This scene from Run with the Wind is pure dopamine

Lately I'm hearing a lot about PDA and autism (PDA = pathological demand avoidance) and it's very good that people become more aware of it and are able to learn more about their own needs. However i often see it framed as like a type of autism, as in PDA autism that's just this thing that happens randomly.

But it isn't just a flavour of autism or something that comes from who-knows-what, it's a trauma response. To having forced yourself to do so much shit that goes against your needs, to feeling like you have to/having to force yourself to do things that go over your capacity, that disregard your needs and do harm to you. Including things where people don't even know their own needs and can't communicate them.

It's a trauma response caused by a lack of autonomy and accommodations (from yourself for whatever reason and your environment). To the point where having to do anything, hearing any demand causes this message of doom to your nervous system

And there is a very simple but not easy solution to it, with the potential of even a cure: Do not force yourself to do anything until your nervous system has healed. Now this is very hard to be able to do, which is the difficult part, because most of us aren't in an environment where we can do that, often have to work etc to survive and don't have people support us for a few years while we do not acquiesce to any demand. Additionally, many of us don't even know how to honor our needs because we trampled all over them for years, were forced to mask them and might not even know what they are or how to recognise them in ourselves.

A possible way to at least some healing of our nervous system is getting to know our needs and working on meeting them better, to try and build down the mask and only conciously use it where necessary but for example not at home or in a safe space, and try to have as many safe spaces to unmask as possible. You might only be able to start while completely alone but even that helps. Another point is decomposition time, soup time as i call it. Where we take however much time we have available, preferably at least a couple days, whenever we can, and do not force ourselves to do anything, even hobbies or getting out of pyjamas, except staying alive, and just drift like driftwood. This also massively helps with autistic burnout.

One additional tipp to recognising our suppressed needs and wants is that when you think "Oh i want this" but immediately shut yourself down: try to recognise this happening and ask yourself "Why can't i do this?" and if you don't have a good reason why not, try doing the thing you want. Might be something as simple as a juice packet or be some leftover rule from childhood. Similar for "I don't look forward to that": if you don't have a reason why you have to do it, and do it exactly this way, consider not doing it. For example you don't have to go to an outing you are very uncomfortable at. You don't have to do the dishes a certain way even tho it's awful sensory wise. Try finding those small impulses and listening to them. It gets easier over time.

This PDA trauma response is also one of the factors of executive dysfunction. Especially for things like when we can't even do our own hobbies or plans we had that we enjoy. Other reasons for executive dysfunction are difficulty transition tasks, sensory issues that make us avoid a task, pending decisions related to the tasks, unknown elements of a task, or not wanting to interrupt the current activity such as listening to music or watching a show (especially since these are big tools for escapism and distraction/coping to keep emotional distress at bay or otherwise aid in emotional regulation).

Btw this whole essay is built on my own experiences, i am not a psychologist or professionally qualified in some other way. So do take this with some critical thinking as my sources are "it's in my head" and we should never take (mental) health advice on the internet without thinking about whether it makes sense and applies to us, and do additional research if any questions or doubts or further thoughts come up.

Like for memes

The World of Sayuri: A Palace of Humility

Palace Ruler: Humilitas Kitagawa

Yusuke’s palace is a fledged out world of the Sayuri painting made up of colorful buildings and flowing landscapes. Everything is a perfect still, a perfect piece of inspiration for an artist’s landscape painting. Simultaneously made of real, or more accurately realistic seeming objects, and of careful brush strokes. A world that is never static and constantly reconfiguring itself to suit and inspire every single cognition housed within it. The palace was made as a hub of artistic expression with Yusuke encouraging his constituents to work on different pieces of art year round to be presented at the large and ornate Arts Festival where the pieces can be critiqued by other artists. This event is how the palace citizens negotiate their social standing, by 1. Creating iconic, masterful and deeply meaningful pieces of art or 2. Becoming the great critiques of art and helping to elevate the vision of other artists through meaningful advice and critique. The main goal of the festival as stated by Yusuke himself is to celebrate different forms of art and help the artists improve so that they can make better and better pieces.

