Environmental illness: the living tragedy of a sensitive response to places altered beyond recognition

When you have come to know a place so well it seems to have become part of you and yet that place is subjected to an onslaught of negative environmental effects that alter it beyond recognition, why wouldn't the effects be physical and utterly dire as regards your own health?

Studying yourself under pressure as an exercise in enhanced self-awareness

How do you shape-sort your life, what unusual things motivate you, where do you get your particular kicks, how and with whom (not!) do you like to work; conversely, what gets your back up, scrambles your processes or burns you out? There's nothing like noticing your behaviour under pressure to learn about your particular version of neurodiversity, all the better to work to your unique strengths in future!

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.

INFJ “Grip Stress” sheds light on lasting trauma and chronic pain

It's been a while since I wrote about Myers Briggs personality types though the method remains one of the most consistently useful tools I have ever used to come to deeply understand myself. Yesterday, I happened upon a particular foible of each personality type called a “grip stress" state, something I had never come across … Continue reading INFJ “Grip Stress” sheds light on lasting trauma and chronic pain

A thing about mornings

Do you struggle, I mean really struggle, to adjust to getting back into your body in the mornings? Even when there's absolutely nothing to worry about, there's no stress, no unhealthy lifestyle habits to explain it, nothing that could be making your cortisol peak when you wake, do you somehow know that you are treading a very fine line as you re-enter your conscious state each day? Have you had to entrain your family to tread very softly around you first thing in the morning because loud noises or sudden announcements get your heart racing, switch on pain? Even when you are perfectly chilled in your mind, ecstatic with life even, is this your "normal" experience of waking; like it's a precision manoeuver? Its a vata kind of a thing...and there are things you should know about how to make this easier.

Off kilter

I see in my dog a parody of same comic behaviour that plays out in me and mine at this time of the year, which he also finds something of a struggle being a sun-worshipper of the nth degree. He sleeps a hung-over type of sleep most of the day, his nose pushed deep into the pile of blankets that he insists upon, then he gets up for his walk (the one lively time of his day) and, once the sun goes down, obsesses about food and snacks like his life depends on getting another treat out of the cupboard, before falling back into a deep slumber in his bed. So what does this tell me..?