neurodivergence

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.

Choosing to become much more grounded in physical reality

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Spirituality can be ungrounding to some autistic individuals; a controversial topic that I have intended to write about, from personal experience, for quite some time and which I have seen under discussion in some other quarters lately. Exploring the impact of a hyperfocused approach to spirituality on health, especially when, on top of inbuilt deficits in interoception, this potentially leads a person to become desperately unbalance and ungrounded in their physical body, leading to increased fragility and vulnerability.

When your autistic bluntness “gets you into trouble”

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

Even the closest relationships in the world can be put to the test when you are operating from different neurotypes, not least when under additional pressures. Combined with a propensity for "blunt, outspoken" delivery and a "lack of filters" in the case of at least this autistic individual, such a situation can lead to miscommunication and hurt...or an opportunity for increased self-awareness, compassion and compromise.

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.

Central heating as a potential trigger of vagus nerve atrophy?

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Central heating can be a blessing but also such a curse. I strongly suspect that there's a need for the living environment to become more closely related to what nature has in mind, per the season we happen to be in. I don't mean that we need to make it frigid and uncomfortable but at least not stuffy, coddled or so artificially consistent...because all manmade consistency does for us is reduce the natural capacity to deal with variety and change (a case of use it or lose it). Personal zone temperature consistency sends confusing messages to a body that needs to still be able to cope with a highly variable world out there all of the rest of the time. If adaptability to change isn't your strong suit (particularly if you are neurodivergent) this can create real problems with the autonomic system and thus your health.

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.

History of a health burnout; what the past can teach me now

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Such as we are experts in anything, those of us with long term health issues also possess a rich hoard of hard-won experience and insight into what made us chronic in the first place. So, what can we take from all the years of navigating our way through the experience of chronic illness as a means to averting a delayed recovery from covid or other trigger virus, especially when we notice any similarities with what we have been through before? Can we now take the overview in order to notice and better understand the patterns, weak spots and trip-wires of chronicness before they become ingrained this time?

Covid’s effect on the vagus nerve (especially if you are susceptible)

~ Helen White ~ 4 Comments

Exploring a known link between covid-19 and certain issues relating to the vagus nerve (amongst others); how does this relate to some of the more scattered seeming symptoms of long covid and what can be done about it in the hopes of making a speedy and full recovery?