Unfortunately for Yusuke his palace plans didn’t go as planned, a small group of the artists grew sharper tongues and their critiques became malicious. Rather than appreciating the pieces and looking at the ways the artist has either failed to fully portray their ideas or ways to improve their technique. This new group of artists began to champion Yusuke’s art as the best and deviation from his style and technique was seen as bad form. Their structured mindset became popular and started to spread among the other cognitions and Yusuke responded by sectioning off his palace into different tiers. This causes Yusuke to go from a passionate mentor of his subjects to a lackadaisical artist who only appears during the Arts Festival. To enter the deeper areas of the palace a test was set up where a painting by Yusuke would be presented and the person or people viewing the work would be tasked with critiquing the piece. Those who made critiques that furthered and met Yusuke’s goal for his palace would be allowed to go further. There were three palace segments and of course this means there are subsequently three tests.

The first test presents a painting titled “Of Sun and Wine” which depicts Yusuke drinking wine from Dionysus’ hands and basking in the light of Apollo’s sun. The second test presents a painting titled “Rebirth” which depicts the Shibuya Teikyu Building Accessway with warm sunlight shining through the accessway windows, a black cat with a yellow collar and blue eyes laying on the floor sleeping and absent of people and vehicles. The third and final test presents a painting titled “IS DESTINY MADNESS” which depicts Yusuke and Madarame’s face melding together with Yusuke’s face contorted into a terrified expression and Madarame’s smiling maniacally with sweat dripping from his forehead.

The first test has been passed by a majority of the palace goers, the second test has been passed by a minority of the palace goers and no one has been able to pass through the third test. The test presents the Infiltrators with a variety of ways to explore further into the palace depths. It is possible to get through the palace by never participating in the test instead fighting their way through the guards. However this will prevent them from gaining access to equipment that will let them enter rooms that give access to Yusuke’s will seeds. The rooms are themed around the artists: Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami and Chiharu Shiota.

Within Yusuke’s palace his treasure takes the form of an ornate paint brush hidden under the floorboards of his private painting room. When the Infiltrators arrive to steal the treasure the roof of the room opens and Yusuke snatches the brush away from them, the walls falling to open into a battlefield. The brush grows in size becoming the length of a spear and Yusuke unveils his persona, St Francis of Assisi.

Finally Yusuke himself appears in the palace reclining on floating clouds wearing a painted obi and an elongated Yukata that trains behind him. He wears his hair up with a topper to accentuate the hairstyle and a bit of hair covering one eye. Additionally he wears a face of makeup inspired by traditional Japanese makeup.

GUYS I GOT A GOOD GRADE ON MY CONLAW EXAM

There's something funny in hindsight about failing a class about disability due to an undiagnosed disability

i have exclusively written and read fanfiction for the past 3 months. and now i have to start reading and writing history academically again. i’m actually not sure if my brain can handle this pivot.

i've come to realize that my burnout is not that I'm burnt out on work/activities/etc. Bc even when I'm tired I'm still active in hobbies and creating things

I'm just tired of being taught. I'm tired of being graded and micromanaged and placed under the constant panopticon of instructors viewing my work. I want to be done with school. I want to do things just to do them.

this semester kept me busy so i havent been posting lately but here’s some hunters i’ve been doodling recently between assignments!!!

I just realized that this past month has given me so many people I need to credit in my thesis

IM. SO. TIREDDDDD *telekinesis throws everything around the room*

"i like you and i blame you for making me feel this way" he said

i still think about it

Now that the contest is over, I can post the illustrations I did for it! Originally we were using red, crimson, and burgundy for our color scheme, but we decided to switch to pink because we felt it was more inviting and sensual without being overtly all about... Anyway. I had a lot of fun making these, and they’re part of the reason I’m so set on pursuing illustration as my career now.

I fear that culturally we're too anti-intellectual for this conversation, but I wish we could talk about how academics are in a similar position to writers/actors/musicians in that we do all the labor for institutions like universities AND academic presses and do not get the pay, treatment, or residuals that we deserve while it all gets funneled to the higher up admin and for-profit entities

one thing abt being disabled/chronically ill that some people don’t get is that sometimes body maintenance that ensures you have the absolute minimum amount of function can also be something that takes away a lot of control and autonomy. you can argue till the cows come home that making those decisions to try and help yourself (or realistically to try to make sure things aren’t worse than they already are) is something that exhibits control and autonomy and stuff, but they can be so limiting in practice because they’re things that take up so much time but have to be done to do anything else