What's your superpower?
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I have super sensitive hearing, so while I can hear the faintest of noises, it also means loud noises are overwhelming and painful.
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I can't stay angry; I have multi-sensory aphantaisa, this comes with not being able to re-experience emotions.
I remember that something made me angry, but I can't relive the emotion. It lets me dispassionately examine the past to see what made me angry and thus work through the trigger and try to reduce it in the future.
There is the downside to this, it is on all emotion, so I also can't re-experience happy emotions either.
As in, when you are remembering/reimagining an experience that you've had?
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CRT TV's emit a high frequency noise while in operation. Apparently there must be a significant number of people who can't hear frequencies that high. My wife can't hear it and had no idea those TV's made any noise at all.
I remember I was able to hear them as a kid. It's been a while since I've interacted with one, so who knows if it's even likely that i still have that acuteness of hearing, but I do remember it. Some good amount of years ago I found a crt monitor and turned it on and the dimming and slightly-static clicking sounds sent me back
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I've hit some killer long-range underwear-into-the-basket shots with my toes that honestly should've been on Sportscenter.
Same here! Why isn't this a weird Olypmic?
...Why don't we have weird Olympics?
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I think I can smell progesterone, in some women, and in some months (far more than others/other times). Being male, this is absolutely is not something I can collect a lot of data on very quickly, and I don't know whether the strength or clarity for me correlates with women who have higher levels than normal, but I do know it correlates really well with this chart in terms of timing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estradiol_and_progesterone_%25_changes_across_the_menstrual_cycle.tif
So often I know that it's a week and a half before your period, and I know what that means, but I promise you that I have never ever used this knowledge, partly because I'm pretty shy, but not even with my wife (who doesn't know I can tell) when we were aiming for pregnancies, because that was a very busy time indeed in that arena and I saw no reason to reduce that in any way whatsoever.
Idk your wife, but I would feel like that's a very intimate connection to share that you have with her. I could see it going a number of ways, of course. But what's kept you from sharing with her, overall? If you don't mind me asking
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I can make the sound of one hand clapping.
It was a thing that went around my middle school. You keep your hand at about a 90 degree angle to your arm, and then flap back and forth with your fingers loose so it hits your palm. Takes a little practice.
I figured that out once and now I always break that out when someone references the sound of one-hand clapping. It gets me mostly eye-rolls which as a dad are my life's blood.
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I can blur my vision on command, kinda useless but a bit of fun to play with.
I also have a lazy eye, so I can scare unsuspecting people, sometimes two at a time if they're positioned right.
I can do this as well. Pretty easily too. It feels like I can pick a direction to look in and then I just look behind the thing my vision is centered at. If I go a bit slow, I can look around the room and keep my vision somewhat blurry
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I can't stay angry; I have multi-sensory aphantaisa, this comes with not being able to re-experience emotions.
I remember that something made me angry, but I can't relive the emotion. It lets me dispassionately examine the past to see what made me angry and thus work through the trigger and try to reduce it in the future.
There is the downside to this, it is on all emotion, so I also can't re-experience happy emotions either.
I can't get angry without a lot of reason, and even if I get angry, I can't stay angry, but that's on my specific presentation of C-PTSD.
Let's be unflappable twins!
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That's really impressive, since to be cucumber mostly just tastes like water. (This could just be where I'm getting my cucumber, though.)
This might be one of those things we haven't discovered yet, like the soap/cilantro thing.
Cucumber has a very strong flavor to me.
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My ADHD is not a super powerful and I'd give it up in a heartbeat.
Mine is a super power in a crisis. The rest of the time it is a massive hindrance. But! I also think it's why I'm so unique and why I developed so many other skills, so I wouldn't trade it so much as living in a world that can't accommodate me.
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My boyfriend can smell when someone drank alcohol hours (or even days!) later. He seems to smell it in a person's sweat, so we suspect he senses some kind of metabolite.
As to me? In-person I seem to emit a comforting, trustworthy aura. Children and stray animals approach me like they just know that I'm a safe space for them. As a result, I've acquired quite a list of no-kill shelters in my phone. I also ended up working in children's therapy.
Adults who share my wavelength can also recognize it in me, and I can recognize it in them - we're drawn to each other in the same "inherently trustworthy" way. I suspect it's an aspect of neuro-divergence.
I also have that aura, and I am here to lend credence to being able to see it in others, and them seeing it in me.
I have this cute phrase for when it's not just that aura but also the obvious background of trauma, "We have so much in common! I'm so sorry."
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I can't get angry without a lot of reason, and even if I get angry, I can't stay angry, but that's on my specific presentation of C-PTSD.
Let's be unflappable twins!
I'm definitely not unflappable, I still get angry. But it fades quickly.
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Mine is a super power in a crisis. The rest of the time it is a massive hindrance. But! I also think it's why I'm so unique and why I developed so many other skills, so I wouldn't trade it so much as living in a world that can't accommodate me.
