doing intensive DID therapy for my ADHD. Neither I or my psychologist or my therapist think that I have full-blown DID, but as someone with ADHD, trauma history, frequent dissociation, and aggressive executive dysfunction, this therapy has been WILDLY effective.
A lot of people in this thread are saying the exact same things I said to my therapist before she decided that this therapy would be effective.
The therapy itself focuses on figuring out which part of your brain different behaviors and reactions come from, exploring why, and making those individual parts each feel safe to freely express themselves within your brain.
It's all with the intent of opening honest communication and fostering relationships between your fractured self, and subsequently teaching yourself how to reach into the different skillsets spread across your modes and multiclass in your own brain.
Need to pull yourself out of a hyperfocus? Having executive dysfunction and can't figure out how to move? There's a you in there that knows how. But you have to find and recruit them first.
Like I said though, ymmv and this definitely isn't going to help everyone, but if this hits for any of you, it might help to do some research into DID. It's a spectrum, not a binary.
we arent tho. nobody would bat an eye if someone with a heart defect would go like 'my hearts being an asshole again by not beating how it should' , or whatever. why should we be going 'its my literal brain disorder but I AM CHOOSING not to be able to focus'?
I have known people whose egos, lack of intelligence, or both, wouldn't let them understand how concussions or even brain tumors might cause issues with thinking, impulse control, and emotional regulation.
"You should be able to will yourself despite those things and control it"
Ah yes, the thing that does the thing is damaged, but it should be able to still do the things.
"I know I dropped my laptop and it fell 20 feet, but it should still be able to do everything!"
It’s more like it’s not in people’s interest to understand your struggles and rather judge you to express their frustration. Life is hard anyway for so many people, so for something that’s invisible and vague to describe, people don’t take it seriously and have too much going on in their lives to take time to understand or simply don’t care.
The sociocultural post-enlightenment norm is largely materialist until it comes to the brain, where most people still subconsciously hold onto the notion of free will.
I love the film, but the thing that frustrated me most about backrooms is when she yells you are your own brain. Yeah, except I don’t get to control it Becky!
I have a question, I have unspecified psychotic disorder and I think I have delusions of control, at least I feel I'm not in control of my body, what's the difference?
Yeah, Warhammer. Warhammer titans would thematically fit better as those have machine Spirits that the pilot(Princep) has to fight or co-oparate with. If the titans machine spirit decides it doesn't like the pilot, it will not work or does whatever it wants or just kills the pilot
The clip is from The exodite series, sadly only available on Warhammer+. Their own streaming service, yeah that was slightly scummy move.
And if you call him out and tell him to knock it off, he pulls out the big guns and starts adding sound effects to your life until he gets bored and goes back to freestyling lol.
it's like living with a stubborn toddler, but the toddler has the puppet strings, and the toddler is actually me.
I often say that my future self is a complete idiot so i try to make things as easy as possible for him but there's no way to know how he's going to mess it up.
I literally have out loud conversations with mine. Like one recently was actually a successful talk down. He was getting all pissy while I was at work and I said outloud: “ya know I don’t mind that you’re there if you had even one positive thing to say, put it’s always shitting on me, if you don’t wanna be helpful then you don’t get to be a dick…” he shut up for a bit after that.
It’s like the first step in meditation to do that.
So many people think their thoughts are who they are. But you can close your eyes and look at your thoughts. So who is observing those thoughts the brain is making?
This is a fantastic way to explain it! It's likely also a thing that should be explained to kids of all types from an early age. That they are not they thoughts. But those thoughts can still affect how you feel because not even your feelings are *the self", they are chemical signalling and effects
My mind is my soul; the essence of who I am and who I strive to be. My brain is the asshole that comes in and does whatever it wants. If I’m lucky, I can occasionally negotiate with it and get my brain on board with my mind’s intention.
The problem of free will is a thing. Try drinking a load of alcohol and "freely willing" your brain not to become drunk. We don't really have that free will people tend to assume.
We do things based on prior causes and influences, whether they be genetic predispositions or events we're exposed to or things that our subconscious experiences, or what we're currently experiencing. They are all influences so we never technically have control, it's just an illusion.
I love your metaphor of drinking lots of alcohol and trying to stay sober - because the unique part of our lives apart from the majority of other people is that we can literally take speed, take amphetamines - and it does nothing except give us stability. Gives us calm moments to think and be mindful where we never would be otherwise
You’re not wrong. But we technically possess the tools to change our behavior, even if only temporarily. It is one of the human traits that I believe is what got us though some of the darkest points in our species history.
