Continuing on from my last post, diving into the topic of hormone balance and autism, particulalrly relating to adult females on the spectrum and those with corresponding pain conditions such as EDS. A personal discussion, backed up by recent studies.
There's no doubt that hormone balance (or lack of it) underlies health but how does it specifically relate to chronic pain conditions such as Fibromyalgia or Ehlers Danlos Syndrome?
Bear this in mind when you consider even the best-intentioned elimination diet. Cultivating joy is central to everything if we are to thrive in life at all…and its an insider job. Take away your entitlement to prepare, look forward to and then relish, without undue fear, some of the most natural and delicious, healthy, food sources that others take for granted and you are quickly placed on a road to isolation, disillusionment and dispair. You begin to wonder what you have done to deserve such a thing…and this is certainly no route to healing!
How do you measure who you are, what makes you feel core-strong regardless of what else is going on, and how does this manifest in your physical health? Boy this feels like such a big post, too much in it to summarise so dive in if you are prepared to ask these questions with me.
Knowing what your weaknesses are and, importantly, owning them can be the very first step to making your "problems" much simpler to navigate, avoiding the endless re-runs of such familiar-old challenges and then claiming all those hidden strengths that are just waiting for you to notice them beyond the smokescreen of struggle...
Are sensory-sensitivities in autism the same as being a Highly Sensitive Person and what can you do, in either case, when your sensory experiences seem to play on loop, especially if they trigger physical symptoms? Sharing some insights as someone with both traits and ways I am starting to rewire my own highly sensitive responses.
You can find clues to lost parts of yourself in all sorts of surprise places...and they can strongly support the path to healing and wholeness when you allow them to speak to you about how or why you left them behind.
"Without pain, I would be a neurodiverse hypermobile person (which is both to think and move outside the box…) with exceptional skills of insight and sensitivity, who knows how she likes to be and work and with whom and how to follow her best, most balanced, guidance through life." Excavating the gifts of diversity beyond a paradigm of struggle.
Do you have one of those brains that go off into all directions, drawing connections between diverse sources, noticing patterns everywhere? You may have an "orthogonal mindset" and its a key trait of autism, one I very-much relate to.
What if none of our traits mean we are "broken" but, rather, that we have been living to the wrong paradigm? An exploratory look at the link between my own hypermobility and neurodiverse traits and an innate need for more movement and freedom of expression.
