Hello, Overwhelm

The Joy of Complicated Brain Chemicals

June and the start of July is always an uplifting time for me. I get invited to speak at staff development events up and down the country and it’s perfect timing to pull everything I’ve learned and thought throughout the year into something fresh and new, always bespoke, always being tinkered with right up to the last moment. If the organisations are happy, I share my scripts here and I look back on previous blogs and see how far I’ve come. This year, we have Kirklees Green Changemakers in the mix too - exciting and full of potentia.

But overwhelm is always lurking around the corner and it takes a hiccup to kick it off. Sometimes the hiccup is caused by the chaos building up around me, sometimes it’s mischance - like the car wash sensors not working properly and damaging the doors on my beautiful new car. Yep, that was yesterday and it brought me tumbling down.

I’m rarely at home at this time of year and when I am, I spend a lot of time with my lovely mum. So the house gets untidy, the car gets full of stuff (The Roundview, I’m looking at you, I’m sure my trainers are in there somewhere) If I’m not careful, I’m rushing everywhere dropping things. Like phones 🙄

We can all find ourselves ‘in the weeds’, as Brené Brown describes overwhelm. But for neurodivergent people, it’s a part of life which is sometimes difficult to juggle. My wiring is ADHD, so I can only speak for myself, but the adrenaline highs of the events I do are always accompanied by crashing lows which can floor me, emotionally, mentally and physically.

The deep commitment I’ve made to Radical Rest helps a lot. Recovery - whether from ill-health or overwhelm - takes work and that joyful work is a form of resistance. This year, I’ve been rewilding my garden. In the drought we’re having, this means I have to get home at some point every day with enough energy to water my plants…and that means I have to slow right down and notice what’s happening. As things speed up, I’ve been following a 30-day programme called Domei (deep listening), which sends a five-minute practice into my email each morning. This morning I closed my eyes and touched, smelled and sensed the plants in my herb bed. I could almost feel my blood pressure coming down.

I’ve always known that to do the work, I have to do the work (on myself). Different things work for different people. I can’t get on with journalling in a book, but blogging here is helping me make sense of my crashing chemicals over the last day or so. I’ve also been exploring the concept of disassociation, recognising it’s something that happens to me at these overwhelm times.

Last month, I was invited to speak at the UK launch of ‘Reckoning with the Primal Wound’, a documentary by film-maker Rebecca Autumn Sansom. Although I’m very open about being adopted, it’s the first time I’d been asked to speak publicly about my lived experience and I found it very affecting. I’ve had a very happy experience of adoption but there was still some trauma there to be reckoned with. It’s relevant for my work, too, and the choice I’ve made to work as a nomad - whole person coaching with Anju Virdee of Puran UK helped me make this profound connection some months ago.

I’d vaguely heard of ‘disassociation’ but - ironically - had not made the connection with my own overwhelm response: “I only cry at sport” should have given me a clue. This weekend, not only did I over-react to the car incident (it’s only money, it’s only a car), I became emotionally entangled with the meme below to the point where I couldn’t eat salmon… (source: the.language.nerds on Instagram).

Ridiculous, right? But I’ve been down this road before and not just because I only cry at sport. Years ago I used to get upset by the sign in each carriage of Pacer trains: “I’m carriage number 345 and I always try to look my best.” It’s the sort of thing you don’t say out loud, but I braved being vulnerable with my god-daughter Annie last night. I told her about the salmon and she independently came up with the Pacer train example. So it’s not only me!

Disassociation means that when shit happens, it finds its way out in strange and disconnected ways. Realising this makes me able to talk about it. And talking about it releases the shame. Writing this now I feel vulnerable, but joyfully so. The anxiety I couldn’t feel yesterday is coming out in me today, but I know what it is. And I can stand in my garden, breathe in deeply, recognise the glory of petrichor after a recent shower, and get on with what I need to do.

So today is preparing for the week ✅ clearing the kitchen island ✅ and getting all the Roundview materials out of the car so I can find those trainers (yet to do, but will be done).

I always say that the answer to everything is ‘community’. I do believe that. But sometimes that work has to be put in on understanding myself, before I can draw on the love that freely surrounds me. I’m writing this from my little greenhouse, sitting on a chair painted with her trademark zebra by my birth mom, resting on Fraser’s old desk, and I’m still a little unsettled and angsty, but I’m OK.