Practical Growth: A Self-Recovery Podcast

How Neurodivergent Survivors Can Empower Themselves with Informed Self-Care

November 30, 2023 Season 3 Episode 318
How Neurodivergent Survivors Can Empower Themselves with Informed Self-Care
Practical Growth: A Self-Recovery Podcast
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Practical Growth: A Self-Recovery Podcast
How Neurodivergent Survivors Can Empower Themselves with Informed Self-Care
Nov 30, 2023 Season 3 Episode 318

Are you neurodivergent and looking for peace after a lifetime of trauma? Struggling to feel comfortable in your own body? Fed up with feeling constantly anxious and burnt out wherever you go?

In this episode, we'll uncover why you're stuck in this never-ending burnout cycle. The neurodivergent nervous system is wired differently from neurotypical people, and that has a huge impact on the healing process.

To find healing, you need to create safe environments and improve the connection in your nervous system. But how can you do that? Don't worry, I'll explain it all in this episode of the Practical Growth Podcast.

Support the Show.

Love the podcast? Leave a 5* review on Apple Podcasts. Ready to commit to the next level of transformation? Join my email list to get my best advice. Want to get coached by me? Apply now: www.therealebjohnson.com.

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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Are you neurodivergent and looking for peace after a lifetime of trauma? Struggling to feel comfortable in your own body? Fed up with feeling constantly anxious and burnt out wherever you go?

In this episode, we'll uncover why you're stuck in this never-ending burnout cycle. The neurodivergent nervous system is wired differently from neurotypical people, and that has a huge impact on the healing process.

To find healing, you need to create safe environments and improve the connection in your nervous system. But how can you do that? Don't worry, I'll explain it all in this episode of the Practical Growth Podcast.

Support the Show.

Love the podcast? Leave a 5* review on Apple Podcasts. Ready to commit to the next level of transformation? Join my email list to get my best advice. Want to get coached by me? Apply now: www.therealebjohnson.com.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Practical Growth podcast with me, ebi Johnson. Author, nlpmp and cognitive reappraisal coach. This is the podcast created for people like you, people looking for more, more health, more peace, more happiness. Each week, I explore new topic in pop psychology and help you build a better life and better relationships. Join me for special guests, exciting ideas and practical advice that you can use to improve your life from the inside out. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

Hello, hello, hello, my lovelies, welcome back to another episode of the Practical Growth podcast. It's me, ebi, your favorite mediumcom writer, your favorite NLPMP and cognitive reappraisal specialist and your favorite TikTok coach. And I'm back, back, back at it again today. Sorry, I was not around last week. I was extremely ill and ended up not doing too well, which those of you who follow me on Instagram, watch my stories or who follow me on TikTok, you will probably know about that, because I've talked about both and if you're one of my clients, you probably know, because you got rescheduled. But I am back. I am here. It's good to be back and it's good to be talking about what we're going to be talking about today, because it's going to explain so much about me to you and it's going to explain a lot about you to yourself. What am I talking about? What am I talking about? Well, it's the reason that you guys hear me burning out this time every year. Right, last year, I had that big, infamous meltdown that you guys heard Right now. You probably tell by the sound of my voice I still don't feel great and won't for the next six weeks. Yeah, it's a tough time of the year for me physically, mentally, all of the above and a part of it, well, really all of it has to do with the fact that I'm a neurodivergent person.

Speaker 1:

Ok, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. Not my neurodivergence specifically, and then, you know, all the other labels underneath that umbrella don't matter. But what we're going to be talking about is neurodivergence and why neurodivergent people are so much different from neurotypical people, specifically why we have to take a completely different path to healing. Ok, we can't just talk ourselves into feeling better, into having more energy, into, you know, or out of the sensory issues. We're wired differently and that changes the way that we heal, and so much of our healing has to be centered around trauma-informed self care, ok, which specifically relates to us. So that's what we're going to be talking about today trauma-informed self care for neurodivergent survivors, and it doesn't matter where you fall in the spectrum, there's going to be stuff in here that's going to help. So that's what we're going to be talking about today how we get out of these cycles of burnout that we fall into, how we deal with the cyclic nature of our trauma and how do we make ourselves feel better, right, how do we just feel better in the skin that we're in? That's what we're going to be talking about today. So, buckle up, get ready. It's going to be a good episode, right? So you know me.

