A need for more (positive) stimulation

Positive stimulation is just so important to a person's recovery out of the cycle of chronic illness. Life has taught me that through experience this year...you have to be almost brazen in your courage and willingness to be positively stimulated to break out of the snake eating its own tail effect of assuming that all you need is quiet, routine and rest.

The pitfalls of identification with a label and the power of positivity

Labels can be so useful, for identifying, explaining, pooling information, finding things out...but they also come with pitfalls. Exploring how to use them (with caution) and also the power of positivity as a tool for breaking out of any boxes.

Two ends of the see-saw: getting to see my ADHD brain in action

An unusually busy phase has blown some theories I once held about neurodivergent traits and chronic illness out of the water or reframed them in a new light. Exploring the link between needing to keep busy, pain perception, sensory sensitivity and chronic fatigue.

Moving towards your best post-burnout autistic life

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?

Like Icarus: rewriting the narrative of what someone with ADHD needs to thrive

What you or I need to recover our health, to maintain it and truly thrive may be completely different, even polar opposite to what someone else needs. Considering the potential relationship between ADHD and a chronic (as in, long perpetuated) state of poor health.

Back to centre again

Bear this in mind when you consider even the best-intentioned elimination diet. Cultivating joy is central to everything if we are to thrive in life at all…and its an insider job. Take away your entitlement to prepare, look forward to and then relish, without undue fear, some of the most natural and delicious, healthy, food sources that others take for granted and you are quickly placed on a road to isolation, disillusionment and dispair. You begin to wonder what you have done to deserve such a thing…and this is certainly no route to healing!

Who knows your pain

When we are in chronic pain, or even an episode of acute pain that seems to go on and on, who do we share that with, can we even expect to share and does it make it better or worse to convey to loved ones what we are going through? Yet, do we need that outlet of saying it like it is and not feeling so isolated in our experience and, if so, where do we get that from, without stirring up the pot to make ourselves feel all the more defeated from over-talking it. This conundrum is familiar territory to anyone who lives with pain, chronic illness, even the disillusionment of daily chronic fatigue. Sharing some home truths, perhaps some helpful perspectives, from my own experience of this highly emotive topic.

Hand-picking your support team

When you scan and tune into how all the various people in your life "see" you, what do you get and how does it mirror your own highest sense of self? Do they closely match or not even get close? Do those people really know that most extraordinary "you" that is online with some serious aspirations … Continue reading Hand-picking your support team