Obviously my past experiences have made me who I am, but plenty of neurotypical people are unique and have skills too. I genuinely believe I'd be the same person I am today but "better" if I didn't have ADHD. I don't want to sound like a doomer, but it's genuinely difficult for me to do basic things. The narrative that disabilities are actually super powers is deeply troubling to me. At times it can even feel like toxic positivity.
I'm not trying to say you're doing anything wrong by describing your ADHD as such. I don't see a problem with it. I view it similar to the way some people who are deaf don't want to be able to hear. Nobody can dictate your experience to you. You know what is best for you. Individuals with ADHD saying things like that don't bother me. What bothers me is when neurotypical people do it or it's a trend.
I got into an argument with someone about this before. They were using the idea of hyper focus as being a super power. If the planets align and I'm able to hyper focus on what I need to be doing at the time and somehow I don't need to be doing anything else then sure, it's a super power. More often it's me being unable to stop thinking about something I'm fixated on for days. Losing sleep while I think about it. It distracting me from work. It distracting me from friends. Only to just suddenly leave making me wonder why I'm not interested in the thing I had been obsessed with for so long.
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I'm definitely not unflappable, I still get angry. But it fades quickly.
Okay! I'll maintain the unflappable facade until you become... less flapped.
That sentence really got away from me. The point is I mean well and I get at least some of what you're talking about. And! I can ask you to come be angry for me when I'm unable to flap! A perfect system!
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I can make the sound of one hand clapping.
It was a thing that went around my middle school. You keep your hand at about a 90 degree angle to your arm, and then flap back and forth with your fingers loose so it hits your palm. Takes a little practice.
To me the sound of one hand clapping is whoosh... whoosh... whoosh...
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I can turn ducks around... but only when they are in the water
supe name: The Ductator!
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Obviously my past experiences have made me who I am, but plenty of neurotypical people are unique and have skills too. I genuinely believe I'd be the same person I am today but "better" if I didn't have ADHD. I don't want to sound like a doomer, but it's genuinely difficult for me to do basic things. The narrative that disabilities are actually super powers is deeply troubling to me. At times it can even feel like toxic positivity.
I'm not trying to say you're doing anything wrong by describing your ADHD as such. I don't see a problem with it. I view it similar to the way some people who are deaf don't want to be able to hear. Nobody can dictate your experience to you. You know what is best for you. Individuals with ADHD saying things like that don't bother me. What bothers me is when neurotypical people do it or it's a trend.
I got into an argument with someone about this before. They were using the idea of hyper focus as being a super power. If the planets align and I'm able to hyper focus on what I need to be doing at the time and somehow I don't need to be doing anything else then sure, it's a super power. More often it's me being unable to stop thinking about something I'm fixated on for days. Losing sleep while I think about it. It distracting me from work. It distracting me from friends. Only to just suddenly leave making me wonder why I'm not interested in the thing I had been obsessed with for so long.
toxic positivity
Oof, you're not joking. There was a community somewhere else on the internet who was 100% about that bullshit. Some days, you just want to be able to do the fucking laundry. Or in my case, make the marinara sauce. I took meds today and I'm all focused but I'll be damned if I can start cooking. Executive dysfunction can really fuck right off forever.
why I’m not interested
There's that depression-like emptiness where once a whole-life obsession was! I'm really grateful that I've gotten to a point in my life where I recognize that feeling for what it is, because that helps me a lot in coping with it. "Why am I not having fun anymore?" It can be such a bleak thing, but I'm lucky enough (I recognize not everyone is!) to be able to objectively realize that's what's wrong with me, and now that it's been identified, to set aside that feeling and wait for the next hyperfocus.
You're for sure right. There'd be less struggle. There'd be less strife. And I wish you could give it up, and be those things, and not have to kill yourself to do basic, normal things every day. But I think I'd keep it.
Hey, thanks for the conversation. If you ever need an accountability person, my DMs are open!
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I have extremely sensitive hearing. I can tell when there's an animal scarer nearby.
This brings me to Microsoft Teams. You might have seen people mention that their dogs know when someone joins the call before they do. That's because they introduced "ultrasonic howling" to detect if they're in the same room as you, and mutes their mic.
It hurts like fucking hell with headphones on.
Never heard of ultrasonic howling, but what a cool idea - stop that feedback in its tracks! Bummer that it bothers your hearing.
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I used to absolutely hate cucumber, to the point that I could taste it if someone cut a tomato salad with the same knife they used for the cucumber without washing it in between, the whole tomato salad would be ruined for me.
I could smell instantly when someone started chopping cucumber in the other room.
That's it, my superpower is to detect traces of cucumber.
That reminds me, when we were kids my little sister used to call cucumber slices "ice cubes". No idea why.
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CRT TV's emit a high frequency noise while in operation. Apparently there must be a significant number of people who can't hear frequencies that high. My wife can't hear it and had no idea those TV's made any noise at all.
Aww, it's not magic, just science
(Thank you for the info! Very interesting!)