Speaker 1:

I always think it's helpful to start at the beginning with this kind of stuff, and, specifically, I think it's quite helpful for me to explain, kind of, my own story and coming to terms with my neurodivergence and how it then led me down this path of understanding the real deal, healing when it comes to neurodivergent people, specifically people with, for the sake of this, people who are ADHD, who are ASD or maybe they're at the crossroads right of ADHD. For me, specifically, I knew something was off because I've spent I spent years and years and years in therapy, right, I begged my mother to take me to a therapist when I was a teenager. When I was a teenager, because it just felt bad in my body and there's not in any kind of gender way, just like physically, I always felt panic, stressed. You know, I was in a debate club and I would break out into hives every time I had to get on stage and do a speech because I was terrified and just this constant feeling of panic, it physically inside of my body and that didn't seem to go away. It didn't matter how much therapy I did, what I sat and talked through. I mean I sat through a few years ago.

Speaker 1:

I sat through a year, a year of intensive, intensive, intensive, intensive therapy with a, with this like an actual freaking psychotherapist right, and that was great for uncovering, like my mindset, increasing my awareness, but physically I just felt terrible. I got to the point afterwards where I was like, am I developing agoraphobia or something? Because after a year of this therapy I felt more panic to my body ever, like a stress response to my body, like it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, hard time breathing, breaking out in sweats, yada, yada, yada. You know the whole thing Still felt panicked and I had done all this work, I had talked about the sexual trauma and the childhood trauma, everything, everything, and it still wasn't working. I showed up, I changed myself, I changed my friend groups, I changed the country I lived in, I changed everything and, you know, was healthy and doing what I was supposed to do, and it still wasn't right.

Speaker 1:

What I discovered later is the reason that none of that worked for me is because I'm a neurodivergent person. I'm a neurodivergent person and that means not not anything about my personality. What that means is that I am physically, physically, from the inside out, wired differently than my neurotypical counterparts, of which I would argue that the majority of my family is neurotypical. So the reason that therapy alone just normal therapy with, you know, not someone who specialized in neurodivergence didn't work for me is because my nervous system was extremely damaged. Extremely damaged because I had come into the world with a highly sensitive and delicate nervous system.

Speaker 1:

That's what neurodivergence really comes down to, right. We have a different nervous system, and then that delicate nervous system had basically been pummeled for two decades, just almost nonstop. Almost nonstop, which you know. That makes the CPTSD diagnosis make sense, doesn't it? But essentially, I came into the world with a nervous system made out of glass. When most people come into the nervous system with come into the world with a nervous system made out of rubber, imagine it that way. And then mine had just been pulverized into dust just pulverized. So the reason I was still feeling so panicked, was feeling so awful, is because my nervous system was broken and no amount of mindset healing was going to make me feel better.

Speaker 1:

When the actual listen to this, the actual physical fibrous tissues of my nervous system were damaged, neurons and synapses could not connect, parts of my brain did not develop the way they were meant to develop. The whole entirety of my nervous system had been damaged and therefore physically changed and unable to function effectively. And that is why my immune system was so bad. That's why I was struggling with endometriosis, that's why I had chronic pain, that's why I had depression, that's why I was living in this state of constant fear and constant anxiety.

Speaker 1:

The neurodivergent nervous system is wired completely differently. So for us to heal we can't just talk in journal and take some deep breaths. Not practical, okay. But it helps to develop ground up plans that, from the ground up, plans that help us to physically nurture and rebuild our nervous system so that they are physically healthy enough to support this, this mass of blood and organs that we're carting around. Okay, so it's a different process to healing from trauma when you are a neurodivergent person, and we're going to get into that now, all right.

