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The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

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Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#191

Post by hluska »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #87
stavros wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, why? "Illness" sometimes is about the quantity, not the quality. If you enjoy the odd glass of wine once a week, you're fine, if you drink every hour of the day, not so fine.

But that's an orthogonal concern. Two people can easily display exactly the same quantity of, shall we say, ADHD-like tendencies. If one of them is a success for separate reasons, and the other one is a failure for separate reasons, why do we want to say that the failure, in addition to his other problems, also has ADHD? What do we learn from that? If the success has a lot more ADHD-tendency than the failure, how do…

What if you try looking at it like this:

You have two people with ADHD-like tendencies. One person feels they have found their own ways to adapt to their ADHD-like tendencies and that they are successful. Another person feels that they have not found ways to adapt to their ADHD-like tendencies and their life could be better if they found ways to adapt.

In this case, the actual magnitude is less important than how individuals adapt.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#192

Post by canjobear »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #133
kdmccormick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. Let me be concrete. I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sometimes I feel axnious and euphoric, other times depressed and lethargic, both at extremes noticably deviant from the average person. This has caused all sorts of turbulence and distress in my personal and academic life. Being diagnosed allowed me access to therapy and prescriptions. There exist plenty of people who oscillate…

So when you find a person whose highs are higher than yours, and whose lows are lower than yours, and whose life is better than yours, that person doesn't have bipolar disorder, because they're not experiencing problems. Which makes the idea of "bipolar disorder" meaningless. That person demonstrates that your problems are not caused by bipolar disorder. But the disorder is defined by you having problems, even though…

Mental disorders are an interaction of a person's characteristics and the environment they are in. That doesn't make them meaningless.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#193

Post by nitrogen »

verall wrote: post #118
nitrogen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors have to play a whole metagame I really detest this idea that blatant manipulation is necessary from people we are supposed to be able trust. How about this instead, where the doctor provides information and a plan of action instead of manipulation: Doctor 3: "Stomach problems are common, they may or may not be caused by the most popular triggers, and they might go away on their own by coincidence. Here's the…

Plenty of doctors do explain all of this, but people hear what they want: did the doc affirm or contest my theory? Did they "do anything"? (recommend surgery, prescription, diet, etc)

I wonder if it would help if the plan of action was always conveyed in written form, as well as verbal.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#194

Post by agency »

zentiggr wrote: post #75
willcipriano wrote: post #35

I had a weird tick as a kid where anytime someone said something to me I had to mentally adjust the length of the statement so the number of words was divisible by 5. So for example if you said "Are you going to school today?" I'd add "my good friend, Will" in my mind. It drove me nuts, but I was unable to stop. Then one day it just went away. Still have no idea what that was but it plagued most of my childhood. I re…

I've had a habit for my entire adult life, of sorting the letters of words alphabetically in my head. The longer the word the better. It's even better when the sorted letters turn out to make any sort of repetitive pattern. And I count stairs, unless I specifically override the internal voice and say "1", "1", "1", "1,".... to myself.

I don’t mean to be glib but are you really good at Scrabble? I believe the strategy at the competitive level is similar to what you’ve described: Memorizing essentially an index of words by the alphabetized sequence of letters, then you keep your tiles in alphabetical order and “look them up”

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#195

Post by failwhaleshark »

robotresearcher wrote: post #138
aspyct wrote: post #83

I personally have problems with doors, and stuff that should be locked. I can never be sure I locked properly. Totally did backtrack unreasonable distances just to check if I had closed the door. It's all fine when it's my door. Worst case scenario, I get robbed. However it's more of a problem when it's someone else's door. Worst case scenario, they get robbed, and that's a different story. Or pets get out... Obvious…

There's a very helpful method for being confident that you did something right, and while it may not be enough for people with compulsive disorders, it's great for many situations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling I think it works by recruiting more of your body & brain to the task of attending to something. Maybe the anxious could video themselves doing it, and watch it back later.