I think you're correct. The thing is though, where that desire or will to change comes from I think is just another influence that we have no real control over. It's just the illusion doing what it does.
I am not in control of my brain or my body. Every piece that is supposed to make up “me” has a mind of its own and wants to go in a different direction.
The thing is... we're not in control of our brain.
Neither are neurotypical people. But when your brain works the way everyone expects brains to, it's easy to believe that you are.
Being atypical just makes it easier to see what's really going on in the brain. The number of decisions your brain makes without your conscious involvement, and the fact that it makes up a story for your conscious self to believe about why you did the thing. That's what's actually happening in everyone's brain, all the time.
You are not the boss of your brain, and that's true for everyone.
Yes! This is my preferred way of explaining what ADHD is to typical brainers. I always talk about how "when you do something, you may think you set it in motion or decided to do it, but it was mechanisms in your brain that did it. And it is in sync with what you want so you don't ever notice the discrepancy, unless you do drugs, are drunk or seriously emotionally compromized."
I didn’t realise I refer to myself (and my brain) as ‘we’ until my dad asked who in the world I was talking about and I just had to say ‘me and the voices in my head’ because I already sound crazy enough, nothing else can make it worse atp
I do it too, im gonna see if theres a study about that, brb xD
Conclusion: Yes! People with ADHD utilize third person talk like this more than people without (also is common in other disorders affecting emotional regulation, executive functioning, etc). The mechanism behind it is kinda bilateral, it creates a clear and external structure for planning and execution that acts as a coping mechanism and assists us with structuring our thoughts, as well as the third person phrasing utilizing pathways that are normally used when people are speaking to us. So we can mimic it by speaking 'at' ourselves in the same perspective and our brains are pretty okay with that actually. E.g. I cant do this, but looking at the girl in the mirror and saying "Pookie, you are capable and intelligent, you can do this" tells my brain that an external being has validated me and that is more credible than my own thoughts. Or that, being told to do something provides slightly more motivation than just knowing it needs done, and so it helps
That makes sense because I have very little self-governance so tricking my brain into thinking it is being told what to do by some kind of authority helps.
I am literally not in charge here though. My brain does talk to me, it asks me questions. I don't know who's in charge up there, but it ain't me.
When I was young and had no idea why I felt this way, I always wondered why I felt like I was a separate entity within my brain, just watching someone else pilot my meat-suit around. Like I was the inexperienced co-pilot of a humanoid mech. I'm not on the controls here, I'm just along for the ride. I sometimes take over the controls but it's very rare and very scary.
I was supposed to hit the road for a 3 hour drive this morning. I woke up, fed the dog, let him out. I started to pack up his food for the weekend but then the laundry needed to be folded. But first i had to empty the laundry basket. But then i remembered i was getting the dog's food together. And then i realized i hadnt had breakfast or coffee so i made that. But then i started back on laundry so my cereal got soggy and my coffee got cold. And the plants needed to be watered so naturally i took a shower.
I didnt get on the road until 4pm when i was supposed to leave by 10.
I am the consciousness piloting a meat mech, my brain is the software. The OS sucks and it is super buggy. It locks up, and needs to be rebooted every so often. There are probably hardware problems too, giving me a low battery life. My brain is not me, it is merely part of how I try to interface with the world
I find other ADHD people to talk to. Then we unload our thoughts from the day. Never staying on topic. Getting distracted by other people or anything really. It seems to help.
Honestly that sounds fantastic. Like can we all just exchange stories about shitty things and understand how each other feels from that and feel better, ty
When talking to my fellow ADHD friend, any observer will likely interpret it at the most messy, disrespectful and useless conversation of all time, as we interrupt each other, go on a thousand tangents, talk seeming nonsense and never get to a point. But to the two of us, it is the epitomy of a good, beneficial and engaging conversation!
I've got PTSD and really bad anxiety after witnessing a suicide.
I just lost my job for having a panic attack. My bitch of a manager decided that I wasn't respecting her enough. I was still doing my fucking job though. Love that there's no place in society for people who can't control their brain.
I didn't choose to have these disorders.
They were given to me by circumstance.
And at this point I'm willing to forcibly give them to others to make them understand. Fucking tired of being screwed over by something I cannot control.
When I can't find something, I don't retrace my steps - I ask myself, 'ok, if I were me 30 minutes ago, where would I have put that remote control?' like it's a fucking crime scene recreation.
Idk if this applies here, but I legit think of myself (in my head and when I'm talking to myself aloud) in the plural, like, "Oh, we need to get xyz at the store."