Speaker 1:

So what craziness am I talking about? Because there's going to be some of you listening to this going, uh, holy crap, what do you mean? Because I've spent the last 20 years in talk therapy and I've spent the last this and that doing this and that your nervous system. If you're a neurodivergent which there's a very good chance if you really resonate with my content, with my thoughts, with my beliefs, if you feel like you see your story in me and you just feel this resonance, there's a very good chance you're neurodivergent. If you've ever been coached by me, the odds of that goes up through the roof.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and here's basically the breakdown. So, unlike the neurotypical nervous system, nervous systems of neurodivergent people so, again, specifically for the purpose of this episode, we're just talking about ADHD, asd and AudiHD are incredibly sensitive. Incredibly sensitive, which means that our nervous systems process way more information than a neurotypical brain. Your average neurotypical brain does not input something like a tenth of the information that we input, and that sensory information is everything going on outside of your body and inside of it too, right, it's feeling things, it's smelling things, it's tasting things, it's touching things, seeing things. Okay, those are sensory information. So, for neurodivergent people, because you are hyper aware and then imagine adding to trauma, because you're hyper aware to begin with you intake a lot more sensory information, so that can make being alive a sensory nightmare, even before the hyper vigilance that's installed into your programming by trauma. Okay, so that's where we're at. It's not the crux of the true differences, okay, and that's not why the trauma recovery is so much harder, though, but that's a big piece of it. The nervous system is more sensitive.

Speaker 1:

The true difference in a neurotypical nervous system and a neurodivergent nervous system, and why it's so hard, so much harder for the neurodivergent system to work is because of a thing called the window of tolerance. Okay, the window of tolerance, and essentially, all you need to know is that the window of tolerance is the ability of all parts of your nervous system to work together in order to balance the sensory information that's coming in. Okay, so if all of your systems are working the way they're supposed to working together, imagine your central nervous system and your peripheral nervous system are people. Okay, they're just two guys that work in an office together and when things go well, they come in, they start the day, they shake hands and they pass off things back and forth one between the other, boom bell rings at the end of the day and they go home. That's a neurodivergent or neurotypical person. Okay, that's how their nervous systems work. A neurodivergent person has two guys that hate each other. They refuse to shake hands. They've built walls like a militarized zone down the middle of the office. They hate each other. They don't work together. Okay, so things don't go smoothly. This is how a window of tolerance essentially is. It's the setup.

Speaker 1:

When the different parts of your nervous system don't work well together, it causes more upset, more panic. Part one part of the nervous system starts carrying more than the other, which could be like the autonomic nervous system right, which is fight or flight, which makes you feel panicked. That gets stuck on. That gets stuck doing all the work. The sympathetic nervous system doesn't work right. It can't kick on and take over to stop that sense of panic. The better the different pieces of your nervous system work together, the greater your window of tolerance. And when you have a really high window of tolerance, you're good. You don't feel stressed, you don't feel angry, you don't feel depressed, you're good. But when that window of tolerance diminishes, that's when you start to feel burned out, aggravated, short tempered, moody, despondent, hopeless, depressed all of those bad things that you feel physically in your body all the time. That's because your nervous system doesn't work the way it's supposed to work.

Speaker 1:

Okay, one really helpful way to think about it, to think about these differences, is to think about it like this is the way I kind of see it. Think about it like two high schoolers who have been given their first car. Okay, the neurotypical person goes to a really nice, fancy school. Their parents have a lot of money and they give them this brand spanking new car. Okay, the neurotypical kid gets a brand new car. Shiny, all the fluids are exactly where they're supposed to be, all the systems work together. The shocks are brilliant. They just sail down the road. They don't feel any bumps Totally good, finderbenders from time to time. But it's a big, fancy new car with all the bells and whistles and all the safety components. So they're totally fine.

Speaker 1:

Now let's go to the neurodivergent kid. Okay, the neurodivergent kid comes into the world with a beater, a jalopy of a car. Okay, there's no oil in the system, the air conditioner doesn't work or not enough, the shocks in the car completely gone, completely gone. It rides like a flinstone car. The kid can feel every single bump, every pothole, and they end up in a ton of accidents because the car is impossible to steer. It is impossible to steer, it doesn't work, right? Okay, that is what the neurodivergent kid gets.

Speaker 1:

While the neurotypical kid pulls right out of the parking lot at the end of high school, it just sails right on down the road, the neurodivergent kid, their car breaks down, their car breaks down before they even get out of their parking spot, before they even know how to drive the car. The damn thing breaks, okay. And if they are lucky enough to get out of the parking lot, they immediately get pulled over. That's how you can kind of think of this. Okay, that's how you can kind of think about this.