"Putting the keys in my left pocket" Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm

- Samuel L. Jackson's character in Long Kiss Goodnight

I also do this for keys, wallet, phone, sunglasses, and have Tile on everything. ADHD = expert mob cleaner: body disposal-division

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#197

Post by SerLava »

bombcar wrote: post #173
function_seven wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kinda funny, because I've had the opposite outcome. Well, "ish", because my situation isn't directly comparable. When I'd leave the house in the morning, there were always five things I needed to have with me: Wallet, phone, badge, glasses, and smokes. Once a month or so I'd get to work and realize I had left one of these at home. It was a tragedy to be caught an hour from home without my phone or glasses. It…

Two solutions I’ve used for similar are to tie the items to something I NEED - such as connect them to car keys - or get multiple copies. Not always going to work but if I need to remember to bring a bag with me I put my car keys in the bag; harder to forget.

Yeah I got a phone case with a card slot and it makes it so so much easier

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#198

Post by sokoloff »

robotresearcher wrote: post #138
aspyct wrote: post #83

I personally have problems with doors, and stuff that should be locked. I can never be sure I locked properly. Totally did backtrack unreasonable distances just to check if I had closed the door. It's all fine when it's my door. Worst case scenario, I get robbed. However it's more of a problem when it's someone else's door. Worst case scenario, they get robbed, and that's a different story. Or pets get out... Obvious…

There's a very helpful method for being confident that you did something right, and while it may not be enough for people with compulsive disorders, it's great for many situations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling I think it works by recruiting more of your body & brain to the task of attending to something. Maybe the anxious could video themselves doing it, and watch it back later.

I have experienced a (partial) failure of this. On the takeoff roll, there’s a call out for “airspeed alive”. One day after leaving the airplane parked outside for a long weekend, I dutifully looked at a dead airspeed indicator and called out “airspeed alive” followed shortly by realizing the mistake and aborting the takeoff, but there’s a danger of looking and “seeing” what’s expected but not actually there.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#199

Post by SerLava »

cperciva wrote: post #159
larsiusprime wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a weirder version of this problem that's less debilitating but annoys people who live with me -- if I pass by a door I will automatically lock it with no memory of having done so, even seconds after. Like kleptomania but for locking doors. If I'm within five feet of a door it's as if a magic force emanates from my body to lock it as far as my own awareness is concerned. One of my roommates in college was carry…

My version of this is turning lights on. I enter a room and immediately turn the lights on, but I'm neither aware of turning them on nor aware of them being on, so I don't turn them off when I leave. Drives my wife crazy.

My wife used to turn off all the lights before we both ran to work, but she would usually start doing it when I was half naked and looking for my keys wallet and phone.

I replaced everything with LEDs and stressed that the price of leaving the lights on was less than being 2 minutes later to work and absolutely nothing compared to getting fired for being late.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#200

Post by SerLava »

kdmccormick wrote: post #129
thaumasiotes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absolutely not how strokes and broken bones are diagnosed. If one of your bones breaks, you have a broken bone. Whether it hurts, or stops you from doing things you'd like to do, is an unrelated question.

I think you're missing the point. Let me be concrete. I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sometimes I feel axnious and euphoric, other times depressed and lethargic, both at extremes noticably deviant from the average person. This has caused all sorts of turbulence and distress in my personal and academic life. Being diagnosed allowed me access to therapy and prescriptions. There exist plenty of people who oscillate…

But also if you have schizophrenia, but all the people around you -for some reason- have chosen you at random to aggressively reward your schizophrenia and lavish you while also threatening that if the illusions stop, they will kill you, then schizophrenia really isn't a problem, in fact it's the best thing that ever happened to you. Saves your life every day.

But it's still a thing. Maybe you can't refer to it as a disorder, but you are hallucinating stuff. It's a set of material facts about your mental state.

Some of Donald Trump's various disorders have objectively rewarded him, generously. But he has those conditions. He doesn't not have narcissism just because his narcissism is good for his bottom line.

I think the issue is that medical criteria are functional- what should doctors do about this. If it's not even bad, they shouldn't do anything! And this gets translated as "nothing is there to treat" but shouldn't be translated as "nothing is there to notice"

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