AuDHD Flourishing

The autistic / AuDHD self-discovery journey can feel like finding out that you've been hammering screws this whole time. You never learned how to use the right tools. You may not have been given the right tools at all!

A few thoughts on the grief inherent in the process, and how to equip your personal toolbox now that you know what's up.

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter
4. New course: Experimenting Your Way to an Extraordinary Life

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Weeks and months are staples of scheduling systems. But they tend not to work well for me as units of time.

My personal ideal is two days on, two days off, though that's impractical. Instead, I talk about the various workarounds I've found, including intentionally scheduling rest (and how if I don't have time for that, I need to decrease demands).

If weeks don't work well for you, how can you find what does?

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter
4. New course: Experimenting Your Way to an Extraordinary Life

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is about both why it's so hard to get help as an AuDHDer,

and some of the broad steps I see working for us.

It can help to have a view of your "big ball of yarn" i.e. complex and interrelated problems or life areas.

It can also help to start addressing your sensory needs, core needs, and just live your life while you take a break from big processing.

Please take care and be gentle to yourself!

Links mentioned:

• New course: Experimenting Your Way to an Extraordinary Life
• Your Core Self Care Need episode
• The 4 steps I talked about

Crisis Resources:

• USA-based anonymous crisis chat
• International crisis lines
• Various types of crisis resources in about 10 countries

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What NOT to do in your AuDHD discovery process is just as important as knowing what to do! This episode interweaves nicely with last week's episode about what AuDHDers need.

This is hardly an exhaustive list, but it covers many of the patterns I've seen and heard in the community.

Links mentioned:

• InterGifted: What is Giftedness?
• Autistic Culture Podcast
• Free Office Hours call (p.s. being a free Patreon member is the best way to get updates/reminders about these calls)

Crisis Resources:

• USA-based anonymous crisis chat
• International crisis lines
• Various types of crisis resources in about 10 countries

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do AuDHDers need (beyond the obvious needs all humans have)? And why do those needs matter?

This episode covers some important ones:

• Being able to engage with our interests (in a particular way)
• Executive Function support, without trying to make the hardest things easy or enjoyable
• Autonomy
• True rest
• The narrow path of just enough stimulation
• Processing time
• To be witnessed in just the right way
• Recognition that our needs vary quite a bit day to day
• Coming to terms with disability
• Space and time throughout our self-discovery journey
• Safe enough spaces to explore what it means to be ourself

Links mentioned:

1. Executive function test post if you want to ask Qs or share your experience
2. Executive Skills Questionnaire Revised (ESQ-R)
3. Unmasking Autism book (affiliate link)

Crisis Resources:

• USA-based anonymous crisis chat
• International crisis lines
• Various types of crisis resources in about 10 countries

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter
4. Love Your Brain course

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Almost all of us consider formal diagnosis in our AuDHD discovery journey. Whether it's ADHD-focused for medication, or Autism-focused for validation or accommodations.

Knowing why you want the diagnosis goes a long way in figuring out what to pursue. The main options as I currently see them are:

• full formal neuropsych testing
• provisional diagnosis with a shorter screening test
• a formal letter requesting accommodations from your provider
• self-diagnosis
• community diagnosis

This episode talks about

1. The upsides and downsides of diagnosis in general
2. My personal diagnosis experience (two full rounds of neuropsych testing)
3. Options to approach decision-making for yourself
4. How to get started if you do want diagnosis

Questions from the longer decision-making process in the episode are in the Transcript Doc

Crisis Resources:

• USA-based anonymous crisis chat
• International crisis lines
• Various types of crisis resources in about 10 countries

Monotropism resources:

• Monotropism Questionnaire and more info about it
• Monotropism explained
• Fergus Murray's 6 Starting Points for Understanding Autism
• 034 Monotropism Might Explain Everything with Fergus Murray
• 035 How Much Time Does Creating Take?
• 039 Autism "Levels" and Monotropism

Other Links mentioned:

• Devon Price's post about Autism diagnosis pros n cons
• Throw Away the Masters Tools: Liberating Ourselves From the Pathology Paradigm by Nick Walker

AuDHD Flourishing Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bonus drop from The Curiosity Cure podcast:

Today's conversation with Mattia takes us through their journey with chronic pain, feeling better, and the ways they navigate their inner mindbody conversation as someone with AuDHD + PDA. We touch upon themes of neurodivergence, gender transition, resourcing inner + external safety. We chat about using hypnotic techniques to decrease a sense of threat/unsafety that may accompany disorders like ehlers-danlos syndrome and POTS. 

Thanks to Deb for sharing this episode: full show notes here

The show notes link above has many resources about successful healing from related conditions

The Curiosity Cure podcast site

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm taking the last two weeks of August off, and will be back in September with a "back to the basics" series about things like diagnosis, what to do when you first discover your AuDHD identity, etc!

In the meantime, you can check out...

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. YouTube: The Longer Road, Mattia guesting on other pods

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are many reasons we experience loneliness. There's a particular existential loneliness I experience when I feel like it's not possible for anyone to understand me. And much of that emerged from a lifetime of ableism.

Being in AuDHD community has been incredibly healing. Thank you for being here!

Also... as of today we're over 200,000 downloads... thanks for listening!!

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Working memory may be a main reason we feel so exhausted... we're doing so many things manually that are habits for non-AuDHD brains.

Using a working memory file as we go can help a lot and massively reduce overwhelm and cognitive fatigue. Cal Newport uses a digital file for this during computer work. I've been using post-it notes so I can carry them around with me.

There are many benefits I talk about in the episode, and the main one for me is being able to track decisions as I go so I don't keep trying to make them over and over!

Resources:

1. Like Your Brain community space
2. Transcript Doc
3. Email Newsletter
4. Love Your Brain course

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.