Speaker 1:

The kid, the neurodivergent kid, with that jalopy car is miles behind their neurotypical peer, before they even know what's going on, before they even know what's going on. And that's made worse if you've been exposed to trauma, especially childhood trauma, which ding, ding, ding. Something like 98% of neurodivergent people have childhood trauma because they end up being traumatized, because they are somewhere on a neurodivergent spectrum and their parents don't know how to deal with that, and so they get traumatized because of it. They get punished, they get ostracized, they get alienated, they get harmed because of their natural, inherent natures. Okay, so most of us are neurodivergent, we're traumatized. That's just the way it is. So add that layer to it now.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I want you to see those two kids in the parking lot. You got the neurotypical kid with his brand new car. He's shown off to his friends. Cranking the air conditioner, blasting the speakers Sounds great. His parents are high-fiving him, other parents are high-fiving them. There's a big bow on the car. Now the neurotypical kid alone in the corner of the parking lot. One of the doors has just fallen off, trunk won't close, grills hanging off the front of the car, and then their parents come over, spin on the kid and light the inside of the car on fire and walk away.

Speaker 1:

That's ultimately, the experience of most neurodivergent people. Okay, that is the experience of the neurodivergent person, and that is why Healing is so much different. It sounds really overwhelming and I get that, and it sounds kinda hopeless. Right, you're like well, I came into the world to shit nervous system and if that's the root of all my trauma and if that's where most of the damage has been done and why I'm still struggling, then that's it. I'm screwed right, wrong, absolutely wrong. There are ways that you can help heal and repair your nervous system. No, it may never be the brand new car, but you can absolutely trade your nervous system in for something with oil in the engine. Okay, let me put it that way.

Speaker 1:

But before you can get there, you need to understand the intersection of hypervigilance and overstimulation. Okay, because being a neurodivergent person creates a perfect storm of chaos, and that chaos very easily derails our lives. Okay, we already have a hypersensitive nervous system and then we get traumatized and that increases the hypersensitivity of our nervous system. So, at peace or not, when you're a traumatized neurodivergent person, you end up with a brain that is constantly, constantly, constantly scanning the environment for threat patterns. Because that's one thing the neurodivergent brain is super good at is pattern recognition, and it goes right. Well, we got hurt, those people hurt us. Let's make sure that never happens again. And it starts just constantly scanning every single solitary thing, even the things it doesn't need to scan for those threat patterns. And that is what hypervigilance is. Okay, that's what hypervigilance is.

Speaker 1:

And when you are stuck in a hypervigilance state, it increases your cortisol levels, which creates excessive stress and anxiety, that feeling of anxiety. But this is actual physical stress that wears on all of your physical systems, your immune system, your endocrine system, your skeletal systems, your cardiac systems, your nervous systems, all of it. Okay, cortisol is damaging to all of it. And if that's not bad enough, that fuse, that window of tolerance that you have, becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. Think of it as the window getting jammed, someone driving a nail into it. Okay, then what is overstimulation? If that's hypervigilance, what is overstimulation?

Speaker 1:

Overstimulation is one of the hardest things to overcome and again, this is where we see the nervous system as the root of the problem. Okay, and most of my clients that come to me, it is this nervous system, again, that has the problem. Overstimulation is essentially like the biggest issue with ADHD, asd and audio-HD people, and it's essentially a sensory processing disorder. Okay, overstimulation is essentially a sensory processing disorder, which means that all the sensory information that's being thrown at you from the world sight, smell, taste, sound, touch. It overwhelms your nervous system. You can think of it as a tidal wave of just noise and chaos just being just draped over you till you can't breathe. That's a good way to describe it for me.

Speaker 1:

Those of you who've been overstimulated, you know your nerves throw more information at your brain than your brain has the capacity to process. So then the brain panics and it starts sending all those panic signals everywhere in the body, telling them like there's danger. We gotta get out of here. It's not safe. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And it does this all the time, all the time. You could just be walking down the street and you walk past a group of people and you just have this unreal physical anxiety response and a lot of it. This is what it is. Okay.

Speaker 1:

This is overstimulation and hypervigilance. It is a vicious cycle and it is a cycle that will continue to repeat, especially for the trauma survivor, who happens to be neurodivergent, until there is intentional intercession, until you break it up yourself. Hypervigilance feeds into overstimulation. Okay, hypervigilance. Being hypervigilant in a state of hypervigilance makes you get overstimulated so much faster, so much faster.

