I simply can’t be this finely tuned autistic person and not have a reboot setting to clear static off the lines. Exploring the anatomy of shutdown, how it is received and why it might be necessary.
Exploring all the many reasons boosting oxytocin can be so important for someone that is autistic, who suffers from chronic pain or has dysautonomia issues such as POTs, amongst all the other benefits.
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 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.
A combination of having a blind spot when it comes to your own emotions (alexithymia) and a lifetime of fear around unleashing strong emotions.not to mention the stockpile of anger, frustration and trauma from all the difficult years before diagnosis, can conspire to push strong emotions deep into the body. Exploring how autistic challenges such as these could manifest as chronic illness and especially chronic pain.
Being on the spectrum doesn’t mean one person lives at a high functioning end and some other autistic person lives somewhere in the middle or at the bottom. It means we are all a range, within ourselves, and some of those highs can mask the lows (a primary reason for missed diagnosis). One trait alone can overcompensate for several shortfalls and mean adults are so blinded by your ability they don’t accommodate or even see your considerable struggles. You then exhaust yourself by overcompensating for, or masking, your own struggles for years, burning yourself out by having to work twice as hard as everyone else just to get by or meet high expectations set by others which you took on at face value. Suddenly, you are hit between the eyes by the pathos of this…you were never really that person they thought you were, which you took on at face value, but rather this other person with such a wide mixture of gifts and challenges they almost seem to cancel you out.
Coming out as you truly are, to yourself and to others, can be so utterly monumental, so pivotal, to your own personal wellbeing; yet also something which cannot be adequately conveyed to anyone who has not ever had to feel like an exile fumbling about in the darkness of their own bewildering life until this point. Nonetheless, it's an experience that deserves celebrating and encouraging, as I do today in these few words on the topic.
For the past few months I have been engaged in an experiment - me, the middle-aged autistic woman with a whole bundle of chronic pain syndromes, dancing twice a day almost every day. The result is, I can't possibly summarise the incredible benefits I have reaped, specifically within the context of autism but also relating to reduction of chronic pain...there are just too many to abbreviate and some of them may very well surprise you, so you will just have to read this post...
Living whole 