living in the present moment

Stabilising the autonomic nervous system as a first crucial step

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

There is no separating the nervous system from the various different aspects of how the body has started to misfire over the years, cumulating in whatever burnout or crash led you to where you now are, however much other provoking factors (such as a virus or accident) might have taken the brunt of the blame because, after all, what makes one person respond to those things differently, more devastating and lastingly, than the next person if its not the nervous system? Post Exertional Malaise is a classic manifestation of this whilst tracking its triggers can teach us such a lot about our personal state of misfiring health.

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.

Are you becoming more aligned with yourself than you realised?

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Has your year been really challenging in lots of ways….but….when you allow yourself to pull back and gain the overview, you can sense just how positively impactful and on track it has all really been? Can you sense how you have actually been getting much more in alignment with who you really are all along the way, if not always by the most predictable or tidy means? Can you sense that it has all been part of a new level of alignment taking shape, as though something is being orchestrated, however chaotic it may sometimes seem to be at the ground level? If you can even mildly glean that this applies to you then take pause for a moment in order to fully allow the realisation of this to swell in your consciousness. Take some time out at the end of the year to appreciate just how far you have come, no matter how messy or symptomatic your life still seems from within, and maybe jot down some of those things that have improved for you. Because its just so important, for your ongoing sense of progression, to notice how much nearer you now are to some aspiration you hold dear, unfinished business though it may all seem in this moment, or to notice all those many pieces of self-knowledge you wouldn't want to give back in exchange for easier circumstances, as have been picked up along the way. This is how we give ourselves the ongoing momentum to continue moving forwards, not to mention how we come to see the bigger picture of the way our lives are truly playing out so that we aren't always bogged down in the small stuff.

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.

Learning to slow down

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

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. 

Living (not waiting)

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

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.

The peaks and the perils of hyperfocus: a seasonal perspective

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Exploring the trials and tribulations of Christmas as an autistic-ADHD adult prone to hyperfocus; and how this one trait alone can be the source of stress and burnout, yet still so much you can do better, including self-compassion, once you realise and work with the trait.

Hypermobility and the moon (and other natural cycles)

~ Helen White ~ 4 Comments

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.