self-care

Assessing the true price of the deep dive

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

If you are extremely prone to taking deep dives, the time comes for asking: What is the true price of doing this in terms of its impact on self-care; is it all worth it? What do I gain from this latest obsession? Is my self-care repeatedly suffering, coming second-best to my latest fixation? Have I succeeded in traumatising myself in the name of a few inches of increased knowledge? What did I lose, in terms of blissful ignorance or humanising innocence, when I opened up that latest can of worms? Should I continue or just drop it now, like a hot potato, to reclaim my peace of mind? Can I break this trend of pushing myself too hard, too relentlessly, without first assessing the value of what I am doing or whether my nervous system would rather be doing something else or even has the reserves to cope? Can I allow that it’s not always a waste of time to be less driven or intense? Can I guide my inbuilt intensity into more benign practices that generate joy and not so much discontent, fear and trauma? Can I actually learn to steer this neurodivergent vehicle of mine instead of running it off the rails?

Cultivating the fierce self-compassion you need to keep your essence intact

~ Helen White ~ 1 Comment

Unnecessary exposures to sadness, negativity and grief suck vital life force out of people; take this from a hypersensitive person who knows all too well the cost to health. Learning how to fiercely curate the amount of exposure to negativity that we can cope with as an exercise in self-compassion.

Coping with sadness for what has been lost through chronic health

~ Helen White ~ 4 Comments

There comes a time, in chronic illness, where you have to address a profound need to be left alone, to carve your own space, time to put down all attempt at social skills to go mute and self-focused, devoid of all expectations from others to do or react or say the right things and just "be" in the dark void with whatever it is that is happening to you. There has to be time and space for you to pull into yourself, to lick your own wounds and to grieve your own losses which, though less overt than an actual "death", are a kind of bereavement all of their own...a deep sadness for the health you once had, the person you used to be, the hopes you once nurtured. This, like any bereavement, takes time and space and solitude enough to process. My craving for solitude is extremely high right now, perhaps no different to how any wounded or traumatised mammal will withdraw to its den in order to attempt to self-regulate its highly overstimulated nervous system in a way that can only ever be done by curling up, alone. No amount of kind gestures or people wanting to fuss or help out can play substitute for this need to be alone and look our current state in the eyes, to intuit what we most need and to search for the means to initiate the body's own healing process, which is not something you "do" but, instead, patiently wait for with whatever small iota of faith that you have left.

Time for me!

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

When one small thing breaks the camel's back, its usually time to stop and pay full attention. So often, its a clue to how we have been giving ourselves to everything, and everyone, else and not to our own needs...a key trait to notice when we have chronic conditions (because there seems to be a link)...

Knowing your own limitations is the direct route to your superpowers

~ Helen White ~ 2 Comments

Knowing what your weaknesses are and, importantly, owning them can be the very first step to making your "problems" much simpler to navigate, avoiding the endless re-runs of such familiar-old challenges and then claiming all those hidden strengths that are just waiting for you to notice them beyond the smokescreen of struggle...

Religious practice to get us through (no, NOT what you think)

~ Helen White ~ 3 Comments

Adopting healthy habits is the thing that will get us all through this challenging phase and so here's the point I'm making here: The religious practice I speak of here is nothing to do with attending "church" (we need to reclaim that association back, to re-empower ourselves), its to do with devotion…to one's self, one's life…and the conscientious, faithful practice of observances that affirm one's existence as spirit in human form (a long way around of saying “health”); and on this topic I have much to say.

Choosing my edges

~ Helen White ~ 3 Comments

We all need some sort of containment, a reliable edge to our experiences, to enable us feel held and supported in life...and belief systems can do this for the majority of people (to a point). My neurodiverse way seems to have required that I build by own edges from scratch, plucked from a cacophony of sensory experiences and turned into the life supporting routines, rituals and focal points of my life; some distinctly more supportive than others (but getting there). Exploring the need for edges and how to make them better - Asperger's style.

There will be times when you just can’t (as well as times when you certainly can)

~ Helen White ~ 1 Comment

How do we know the difference between when our intuition is speaking to us or when our self-sabotaging fears are stopping us in our tracks? This is an essential lifeskill for self-care and guidance when we venture back into life's busy fray...

Do it for you

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

There is a level (and its the fourth dimension, where ideas about ourselves become reality...) where we have to be fully prepared to heal, at a moments notice, and no "ifs" and "buts" about what that leaves us holding in our hands or who we would let down or leave behind when all we have been for a number of years simply vanishes as if it was never even there. Its only once we are fully accepting of this possibility and all its ramifications, as laid in front of us on the table of all potential, that it can get even close to us (though this is the territory of spontaneous remission so allow some excitement to come into it since this is its very rocket fuel). If you are serious about this, you have to feel into what it is that is keeping you attached to this thing that has so-long defined you and make sure you are 100 per cent happy to let it go...and this can take some serious amounts of inner probing but once those sacks of ballast are identified, you can find yourself in an upward spiral that will blow you away and leave others watching you with their jaw-dropped.

There’s no such thing as “inevitable”

~ Helen White ~ Leave a comment

I'll say it again, there really is no such thing as inevitable...a foregone conclusion...in matters of health or anything else. Its a mindset we fall into a lot, especially when it comes to our bodies. We assume (either consciously or so very deep down that we don't even notice ourselves doing it) that one thing … Continue reading There’s no such thing as “inevitable”