Executive functioning and school

[Black Rose]

I have low processing speed and working memory. My ability to follow instructions or execute is slow and limited. My sister is an insurance sales agent. She can do things I can't. Because I cannot type or follow instructions or memorize like is required by her job. She is fast. I think all the time but I think slow. I think broadly. I can manipulate large spatial variables. I have high fluid intelligence.

I was considering going back to school but I realized the executive functioning required would take too much effort I could handle. I have a deficit in executive functioning. I just can't organize things on a large scale because I cannot do so on the small scale.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Yeah you cannot do anything about those things.

Plus those are just concepts.

Factually there are things hardwired in your mind that simply don't change.

 

[Black Rose]

My brain fights against itself. On the one hand, I know deep comprehensive patterns. I am good with puzzles. But on the other hand, I have problems developing new puzzles on my own. I can't carve out shapes on my own they must all be external. My internal process is underperformed. I just cannot generate internally in a spatial manner. Language is fine I can make comprehensive sentences. It is inventing I have trouble with.

It is my inability to hold a thought in my mind and manipulate it that is really frustrating. It drains me of mental energy if I force it. That is why I go slow in most things, so I can be sure to hold on until I'm finished. I am trying to think thoughts too big/complex to grasp. Plus I cannot see my thoughts which makes it harder to hold things.

 

[ZenRaiden]

You can't do much about that.

 

[Black Rose]

It is a fine line between what I can and cant do. Reading for example I can't read at home or at night. The other day I read a tone at the laundrymat. I felt able to there but home I can't. Sometimes I feel I can think other times I can't. I just have problems knowing what causes my inability to do something mental. I get mental blocks all the time and I can't figureout how to get out of them.

When I am blocked the worst thing is it feels like I have nothing to do. But really I am stuck and can't force myself to do stuff. I have stuff to do I am just stuck.

 

[Black Rose]

Because getting stuck and having mental blocks accrues randomly, that I can't find a pattern, I have trouble maintaining long-term plans. A little thing happens and I quit. I can't handle little things. I feel weak trying to deal with them. I get overwhelmed and it's too much and this happens even alone in my room doing nothing. Doing nothing is too much to handle. I go crazy pase around. Can't sit still.

 

[Black Rose]

It is in my brain that this problem derives. That and energy levels. A combination because the brain needs to be coordinated to work. When I am energized I can do alot. But drained doing nothing is torture. When things just function it's good but why does it function? Everything lines up is what I figure. Why do I sleep all day? What is different about my depression?

 

[ZenRaiden]

Yeah you cannot do much about that.
That is why its a problem, but take magnesium and see a psychiatrist.

 

[sushi]

know what you can, cant and want. if you cant figure it out, no one can help you.

if you have to know what you can do
you have to know what you cant do now and limit

you have to know what you want in the end.

 

[Black Rose]

I slept in the sunlight yesterday. seemed to help.

I still draw blanks when it comes to thinking.

I need someone to talk to.

I get nowhere on my own.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Sometimes I like to post on internet or brows internet.

 

[Black Rose]

Let me give an example of thought blocking.

I have this a.i. idea. A fractal as working memory. Fine, I have this idea. So I need some math. Can't find any. Feel bad. Feel like ADD.

I still am working on it. But it really does feel like ADD when I can't get it.

 

[Black Rose]

I have been taking buspirone for a week and my anxiety is gone. I am calm and I can sit still in bed. But the thing is that the ADD is more pronounced. I notice that when I am calm I am also blunted. Everything is just shut down. The next time I see my doctor I will ask them about it.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Good job!

Personally I think ADD is made up though.

Its probably a different problem all together.

Have you ever tried cocaine?

I know it was used in the past as medicine.... it works well, but its illegal due to cartels and shit.

Mushrooms?

They also say they work on depression, but they could probably work in your case as well.

Have you ever tried to just you know kind of just meditate?

I do it all the time it works wonders.

