iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 20h

I have to keep bandaids on my minor boo boos, cuz otherwise I'm constantly picking. OMD, and then were all the years I got fever blisters all around my mouth when I was PMSing. Drove me nuts

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 20h

I used to buy sanding blocks for my skin.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I looked it up. I think that would help me a lot, since I'm basically doing everything by myself. I'm my hubby's caretaker, and that's the only other person I see 98% of the time.

Body doubling is a productivity and executive functioning strategy where a person with ADHD performs a task in the presence of another person to improve focus, motivation, and accountability.

How It Works

• Passive Presence: The other person (the "body double") does not supervise, coach, or actively help with the task. They can work on their own separate task or sit quietly.
• External Anchor: The physical or virtual presence of someone else acts as an anchor or gentle cue, making it easier to start ("self-initiate") and stick with boring, repetitive, or overwhelming chores.
• Shared Attention: It taps into social-attentional networks and mirror neurons, helping the brain match the steady focus of the person nearby.

Common Formats

• In-Person: Working alongside a friend, family member, or coworker at a kitchen table, library, or coffee shop.
• Virtual / Remote: Having someone on a video call (with cameras on) or using structured online co-working platforms like Focusmate or Flow Club.
• Audio / Digital: Working together over a phone line or inside a dedicated community Discord server.

Benefits and Limits

• Benefits: Reduces procrastination, lowers anxiety or perfectionism around starting tasks, cuts down isolation, and builds momentum.
• Limits: Can sometimes introduce unwanted distractions if the companion is too chatty or the environment is noisy. It is a self-management tool rather than a cure for executive dysfunction.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

If my other option is a GOP of any kind, I'm stuck supporting the Dem.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

So body doubling is when you need background sound to do things?

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Are the Zionists the far right like Netanyahu, determined to wipe out the Palestinians? I can't keep it straight. I really wish more people remembered that Putin was besties w/ Bibi, & Trump too. Putin is pulling everyone's strings

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I still don't understand what it is? I LOVE silence. I'm trying to find a microphone & speaker system so I can listen to the birdies outside, I hate closed windows. Course I live in the rural suburbs, still have a few alfalfa fields around us. I could never concentrate w/ music on at work.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Dem leadership like Schumer & Jeffries? Give me Deb Haaland (hopefully my next gov) Jasmine Crockett, Mandami & Pete. And could we please elect some ATHIESTS & scientists? Only way to combat the Christian Nationalists & the current Theocratic Kakistocracy.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

In my own life this is so true! My parents were AuDHD/Autistic. All my major relationships & besties were ADHD/neurodivergent. My hubby used to draw people, the saying was: *If you're sitting at this table, there's e something wrong with you* Every last one smoking pot & other kinds self-medication.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Thank you so much for this list! Absolutely the story of my life

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Reposted by Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom)

Maggy Speakes @magandy.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

#auHD If you're neuro-typical, very few of these affect you. For the rest of us, most of this is normal. We're not broken. It doesn't go away. If we're lucky, someone helped us create strategies. #autism #ADHD

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I'm familiar with everything except body doubling. What's that? Many of them all piled up & are what would eventually get me fired &/or reported to the board of nursing & blackballed. I live surrounded by doom piles & nothing gets done, no matter how much I want/need to do it. Why no term papers

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Absolutely the story of my life & probably my parent's too.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Can't you do neurodivergent coaching over the phone/computer? I've been looking for one but my insurance is never listed as what they take. I know there's a huge need for coaching, it's more effective than talk therapy, which doesn't necessarily give you the right *tools* to use.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Those are hard to find. I finally accepted I was never going to be able to keep a job, even as a nurse. I grieved losing that part of me for years! Oh & I got blackballed & nobody would hire me over something that happened 15 years before. I got on SSD the 1st time I tried. I send many hugs🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Wait till you get to old age/chronic illness. Then it's the pill drill

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Oh absolutely. What it boils down to I can't stand any irregular surfaces & I'll pick until they're smooth. Now it's picking the scabs from where my puppy's claws cut me.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

That deep cellular shame is finally easing. I finally understand my lifelong inability to organize or clean my house. I can start to forgive myself. This graphic really explained a lot to me.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

They're not static, they change in different situations, and as we learn & grow. Some of the things I do I had zero idea why. (TW, gross) All my life I picked my nose, cuz I was massively irritated by anything in there. To the point I eventually picked a huge hole in my septum. Not bothered now