Speaker 1:

And once you're overstimulated, that's when you have meltdowns, you have explosions, you have self-sabotage and burnout, which you need to understand something. If you're a neurodivergent person, specifically if you suspect that you are an autistic person, your burnout is not the same as neurotypical burnout. It is completely different. It is physical. Okay, there are physical markers for this, and you can't talk yourself out of it, nor can you just keep doing. If you are burned out, you have to stop. It is like a crisis thing. It's very serious and you need to take it very seriously. But essentially, that's what happens.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this cycle of hypervigilance, overstimulation, hypervigilance, overstimulation that's gotta be stopped. Before you can do any of that mind work, before you can think clearly, respond clearly, regulate your emotions how are you gonna do any of that if you're in a state of panic? It's not your question. You can't. And this is where the trauma-informed self-care comes in for neurodivergent people. You have to learn how to take care of yourself and to accommodate your specific needs and rebuild your specific nervous system so that you stop drowning in the world.

Speaker 1:

So let's get down to the meat of the episode then. This is what you came here for. I'm gonna now give you the secrets that you need to take away from this episode and start instituting into your life immediately. You need to build these self-care tactics into your life immediately, if you suspect that you are any type of neurodivergent person, so that you can again start making accommodations for yourself, start taking care of your nervous system and get your physical health into a place in which it is manageable and it is peaceful enough that you can do the work of healing your mind all right. So let's just get right. Just get right into it, okay, because the thing is, yes, the nervous system is the core of your problem, but your nervous system can be rebuilt, rewired, improved, repaired all of those things. There's tons of empirical evidence for this. You don't have to settle for the nervous system that you have. It can be better.

Speaker 1:

So, number one, let's just dive in neuroplasticity. That's the biggest thing if you're a neurodivergent person, that you need to be focusing on neuroplasticity. What is neuroplasticity? I've talked about it in past episodes. Go back and listen to them or go and check me out on Medium.

Speaker 1:

Read what I've written about neuroplasticity, but it's fascinating. It is essentially the nervous system's ability to physically, physically repair itself. Physically repair itself, specifically the brain. There's been tons of studies. I mean they've had. People who have suffered traumatic brain injuries regrow literal gray matter in their brain through doing neuroplastic exercises. It's very, very incredible, so I encourage you all to go and look at it. But essentially, neuroplasticity the kind that neurodivergent people need to focus on is the type in which it's learning. When the brain learns things, when it has fun, when it's engaged in movement, it's actually able to repair itself. So it starts reconnecting the neurons and the synapses and when they function better, that's what helps depression and anxiety. Yada, yada, yada. You've heard me talk about this. So you need to focus on neuroplasticity and there's a few ways you can do this. You can do it through three ball juggling. I'm not even kidding. Go and look at the study about juggling. It literally regrows gray brain matter dead serious. You can play memory recall games on your phone and they used to sell paper books of those. You can play card games with your kids stuff like that. Brain training exercises there's a ton of brain training apps like Lumen and things out there. Go and get them An omega-3 rich diet.

Speaker 1:

This is so important. You need to be packing your diet with omega-3 rich foods. You should be taking an omega-3 supplement every day if it is healthy for you to do so. Why? Because it feeds the brain. It feeds the brain and the rest of your nervous system and helps it to be physically healthier. Because that remember your nervous system isn't some ethereal thing. It is a physical system in your body, made of physical components that, if we were to split you open, we could touch okay. So you need to be feeding it, nourishing it, taking care of it, giving it the nutrients that it needs to get stronger and then, last but not least, regular movement and exercise. The more fun you can make that, the better, which means silly dancing around the house with your kids every day helps you repair your nervous system. Helps you repair your nervous system. So you need to be focusing on these omega-3 rich foods, doing a lot of movement, playing memory recall games, keeping your mind sharp, focus on making that physical system as physically healthy as possible, so that you can get your somatic nervous system online. You could start feeling better from the inside out. All right.

Speaker 1:

Number two and this especially applies to people who have ASD you need to limit your sensory input. Limit your sensory input. That's one of the biggest issues with neurodivergent. Specifically for people with ASD, it's that sensory overwhelm. The nervous system of a neurodivergent person is highly sensitive. Okay, it's easy to become overwhelmed, to melt down. So if you're a trauma survivor who's neurodivergent, you have to keep your remember that window of tolerance as wide as possible, and part of doing that is limiting sensory input. Limiting sensory input Make safe spaces for yourself, pockets.

