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?
Beaking down "what happens" when you flare-up and coming to understand why your body migth tend to resort to these responses to certain triggers, usually in an effort to help you (an understanding that can occur to you when you slow down enough to listen, instead of letting fear lead the research party) can make for a big breakthrough in managing these dips...
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!
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...
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.
For the past few months I have been engaged in an experiment - me, the middle-aged autistic woman with a whole bundle of chronic pain syndromes, dancing twice a day almost every day. The result is, I can't possibly summarise the incredible benefits I have reaped, specifically within the context of autism but also relating to reduction of chronic pain...there are just too many to abbreviate and some of them may very well surprise you, so you will just have to read this post...
As an autistic person, I find there is a definite link here between my particular wiring for high sensory processing, which can make me feel more overwhelmed than some other people might be in the same situation, along with a tendency to live in my thoughts way too much, plus also the need to actively process those senses though my body in such a way that the body fully registers them, but without overwhelm, on the way through…because, otherwise, I can tend to bypass the body altogether. Not least because of issues with chronic pain, learning to bypass the body can become a really big issue. What I need is exuberance, joie de vivre, activities that ground joy in the very cells of the body...and I suspect a lot of people (not least those who live too much in their heads) are needing that right now too!
What would my autism look like if it had been noticed 50 years ago, if I had been fed an appropriate diet supported by the full understanding of what best suits my particular biology, if I hadn't had to work so very hard to blend in as neurotypical for all these years as a matter of survival, and if my autism was welcomed as the useful and contributory trait that it is in its own unique way? Here, amongst some key observations about how "wrong" diet has had such a huge impact on my life, are some aspirations for the future of a world in which autism is better understood and has its valued place.
Living whole 