Especially sleep meditation.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I recently hit a high in my life, realizing that 4 or so years ago I set out to be the person I am today. I successfully achieved a high aspiration. Not founded in material value mind you. More so behavioral and temperament. I was a in a dark place before, and today I see everything with clarity. My mind is blank 90% of the day and at my command.

The only rational thing to do now is to set a new ambition. But maybe I should've waited to do so. The next day I was as anxious as I ever was.

Many of the old emotions I had dealt with over years came back with the single goal of- idk, but it was all spawned on the basis of success that I now changed to have different parameters.

Suddenly, I went from doing a good job, to feverishly bad. Not because I my state deteriorated, but because my expectations and intentions changed.

But because I put in the work of becoming something worth becoming, and set out to cultivate stability, enhance clarity and temperament, I was able to identify this and adjust accordingly within days, without a spiraling sense of hopelessness like my old self. Oh so very proud of myself :')

You can have a grander goal, just don't set expectations and intentions you can't handle. Widdle down the task little by little if you have to.

 

[ZenRaiden]

People without goals aren't even people.

I was working on uncovering this conspiracy for years.
Its my only goal in life currently at its going splendidly well.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Just take it easy. Turtles win over hares.

 

[Black Rose]

Have you ever tried cocaine?

Mushrooms?

Marijuana gave me Canibus-induced psychosis.
I ate one cookie and my life was ruined for the next 5 days.

 

[Black Rose]

You can have a grander goal, just don't set expectations and intentions you can't handle. Widdle down the task little by little if you have to.

If I have the mental energy I can sustain the planning necessary for achieving goals.

My frontal lobes have suffered burnout, sustaining goals have been affected.

If I can work on the ADD I can become functional.

Being stuck is not a good feeling.

It is not a matter of effort.

I just need to become functional.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I just need to become functional.

Good luck I guess.

 

[scorpiomover]

I have low processing speed and working memory. My ability to follow instructions or execute is slow and limited. My sister is an insurance sales agent. She can do things I can't.

Every person in the world is different to me. They can each do something better than me, and I can do something better than her.

Because I cannot type or follow instructions or memorize like is required by her job. She is fast. I think all the time but I think slow. I think broadly. I can manipulate large spatial variables. I have high fluid intelligence.

I gather that high fluid intelligence is highly sought after, especially in professions where you can have all the time you want to solve very complex problems, like really high-level stuff.

I was considering going back to school but I realized the executive functioning required would take too much effort I could handle. I have a deficit in executive functioning. I just can't organize things on a large scale because I cannot do so on the small scale.

Maybe you need to go to "executive school"? Get an MBA in "being an executive"?

 

[scorpiomover]

You can have a grander goal, just don't set expectations and intentions you can't handle. Widdle down the task little by little if you have to.

If I have the mental energy I can sustain the planning necessary for achieving goals.

My frontal lobes have suffered burnout, sustaining goals have been affected.

If I can work on the ADD I can become functional.

Being stuck is not a good feeling.

It is not a matter of effort.

I just need to become functional.

It sounds like you think that your sister is the only measure to judge yourself by.

I think you want to be her clone.

We've already got one of her. We don't need another.

We need one of you, because we don't already have one of those.

 

[Black Rose]

Executive functioning is prioritizing what to do first. You take a section of a problem and further break it down. My problem is holding a particular part. When it's right in front of me I handle it fine but it just being in my mind is difficult I keep dropping it. I lie awake at night and I drop them. And I can't sleep.

How do I stop dropping my thoughts?

How do I fix the holes in my brain?

 

[Black Rose]

I think my serotonin is fine but something is wrong with my dopamine.

 

[scorpiomover]

I think my serotonin is fine but something is wrong with my dopamine.

People who eat plenty of meat every day, have the behavioural patterns that are considered signs of being high in dopamine.

 

[Black Rose]

I think my serotonin is fine but something is wrong with my dopamine.