Speaker 1:

You don't have to go buy a new home or disappear to the woods, you just need pockets of quiet and calm, maybe 10 to 15 minutes a day, that you can plug into, that you can access at regular intervals, so you can give your nervous system a chance to decompress. Okay, if you've got extra cash, yeah, you might go and take a week on a lake by yourself, in total silence, where you don't have any demands on you whatsoever and you are in a complete cocoon, a nest of safety and stillness and quiet in which you are the only person that you have to answer to that you have to function for yada, yada, yada. If you've got money, do that. Do a sensory deprivation pod, something like that. If you don't, which you?

Speaker 1:

Here's something else everyone needs to understand the unemployment and underemployment rates for neurodivergent people is incredibly high, incredibly high. They think that 85% of autistic people across the spectrum are probably unemployed, okay. And 30% of adults with ADHD in America get some kind of state assistance because they don't make enough money, they don't consistently have enough work. So this is very serious. This is very serious. So if you're someone who is neurodivergent, you don't have the money.

Speaker 1:

You can still make pockets of safety and calm for yourself when you send the kids out for 15 minutes with their dad, with their grandparents. They just go down the street to the park or they take a walk or something, and you just get 15 minutes in complete silence in the bubble bath or a nap or whatever it is. You don't have to have a sensory deprivation pod or quiet getaways to physically get yourself out of stressful environments to more quiet, peaceful environments, to just give the punching bag that is your nervous system a break, okay. So find some quick and easy way to do about it and one of the simplest things you can do, okay, because there's no right or wrong way to do this. You don't have to like completely overhaul your life. You can just start wearing comfortable clothes, right. You can just create cozy spaces that make you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. It doesn't have to be complicated.

Speaker 1:

Number three you need to make sensory accommodations for yourself. Remember that sensory overwhelm we talked about up top. You're going to have to beat that, and not all of it's avoidable, right? Because all of us live in a world with neurotypical people and we have to go out into the world with those neurotypical people who are chaos. They are absolutely chaos and they're extremely hard to read. So it doesn't matter where you're at on this kind of neurodivergent spectrum. You're going to have to make accommodations so that you cannot burn out with the unavoidable overwhelm that you have to face. Okay, so what does that mean? What does that look like? When I say making accommodations for yourself, I mean doing the simplest thing to help limit all that sensory overwhelm. Okay, so you want to avoid the nuclear detonation that is, that overstimulation of hypervigilance, by finding a way to comfort your sensory inputs. You want to comfort your sensory inputs when you are in positions that you cannot avoid. All of you have probably seen this at some point. If you watch Ryan Murphy's Screen Queens, you've definitely seen it Headphones.

Speaker 1:

Headphones is one of the easiest way to do it and that's how a lot of neurodivergent people do it. You put on headphones. It limits that sensory overwhelm that's coming in through hearing, which is a big one, which really overstimulates people and also creates this kind of cocoon feeling, this kind of safety I'm in my bubble type of feeling. That's an easy, easy, common way to do it. Get headphones when you're out moving around in the world.

Speaker 1:

I personally use fidget cubes. Love, love, love a fidget cube, love a fidget cube. They help keep the mind's focus where it needs to be, while also allowing the neurodivergent person to fidget with their hands, and it limits excessive input and it provides manageable sensory input that's easier for the neurodivergent person to process. So, headphones, fidget cubes again, comfortable clothes, clothes that make you feel comfy all of these things Do what you need to do to accommodate your needs so that you don't feel like you're getting overwhelmed every time you step. And last but not least, number four find yourself a like wired tribe. Find yourself a like wired tribe as a matter of self care. I'm dead serious, I'm so serious.

Speaker 1:

Social supports are super, super, super important. Even if you feel awkward, even if you've told yourself your whole life you don't need them, you do need them. You will need help from someone else at some point. Okay, and we want to have a connection to the world and to people. A huge number of comorbidities aside, neurodivergent people benefit from having social connections in which we can share our hyper fixations, our interests, our experiences, our needs, the questions that we have, the natural curiosity. So it's not as important for us to have like minded friend groups.

