Clients sometimes tell me they “haven’t been doing anything,” and then when we dig into it, it turns out they have been working incredibly hard. But a lot of that effort is invisible. Invisible labor can look like Emotionally regulating so you can make a phone call Being there for a friend having a hard time, while trying to soothe the part of you feeling like you’re not doing a good job in the conversation Having to re-wash the laundry three times because you keep forgetting about it while...
11 days ago • 2 min read
Sometimes I lie in bed running through everything I need to do, trying to get ahead of my workload without actually doing any of it. Often I start scripting possible future podcast episodes. Which, as you may know, is not the best way to fall asleep. I’m laying there experiencing one of the biggest tensions in my life: care for the meatsuit vs. captivating ideas to bring into the world. My brain doesn’t really want to rest. It wants to do awesome stuff right now!! But I also need to do...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Live events for the BloomCon26 Speaker Series start tonight, and there are on-demand talks (including mine) available now. BloomCon is a gifted neurodivergence conference in its second year, which I attended live earlier this month. My title was "Paradox Incarnate: Giftedness, CPTSD, ADHD, and Autism," - the order in which I was diagnosed 😉 It's about how those experiences pull against each other, and especially the gifted-CPTSD axis (since you've heard me talk about the autism-ADHD one...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
After any big project or creative output, of course the body needs some recovery time. Right now I'm weaving that in strategically, because I'm also about to head into a busy October with three (3!) different trips. In fact, when I was looking ahead trying to make some social plans, I realized that I didn't have any free weekend days until the end of October. This is not normal for me. The more busy I am, the easier it is to switch into old habits of hunker down and just keep working until...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
A few years ago, I made one of the biggest purchases I'd ever made for myself. I'd been researching and considering for months, trying to decide. By the time I finally clicked "buy," I expected to feel terrified. Instead...I felt relieved. Not because I knew everything would work out perfectly. Uncertainty was still present. I still wondered whether I'd follow through fully. Making a choice ended the internal debate and freed up mental energy. I was viewing it as a choice between certainty...
3 months ago • 1 min read
My “watch later” playlist on YouTube is out of control. I have About 10 Train Valley II specific level playthroughs a 2-hr John Overdurf hypnosis video Dozens of interesting podcast episodes Will I ever watch them all? Probably not. That doesn’t equate to laziness or lack of follow-through. (For me, or for you btw) All of us neurodivergent folks have tried things that didn’t catch our interest, or that we intended to come back to… but then some new sparkly thing captured our attention. It’s...
3 months ago • 3 min read
When I was 21 and imagining a lifetime as a composer, I thought completing projects would naturally create the life I wanted: time to make art for fun energy to dance and move a lot feeling satisfied with myself But instead, the harder I tried to meet an external metric, the more I struggled… cut to me putting off writing the opening of this email because I was feeling perfectionistic about it. :P Here’s the thing… I don’t want rest, play, and self-acceptance to be rewards I earn by being...
3 months ago • 1 min read
One of my favorite coaching moments from the past few months lasted maybe 30 seconds. I noticed her speaking faster, saw what looked like tension, and heard multiple competing priorities that her brain was struggling to sort out. (Relatable.) Instead of trying to fix it, I asked, What do you notice in your body? Because problem-solving doesn’t address most distress, and it’s harder to access from that state anyway (curiosity requires a certain relaxation). With a pause to notice what was...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Sometimes I get sucked into a popular self-help book and the back of my brain starts whispering, What if we got super-duper disciplined in like a non-toxic way? “More discipline” is a common piece of standard productivity advice (along with “try harder”). Well-intentioned people share planners! routines! time blocking, now with more pomodoro! have you tried waking up earlier?? The problem is that if we think the individual tools are The Answer, then when they don’t work, now what? Did I just...
4 months ago • 1 min read
