Here are some people, tools, concepts, and techniques that help us cope as embodied beings.
People That Help Us Cope
Neurodivergent? Disabled? Need a coach, therapist, or other practitioner with first-person experience of what you’re going through? Listed below are some folks we know as well as several practitioner directories.
Folks we know:
- GROVE | Neurodivergent Mentoring & Education
- The #ActuallyAutistic Coach | Autistic Life Coach | Autistic Peer Support Coach
Directories of practitioners:
For a list of good autism organizations, visit “Determining a Good Autism Organization – Stimpunks Foundation“.
Tools That Help Us Cope
Ours is an empire of foam, articulation, and assistive devices. Scheurmann’s kyphosis, lumbar spondylolisthesis, fibromyalgia, wildfire muscle cramps, muscle-boiling fasciculations, and peripheral neuropathy are constant companions for Stimpunk Ryan. As are sensory overwhelm and the effects of autistic burnout.
We adapt our worlds to our bodyminds through niche construction in our Cavendish Space. In this guide are the things we use to conserve spoons, stay below sensory thresholds, and get through each day. These are tested in the field of our disabled and neurodivergent lives.
- Sensory Kit
- Pillows: Separate, Isolate, Bolster, Squeeze
- Articulation & Surfaces
- Sitting, Standing, Walking, Rolling, Hauling, Relaxing
- Dressing, Eating, Hydrating, Hygiene
- Reaching, Gripping, Grabbing, Fastening, Finding, Opening, Lighting
- This Chronic Bodymind: How We Cope
Concepts and Techniques That Help Us Cope
Neurodivergent and disabled people often live lives of “continuous fluid adaption”.
Many of the challenges that come with being autistic are pervasive, meaning they’re with us forever. Even if they aren’t active at all times, they still exist and may reappear when a particular coping strategy gets temporarily taken offline because the brain needs to reallocate resources for a more urgent task.
When this happens, an issue that was previously “fixed” can suddenly appear to be “broken” again.
In fact, nothing has been fixed or broken. We simply have very fluid coping strategies that need to be continuously tweaked and balanced. Because a child or adult goes through a period of having very few meltdowns, that doesn’t mean they’ll never have meltdowns again. If something in their life changes, for example the hormonal storms of puberty, they’ll need to develop new coping strategies. And until they do, they may begin having meltdowns due to the mental, emotional or sensory overload caused by the new development.
Being autistic means a lifetime of fluid adaptation. We get a handle on something, develop coping strategies, adapt and we’re good. If life changes, we many need some time to readapt. Find the new pattern. Figure out the rules. Test out strategies to see what works. In the mean time, other things may fall apart. We lose skills. We struggle to cope with things that had previously been doable under more predictable conditions. This is not regression to an earlier developmental stage, it’s a process of adapting to new challenges and it’s one that we do across a lifetime of being autistic.
Autistic Regression and Fluid Adaptation | Musings of an Aspie
Here are concepts and techniques that assist us with our “continuous fluid adaption”.
