I simply can’t be this finely tuned autistic person and not have a reboot setting to clear static off the lines. Exploring the anatomy of shutdown, how it is received and why it might be necessary.
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.
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
Stress has been the modern pandemic since long before covid-19 came along, which is why so many people and systems have been wrong-footed by it...but therein lies the opportunity to evolve. individually and collectively.
From the International Bra Free Study: “Bras Can be a Pain. Literally. In fact, research shows tight bras can cause breast pain, cysts, and even cancer. The tighter and longer the bra is worn, the higher the risks. While the bra-cancer link is still being resisted by affected industries, the fact is that bra-free women have the healthiest breasts. The Bra-Free Study will prove that and show that this group of women will have lower breast cancer rates compared to women who wear bras.”
Why does the kind of stiffness that can be likened to rigor mortis occur in the body of someone with fibromyalgia; are there any clues why that could happen in a living-breathing person? Rigor "stiffness" mortis "of death" says it all really....it is a condition of death so what makes it appear within life for just so many people, resulting in a kind of half-life. I had been here before but this time I wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery...
Dr Elaine Aron’s work on this topic has been a life-changer for so many people with high-sensitivity since the phrase was not even coined until she came along and gave it this label. Her book, film and website resources are some of the most useful tools I have ever come across and she is cited by pretty-much everyone who speaks out about high sensitivity which, thanks to her, people now do; quite unheard of a couple of decades ago. More and more, high-sensitivity has become a buzz-word and not because its trendy to jump onto its bandwagon but because many of us had very little concept of what made us so different until this point; which allowed everyone else’s opinion of us, that we are “wierd”, “weak”, “neurotic” highly-strung” and so on, to stick. With more interest garnered in it than ever, it's now been shown by studies to be a genetic trait; something a fifth of us are born with…so, not an illness, timidness, weirdness, personality flaw, mental health issue, handicap or lack of backbone (as so often referred to in our families, schools and workplaces). When we turn this around to see High Sensitivity and its traits as a bundle of gifts, we start to live much closer to our personal blueprint.
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.
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..?
Knowing how to hold that inner space of unconditional wellbeing intact whilst facing up to whatever is going on and taking part in all aspects of life that require our attention is such an important skill set; as I was reminded this week. Once we have a handle on this, it demonstrates to us that there is nothing coming at us from outside as such and that it is that inner choice point of how to respond - a decision made from the creator seat at the very heart of us - that determines everything going on in our reality; manifesting as our most minute body responses and so very much more. We start to dare to live with a foot in both camps; one in the inner sanctum and the other "out there" in the world, newly trusting that these two aspects of ourselves can learn to walk together, "one...two...one...two...one...two". In being enticed to practice such a balanced approach (when we may have thought we had withdrawn forever) lies the potential for a whole new level of healing as we are encouraged to believe that we are not signed up for life's perpetual hopping race but can really do this whole "being divinely human" thing without expecting to keep falling over when something rocks the boat.
Living whole 