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realizing that sticking to the "do it bad" "do it scared" mentality implies theres also a "do it bored"

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simple (?) definitions of the functions

Edit: I made some changes (they are in italics)

Without a basic knowledge of the cognitive functions, it can be extremely hard to understand mbti. Here are the simplified definitions of the functions:

Ne (extroverted intuition): this function spreads intuition/ideas externally. The main thing Ne values is possibility. Ne wants to understand the dozens of ideas that stem from one event. It does not like to stick to one idea.

ex: when it sees a flower, it comes up with dozens of flower designs of its own. It thinks of all the possibility the flower can look like, thought Ne does not care if it is practical (or considered a “good” idea). 

Ni (introverted intuition): this function forges an intuitive idea internally. Ni takes information in and thinks of one idea, one insight, on possibility. Like Ne, Ni is focused on what might be possible, not on what is tangible. It wants to dive deeper into the “truth” to find a secret meaning/contradiction.

Ex: when it sees dozens of flowers, it comes up with its own design of a flower. Unlike Ne, Ni takes its time to analyze the depth of one specific idea. Ne does not care much about the accuracy and worth of its ideas (it values possibilities more), while Ni wants its idea to be valuable.

Se (extroverted sensing): this function is focused on the external physical world around it. Se is focused on the present and what is happening in the moment. Like Si, it is focused on the small tangible details. Se is a fairly direct and objective function. It does not like to meddle with hypotheticals and theories (this does not mean Se is unintellectual). This function is a kinesthetic learner and likes to meddle with its environment.

Ex: when it sees a flower, it simply, well, sees it. It’s a concrete object that has no other poetic meaning to it. 

Si (introverted sensing): this function is focused on the real world in its head/internally. Si is oriented towards the past, towards repetition. It makes decisions based on how similar events in the past enrolled. Si values predictability (not necessarily tradition).

Ex: when it sees a flower, it remembers how the flower connects to past sensory details and it stores the details of the flower in its head for further use in the future.

Fi (introverted feeling): this function is focused on its own internal moral code/philosophy. It makes decisions based on how moral the situation is based on its own feelings and values. Fi is often seen as the function that wants to be authentic because it is concerned if the current situation/its decision aligns with its personal values.

Ex: when Fi gives gifts to other people, it contemplates on what gift it would like/value. Fi also analyzes how the gift would be valuable according to the person’s inner feelings and beliefs.

Fe (extroverted feeling): this function is focused on the external moral code. It is concerned if its actions align with external beliefs and ethnics. Fe makes decisions based on what the majority values. It is aware of how its actions will impact/meddle with the emotional state of other people*. Unlike Fi, Fe believes ethics are not decided by itself. Fe is objective, like Te. 

*Though other functions might have this ability, Fe knows how other people feel on a “deeper level” and it is confident in its ability to do so (just like how Fi is confident in its ability to analyze its own beliefs). For example, Te might be able to analyze emotions on a surface level, but it has trouble understanding the emotions of others on an in-depth level. Plus, Te is not concerned with the emotional environment.*

Ex: when Fe gives gifts to other people, it gives gifts based on what the majority believes is the best gift.

Ti (introverted thinking): this function is focused on the logical world internally. It forges its own logical claims, reasoning and conclusions. Ti is mainly concerned with the internal consistency and analysis of one thing, rather than external evidence that supports it. Inductive reasoning. “The ball will fall because I’ve seen the same ball fall down multiple times, therefore it will fall down this time.” Ti cannot understand how one thing can contradict its own “rule”.

Ex: when Ti gives gifts, it forms an analysis on what gift would be the most beneficial based on the patterns and observations it witnesses.

Te (extroverted thinking): this function is focused on the external world of logic. It is focused on data, evidence and facts from the outside world. It is focused on if something is practical/aligns with external rules and principles. It analyzes things based on how it relates to similar external logical principles. “This ball will fall because I’ve seen other rubber balls like this fall, so it is logical to assume that this one will fall.” Deductive reasoning. Te cannot understand how one thing can contradict the “universal rule”.

