Through the Rain

The Right Word   I am listening to a podcast called On Purpose with Jay Shetty. I’ve been listening to several of Jay Shetty’s works now, and he’s a person of interest for me. He has a lot of interesting things to say about being present and saying the right words at the right time. It’s also a bunch of therapy type stuff which is right up my alley. My therapist sent me this podcast because I asked her about communication because I’ve been having extra trouble communicating since my diagnosis back in March, but mostly with the people I know the best. The episode I believe is called “You Are Not Responsible”, and of course it’s about things you are not responsible for, one of which is helping other people. I know, I know. I’m super guilty of this. I’ve been trying to work on it. I even just stopped communicating to people altogether “until I could get a handle on it.” That’s a bunch of crap, right? You can’t just “get a handle on something” without trial and error! So with a l...

Why Can’t We Be Friends   I spent so much time trying to be friends with people that for the first time last night, I called myself an extrovert, and it seemed true in the moment. I want to connect with people, yes on a deeper level, but also on a positive note, whether that be a smile and a good morning or whatever. I may not be the life of the party, but my facial expressions always seemed to make me one of the most dramatic when I had something to say. What I wanted to say was this morning I happened to stop chasing friendship, and it found me. I started a few conversations with guys from the men’s chat from the NeuroSpicy Community group last night, and one lives in Australia, so of course the conversation ran a little later because he’s 14 hours ahead of me. 9pm my time was 11am the next morning for him. Then the next morning for me was the evening for him. We talked about autism and how it affects our health. He has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and a lot of our symptoms ov...

Yeah, But Is It Nice? I am sorry. I have used this platform in an irresponsible way and must apologize. All of what I said in my last post was true, but one thing that was taught in Partial Hospitalization when asking for honesty is posing the question is it nice, and it was not nice. Now, will I ever apologize for trying to defend a minority even if some of my information is off or needs tweaked? I will never stoop down and make sure to sugar-coat to people who have no empathy towards those who spew nonsense towards a minority and call it “facts.” But these weren’t people like that. These were people who thought they were getting the truth and weren’t. They were getting more questions, more “one-way assumptions” and instead of researching it themselves, they thought they had all the information. They trusted what was being told to them. And it pissed me off.  Several things pissed me off. Not only can we apparently not trust the “news” to handle facts anymore and give us complete ...

Wait, What? Two days of nobody reading my blog and my self-esteem has crumbled to the ground. Haha. I just wanted a hundred views, and you surpassed that in a week, so I am very impressed with you all1 You’ve made my dreams come true! You’ve made me feel heard! “Drunk Uncle Boundaries” itself got the most views of any post so far! But you didn’t keep me accountable. It’s okay. It’s the holidays. All bets are off when it’s the holidays! I returned from my crazy trip less than an hour ago, and it was a wild ride. I think I managed to accidentally or on purpose offend almost everyone in my family who I tried setting up boundaries with. I forgot one of the most important things about boundaries: I can’t control other people. I wanted to help everyone, and in trying to help everyone, I noticed bad things that had been happening for decades, and those weren’t going to change, no matter what therapeutic insight I threw their way. They weren’t looking for it. They weren’t open to it. And they ...

Did That Seriously Come Out of Their Mouth? We all have that friend or family member who we wince when cornered by. They lock eyes, and it seems the conversation never ends. Worse, it seems like they have opposite views as you do, but they don’t care. They just nod their heads until you nod your head and pretend like you’re enjoying the conversation. Then they take that as their cue to continue for half an hour more. If someone tries to save you, there’s a 50/50 chance they will be pulled into the conversation too, depending on how skillful they are it could lean more heavily on the side of damage. I get you. There are fortunately many Facebook reels about this very topic. Just keep researching “narcissist” and eventually Facebook will point you to these very people. Some of them don’t possess empathy. Some of them have no idea what another person could feel or think besides themselves. They are stuck in their own corner of the world. I am no expert in this, but I took classes on bound...