Executive Dysfunction

rosslynpaladin:

thatspooniefeel:

The more I find myself having to explain executive dysfunction to people the more I realise it’s near impossible. There’s a thing. I wanna do that thing, I really do. But no matter how hard I try to tell my brain to do the thing, it won’t do the thing. I can’t tell you the amount of hours I’ve spent scrolling mindlessly through social media wanting more than anything to stop, but I can’t.

This concept is so ridiculously alien to abled/neurotypical people and makes awareness/acceptance for it so hard to achieve. If an abled/nt person wants to, say, have a shower, or get some food, they just up and do it, no second thought. But the amount of mental exhaustion that goes into getting myself to get up and do one of those things can honestly be disabling in itself.

It’s not laziness, or not caring. It’s a total mental block between wanting something and doing something about it. I really wish the concept of this was more widely acknowledged. We are not lazy.

I’ve tried telling people, Look think of it like an engine: the brain has spark plugs to start the fire to the fuel to the engine, and Exec Dysfunction is when your Spark plugs are crappy so the engine won’t turn over no matter how you wrench the keys in the ignition, and you have to research all kinds of ways to get around that and kinda kick the thing into gear, and sometimes even those don’t work but the point is

we’re trying.