resilience

The positives of finding out you are autistic (if you are)

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

Before you realise you are autistic (if you are), all you tend to know is the outline of your autistic self, as in, the shape that is left where you don’t fit in with other people’s experiences. It’s a bit like drawing a portrait of someone by filling in the background and leaving a space where the person is standing; what they call a negative space composition, in art terms. You get to know what you aren’t…but not what you are. Such an approach tells you a lot about all the misfitting bits but nothing much about yourself and that, in itself, can be a source of ongoing trauma because it can leave you feeling like a blank. Finding out you are autistic begins a process of filling in all the blanks and getting to know who you actually are.

Under pressure: the EDS anxiety link

~ Helen White ~ 3 Comments

Hard science has uncovered a mechanism whereby the same collagen abnormalities in EDS that make joints especially flexible seem to affect blood vessels, making those with it prone to accumulation of blood in the veins of the legs, an effect that may lead to exaggerated cardiovascular responses to maintain the output of blood from the heart. This and other foibles, which I feel are versions of the same response, put those of us with this issue under immense pressure and strain, all the time, as our version of "normal" so just imagine how much we then react to any additional triggers, to which we tend to be hypersensitive (I share my about theory about that too...), setting off our nervous system at regular intervals in a way that has nothing inherently to do with mental health...although, no surprise, it can start to manifest as anxiety over time. Joining some dots and celebrating just how much people with hypermobility type EDS deal with as their daily benchmark...plus some practical ways of making it better.