It can feel like a very long walk down a dimly lit corridor when you are trying to fathom your way out of a long running health condition such as fibromyalgia, as I expect others on the journey could probably relate to. From time to time, if you’re fortunate and diligent enough in pursuit of … Continue reading Ehlers-Danlos, POTS and Asperger’s…many lightbulbs go on at once
How long have you felt like an alien landed on the wrong planet? Its something that needs be felt into if you are an Aspie, in order to fully respect yourself for just how long you have had to swim upstream against the flow; so you can appreciate the sheer tenacity and determination with which you try…and keep on trying….to fit in, speaking and receiving words and behaviours that don't compute and yet always having to step forwards to meet others far more readily than they ever come to meet you. It's a thankless task and now it's time to thank yourself. Bringing your Asperger's into the equation can even help you cope with some of your most triggering circumstances because now you have logic on your side (and you know how much we love logic). Here's my example...
Is your body acutely sensitive to quotas of light, to changes in the season, to events way outside your mind's awareness? Time to celebrate how truly remarkable it is...and to learn to live with it.
Asperger's can be challenging for any woman; and parenting a child with more typical needs than your own can place those challenges right under a microscope...but you both stand to gain such a lot, in the long run, as I am now discovering. Examining some classic Aspie traits in the light of motherhood...
When we open our minds to the fact we have access to experiences we can't always explain with logic, we realise we are the early warning system to ourselves. Above all, when we allow ourselves, we just know what we know...with every instinct in our body and soul and this is our gift; albeit it a typically double-edged one...(read on).
The propensity to teach ourselves new skills and prefer to do things our own way from the outset is, I suspect, a trait of high-functioning autism. It makes us into mavericks, it sometimes increases what looks like our failure or non-completion rate and it frustrates the hell out of partners when we prefer to construct things "out of the box" without first consulting the instruction leaflet. However, it also makes us movers and shakers when it comes to making paradigm leaps...a much needed skillset at this point in time.
I’m sharing these thoughts because I’ve been swept over by a sort of epiphany that I am on the autistic spectrum and I'm by far from the only one discovering this in my 50s! The more I delve, the more I (a) discover anecdotes that sound like myself now or as a child/young adult (people … Continue reading Are you on the autism spectrum?
When we are in chronic pain, or even an episode of acute pain that seems to go on and on, who do we share that with, can we even expect to share and does it make it better or worse to convey to loved ones what we are going through? Yet, do we need that outlet of saying it like it is and not feeling so isolated in our experience and, if so, where do we get that from, without stirring up the pot to make ourselves feel all the more defeated from over-talking it. This conundrum is familiar territory to anyone who lives with pain, chronic illness, even the disillusionment of daily chronic fatigue. Sharing some home truths, perhaps some helpful perspectives, from my own experience of this highly emotive topic.
There's literally nothing to lose and everything to gain from a healthier vagus nerve. Like all the best paths, it starts out a little mysterious but that's where its adventure lies. I've certainly had cause to explore it lately as its been found to have just so many links with the most chronic, mysterious, health conditions....and here's what I found out (to my benefit, maybe yours). So, having found it and become so much more aware of it, I like to think the vagus nerve is a path worth following as, so it turns out, it may very well lead us back to ourselves in more ways than one!
If you have chronic health condition going on then reading about voltage-gated calcium channels might not sound like what you want to be doing right now...but it might actually be a key in the door of your understanding!
Living whole 