Highly Sensitive Person

The October Slide is real

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been noticing the October slide into worse chronic health symptoms phenomenon for years (as reflected by countless posts alluding to it ever since I first started writing here) but, at last, I’m hearing tons of other people talking about, or maybe my ears are just pricked-up looking for more answers as ever, galling as it is to see a summer’s worth of steady health improvements set back like this once again. So what is it, why does it happen and what can be done to get through this heinously challenging time for some of us?

The fact I “seem” to be coping with the big event doesn’t mean that I really am!

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

My hypermobile neurodivergent way of getting through an event might not be typical and will generally involve a lot of extra strategy and accommodations but it is just as valid as the next person's and, the more I own this, the less disappointed I am with myself or my circumstances. The world does not, in any large way, accommodate people with neurodivergent sensory responses to the environment or their not insubstantial neurological or physical differences, especially if hypermobile, therefore big events are seldom pitched to accommodate us, as a minority factor in the room. The very best I can do is have my own list of helpful methods and tools at hand to get me through these big events my way whenever they happen, with a view to minimising the worst kinds of after effects sufficiently enough for me to be able to hold on to the happy highlights instead of all the low points. Here are a few of my tips to myself in case they are of use to anyone else.

Music festivals and the like: The biggest win isn’t pushing through but getting real about what you can and can’t do

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

As someone who is both autistic and who has disabilities, I've learned the hard way that the most important thing is to keep getting ever closer to living within my actual capacity (not some pipe dream based off "what I have done in the past" during all those years when I tended to try and normalise my behaviours), knowing my limitations, tailoring my life more and more to what feels good without all the compromise and stepping away from circumstances that have too high a toll, in terms of physical consequences and overstimulation from crowds and such, to be any good for me.

hEDS and “energy flu”

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been calling it “energy flu” for decades but what I mean by this is when the environment changes and I sense it through every tissue and fibre of my hypermobile body and it affects me…affects literally all of me, like I’ve walked in or out of a pressure chamber and nothing is quite normal whilst I adjust. Talking about hEDS in relation to an increased sensitivity to environmental shifts, how this impacts sensations, symptom load such as pain and dysautonomias, functional ability, executive function and more and things you could possibly consider as a better way of managing these episodes.

Reframing PEM and considering how it may be linked to delayed emotional and sensory processing in autism

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

How could having more sensory information to process than the next person and delayed emotional processing have to do with post exertional malaise or delayed onset pain and what could any connection between them tell us about PEM so that we can reframe it in a more positive light?

Super syndrome: taking a unified approach to all the things

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

What if there is a constellation of frequently overlapping health “things” that some of us have going on, all of them connected together so deeply and intrinsically that it makes a nonsense to consider them in a piecemeal fashion? Looking into the findings of a couple of neurodivergent medical professionals who share this view I have so long held and ways we can use the information to further our self-understanding and thus empower ourselves.

ME/CFS and neurodivergence: a potential overlap?

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

There are so many overlaps between ME/CFS with common neurodivergent factors such as extreme sensory sensitivity and environmental challenges, increased hypermobility, porosity and laxity, orthostatic challenges such as POTs, increased susceptibility to viruses and adverse medical side-effects, sometimes lifelong energy deficits and frequent burnout events that, surely, the question needs to be asked...is there a credible link between neurodivergence and having an increased propensity to develop the condition? If so, how do you single them out; is it even viable to try and view the one factor in isolation from the other if they now coexist side-by-side, as they clearly do for me, or is the better headway always made once they are viewed as a kind of package of tricky responses to "life" as we know it.

Slowly inching back outside after a crash

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Of course you want to get back out there doing normal things, just as soon as you feel remotely ready, but there's a right time and a right way to do this with ME/CFS. Exploring some of the expectations, the risks, the difficulties and the lessons of inching back outside again.

Accommodating both sides of AuDHD is a must!

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

If you are AuDHD and a situation that is meant to be working out for you is actually overwhelming you more than its helping, is too mentally, physically or emotionally stimulating, pressing buttons and resulting in repeated fatigue or symptoms that suggest your triggers are increasing, not backing off then you need to question whether its right for all the various parts of you. It's just so easy to be led off down a path of becoming overstimulated, thinking you can cope because you are ADHD or must push through when you can’t (I believe we AuDHDers really do require more rest and recovery to cope with our complex nervous system), never forgetting, except at our peril, that there is always that other factor to appease…the autistic side!

Making invisibility more visible as someone with hidden disabilities

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

A recent experience I had, as someone living with invisible disabilities, including its positive outcome, just goes to show the importance of speaking up for your needs, of feeding back when things don’t work out and of urging venues and organisers to try harder in the future. Some, if not all, will listen and, in time, things should get better. It will also take a lot more education of the general public for things to really improve, which is something I hope we are all prepared to work towards, as we each do whenever we stand up for our challenges or dare to speak out and educate people regarding what isn’t so immediately obvious about our disability experience, utterly life-encroaching though it may be to us. We have every right to be able to expect to take part in, and enjoy, experiences that able bodied people are able to take for granted and, if it takes a few tweaks and accommodations to make that happen, then we should be pushing for those until we get them. Yes its very hard to do, and we need to pick the right time (for us) to be more vocal as it can take a lot out of us when we are already struggling but we also have to think about contributing, when we can, towards making our invisibility more visible, in all aspects of life until, little by little, people start to see us more clearly.