A pile of garden Shingles.

I imagine most people think that overwhelm is what happens when you do too much big things.

I'm reminded today, how hard it is for some people to understand the invisibility of my psychological overwhelm.

To understand, you need to truly believe me when I say that my brain has a buzzing million thoughts ALL THE TIME. Every waking minute of every day.

I am particularly reminded of this today because it's my 2nd full day of being ill. Clients and fun cancelled kind of ill.

It's the cold, bug, whatever, that's doing the rounds here in the UK right now.

I have immune issues so I get utterly exhausted whenever I'm ill. It's like a free add-on prize you don't expect/want.

Being ill means I'm out of routine. And not busy.

Those 2 things are a recipe for disaster. I'm Autistic/Adhd and Monotropic. Something HAS to be in my attention tunnel, it's not a choice.

Normally, my busy life and routines take centre stage. The mindful strategies, the coping good stuff, they are thankfully built into my life with routine and habits.

My job is my Monotropic special interest (I'm lucky) and certain tasks are very well trodden paths along my Monotropic Schedule.

Getting ill makes me ill.

BEING ill also makes me more ill because my routines are gone.

Being ill becomes my new f#cking Monotropic interest because nothing else is happening, like it normally does.

I've said before - my Flow chooses me, I do not choose it.

Being unbusy is not good for me without a good thing lined up (see my post on Lilipadding).

Doing the things that are good for me are not available to me when I'm ill. Because I'm ill.

A downhill spiral commences.

In that empty Monotropic attention tunnel is now every ache, everything that I want to do but can't, every bit of my headache, every bit of snot, every sound, every bit of Tinnitus, every bit of sweat (thanks UK heatwave), every shiver (yup I'm ill), everything on my imaginary to-do list, everything on my actual to-do list, anything that could be ruminated i.e. every catastrophised old and forthcoming risk, everything that irritates me, everything about me that could irritate you.

Everything that would be best not in the f@cking tunnel is there in the echoey gap and nothing that would be helpful to be in there, is there.

When I am under-stimulated, dark Flow will visit like a swarm of deadly ants. Busying away, each thought individually harmless but collectively strong.

You ever watched a colony of ants working together to make big change?

Yup, like that. That's Dark Flow. I now recognise it from my past. I didn't have a name for it then. Thanks to Tanya for that language, her work is showcased here Emergent Divergence: The neurodivergent ramblings of David Gray-Hammond.

Someone just now made a suggestion to me about me doing a teeny thing to help them (when I'm better, in my normal life). It's a tiny request.

And just like that, I was taken back to my long ago shame filled past when I felt useless and incapable, me not remembering or doing such simple things that others did so easily, me failing at normal.

I looked at said person with the request, me full of utter rage and old pains.

If this request was so easy for me to do, do you not think I'd 'just do it'.

If this request was so easy for me to do, do you think that me not doing it, is therefore an active choice? Is that what you think?

Because if you do think I could do it, but am not, then you have no f#cking clue.

To choose not to do it, takes focus and energy of which there is none.

To choose not to, means

a) it's in my awareness,

b) it's in some order of priority, and

c) I've moved it actively unprioritising it, downscaling it.

You think I have that much brain bandwidth spare to do that?

I'll tell you what my brain bandwith is coping with.

Everything.

My brain is either locked into a Special Interest, or it's EVERYWHERE.

EVERYWHERE with no order.

I'm renovating the garden, so lots of garden shingle is being moved around, re-laid and generally getting into every annoying crevice in the garden.

We are 'rich-people' kind of broke so we are doing it ourselves. I have no spare money to pay people. We do it. With pride that we are rich enough to even do some DIY.

Rich-people broke means I pay my small privileged mortgage, we buy our privileged-enough Aldi food, we go on privileged old-DIY-campervan cheap or free UK campsite/holidays.

You get the gist. I think we are rich but that's because we have enough of the essentials and we have Autonomy. I'm f#cking rich in my eyes.

Doing DIY ourselves means it's taking months to do. I'm sick of garden shingle.

And thus garden Shingle comes to mind.

My Thoughts are like shingle. My thoughts are not ordered. They are thrown onto a pile of f#cking shingle. Thoughts is a metaphor for shingle.

Imagine being asked to put a pile of shingle into order. Colour and size order.

Impossible.

Now imagine asking me to do a teeny task i.e. to go to a thought (shingle) or to give me a thought to add in a certain place in the shingle pile.

You cannot take a piece of shingle out of the pile without disrupting the whole f#cking pile.

You can't add a piece anywhere but possibly on the top if you are very gentle/lucky.

Except I'm holding in my mind the top layer of the pile/shingle so if I even have to give your request some attention, that's it, I've dropped the few f#cking shingles I had a grip on, into the pile.

Now I'm doomed.

I say 'doomed' in a Scottish accent, no idea why.

By the way, I don't mean if I do your request then I lose my grip on my thoughts. I mean if I just have to listen to you about said request then I've dropped my own stuff.

I'm Monotropic. If I listen, I properly listen (it's why I think Autistic Counsellors can be brilliant, assuming being a Counsellor is their Special Interest).

So as I'm listening to you, I'm fully listening to you.

My day to day habits, rituals and order keep me functioning.

I don't mean Trains or beads in order.

Having a wee. Having a drink. Starting my laptop. Getting up. Thinking about my Adult children (even loved ones get forgotten), showering, getting dressed, putting lenses in.

Mindfulness. Blah blah blah.

My shingle/thought pile is relentless and messy and full. But normally managed. Just.

And it was only when I blurted out all of this to my loved one in response to their teeny request, that I suddenly remembered that because I'm ill and out of routine, that I've not taken my Adhd meds for 2 days. Nor blood pressure meds. Nor vitamins.

My Adhd low dose meds take the edge off the enormity of my big fecking pile of thoughts.

My meds really really help me a teeny teeny bit. They help me remember the naturally good stuff (breaks, nature, breathwork, etc).

They don't help me be more Neuronormative, they help me cope with the pile of shingles in my awesome head enough, to use my awesome head and heart.

Being ill meant that my meds moved position.

So please, do better at understanding us.

Because you may not see it, you may not know it, but what you see as an invisible

paralysis/disability, is actually us working way harder than you think or it looks. It takes alot of invisible effort and work to function. Effort you do not recognise.

It might be invisible to you that I'm Adhd/Autistic. The pressure it takes to function may be invisible to you too.

Don't be fooled.

My body knows how much I'm working/have been working my whole life.

My diagnosis/awareness helped me understand it. My lifetime of poor heath is evidence of it.

This brain of ours is actually rather phenomenal. And fucking hard.

Thankfully, my loved one realised their error in momentarily forgetting how difficult things can be.

We all make mistakes (and I will now help us figure a way of 'us' solving this problem thing they clumsily asked me to do). They matter too.

Forgotten paracetamol also just given to me, with a drink, because I'd forgotten those, and an ice cream. This is their apology.

Pic description: close up of a mini chocolate I've cream, milk chocolate brown, sat on my leg, teal sofa underneath, multicolour puff on the floor. This ice cream has almost melted because I forgot about it whilst typing about shingle.