neurodivergent

Music festivals and the like: The biggest win isn’t pushing through but getting real about what you can and can’t do

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

As someone who is both autistic and who has disabilities, I've learned the hard way that the most important thing is to keep getting ever closer to living within my actual capacity (not some pipe dream based off "what I have done in the past" during all those years when I tended to try and normalise my behaviours), knowing my limitations, tailoring my life more and more to what feels good without all the compromise and stepping away from circumstances that have too high a toll, in terms of physical consequences and overstimulation from crowds and such, to be any good for me.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is debilitating, devastating, isolating and often quite unbearable and yet nobody that has not experienced it for themselves can imagine what it truly feels like on the inside; there is no point of reference for anyone that isn't wired that way since it is the product of particular genetics plus epigenetics combined with a lifetime of trauma. As a common experience of both autism and ADHD and something I experience myself, this important topic has been on my list of most daunting things to cover for quite some time...here goes.

Could you be a “twice-exceptional” adult?

~ Helen White ~ 1 Comment

Twice-exceptionality is such fertile territory to explore for anyone who may have even an inkling it applies to them (assumng they can get over the sticking point of using that much stigmatised word “gifted” for long enough to even consider it). The effect of being gifted in some areas and yet held back in others can make a person seem as though they are coping when they really aren’t, and it can also deprive them of the help, understanding and accommodations they desperately need for their deficit areas, as well as the recognition they deserve for their exceptionality. The outcome can be a lifetime of lost potential, fallen through the cracks, or even total burnout...until both the giftedness and challenges can be seen side by side and looked at in a whole new way.

High-functioning autism and the creative, self-teaching maverick

~ Helen White ~ 4 Comments

The propensity to teach ourselves new skills and prefer to do things our own way from the outset is, I suspect, a trait of high-functioning autism. It makes us into mavericks, it sometimes increases what looks like our failure or non-completion rate and it frustrates the hell out of partners when we prefer to construct things "out of the box" without first consulting the instruction leaflet. However, it also makes us movers and shakers when it comes to making paradigm leaps...a much needed skillset at this point in time.

Too much (not too little) going on

~ Helen White ~ 12 Comments

This is an add-on to an earlier post since I just came across “the intense world” theory proposed by of Henry Markram, director of the Brain Mind Center at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologym, which seems highly relevant to it. In that previous post, entitled High-sensitivity, synesthesia...and hearing tones, seeing lights or other anomalous experiences, … Continue reading Too much (not too little) going on