Ex: when Te gives gifts, it analyzes what is the most beneficial gift by evaluating the already the existing/assumed benefits each gift option has and picks the gift with the best benefits.

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I’m sorry if i seem weird it's because I literally am

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If you have autism, ADHD AuDHD, depression, anxiety, OCD anything that causes you executive dysfunction where you feel overwhelmed by tasks and don't know where to start I need you to stop and read this because this website is about to change your life.

It is called goblin.tools and it is completely free and I believe it is life changing.

So this magic todo taskmaker is amazing. You can give it any kind of task you need to do and it will break it up into easy to understand, manageable, and accomplishable steps, (that you can then check off the list which probably my favorite part) like cleaning your room, making coffee, etc

In this example below I put the Magic ToDo Task as "take a shower" (but it can be any task)

Here is the lowest spicy take (aka not broken down into many steps)

And here is the highest spicy level (where the tasks are broken into many easily managable step that will tell you exactly what to do)

Any parts of this you feel like didn't give you enough steps? Need more clarity? No problem! Any step you can edit or break it into even smaller steps!

Let's say you are have a foggy brain day and need more instructions for washing your hair, here you go!

Legitimately it can break down any task, making them so much more approachable and manageable.

And if this incredibly cool task helper thing wasn't enough for you, the website has five other functions

A feature that adjusts the tone of your text, allowing for a more professional or sarcastic expression, ideal for business emails.

An emotion detection tool, which helps interpret the emotional content of a text, identifying anger, frustration, or other sentiments to clarify communication misunderstandings. (I think this feature could help a lot of autistic people SO much)

A function that estimates the time required for various activities, such as making the bed, providing practical scheduling help

There is an entire *insanely* cool cooking function (I am gonna have to make a post about that)

Something called the "Compiler"? I honestly don't get it. It says "Compile my braindump into a list of tasks" (so if someone figures that out please let me know)

And since it is tax season under the cut are the steps it gives you for filing your taxes on the lowest and highest task breakdown levels! :)

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consider: intrusive thoughts described like shitty Buzzfeed articles

“Top 10 Reasons Why You’re Actually a Pedophile”

“People Are Sharing the Best Slurs to Scream at the Top of Your Lungs and Honestly I Am So Here For It”

“Tell Me Your Favorite Color and I’ll Tell You You Can Jump In Front of A Moving Train Right Now”

“You’ve Heard of [Normal Activity], But Have You Heard of All the Horrible Ways You Can Die While Doing It???!!”

“This Quiz Will RevealWhich Hand You Could Hypothetically Stick in a Blender!”

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gentle reminder to just be soft with yourself. I pinky promise you really really deserve it. I’ll stamp it and everything.

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Fuck, man. Neurodivergent love. I’m never going to get over it. Depression love says “I will do my best to stay for you.” DID/OSDD love says “Every face of this brain is endeared to you.” Autism love says “I will do anything to reach you, to give you the understanding I never got.” BPD love says “You are a vital organ of mine, and I am one of yours.” Bipolar love says “Wherever I may go, I will come back to you.” Post-traumatic love says “I will always show you gentleness in this reckless world.” ADHD love says “I will try for you, no matter the obstacle.” Anxiety love says “You are my safe space and I am yours.” ASPD love says “I choose to, on purpose, for you.” OCD love says “I will stand guard for you.” Neurodivergent love. Neurodivergent love. Different brains in love, oh my G-d. These colors are uncountable and they are my religion.

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Look, this is what moral OCD is like for me:

I walk past a piece of paper. I don’t pick it up because I had a long day at work and it’s very cold outside. This then becomes my internal monologue:

I didn’t pick up that piece of paper, I should have. Don’t I care about the environment? It’s not my trash, I shouldn’t have to pick it up. But also that’s how these things happen right? We place the blame on others as our environment degrades. It was just a piece of paper, it’s not like it can do that much damage. But also how do I know: I’m not an environmental expert. Maybe stray paper scraps are killing the frogs. You’re literally killing the frogs. You should look up how many frogs die a year so you know how shitty you are-No stop it.