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Just so you can clear your name. I wouldn't want to work there either

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I never considered that part. I haven't worked in 16.5 years, staying home in my wildlife sanctuary & my only outside contact is the endless Dr appts & grocery store. I thought that lack of practice eroded my ability to control my emotions or filter. Poor hubby puts up w/ my wild rants or meltdowns.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

That totally sucks & the same happened to me, cept she was a psychopath who'd been plotting for months to set me up. Probably killed her toddler who supposedly died of SIDS. Any way for you to fight back? Sending more hugs

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I'm no help, I'm not sure I ever masked. I was focused on being real & genuine in my recovery, what you saw is what you got.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Damn, you just told my story! When I sobered up at 23, drank myself out of nursing school. I did what many of us do, I went into counseling psychology. Oh & I was going to *figure out what is wrong w/ me & then my parents*. Daddy was AuDHD & Mama was clearly autistic once I looked at it.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Exactly! We get fried to a crisp & don't know why we can't function anymore. I crumble under pressure, just totally shut down & withdraw into myself

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

😭😭 We're in a super fast mass extinction. Pumping out more gasses in last 50 years, approaching what was released over 800,000 years of near constant volcanic eruptions from the Deccan Traps in India, which is the real cause of the Cretaceous mass extinction. Asteroid was maybe tipping point.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I was having intense meltdowns when I was trying to train my puppy & going to obedience classes w/ her. That's when I remembered RSD & lo & behold… I have major emotional regulation & sensory sensitivity issues, that caused job/career ending meltdowns. Along w/ major people issues. Yep, I'm AuDHD.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I've been worrying about all the bats & birds dependent on all the insects that vanished just from the Rio Grand running dry much of this year. I had very few insects, and I didn't see a single spider in all my plants & flowers all summer. No butterfly increase in the fall.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I'm constantly learning new things about myself, & while I haven't been actively looking for autism info before 2.5 yrs ago, but it seems to me there's an explosion of info since I started investigating & reading people's lived experiences.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I went fashionista, w/ tiger stripes & pink stripes on top when I met w/ the surgeon, & she walked in even MORE Fashionista, knee high boots & a mini skirt! On a cool morning! This is after I came home

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Thanks, good to see you! Hope you've been able to get out & about to get sticks.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Sure would have helped to have this new understanding of how our brains are all wired uniquely when I was a lot yyounger. I was baffled all my life when strangers would tell me versions of *You're weird, odd, strange, DIFFERENT*. My life's search was to try to understand what the hell they meant.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

… probably from benign ovarian cysts? Rare, atypical (but of course, no abdominal fluid) Meigs syndrome. So I'm waiting to get scheduled for total hysterectomy. My Baby Girl is almost a year old now, 10/23. She's been sedated today to get her deadly dew claws trimmed. She's about 35# & very strong!

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Thanks so much for your understanding! He's finally able to walk upright w/o his cane, which is dramatic improvement. Still needs pain meds but not as much. I've been having a slew of tests to try to find source of chronic fluid at base of my R lung, going back to 2019. Would you believe it's…

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

High functioning really doesn't describe it anymore. Cuz I did great in very structured grad & nursing school, but in the unstructured outside world? Or at home, like keeping it clean or organized? Not so much. I have raging ADHD that obscures much of the autism, until I look closer & it's obvious.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Hi, sorry to vanish. I mostly shut down & crawled into hiding when Rich got his back disk transplant injections. They did not adequately warn us just how excruciating recovery would be. He moaned constantly & I absorbed his pain so much I just closed out the world. 7 weeks later… How's all of you?

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Hi everybody! I had a raven fly over this morning, of course I waved hi 👋

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Depends. I never took a test officially. I saw pshrinks on & off much of my adult life, worked in psych & NO ONE EVER suggested autism. Not once! I figured it out myself, just like I figured out the ADHD at 36 & the 3 learning disorders at 49.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I'm so much happier after I finally gave up trying to function into a world where I never, ever was going *fit in*. 15 years after I became essentially a hermit, I figured out the autism part of my neurodivergence. Explained so much. I'm happy in my wildlife sanctuary & I don't have to pretend now.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Sending endless hugs. I got fired from so many jobs after tangling w/ supervisors. The willfully ignorant narcissistic assholes always fail upwards. Totally baffling.

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Marshmallow & Cricket 🦗 (Mom) @frecklesxx20.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It took me until I was 65 to figure out the autism part, many years after my life fell apart

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