Fibromyalgia

Synesthesia or salience: autism and environmental sensitivity

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

In the case of those of us most sensitive to environmental factors, is "weather (or whatever it is) salience" a more apt term to describe a higher degree of awareness that leaves other people wondering what on earth we are talking about and does synaesthesia sometimes get recruited by our neurodiverse brains as a means of extending the basic sensory tools so that we get to gather far more "data" from our environment in an attempt to better "systemise" our experience of the otherwise random-seeming world we live in?

Change = laxity = release: An inbuilt opportunity for healing

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Exploring possible explanations for links between weather changes, episodes of hypermobility (increased laxity), oxalate dumping and sudden flare-ups of physical and/or emotional pain, all as linked to neurodiversity and hypervigilance.

Learning to slow down

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Letting a day of nothing in particular be an accomplishment, even more so than a day of “productivity”, is a necessary mind re-program I am steadily adopting for my health. Allowing myself to feel equally good about myself and, most importantly, relaxed because I managed to go slow today rather than ticking things off a list is a crucial reinvention of myself on the way towards, somewhere down the line, reaping a far healthier nervous system than I ever had in my life. I’m playing the long game now, the fruits of my labours no longer some transient thrill gained from fighting down another dragon but the slow and steady harvest gained from peaceful seeds planted in the ground on some equally slow and steady day and all the intervening patience I had to watch them grow. 

A need for more (positive) stimulation

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Positive stimulation is just so important to a person's recovery out of the cycle of chronic illness. Life has taught me that through experience this year...you have to be almost brazen in your courage and willingness to be positively stimulated to break out of the snake eating its own tail effect of assuming that all you need is quiet, routine and rest.

On oxalates, emotions, self-protection, autism and releasing: a hypothesis

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Exploring the idea that certain chronically painful bodies have formed the habit of storing oxalates (toxic anti-nutrients) from common food sources in order to protect us when, really, this only does great harm...and how to get out of the subconscious mindset of vulnerability in order to heal.

Big emotions at the root of “chronic”

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

If TMS is behind your chronic condition then, until you accept this and take the necessary action, you’re unlikely to move on. You have to believe in it, commit to doing the work and garner the faith that you can and will get well again. You have to let go of any negative feelings that arise from the realisation you’ve been caught in your own mind-trap all these years because it really wasn’t your fault as you had no idea and the brain is extremely good at doing this thing that it does to distract you from intense emotions with symptoms (and utterly convinced it is doing the right thing; that your very survival depends on it, thus it gives it everything it’s got). That’s a huge amount to contend with; the odds were stacked against you all along, but not anymore, now you know and can learn the tools for healing.

“You’re looking really well”: The curse of the invisible disability

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

The way human society is devised, the very foundation stones of its connectivity networks, is based on us all having relatable, sharable situations and people being able to recognise when another person is in strife. When you have chronic conditions that not only isolate you from other people due to an equally chronic lack of spoons, also causing you to be misunderstood by other people (as people tend to assume you are making up lame excuses when they can’t see the energy deficits you are having to work with!) then having the additional pitfall of nobody being able to recognise that you are ill, because your disabilities are hidden from sight, even when you finally come out of the woodwork, is the final sting in the tail.

Exploring the link between hypermobility and neurodiversity

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

The very fact of constantly having to adapt, to meet alien-feeling situations on their terms, when others just slide into circumstances like a hand into a well-fitting glove, exhausts systemically when we don’t even notice how much we are having to do it, how much we are constantly having to bridge the gap between what is and how we are. This may have been damaging our health for years, as surely as long term smoking or heavy drinking, only we didn’t realise it until it was too late to avoid the consequences to our health. This is why I am passionate about helping other high adapters, women especially, to realise, embrace and advocate for their neurodiversity early on in life. It seems to me, autistic women often have a sort of hypermobility of a more subtle kind; one that enables them to become whatever people expect of them…but at what cost.

Worrying or stimming? Looking at an overactive mind from a neurdodivergent point of view

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

From what I can tell, neurodiverse criteria for getting a good night's sleep can be very different to "norm"...and we may not be as anxious as we seem, measured by usual criteria. So how can we tell when we are worrying compared to when just NEED to stimulate ourselves awake in the middle of the night (and why might that be)?