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.
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.
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.
The slow and steady loss of independence that can happen when you have a disability or health issue can be quite pernicious, quietly gnawing into the roots of your confidence until its too late to undo. Exploring ways that we get to feel independent in spite of other limitations and how important it is to preserve them.
When we notice how our bodies work so closely (as does eveything in nature) with the cycles of waxing and waning, we gain the tremendous power that comes from accepting what is and ceasing to resist the natural rhythms that can also be our best source of strength when we harness them for our recovery.
Perhaps more than any other aspect of chronic illness I have ever had to deal with, including chronic unrelenting pain, dysautonomia has the ability to throw your entire life into disarray, permeating every single aspect of your life in ways that can be as invisible to the casual bystander as they are devastating. Is there a bright side, things we can learn, ways of living with it better?
If you have ADHD then you don't need me to tell you what its like...but I didn't know I had so many coping methods until I started to write them down so here they are, in case they help.
Do you have marked seasonal difference in your health symptoms? Many people do! However, when we learn to accept them, know them and work with them we get to find a new kind of equilibrium in spite of them, and that brings its own seasonal gifts.
I am reminded by what I am about to share (a transformation in progress) that slow-steady transformation on the inside happens in just the same way, in tiny increments, and more so without the burden of high-expectations, the deadly weight of huge targets or imperatives...just simply rising up and making that small effort, day after day, with steady faith in the outcome.
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.
Living whole 