People who eat plenty of meat every day, have the behavioural patterns that are considered signs of being high in dopamine.

How do I afford that on $200 food stamps a month

 

[Black Rose]

I figured it out. I now know what my executive function profile is.

I am pretty good at inhibiting myself and controlling my emotions.

There are only two areas I have trouble with but it is the discrepancies that matter.

If everything was balanced I would not have ADD but there is an asymmetry in my profile.

 

[Cognisant]

Motivation, focus, discipline, there's a perception that these things are innate, that people who are disciplined focused and motivated were born that way, but they weren't, everybody sucks, everybody starts out terrible, every maestro started out not knowing how to play an instrument, every artist started out drawing lopsided stick people.

Having the discipline to sit down and practice is a learned skill, it's like writing your own user manual, you learn your own patterns of behavior, what to do and what to avoid.

For example I keep my fridge stocked with fruit and leafy greens because I know if I'm hungry and healthy food isn't immediately available to me I'll walk down the street to a fast food joint. When people ask me how I have the discipline to eat healthy when there's three fast food places just down the road I tell them it's because I have no self control. I need to have healthy food ready to eat and at risk of going off and I cannot allow myself to eat out because I know if I do it once I'll do it twice, and then I'll do it again, and then it'll become once a week, and then it'll be every other day.

Likewise I very rarely buy games, because I love games, if I have a new game to play it consumes me utterly, every waking moment, until I'm satisfied I've experienced everything it has to offer me. This is why I cannot play MMOs, I know once I go down that road I am never coming back.

The commercialized world we live in is designed to undermine our impulse control, I don't own a TV, I can't be around a TV, because if there's a TV in the room I can't help but watch it, I have to consciously tear my gaze away and go for a walk.

I don't mean to underestimate your challenges AK, you probably do have some kind of disorder which is undermining your efforts and your living situation only makes it harder still. But there's no way to rationalize your way out of the problem, you can't argue with it, even if the whole world agrees that it's unfair you there's still only one way out. You've just got to seize control of yourself, it may be a long road, it may take years of tiny incremental improvements, but there's no other way.

 

[Black Rose]

I take an antipsychotic a seizer med and an ADHD med. These new meds I was prescribed by the doctor when I went to the mental hospital Nov 2022 for 8 days.

I had crippling anxiety which is now gone. It was hard to self-regulate when I had these symptoms. Think was hard. Relaxing was hard. Focussing was hard. I could barely get things done. That all changed.

The ability to now relax has changed my ability to get things done. I am no longer worried about being unable to hold things in my head. The ADD doesn't matter to me anymore because it is no longer causing me anxiety. I have gotten around it.

I am still unable to operate a cash register. Or multiply numbers. The comparison to my sister is not a moral one but a skills-based one. Rote memorization is not conceptual. I am conceptual but limited. Much of computer programming is by rote. So I would not be able to get a job in it. Much of the jobs available I am bared from. And if I am barred from them I will not be able to make money and remain on SSDI. Hard labor is not something I want to do.

I can't do the little things so I can't do the big things. This is no problem, I do not really need money. But I just am bored all the time. The only things I do are the internet and talk to my therapist. She is new and better than the last one.

I don't feel down like I used to. I just keep busy. I was sad that I had no purpose but that doesn't matter anymore. I accepted I am limited and won't be able to do big projects. I don't really like to have fun. Normal fun things are not fun to me.

Right now I am focussing on increasing my perceptual range. I am staying in the moment. Meditation. Music. Vision.

There are things I want to do but I just have to wait and see.

 

[Black Rose]

Regarding my ADD.

I have superpowerful Anxiety.

I am not hyperactive, I have bad at memorizing, and am slower than average.



I don't have Autism. Autism is a growth pattern of neurological development. It is not necessarily a deficiency in social intelligence. People that lack social intelligence are often called autistic but Autism is genetic not learned. ADD and Autism overlap but are not the same thing.