I care about the environment, and I recycle and I joined green activism movements but is that enough? I could be doing more. I should be doing more. I should donate my entire check to charity. But isn’t it self serving to think that my one check could help that much? Do I really think I’m that important, how self entitled and-no stop it, reset! You are obsessing and if you fall for it, you will not eat dinner. Let it go.

Okay it’s just a piece of paper. It’s okay you skipped it this once: it could have had something dangerous on it. Yeah that makes sense. But also, that means I’m putting my own safety over trying to help the environment, which is very selfish of me. I’m just one shitty person: god how could I be so self absorbed. I should have picked up the piece of paper. I’m so selfish, and shitty and-no, no, stop it! This is not helpful. It’s fine.

It’s been a long day and I’m cold, that’s not a crime- no that’s being selfish again, you’re making excuses. You’re just a lazy piece of shit who doesn’t care about others, and selfish and God the fact you’re thinking this much about one piece of paper shows how selfish you are, you care more about if you’re a good person than anything else, you’re a piece of shit, you’re a piece of shit, YOU’RE A PIECE OF SHIT.

I get home and open up Tumblr. The first post I see says “if you don’t reblog this post about the environment you’re as complicit as an oil billionaire.” I close my computer and resign myself to looking up the state frog populations until I go to bed.

I don’t eat dinner.

The amount of frogs that die a year is somewhere from 200 million to over 1 billion.

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Tips on stopping Ruminating

Recite a song, a poem or whatever in your head. It might be good to pick something that calms you down or that doesn't trigger the negative emotion you're ruminating with, but the only important part is that it breaks up the flow of your thoughts so they don't keep going. If you're focusing on trying to remember words, you're not focusing on the runaway train that is your thoughts. Try to pick one specific thing so whenever you realize you're ruminating, you can start reciting it instantly.

If that doesn't work, stop doing the action you are currently doing. Yes even if you're in bed, you probably weren't going to get a lot of sleep that night anyways. If you're showering, get out of the shower. Do something that requires you to focus, then you'll be focusing on that instead.

If you have somebody you can do that with, talk to someone about it. Just word vomit it all over them, it helps to get the thoughts out of your head and another person might provide clarity.

Remember these are your thoughts.

Rumination is different from intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts is just a psychic evil gremlin whispering things that it knows will upset you specifically into your brain-ear. Rumination is like you're in your metaphorical car of thought and somebody cut the breaks so now the car can't fucking stop. Remember you can pull over the car before it runs out of gas or off a cliff.

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social anxiety brain: why did i say/do that?! im an idiot

kind brain:

it wasn’t wrong

they didn’t notice

they didn’t think it was bad

they’re more focused on themselves

they don’t hate you

they won’t remember it in a day’s time

you’re allowed to be yourself

you’re allowed to take up space

you’re allowed to speak

beating yourself up is cruel and has a lasting impact

you (hopefully) won’t remember this in 20 years

anxious thoughts are hard to deal with and you don’t deserve them; they are not justified

you’re wonderful and i hope you treat yourself with gentle, kind words. 

🌹🌹

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OCD got me coming up with conspiracy theories about myself just like

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Recently saw an insta vid where a musician was singing lyrics that described their intrusive thoughts as a person with OCD, and in the comments every so often there would be people writing like "bro what is this 🤨🤨" and "keep this between you and your therapist dont post it on the internet" and it just further fueled my belief that OCD symptoms and intrusive thoughts need to be talked about more because a majority of the struggle with the disorder is the shame surrounding its symptoms. OCD is not able to be easily romanticized or 'quirky'fied like other disorders or neurodivergencies have been*, and as a result its symptoms are more quickly met with disgust or repulsion.

