Tips For Writing When Struggling With Executive Dysfunction

Altair and Yasmin promt

Yasmine strangles a man in a choke hold and Zafira heard Altair muttered under his breath lucky bastard before proceeding to throw his scimitar against an oncoming enemy.

Characters raised in violence and knowing nothing else learning about love and kindness my beloved

anyone call zafira's name in the tone of shakira shakira?

Congratulations! Today, you get to learn the difference between memory and recall. There is an important difference, and understanding that difference will make you a better ally to the disabled community and also more understanding of your own brain!

What is memory?

Memory is the information your brain has stored for later. Let's make an analogy: your memory can be compared to files stored on a computer. Your brain is extremely complex and has a deep, layered filing system.

When your roommate's friend visits and introduces herself, you put her name in one of the many name folders. Our brains are complex enough that we can assume there are thousands of those folders, each for a different type of name and how you know it: friend names, immediate family names, extended family names, classmate names, coworker names, celebrity names, and so on and so forth, forever.

What is recall?

Recall is not whether you have something stored, but whether you can find it. Like that photo of you at summer camp in sixth grade that's stored somewhere on your computer, the information you learn throughout daily life is sorted somewhere into your brain's filing system. The longer ago that you put the information into the system, the harder it is to find, unless you frequently visit those files.

For the average instance of recall, people generally use the equivalent of the search bar of their brain's filing system. The information is sorted precisely so it's, naturally, recalled in the blink of an eye.

However, you may have had moments of recall issues. Everyone does here and there. The sensation of a word being on the tip of your tongue is a common example of issues with recall. You know the word, but it's just not coming up when you search for it.

In instances like these, you end up kind of manually rooting around in your brain's folders, desperately looking for associated folders that it might have been mis-stored in. You're trying to think of a vegetable you know of, so you start listing off other vegetables to yourself, as if sifting through the vegetable folder.

Sometimes, this association game can bring forth the missing file - or in this case, vegetable name. In other cases, you simply have to let it go and wait for it to come to you later. That might mean you smacking your forehead 48 hours later when you're in the middle of driving to work and the name of that vegetable suddenly throws itself right in the middle of your internal monologue.

Recall and disability

So, what does this have to do with disability? Well, the average person may have occasional recall issues, but for many disabled people, these issues are extremely prevalent. For neurodivergent folks or those with brain fog, we can end up having trouble recalling things many times in a day. It is extremely frustrating and can even be embarrassing in social situations.

For example, your roommate's friend, who you've hung out with on multiple occasions and heard numerous stories about might drop by six months later and you might stand there trying to avoid talking while you scramble desperately through your name files trying to recall her name when you know it's in there somewhere. It's a real life reproduction of that scene in SpongeBob where he only knows how to be a waiter. By the time she addresses you, it's too little too late and you have to admit that for some reason her name is evading you. It's humiliating.

Be understanding of recall issues

These issues have little to do with how important something is to a person. If you know someone who's disabled and they have frequent issues recalling words or names, it's just because the search function in their brain sometimes breaks down and they have to rely on manually digging through the billions of memories they have to try and find what they're looking for.

If you know someone with this issue who is comfortable with it, try filling in the gaps for them! It can be a fun bonding experience, especially between two people with recall issues, to immediately offer a word that seems to fit the flow of the sentence as soon as the other starts to draw a blank. The better you know them, the easier it is.

If you know someone with recall issues, be patient when they use you as a living thesaurus. You're saving them countless hours of googling or agonizing over what that word was - you know, the one that's like willingly suffering for an extended period of time about something that may or may not matter? (I just had issues recalling 'agonizing' 😔)

Anyway, that's all for today! I hope you've all learned something new about recall and how it affects people with disabilities differently/more frequently than the average person

My doctor and therapist: now with this autism + ADHD diagnosis you need to learn to unmask because masking all the time will make you burn out again and feel like shit

Other people: well it's just interesting how after getting the diagnosis you suddenly start behaving like that I mean I'm not saying you're faking it's just funny how you suddenly cannot be normal like you were before

being the only person who wears a skirt used to be so embarrassing

all the memes about when you need to be at somewhere at a certain time but you need to get coffee or something so you need to get ready like 15 or 30 minutes earlier but for someone who's time blind watching it is like " how the fuck youre so sure that you need to do it 15 minutes earlier- h- how do you know its gonna take 15 minutes?????? what if you get motional or need more mental preparation to do it??? " i cant tell the time so shit is mega vague when i planned for something it sometimes goes like Must be at A at 13.00. the travel will take around an hour to get there. better get B before im at A. so that means i must go at fucking 7 in the morning just in case time goes extra fast or i am just extra slow or if im getting a bit sad and dumb... but then leaves at 12.15

a reminder of how executive dysfunction can also look like . You are NOT lazy

brain : Hey the new season of my favorite show is out!!! I've been waiting for so long I'm excited to see it!!

Executive dysfunction : no. impossible. no fucking way. too difficult. unattainable. blocked.

brain : but I want to see it, I want to do it .. badly :(

Executive dysfunction : fuck no. you will be experiencing new emotions, meaning that it will have to be processed. that's too difficult and very exhausting

brain : alright lets watch old shows then

Executive dysfunction : that will be a waste of time, you could've just watch new things you stupid fuck.

brain : ..u right .. but what else can I do?

Executive dysfunction : i have preaperd for you exactly two options. You can either wait for no reason orrr, rot in bed and doom scroll for hours while you feel absolutely shit with yourself from wasting all this precious time.. ill let you chill in distress, mkay? :3 btw have you noticed the feeling, that looming fear and utter discomfort that has been gnawing at your insides like youre being chased by something? Correct, there's nothing you can do about it.

brain : so you're just gonna let me get stuck?

Executive dysfunction : absolutely! :)

brain : Is there really nothing i do something about it?

Executive dysfunction : well.. You can always try.. I'll just never gonna let you do anything else you want or need :)

brain : ... but that wont do.. how abou-

Executive dysfunction : bitch no. you cant