Its continued to be an interesting experiment, this period of my life where I’m living in a sort of limbo waiting to complete on a house purchase whilst renting a place that is really quiet and tucked away from everything. Its proving to be one of the best instruments of neurodivergent self-awareness that I could imagine!

Now that we’ve got into some sort of groove with it, I really notice how I pretty much have to schedule one day a week (Friday) where I get to do something stimulating, followed by a “proper” weekend by which I mean something demarcated from the rest of the week by the kind of activities I associate with leisure time and fun. If I don’t do that, it leads to consequences and those consequences could be presented as a sort of “truism” about my ADHD in general….

When I don’t feed my need for hyperactivity, it presents as internal hyperactivity, mainly “overthinking” and then, given time, it ultimately presents as more and more physical symptoms.

This trait, which I now recognise as something that has played itself out over all the many decades of my life, really points to the issue they all seem to talk about, to do with the different ways that ADHD presents in girls and women compared to males. A tendency not to display hyperactivity externally but to internalise it is an extremely common manifestation of ADHD in females and a main reason why they are not so easily identified as having ADHD in the first place!

Of course, in my twenties and even most of my thirties, I was able to factor in these more stimulating kinds of day without drawing particular attention to them as life was “just” like that for all of us young people. These were the kind of days when I could just let go of the normal, domesticated routines to allow something more spontaneous to arise and they just tended to occur as a matter of course for the first few years of adulthood…at least, until most of the people I knew, and that includes myself, became suddenly  more “domestically oriented”, for want of a better phrase. By the time I reached my late 30s, however, which is (coincidence?) when my health imploded, everything had become focussed on domestic and work routines and all the considerable responsibilities of parenthood and that, so clearly, was when I really began to struggle as someone with ADHD.

These days, I am finding that all it takes for me to “stim” myself enough to keep my mood and energy buoyant for the rest of the week, while we are living here in this oh-so-quiet place, is to go into the nearest city for a spontaneous “city day” once a week, by which I mean the kind of day out where we have no particular plan but always end up having some sort of an adventure. In fact, without these end of the week treats, I’m not sure I could cope with the extreme quiet here at all, which has been quite the learning curve since I had always assumed I would love to live somewhere so tucked out of the way, so perhaps I won’t need these city outings very often at all once we move to somewhere that has a better mix of stimulation all of the time. I can only say just how relieved I am that we didn’t get to buy the first house we made an offer on as it was just such a house, miles from the kind of places that might have given me some sort of respite!

On such a day as today, as we are setting off shortly, we (this is definitely a “we” activity for me with one other person I feel comfortable with) might try out new places to eat or drink, explore independent shops off the beaten path, discover pop up art galleries or craft markets, strike up conversations with friendly people we happen to meet and finish the day in a favourite jazz bar for a bite to eat with some live music before wending our way home in the dark, to contentedly crash-out on the sofa after a day so very well spent. This kind of day can make all the difference to my week, highlighted by how much less well I did last week when our plans to go out had to be cancelled at the very last moment, which was not just a disappointment but more like somebody pulled my plug out!

I look back and marvel at how my “old” life had no such places to go to for the last few years, ironically, since we lived somewhere far more urban than this, as I so strongly disliked the nearest city I actively avoided it, therefore we had to make so much more effort to go somewhere like that, perhaps all the way to London, to get the same effect. I guess one of the reasons we chose the area we are in now is that I chose a city I really liked, first, and then chose to pitch myself close to it but not actually in it, in a sort of best-of-both worlds place where I am not overstimulated all of the time but can dip in and out of the lively bits quite easily whenever I want to.  This is where we will be moving to, permanently, in the next few months.

Its this enhanced ability to be fully self-aware of my own traits and unique needs and to therefore accommodate them that has literally transformed my life since first realising my neurodiversity just a short handful of years ago. Before I became so acutely aware of it, I just bumbled along reacting to the “symptoms” of neurodiversity such as becoming painful overstimulated (which I do when the wrong kinds of environment are forced upon me) yet not realising that, sometimes, I really need to be positively stimulated in order to thrive. Without this, I’m condemned to a life of overthinking, of lack-lustre routines that ironically lead to chronic fatigue (since there is nothing more exhausting than being systemically bored!) and symptoms that would literally pop out of my body, I now think, out of the sheer frustration I was feeling with my whole way of life!

