Budgets and Boardgames

Finding our ease with reasonable adjustments

Lots of people talk about ‘reasonable adjustments’, when I worked as a disability practitioner this was one of my most used phrases.

A reasonable adjustment must be ‘reasonable’ and ‘practicable’ two very vague and subjective things, which can make it difficult to implement in practice even when you know what you support is helpful for you.

What if you don’t know what helps?

What if you’re not even aware that some things are more tricky for you?

Where do you start?

I was reminded of this over the weekend as my wife and I sat down to talk about our finances and start doing some planning for the immediate future as well as longer term.

This meant looking at lots of information that was stored in different places and being able to hold different scenarios and possibilities in our heads as we figured out the best way forward for us and our family.

As someone who has an A-level in maths, has previously worked in finance and who loves a spreadsheet, I immediately thought that this is a fairly straight forward task. But that thought, didn’t take into account, some of the anxiety I have when discussing things I don’t fully understand (pensions and mortgages) alongside the dysregulation and overwhelm I can feel when trying to predict the future.

This coupled with my wife’s own spikey profile and different ways of processing can often lead to conversations where we both quickly become dysregulated and get caught up in negative feedback loops. (Thanks hyper-empathy and rejection sensitivity!)

Sometimes out spikey profiles fit together and create amazing supports for each other as we work to our strengths, but sometimes there is only friction between our conflicting needs and everything seems so much harder.

Luckily, these days we have so much more information about ourselves as well as each other. So instead of diving in and hoping for the best, we were able to think about how to approach the conversation in a way that would find the ease. This doesn’t mean that it would necessarily be easy, but that we might be able to make it easier, and minimise the negative impact on us both.

One of the difficulties we knew we would have was communicating about an abstract (money) in a way that both of us would be able to process and understand without lots of mis-communication. And my wife’s genius answer (said half jokingly) was can we just get the monopoly money out.

It was a game changer!

As I let go of the expectations and ideas around how to ‘do it properly’, the part of me that gets anxious and fearful about these types of conversations was able to relax. An in the relax of tensions and ‘shoulds’ I found space to be. Space to make the adjustments that were reasonable for us, in our relationship, at this time, with this task.

So down came monopoly (the Disney version leftover form when the children were at home), the coloured pens and post it notes.

Instead of sitting at a desk wrangling with spreadsheets, we spread out on the living room floor with hot chocolate and warm blankets.

Because it wasn’t real money we could simply move it from pile to pile, representing our different commitments and spaces, as we tried to figure out what was possible.

We utilised online mortgage calculators and retrieved bits of paperwork as we needed them to clarify things. But we didn’t put ourselves under pressure to have all the answers straight away. It was ok to get things as we realised we needed them.

And by the end we had a clear action plan so neither of us is trying to hold all the information, and keep track of what needs doing, in our heads.

Previously, before we both understood our own (and each others) neurodivergence, we wouldn’t have been able to do this.

Our conflicting needs and processes would have caused conflict and hurt feelings, because we wouldn’t have been able to articulate our own needs and make accommodations for each others.

In all likelihood we would both have thought that our way was the ‘right’ way and would have been frustrated with each other for not understanding.

Things were different this time because we have new knowledge.

Because we have a shared language to express this, one that is based on kindness and compassion rather than blame and shame.

We were both able to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for each other and therefore to minimise the cost to us both.

It still took a lot of energy and time from each of us, but there were no tears or cross words. While there was still some dysregulation it was tiny compared to what might have been there.

And afterwards we were able to acknowledge to each other how helpful it had been to find a way that worked for us, rather than trying to do it the way we thought we ‘should’.

I really believe that the more of us that are talking about the different ways we’ve found to do things to support our own spikey profiles, the more likely we are to come across reasonable adjustments that we might not have thought of, but which will help us to find our own ease.

So with that in mind, I’d love to know what reasonable adjustments you have given yourself permission to make.

Do have a look at the comments, and see if anyone has left a suggestion that might be helpful for you.

For anyone who is working with neurodivergent folks and wants to know more about neurodivergent practice, I’m hosting a two hour workshop tomorrow (Tuesday 16th January) at 6.30pm GMT.