Another huge one to unpack as I'm learning evermore about this is the shift with undiagnosed ADHD moms that enter menopause and CRASH
Often just as the teens hit puberty. How's that for a double whammy! Especially with some ADHD daughters!

Because just like they can focus on your stuff SOMETIMES, they can also be VERY emotionally mature SOMETIMES. But as a kid you have a hard time predicting when this will occur so it feels very unsafe. &if you dare to call the out on it they will probably gaslight you to protect themselves from RSD.

It has helped me a lot to realise how much undiagnosed ADHD can lead to the experience of having emotionally immature parents, which is quite traumatising to experience, but the ADHD component makes it even more confusing because it is so erratic and unpredictable. ->

As such, I've put together a six part series that I'll drop weekly on Fridays.

Part 1: Deciding to Decide is now available to read on my blog, or watch on YouTube. Your choice!

📽️ Watch here: youtu.be/B1UM20JIyOw
📖 Read here: catieosaurus.com/f/part-one-in-which-i-make-a-decision

Might that be because most people never learned to deeply read and examine visual and their "grammar" because the initial skill is so intuïtive? IME anyone i know that HAS studied visual art, symbolism or more abstract forms of visual "language" IS offended and does call these out.

The irony being that it is very likely that Covid long term effects are probably driving up cancer rates too! So we need ALL those vaccines even more!

Yup

A point proven everyday on Social media interactions -even on short narratives- between people where there are many 'whataboutism' responses from another audience than the OP imagined to be posting for.

@mykola.bsky.social curious to hear your thoughts.
And great post on kindess vs niceness in the other place btw!

But -with the right perspective- there are always new things to learn from, examine and improve in life. As I learn, new avenues do open up to me. The circumstances change. There is enough novelty, discovery and exitement represented in a life long learning journey to keep me engaged.

So we end up with the 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy' approach to life.
Although the metaphor does paint a bit of a false picture.
It is not the same boring boulder up the same boring hill. Even if it feels like that sometimes.

That eventually also leads to a fixed mindset, also Carol Dwecks research clearly shows.
Growth/improvement and learning are way better goals than success or failure prevention can ever be.
Even if they can never be actual goals, because we are rarely done with them. We never reach the end.

And so we end up with a very onesided picture of reality. One that will not help us succeed, only fail less.
It can be very hard to shift this mindset
And some people shift too far in the other direction. They get hooked by the ego stroking of ONLY analysing success.

We forget to ask questions like: What about this worked? Why was that succesful? What is one small win we can build on for next time? Why was this succesful in that case and not in the other? What led to the succes?

From those correlations we can speculate about causation and design more experiments: things to try, to see if they lead to succesful outcomes. And we learn even more.
We often got hyperfocussed on asking: -What went wrong here? What still needs improvement? What did we miss?

They have dismissed or overlooked the high pay off that comes with trying things even if you do fail: you get real time results about what might not work AND about some of the context and elements that correlate with the occasionally success, even if it is a partially or small win.

They need my help to make that make sense to them. Because they often got stuck just there: not even trying is better/safer/ less exhausting than continuing to fail.
But that's because they got hyperfocussed on failure being a thing to prevent.

Succes cannot rest on prevention of mistakes and failure alone. The best way to actieve that with 100% succes is to not even try stuff. And we don't learn through inaction.
I always have to do some work with clients who have perfectionistisch tendiencies and/or a strong inner critic

Yet that approach eventually led to me embracing the positive psychology and strengths based approaches that i work with today. Because it just makes sense. We don't learn how to fix or improve things by only studying failure. We need to study all the factors that go into succes and thriving too