intensity

When things go right but your mind is still looking out for things going wrong

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Over the course of a lifetime, we can become so very weak at this skillset of taking pause, taking a moment, taking the time to enjoy the view from the top of the mountain before “doing” anything else such as pulling the metaphorical camera from the pocket. Just allowing ourselves to be there in the moment of culmination, to breathe it in, take in the 360° view and allow the cells of our body to drink from the water that will remind us later that things don’t always have to be “going wrong” or dying or destructing. We need to amplify such moments in our awareness…not skip over them. They help us to rebalance all the other moments when things feel like they are always shifting and taking us by surprise and they help us to redress all the hypervigilance and anxiety that seems to want to take us over as we age.

Adult ADHD challenge: When you know you need to stop everything for while…but its a real struggle to do so

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

As someone with ADHD I can never completely stop or relax. I end up laughing at myself for my lack of ability to sustain even the most inviting moments of peace and inactivity for very long but I am also mortified. Almost as soon as I have clocked the perfection of such a moment, like taking a minds-eye photograph of it, I am already prepared to dismantle it and move on to the next thing. Its as though I am designed to blow-up such moments of completion, some part of me utterly compelled to drop the pebble in the smooth pond, like I just cant help myself!

The importance of finding your place

~ Helen White ~ 4 Comments

So many of us put up with living in less than ideal places and circumstances, especially if we feel we are stuck with them, but what if they are the missing piece of the whole health jigsaw. If we also happen to be neurodivergent, feeling "out of place" can be become such an innocuous-seeming sensation across the course of a lifetime because we become so acclimatised to feeling like a misfit in a lot of situations; our version of "normal". This makes it all too easy to ignore times when we are really in the wrong place or situation, when we should be doing something about it, especially when our health is being badly impacted. Clues might be subtle but we, of all people, are past masters at piecing together all the signs and patterns that tell us there is a better kind of life waiting for us somewhere, one that better fits the way we are wired.

Learning to pick your hyperfocus

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

Hyperfocus run amok, if your neurodovergent brain is prone to it, can lose you a lot the the key moments, a great deal of the colour and richness, of actual life. The need to feel perpetually occupied in your head can be a tyrant when there are no checks in place. Learning to curate what you engage with, and when, as your latest area of hyperfocus can bring some relief and lead to far less mental exhaustion or overwhelm. By picking and choosing lighter topics of engagement, you can feel like you have taken a sort of brain holiday...without actually becoming too bored, which is probably something that you abhor to do.

Driven by positivity: an alternate spin on neurodiversity

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Considering a hunger for positive feedback, recognition and praise as a main driver for a lot of people with ADHD, leading to a euphoric state on the rare times we ever receive it. Such positive feedback can turn us into a "whirling dervish" of positive energy and enable us to turn all that apparently erratic energy around and apply it to striving, thriving and making good things happen.

The positives of finding out you are autistic (if you are)

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

Before you realise you are autistic (if you are), all you tend to know is the outline of your autistic self, as in, the shape that is left where you don’t fit in with other people’s experiences. It’s a bit like drawing a portrait of someone by filling in the background and leaving a space where the person is standing; what they call a negative space composition, in art terms. You get to know what you aren’t…but not what you are. Such an approach tells you a lot about all the misfitting bits but nothing much about yourself and that, in itself, can be a source of ongoing trauma because it can leave you feeling like a blank. Finding out you are autistic begins a process of filling in all the blanks and getting to know who you actually are.

The effect of chronic stress and early-life trauma responses on long term health

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Looking at what we already know about the effect of chronic unaddressed toxic stress and early life trauma-responses, specifically from the perspective of neurodivergence, and its possible link to chronic health issues.

Cultivating the fierce self-compassion you need to keep your essence intact

~ Helen White ~ 1 Comment

Unnecessary exposures to sadness, negativity and grief suck vital life force out of people; take this from a hypersensitive person who knows all too well the cost to health. Learning how to fiercely curate the amount of exposure to negativity that we can cope with as an exercise in self-compassion.