My brother has low empathy, he cannot understand why others have different views than him. I don't know but he is very autistic in certain areas. He says he can listen to too 3 sets of music at once like Commander data from star trek the next generation. He is very hyperactive and was in the special needs class at school.



My crystallized intelligence is extremely high but I have poor vision, and I cannot draw detailed pictures. My fluid intelligence is high but not in certain areas. I can divide things into parts and deal with many parts but this is a mixture of spatial and language abilities. Dividing things into parts is how I define intelligence. The ability to work with information and understand different causality patterns.

 

[Old Things]

About low processing speed and low working memory, I can relate. It took me literally hours to install this one mod for Fallout 4 and I had to retry it many times before I got it right. There were a lot of steps you had to get exactly right for it to work without issues. I did get it working eventually and now that I played for about 48 hours I am no longer interested in the game. So it wasn't really worth it at all. My IQ is about 114 so about a standard deviation above average. My working knowledge is rather poor and I am also really bad at memorizing things. I also have pretty much zero stability in my life; I can't do anything consistently.

 

[ZenRaiden]

About low processing speed and low working memory, I can relate. It took me literally hours to install this one mod for Fallout 4 and I had to retry it many times before I got it right. There were a lot of steps you had to get exactly right for it to work without issues. I did get it working eventually and now that I played for about 48 hours I am no longer interested in the game. So it wasn't really worth it at all. My IQ is about 114 so about a standard deviation above average. My working knowledge is rather poor and I am also really bad at memorizing things. I also have pretty much zero stability in my life; I can't do anything consistently.

This would make you more of a INTP.
INTPs are known for P as procrastination.
Discipline is something INTP don't have as routine is something they hate.
INTPs usually focus on doing things in bursts.
That means INTPs focus on single thing for say a week and then either get to the goal or drop it being bored.
Unfortunately this is not something that pays or makes people happy.
I think its mostly viewed as aberration more so because it does not pay and is culturally unacceptable rather than it being necessarily neurological problem.

ADHD may be the same type of thing.
If a kid does not sit for 6 hours in school and passively listen to a teacher they are viewed as ADHD.
This type of logic realistically means anyone with any deviation from the cultural norm has xyz disorder etc.

I wonder where people draw the line.

 

[Black Rose]

No one does the genetic tests.
No one checks for diet or metabolism problems.
Inflammation, gut biome, lead, mercury, nutrition.

There is no ADD there is no Autism.
Labels do not cure dysfunction.

 

[Black Rose]

I was looking at all the tests I did and I looked up "cognitive profile analysis" on Google and Bing. Did not find anything so I made my own.

Unlocking the Mind: A Journey Through the Wonders of Memory​

 

[Black Rose]

Generative AI is experimental. Info quality may vary.

The brain stem is involved in sadness. The brain stem is also known as the "animal brain", "reptilian brain", or "survival brain". It is involved in appetite, sleep, and energy.

The main subcortical limbic brain regions implicated in depression are the amygdala, hippocampus, and the dorsomedial thalamus. When depressed people view sad faces, their amygdala is extremely active compared to non-depressed people. However, when viewing happy faces, amygdala activity is not distinguishable between the two groups.

Depression has many possible causes, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, stressful life events, medications, and medical problems. It's believed that several of these forces interact to bring on depression.

Changes in brain chemistry, especially disruptions in neurotransmitters like serotonin, that play an important role in regulating many bodily functions, including mood, sleep, and appetite, are thought to play a particularly important role in depression.

This is for informational purposes only. This information does not constitute medical advice or diagnosis.

Generative AI is experimental. Info quality may vary.

Subcortical structures, such as the caudate nucleus and the marginal division of the striatum, play important roles in working memory. Other subcortical structures that contribute to working memory include the thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum.

The frontal lobes are thought to control processing speed. The more a person does a task, the more efficient the frontal lobes become, and the faster they can do the task.

The prefrontal cortex is thought to play the most important role in working memory.