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.
Sometimes you've just got to make that one decision, large or small, at the fork in the road in order to release all the necessary flow back into your life!
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.
As an autistic person, some places instantly deplete me like I have taken a chemical bath or eaten something off my allergy list…the effect is that instantaneous. Exploring the importance of place as a primary factor in sensory processing and other aspects of neurodivergence.
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.
So many of us feel like we are waiting for the other shoe to drop, breath held, with forces beyond our control seemingly holding all sway over our lives. All the more important, then, to corner some area of your life where you get to exercise the muscle of influencing things that feel creative and positive, whether this is a literal act of creation (and I don’t just mean art) or making decisions, taking actions, putting things in the diary that will help sculpt a better feeling about life, for yourself and others.
Longing to find "your place" in the world, to reclaim your energy from the need to mask, to set parameters around exposures to sensory, social and other factors that detract from quality of life and to be fully unapologetically autistically yourself. What would your best post-burnout autistic life look like and how good would it make you feel?
Exploring the healing gift of hyperfocus (once realised, owned and embraced as a valid choice) for those of us who derive clarity, calm and sense of groundedness from the sheer intensity of our interests.
Being an HSP isn't a flaw but an evolutionary advantage, as has been amply demonstrated by science and history. We were always meant to be the natural outliers of the community, by design, so that we could be the first to notice important things that others miss, picking up envornmental cues and alerting others to any danger that we sensed coming our way. But what happens when our alarms start to go off all the time and when or how do we get a respite? How does this relate to the modern age phenomenon of chronic pain, fatigue and systemic meltdown?
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!
Living whole 