Change and Calibration

The search for balance and sustainability

I don’t usually work at the weekends, or from bed.

I’ve learnt that having a complete break is one on the things I (usually) need to maintain a sustainable and balanced life. I find moderation difficult in lots of circumstances and know it’s generally much for me easier to have very clear boundaries.

My autistic brain feels safer when things are fixed and, for the most part, weekend off is an intention I keep. Unless I’m in a hyperfocus in which case the specific rule overrides the general one (to borrow from the D&D Players Handbook). But, because what I need changes, as my internal and external context changes, what balanced and sustainable for me looks like changes as well and, therefore, my desire for rigidity often doesn’t serve me in the way I always thought it did.

Pre-pandemic I was always searching, and failing, to find the magic formula that would make everything feel easier. The one static point of balance that I could maintain with little or no cost. Unsurprisingly, I never found it and I can now confidently say, it doesn’t exist.

Instead, every time I went rigid, fighting against the wobbles, I either ended up staggering forward, trying to outrun it or simply falling over instead. I would leap from job to job, or add in a new course to avoid the fall, and more often than not just ended up delaying my descent into burnout.

When the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown, there were fewer places to run and this, alongside realising I was autistic and developing a chronic illness, meant that and I could no longer pretend that how I was living was sustainable. The change in context meant, I had to learn to manage the wobbles in a different way.

What I (eventually) learnt, is that finding my balance in life was very much like finding my balance in yoga.

If I go rigid, I’m likely to just fall over or go staggering off my mat. Balance comes from moving with the internal and external changes, making space for the micro-movements and adjustments our bodies continually engage in as they shift and change, recalibrating as they go.

Also, that even with lots of practice, we still fall over sometimes because nothing is perfect.

When I am hungry, thirsty, tired, the wrong temperature, sick or experiencing external stressors, I become dysregulated and my spiky profile becomes spikier. As I lose my tolerance for certain sensory inputs and my executive function becomes more dysfunction, I start to wobble and if I’m not careful, I can fall down towards burnout.¹

But, the more I understand the fluctuations of my own needs and respond to them with kindness and compassion, the more easily I am able to make the calibrations I need to stay balanced.

Which is why I am sat writing this in bed on a Sunday morning (rather than at my desk between clients last Thursday when I was supposed to). Because, then, I recognised I was starting to feel unwell and that the thing I most needed then, was a nap. I responded to the wobble in my body as data that was trying to tell me something important, rather than something I needed to fight against.

My current view

I gave myself time to rest and I met myself with the same kindness and compassion I’m always talking to my clients and supervisees about². How can I ask anyone to trust me to support them on their own journeys if I don’t practice what I preach?

If I was in a yoga class, this might have looked like putting a hand (or foot) out to lightly support me, or coming down into child pose to allow myself to pause. Or (more accurately), coming into savasana and acknowledging that today is not the right day to attempt this particular balance.

But, remembering that this doesn’t mean I won’t be able to do it on another day.

Which is why I’m posting this piece today, because my context on Thursday meant I didn’t have the capacity to write it, but todays context does.

Just as with yoga, learning to recalibrate and respond to my changing context with compassion and kindness is a practice. I don’t think it ever becomes a perfect, but it certainly feels more natural the more consistently I practice it.

So I’m off to practice meeting myself with compassion some more with a nap and then some distraction.

If you have any easy going binge worthy shows or movies to share, then please drop them in the comments. Practice nearly always seems easier wen we have a community to support us.

Thank you for reading until the end!

I’d love to know if any of this post resonated with you, please leave a comment, share or restack.

If you’re interested on learning more about the power of kindness and compassion in supporting neurodivergent folks (including ourselves) then please do come along and watch me share more at the Onlinevents conference on Living and Working with Neurodivergence on Friday.

My session starts at 10.30am - 12pm and there’s lots of amazing speakers sharing their knowledge throughout the day. (Recording available)

Tickets are on a sliding scale and available here

1. More on my model of neurodivergent wellbeing in this post.

Moving from Burnout to Balance

2. This currently means I am accepting that I can’t tolerate the feel of my contacts or glasses, so everything has been in a weird soft focus since Friday and I have subsisting on a diet of cold and flu pills, pot noodles, tea and toast.