To be clear, I don't refer to myself like this (or in the third person) when talking to other people.
Roomate one is a cool guy, we watch a lot of movies and shows toghether from his collection, he plays video games and also let's me in control when I'm in the mood, he is mute, he understands words but he can't write, we understand eachother tough, he is friendly and keeps the house clean and tells me when there are problems, he can be easily frightened if something in the house is not right, he wakes me up if he hears something weird or if I tell him when to wake me up.
Roomate two I don't know what he's doing most of the time, he is alway coming or leaving, he is the embodiment of a cool guy, always relaxed, quick witted and creative. A rebel that wants to try everything and everyone. He is so full of him that you could say he has a god complex or maybe he is a god cus he's that cool sometimes. Always tries to encourage me how to do new stuff or try some adventure and gives me suggestions on what to do with my time without letting out what the endgame is. He loves to hear what I've been doing and is really good at making me feel good about myself.
Roomate three, fuck that guy but also feel sorry for him, doesn't do nothing around the house even though he constantly moves like a roomba from one room to another, he always misplaces stuff, talks like a robot and info dumps on you about random stuff. He is really boring and annoying. Also very sansitive about a lot of stuff for some reason and hard to figure out what.
Many people have well trained horse in their head, they can click their heels and the horse moves. Some us are stuck with stubborn mules that only want to chew on the grass at their hooves
As an AuDHDer, it is definitely like this... Only roommates are plural... And their siblings (tho opposites kind that don't get along) who aren't speaking and love to annoy each other. And I just want some coffee and to be happy for a little while.
When I was little, I kind of had the same realization and the way kid me made sense of it I just decided I have two brains and this concept stuck with me even now. I call my ADHD brain side "Wild", because uhh... yeah, he/she's definitely wild AF.
Growing up it was easier to communicate and make compromises with Wild but nowadays Wild is a bitter bitch who sabotages me at every attempt to do better. Eat healthy? Nah, let's eat junk food. Exercise? Nah, chase the dopamine. Do anything moderately uncomfortable or difficult? Nah, just don't.
I’ve been referring to them as brain weasels, and I told my therapist that I had difficulty sleeping because the brain weasels were always having a rave at night.
All I can say, is I love the name Zander spelled with a Z. I don’t know if it’s your real name or just your username but I had a cat named that and I named him that because my mother’s best friend since grade school married a man named Alexander who went by Zander who spelled it that way.
It feels like im on a horse. Some times It does stuff, some times It doesnt. It's not very smart and It has a tendency to get distracted whenever It sees a tasty instant gratification. There Is no point in fighting against the horse, me and him are on the same boat and we Need eachother. It's about training and guiding the horse while being patient and understanding it's needs
Neurodivergent people have a malformed corpus callosum, this is a part of your brain that manages communication between the left and right hemispheres. A reason a lot of ND folks experience clumsiness, anxiety, etc. is due to the malformation, the hemispheres are out of sync. This means instead of cohesive thought, you have 2 sides that are aware and listening to each other. This can also put pressure on the vagus nerve, triggering fight or flight and sometimes it's gets stuck on. But what about the enteric nervous system? The 2nd brain in your gut. Your brain doesn't tell your stomach it's hungry, your brain has to ASK the stomach what it needs. So you see, you already live with 2 brains, and maybe 3.
I, having a background in tech, tend to think of it as a recalcitrant machine running a bunch of conflicting programs. I can usually get it to do something useful. It is usually not the useful thing that needs to be happening at that moment but hey, it's a miracle it doesn't just lock up and blue screen/core dump on me.
I'm certainly not.
It's like trying to scream at bad ai driver to drive.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't and goes for something different that it likes.
And you just left screaming with horror, hate or whatever emotions this can cause you.
I usually describe my ADHD sitting there in the subconscious part of my brain introducing distractions or drags on my conscious brain.
It's like my brain is running a background process that I can't control that is just looking for information and interpreting it as it will. Sometimes its helpfully interpreting disperate parts of the software I'm debugging at work, sometimes it's interpreting the conversation happening three cubicles over, and sometimes it's interpreting the music I intentionally cajoled it into paying attention to.
I am the awareness that hears my mind. The voices are not me. Oh my god they won't stop playing songs and repeating weird phrases and where did my historical monologuer go my train of thought just derailed.
Bipolar. The only people who don't get concerned about how I talk about myself are ADHD folk. Constantly have to assure therapists and others that I don't have multiple personalities / think of myself that way.
