Exploring some quite compelling links between sensory meltdown, shutdown and synesthesia and a possible causal relationship between them, explored from a personal-anecdotal and research point of view.
In the case of those of us most sensitive to environmental factors, is "weather (or whatever it is) salience" a more apt term to describe a higher degree of awareness that leaves other people wondering what on earth we are talking about and does synaesthesia sometimes get recruited by our neurodiverse brains as a means of extending the basic sensory tools so that we get to gather far more "data" from our environment in an attempt to better "systemise" our experience of the otherwise random-seeming world we live in?
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.
When you have come to know a place so well it seems to have become part of you and yet that place is subjected to an onslaught of negative environmental effects that alter it beyond recognition, why wouldn't the effects be physical and utterly dire as regards your own health?
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.
If TMS is behind your chronic condition then, until you accept this and take the necessary action, you’re unlikely to move on. You have to believe in it, commit to doing the work and garner the faith that you can and will get well again. You have to let go of any negative feelings that arise from the realisation you’ve been caught in your own mind-trap all these years because it really wasn’t your fault as you had no idea and the brain is extremely good at doing this thing that it does to distract you from intense emotions with symptoms (and utterly convinced it is doing the right thing; that your very survival depends on it, thus it gives it everything it’s got). That’s a huge amount to contend with; the odds were stacked against you all along, but not anymore, now you know and can learn the tools for healing.
Its a message I ingrained into myself years ago, when I read a book on the topic cover-to-cover in an afternoon and heard all the numerous, often subtle, frequently devastating symptoms of B12 deficiency and yet, though I pursued a vegetarian and vegan diet for many years, and continued to present with a multitude of … Continue reading Don’t underestimate B12 deficiency, ever!
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.
When you thrive on predictability, how does your body cope with delayed or oddly-behaving seasons? Or with prolongued transitions? Or when "feeling too much" and energy overload (ironically) translate as deficit? Exploring the effect of seasonal changes from a neurodivergent perspective.
Looking into the potential triggers of a significant ME flare-up, noticing the kind of lifetime patterns and underlying (personal) stressors that might be at the root.
Living whole 