In the light of Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), a topic that I have been deep-diving lately as a possible cause of chronic illness, its not difficult to imagine how all the suppressed frustrations of ADHD could manifest as all kinds of physical symptoms in an attempt to distract the brain away from the sheer hopelessness of a life so under-stimulating it hurts!

This entire move process has been inspired and rocket-fuelled by a strong desire to create the right life balance to suit both of us with our various neurospicy needs for “just so” amounts of positive stimulation combined with other sensory and circumstantial preferences that might not be as mainstream as all that. It’s good to be able to sense that we are starting to get it right, which will be even more the case once we move from this somewhat too remote place into our actual chosen location in a few months time. It’s a place that we have researched thoroughly and believe to be somewhere we can both get just the right balances of factors from it to serve our best interests for the rest of our lives.

Its also interesting to notice how I’ve thrived during this year of considerable upheaval moving from one location to the next and I think one of the reasons for this is that certain skillsets to do with my ADHD have actually come into their own. I’ve long recognised how I’m at my best when dealing with upheavals and challenges that shake up the domestic routine of life, like some usually subdued part of me springs into action to find that its special skill zone (so often invisible to the naked eye…) has finally lit up to be seen whereas, in a more domesticated routine, I can sometimes seem to lack skills at all and be all about the deficits!

At times, chronic illness has appeared like a more “socially acceptable” screen for deficits I am embarrassed to own up to….because I know, deep down, that they are not all that I have to offer, its just that the domestic routine of life fails to bring out my better qualities and it takes more variety and positive stimulation from life for me to light up and shine my unique light.

Domestically, I often feel inept and disorganised (frequently bored!) and am generally the one who is deemed to be slightly letting the side down or not quite pulling their weight unless I give it all my best effort, which I find so hard to do because routine, mundane tasks do anything but light me up or turn on my best qualities. In the day-to-day, I seem to slip into a persona where my husband does most of the donkeywork and (frequently, to my chagrin) takes on the task of sweeping up all the things I’ve overlooked because they didn’t even register to my frequently distracted mind. Yet, when there’s a major logistical scenario to tackle, there I am at the helm and, suddenly, he takes the back seat as I orchestrate what looks like abject chaos into some sort of crazy but inspired master plan. This year has done so much for my confidence because it’s reminded me that, without my particular skillset, we wouldn’t have got out of our old stuck life and an impossible situation (or so it seemed) selling our house, given nobody seemed to want it because if its location, and moved to this new place at all. I know that I’ve pulled off a minor miracle and, though we aren’t quite there yet, we are well on our way!

Related to this, I’ve long considered that there must have been a time in human evolution, before we became such a neurotypcially oriented civilisation, when ADHD as a trait was at its most useful; perhaps in times that were far less certain or predictable or during circumstances that made good use of people who were highly responsive to environmental factors, who offered the ability to be more spontaneous, see the bigger picture and think outside of the box. It’s already been demonstrated by researchers such as Elaine Aron that hypersensitivity offered an evolutionary advantage during such times.

So it was interesting to hear a reminder, today, on a podcast I was listening to, of the farmer versus hunter theory of ADHD based on a study that found that ADHD “represents otherwise normal behavioral strategies that become maladaptive in such evolutionarily novel environments as the formal school classroom.” Bearing in mind humans were hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, it is only relatively recently that society has organised in such a way as to push the usefulness of these traits “out” of the acceptable or valued. In a study of a Kenyan tribe that had at some point broken into two distinct groups whilst sharing the same gene mix, one of which was now agrarian and domesticated and one which remained hunter-gathering, those found with ADHD gene markers in the population of the agrarian group were found to be low-status, undernourished and poor but those with ADHD markers in the group that were still hunter-gatherers were  found to be the most successful, most well-regarded members of that group, which just goes to show how social setting and societal priorities are everything to do with how easy it is for neurodiverse people to adapt and thrive since it is is just made so very hard in the face of the modern-day model for “normality”.