Speaker 1:

Okay, because most of us who are neurodivergent are capable of holding two very different ideas we like, we're curious, we like different things. We don't need to have people that think the same way as us. We need to have people that are wired the same way as us. That's the real secret to success is creating a village of people who are liked wired, like wired, because it means they have similar nervous systems. They know what it means to move through life, feeling the way that you feel, being overstimulated, hyper vigilant, on edge. They can empathize with that, and that empathy, my god, is so much more important than liking the same pop singer, okay. So find fellow neurodivergent friends and it will make your life so much easier, so much easier.

Speaker 1:

Okay, start with your interests and expand from there. I know, go where your interests lie ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, psychology, programming, warhammer, d&d, computer games, whatever it is. Start there and then just expand, branch out and just find people who are clicked on like you're clicked on. Oh, that is a long one and I am running out of time here, so that's where we're gonna leave it today, but essentially, here's what I want you to remember. It would be great if we could all just talk ourselves out of trauma, do some journaling gone, some retreats, like all these coaches Tell us we can do if we just pay them $10,000, but that's not the reality.

Speaker 1:

When we are neurodivergent, when we are neurodivergent, the root of our healing has to be in physically repairing our nervous systems and getting our nervous system, the different parts, the different components of that nervous system, working together so that we can Increase that window of tolerance. So when you leave here, I hope that you're gonna walk away and go right, I'm gonna go look up this neuroplasticity. I'm gonna come up with a list of 10 things I'm gonna do this week 10 neuroplastic exercises, some adjustments I'm gonna make to my diet, I'm gonna go and move and have silly dance time with my kids, or you know, whatever it is. I want you to start nurturing that nervous system so that you can finally find some physical peace. Is it a perfect formula? No, but I guarantee you, if you use those four trauma-informed self-care tips that work for your brain and nervous the rest of your nervous system you will feel better at 30 days, you will absolutely feel better in 30 days. And that's it. That is today's episode. Thank you so so much for listening. I really hope you got something good out of this and I hope you feel motivated and inspired to you know, when you walk away from this, you go and, like I said, start taking some action. Start, you know, nurturing that nervous system and getting it working and on track. Thank you so much to everyone for listening, for all your kind messages when I was sick last week. You guys really are the best and thank you for blowing me up on medium and reading all my stuff. I'm really really so, so grateful.

Speaker 1:

Now I know Black Friday was interrupted because I was in the hospital, so, as a good gesture, I am extending my Black Friday offer until December 15th. What is my Black Friday offer? Essentially, anyone who applies and is successful for my one-on-one coaching program, which opens in January, is Going to get more than four hundred dollars worth of freebies added on to their program. What are those freebies? Number one. You're gonna get a customized better brain plan for me which is basically your whole Approach, your blueprint, your map to getting your nervous system wiring physically on track, based on your needs, your energy fluctuations, what's going on in your life and what your ultimate goals are. Designed by me just for you that you can take and work well beyond our time together.

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Those who apply now, between now and December 15th, is successful. They are also going to get an additional free one-hour session with me, a maintenance session to use after their program ends to get some extra help to Keep that momentum going and, to you know, get some extra answers after their time with me is up. So better brain plan and an extra one-hour session Both of those are going to go to everyone who applies between now and December 15th for my one-on-one coaching program. Again, this is over four hundred dollars worth of freebies that I'm adding on, especially this better brain plan, which you know includes diet, exercise, the specific brain exercises you need to do, the somatic exercises that you need to do to activate your somatic nervous system, specifically for you, all of those things.

Speaker 1:

So Take advantage of this because this is gonna stop. Make sure you get in there, apply to go to the real EV Johnson calm and click on working with me. You'll see all the information right there. Just send in your application and, if you're successful, you automatically get all those black Friday juicy offers. So go, go, go, go and apply. I look forward to seeing you guys in January when the program starts. It is going to be a fantastic, fantastic start to the year for everyone else. Thank you again. Keep following me on tiktok. I'm going check out my blog at EB dash Johnson calm. I've got more on neurodivergent healing there For everyone else. Keep your heads up and keep your eyes on the stars. We'll talk to you later. Bye, bye, you.

Neurodivergence and Trauma-Informed Self Care
Nervous System Dysfunction
Improving Neurodivergent Health and Well-Being