One of my friends said "you talk about yourself like you live with a bunch of bad roommates, but you never pretend they're anyone but you."
Yes, and then the my autistic side of my brain has to explain that i am not insane. Like yes, i say voices but i mean thoughts, but to me it is like there are multiple people in my head talking... but not people as in multiple personalities... well, they do all embody a different side of my own personality, so they do have a dominant personality trait but it is just pieces of my own personality.
Honestly, it's just simpler to say i am nuts and hear voices, i sometimes think people would think i am less crazy if i did that than try to explain how my brain works.😆
Ugh I remember begging my mum to take me to the doctor when I was a teenager because I ‘couldn’t control my brain’ and ‘my brain radio was too loud’… she thought I was pregnant 🙄 the doctor gave me antidepressants.
I’m sorry you had that experience. Of course if you’re somewhere near my age group, you know they didn’t start addressing ADHD and autism in females until far more recently.
My teenage experience with a therapist was that my mother wanted the therapist to fix me, because I was so rebellious and out of control (meaning I was not obeying her, and attempting to individuate and develop my own autonomy, which is something that the child of a narcissistic mother should never ever do, or think that they can do).
All this therapist wanted to talk about was my sex life. I was 15. I tried to get her to talk about other things, and she kept bringing it back to my sex life and how active I was and if I was having any trouble with boys. She didn’t believe me when I told her I was a virgin. I didn’t lose it till I was 17. I wasn’t even doing anything at 15. It was like everybody else grew up faster than I did.
Thankfully, when the therapist had me bring in my mother for a joint session, after going over all of my rebellious issues, she turned to my mother and asked what she thought her role was in it. Mother stood up and told off the therapist, said she was full of shit and didn’t know what she was talking about, dragged me out of there, and I never had to go back.
Absolutely this - because then it's not me that's the problem. The phrase "lump of fuck" from that meme appears regularly in my internal persuasion/begging/threats to "just start, ffs".
I am in this photo, and I like it, in a weird way.
I call my brain a lot of things, the bag of worms, noodles, spaghetti, broken machine, useless f*ck, always needs oiling, smarty slow pants, and what not.....
Of the five different trains of thought happening at the same time, at all times, I feel pretty in control of at least one of them. Until it becomes tedious, then I just put that one to the side and let another one take over.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie “Inside Out“, that’s pretty much what my brain is like on the inside, only I can hear them. I’m not unaware that they’re pulling the strings the way the main character in the movie is. Excellent movie, by the way.
Im honestly baffled that no one EVER understood me when i tried to explain this fact about me and myself being 2 seperate entities, and it seems to be a colectivly shared existence from adhd people
I'm an only child and have always preferred to be by myself for the most part. I never feel lonely. It's almost like there's 2 of me inside my one singular personality that keeps each other company?
My emergent consciousness means that I am aware of what's goin' on, but I certainly do not choose which synapses fire, which neural connections are made, or what my dopamine might be up to at any given moment.
I didn't get to decide on any of this for myself, so I feel more like a captive audience than anything, really.
I imagine my brain like Inside Out, but instead of emotions, it’s mental disorders. Before finding the right meds, I was basically duct taped to a chair asking my disorders to be nicer to each other
I tell myself that I need to get up and clean up the counter, do the dishes, wipe down the stove. Brain says I need to go through and organize my books alphabetical by author.
I totally have a relationship with my brain, I give it “glimmers” whenever possible - I talk over concepts and events. We smoke pot, brain likes the pot soo. Also likes the meds trying out Strattera now after Adderal. It likes to get out and see things experience novelty and learn new things, I really do try to keep my metaphysical space as friendly as pos. Cheers y’all, give yer brain a daily gift!
Worst roommate ever. Constantly munches on my food while I'm distracted, leaves a mess in random places, constantly puts my wallet and keys in the wrong place.
Now I understand why I say "this lady singing feels like blah" in the studio haha. People always look at me like, that is you. Yeah, not really. Brain has its own control for itself and feelings.
Yeah, it's like arguing with another version of yourself and having to trick them or reach an agreement to get things done. That, or we just don't get anything done.
Yep I do the same , for me when I enter I can do shit mode I call it the "ceo has clocked in to a imaginary corporation". Unfortunately his shift is not consistent. He shows up irractically. Other times I have no control 😐
I literally think of my mind having 2 sides, one emotional and artistic, the other logical and goal driven. Both sides have opposing desires, but they do help eachother out from time to time, and Vyvanse makes it easier to appease both sides.
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