This just goes to emphasise how much neurodiversty appearing as a so called “deficit” really comes down to environment and lifestyle factors and, therefore, just how important it is to try and curate these elements carefully and mindfully for yourself, as a neurodiverse adult, in order to get the best out of your personal strengths and requirements whilst playing down the risk of deficits appearing. I’m no longer prepared to take life as a sort of accident of fate that my nervous system responds to but work very hard at choosing to single out the best balance of life factors to feed my better qualities and push those that I most struggle with into the background by not provoking them any more than is necessary. Stimulation is something that is neither inherently good or bad; its just something that I have to get just right…for me!

So yes, in many ways I see how the year of living by the seat of our pants has been good for me as I really came into my element during the really active months of getting our move on the road, which has strongly reminded me to regard my unique traits in terms of gifts rather than flaws. Like a somewhat more unusual packet of seeds, my neurodiverse traits simply need particular circumstances in order to germinate and  then flourish and I am intent upon finding those best circumstances, even if it takes the rest of my life. The proof is in the pudding: in terms of my overall health and much lessened symptoms of chronic illness, I’ve probably seen my best year for at least half a decade if not longer!

How much is this down to the fact I have been appropriately, usefully, stimulated for much of that time whereas, for over a decade prior, I was largely living the quiet life as dictated (or so it seemed) by the very symptoms that were really like the snake eating its own tail because the more symptomatic I became, the quieter my routines, thus the more symptomatic I continued to be, leading to longer and more frequent phases of chronic fatigue syndrome and “crash”?

Its now been quite a while since I have had what I would call a chronic fatigue kind of crash and, though I’m not out of the woods yet, coming to recognise the part played by this need I have for positive stimulation (the very title of a post I shared just a few weeks ago) is helping me to navigate away from the likelihood of it reoccurring as the kind of autumn weather arrives that often heralds my riskiest time of year. By now, I would usually be enduring a few face-to-the-wall days of deep fatigue between the better days and yet, here I am, upright and, though mindful of my limitations and responsive as I still have to be to signs and clues that I may be overdoing things, I now feel pretty confident when it comes to making plans and saying yes to doing things.

As this dark rainy day gets going, I know my best medicine is to do what we already planned to do and go and seek out some lively places full of interest and people, not that I need to necessarily know any of them as I am more than happy vibing off being around them for a few hours, watching from the sidelines (am endlessly fascinated by human beings) whilst having my own adventure. I plan to head to places filled with light, colour and the kind of interest that lights up my brain and stimulates me enough to feel more thoroughly alive than on some of the more mundane days where it takes real effort to shepherd my overactive thoughts into some kind of productivity. This will roll into a couple of days of weekend pursuits that keep things moving, if at a more sustainable pace.

After all that, as long as I don’t over do it, I can pretty much guarantee that I will sleep well and feel good, rebooted for the week ahead when I will, once again, apply myself towards some sort of productivity until the next time I can get out and seek some stimulation.  Its a rhythm that seems to be working for me better than anything I had tried for a long time but which reminds me of better days in my youth, when (as it happens) I coped so much better with my ADHD that I didn’t even notice it; why? Because, for me, there is a kind of rest that comes from a day that is so highly stimulating that I can just surrender to “what is” for a few hours, just so long as its my kind of stimulation and that’s where the self-awareness factor comes in so very handy because it takes knowing oneself pretty well to understand what works for you versus the next person (and then standing up for that)!

Because, when I’m pleasantly stimulated by the right environment, I don’t have to plan the direction of my thoughts or activities but can be carried away by the largely spontaneous tidal wave for a while which, for me, is like a sort of holiday that enables my whole body to relax and the deep fatigue and high intensity of living in a hyperactive inner universe calm down…for at least the next few hours!