Other people in the comments were thanking OP because it captured the struggle of real intrusive thoughts instead of impulsive ones. Impulsive thoughts are more of the 'I'm gonna dye my hair randomly on a thursday night' thoughts vs the intrusive 'what if I drove my car into that family and suddenly killed us both' thoughts, the latter of which make OCD as a disorder truly debilitating. And the people that immediately assign bad morals to intrusive thoughts? They only further condemn people with OCD to never wanting to talk about the symptoms they've already been struggling with shame about.

I feel it needs to be made more blatantly explained to the public that OCD intrusive thoughts aren't desire based. They're fear and disgust based. You fear hurting anyone so badly your mind can't stop thinking about what if you hurt someone. You fear molesting anyone so you never want to even touch anyone. Your mind fixates on the 'what ifs' and distorts them into the idea that, because you think this way, you must want to act this way--when the reality is the exact opposite.

If a person with OCD ever confides to you one of their intrusive thoughts and you feel a knee-jerk reaction of disgust towards them, it needs to be reiterated that:

1. the person does not want to be thinking about this, their brain is legit hardwired to make those thoughts pop up

2. the person themselves also feels this disgust, often intensely, and they very likely resent themselves for ever thinking it

and

3. they have no desire to enact the intrusive thought, because its intrusive nature hinges on the person's fears and dislikes.

*And to clarify what I mean by romanticization and 'quirk'-ifying, I do not mean to imply that romanticizing any disorder or condition is inherently a good thing. It's only to state that conditions like anxiety and ADHD have been made such common/'trendy' topics recently that they're less taboo to speak about--leading to more people talking about their struggles with it, and helping others realize they might have it too and aren't alone. Because certain OCD traits aren't as marketable (obviously) a lot of those with it are left rather isolated.

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Being a narcissist is so fucking hard because I vent or drop hints that I'm extremely unhappy with myself because I need narc supply, compliments, and reassurance from my friends, and they DON'T FUCKING CATCH MY DRIFT LIKE HELLO?

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Okay I’d like anyone that sees this to blind react and put a finger down for each thing in this list you relate to. There are 9 things. You can comment your score publicly or keep it private, up to you, but I think this might be interesting for some people. Here’s the list:

-Do you tend to take criticism too personally, or gotten unreasonably defensive when someone points out a mistake you made? Do you hate admitting you’ve done something wrong?

-Do you like to daydream about doing something amazing (such as saving people from a burning building, being the one to win your team the game, being an amazing actor in a movie, etc.) and having people recognize you for the great thing you did?

-Do you place in importance on being associated with important or high status things, like trying to date/be friends with the coolest kids in your classes, or choosing to go to a prestigious university over a common state school?

-Do you tell people about things you’ve done specifically to get praise for it? Such as telling your friends about the A you got on that really hard math test, or pointing out your cool new hairstyle, or the drawing you did that you think looks really cool, specifically so that they will compliment you for it?

-Do you feel comfortable prioritizing yourself and what you want/need over other people?

-Have you ever diminished your accomplishments, or been purposefully self-deprecating so that the person will reassure you (i.e. “You’re such a good artist!” “Oh no I’m really not, anyone could do what I do” “No really, your art is amazing!”)?

-Do you find it hard to genuinely care about other people’s problems?


-Do you get jealous easily if, let’s say at a party, your friend is getting more attention than you?

-Have you ever felt secretly happy that someone around you failed or did worse on something than you did? Like maybe you didn’t want your friend to fail their math test, but them failing it did you make you feel a little extra good and proud about the non-failing grade you got on it.

(Scroll for explanation for spoiler reasons)

So what that list was a rewriting of the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, where for each section I filled in one of the ways I actually feel that part of the criteria. So instead of “grandiose sense of self”, I said “bad at taking criticism”, because that’s one of the ways my grandiose sense of self actually presents. If this was the original diagnostic criteria, you would need 5 of 9 to be diagnosed with NPD.

The reason I asked you all to count how many you relate to is that I have seen a lot of egotypicals do this exact same stuff. My goal is to help someone possibly unfamiliar with NPD understand that people with NPD are not the foreign, subhuman monsters that we are so often represented as, but rather people who feel some normal human traits too much.

(Also please don’t use this alone to self-diagnose, it was not made for that)

(Also also, thank you to the people in the reblogs for letting me know I could’ve used the read more feature. I am new to tumblr so tips on how to use it are appreciated)

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therapy yesterday (tw: health anxiety, specifically heart-related; contamination OCD)

so i probably have health anxiety. i've been having some physical symptoms which led me to get an electrocardiogram (ECG) and then a 24hr ECG - and of course i didn't have any symptoms during, only before and after 🙄- but i talked to my psych about how i get all obsessive over it (e.g. i get palpitations, i check what that could mean, i worry i'm having a heart attack, the anxiety causes the palpitations to get worse, the cycle continues). and turns out she wrote her masters thesis on heart-related health anxiety so literally the best person i could be talking to about this!

in typical health anxiety fashion i spent all of today researching health anxiety. i found a subreddit (r/HealthAnxiety) and reading their posts has been really helpful. i also found a workbook on health anxiety so i'll read that.

the thing to remember is that i'm still here. like... i've had many episodes of these heart symptoms and i'm not dead.

of course though, all the symptoms of a heart attack are the same as symptoms of anxiety & panic attacks. which makes it hard! but then the trick is to wait, as hard as that is. if you're really having a heart attack, your body knows. panic attacks are awful but they won't kill you.

if i had been assessed as a kid, i reckon i would've been diagnosed with OCD (and painfully obvious autism lol). i read Roald Dahl's autobiography when i was a kid and he wrote about having appendicitis which scared the shit out of me. obviously treatment and prognosis of appendicitis is way better in 2023 than it was in the early 1900s lol. but if i felt any amount of abdominal pain i'd be mentally running through the symptoms of appendicitis and freak myself out over it. (a small reason why i got a hysterectomy was so that i'd be 100% certain that i could never get a ruptured ovarian cyst, or endometriosis, or cervical cancer, etc.).

i was also obsessed with (and terrified of) natural disasters. i'd memorised all the cloud shapes and patterns and what they meant and i was always analysing the clouds to make sure a tornado wasn't about to happen (worth noting i live in a part of the world where tornadoes literally do not happen). or i'd see a mountain that was vaguely pointy and i'd be like, oh shit what if that's a volcano. or i'd be at the beach and be obsessively checking the sky and sea to make sure i'd be prepared if a tsunami were to happen (again, there's no volcanic activity here or tsunamis). bushfires do happen and can be pretty severe (our house came close to burning down a few times) and i still fixate on them during bushfire season but definitely not to the point i did as a kid.

i also went through a phase were i'd never be sure if i washed my hands after going to the loo, so i'd go back to the bathroom multiple times to wash them again. classic OCD there.

my psych and i theorise that these anxiety/OCD-like symptoms are the result of autism and trauma (as everything seems to be in my life lol). it makes sense - a little (undiagnosed) autistic kid in a chaotic, unstable environment hyperfixates on control and uncertainty (OCD)... and develops a fear of pain and death. an injury can be controlled, there's a process and uniformity to it (e.g. you cut your finger, so you wash it and get a bandaid, and over time it heals). an abusive environment is unpredictable and can't be controlled, so you focus on what you can control (and dissociate from the rest). once again, i have to wonder how much easier and better my life would be if it weren't for all the trauma lol...

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being in therapy as a psychology student is soooo funny sometimes i'll just be like "i just dont think xyz thing is happening like it just seems far-fetched that that could happen" and my therapist is like "have you not talked about xyz thing happening to people in class" and ill have to be like "......yes" and shell be like "victoria you're people"

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Is there a name for the mental illness version of hypochondria/health anxiety? Or is it just hypochondria? Like, worrying that mental illness is laying dormant in you. Obviously this is a big symptom of ocd but I wasn’t sure if it was a stand-alone phobia as well. I would google it but idk how to phrase it lmao