I’ve felt a bit humbled this week. For all the returns of energy and activity over the last few months, over the last few days, I’ve felt really tired. I effectively cancelled any and all social plans.
On top of that, I’ve also had regular bouts of anxiety. It’s hard to place where exactly it’s coming from. I spoke to a doctor who tried to pin point what I’ve been worrying about. Nothing’s especially been on my mind, at least consciously anyway.
I could certainly find reasons if I look for them. And no doubt, they’ve played a part: health concerns in my family, fatigue from numerous tests and visits to the doctors, stresses and worries around politics (particularly the situation in Bangladesh).
Perhaps it’s also to do with the fact that September is now upon us. Usually I come back feeling refreshed after the summer lull, with a feeling of ‘back to school’. This year, my seasonal cues are missing, and I feel more lost and confused rather than energised.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel that sometimes we can fall into the trap of needing to explain everything. Maybe I’m not really meant to know exactly ‘why’ I’m feeling this way. One of the less fun things about burnout is that it’s an accumulation of fatigue over a period of time. What could also be the case is that certain things are being released from months ago, and it happens to be hitting me right now.
My current state also got me thinking about a question a coach once asked me. ‘What are you tolerating in your life right now?’. I’ve become very used to juggling so many different things, including simply accepting certain situations and draining emotions. Even now, where I feel anxiety, I really tend to downplay it. The people around me are usually quite surprised when I mention I’m having strong anxiety pangs, because I seem to be acting pretty normally.
Perhaps I’ve picked up the British ‘stiff upper lip’ – Keep Calm and Carry On. I hate the idea of cancelling plans, so I rarely do. (Or perhaps my neurodivergent brain hates changes in plans so tends to follow through to things I commit to, even when it’s not the best idea.)
Just because I can put up with a situation, doesn’t mean I need to be. I think the fact that I can function with levels of fatigue and drained emotional energy has led to this building up to the point it has become insurmountable. Eventually my body has been the one to tell me to stop.
The solution to all this isn’t really clear. Yet it also doesn’t need to be right now. The important thing right now is to rest, and let myself experience whatever I need to. If I try and fast track or skip this step, I’m doomed to repeat the cycle again.
The cleansing process isn’t always fun, but it is necessary.
I’ve known for a long time that I have a hard time receiving things. I’m not talking about literal presents, but receiving help, support or even words of encouragement. It’s only until recently that I really learnt to appreciate compliments people give me – in the past I would simply bat these off or deflect them. In all honesty I didn’t really understand the point of them.
I thought that my nature was simply to be nice and giving. Since I was fortunate enough to have my life together, I didn’t feel like I needed to receive things from people.
The more I examined this story, the more it started to unravel.
This wasn’t simply me not needing to receive compliments, gifts or help. It was that I had an actual discomfort to when people did these things for me. I felt very self-conscious when someone would do something nice. People singing happy birthday to me makes me cringe, whilst I would always worry about receiving presents in case I had to fake liking what had been given to me.
If I did genuinely appreciate it, I would always make a mental note to repay that person back somehow, but in a way that trumped what they did for me. I thought this was a way of repaying gifts nicely, but really it was just my own type of one-upmanship. By always doing more for someone else, I could guarantee that I didn’t owe anybody anything, and thereby protect myself from needing other people. There’s some level of comfort in taking the moral high ground of being the person that ‘always gives’.
The unhealthiness of this approach becomes apparent when I find myself feeling unappreciated. I would go the extra mile for people (without them asking me to do so) and then expect to be heaped with praise. When this didn’t happen, I would feel upset. There’s been a level of subtle manipulation in my behaviour.
Unlearning this behaviour has been accepting that It’s okay if for some people they actually do more for me than I do for them. Sometimes people want to help without wanting anything in return. This has its own fundamental beauty. My hypocrisy has been that I’ve wanted to help people without reward, but felt very uncomfortable if someone did that for me. I lacked the humility to accept help, which subtly reinforced my sense of superiority to others.
One of the greatest things we can do for someone who offers something is to accept it. Receiving a gift (whether physical or not) can be a really heartwarming experience, at least if we let it be so.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the I-owe-you’s, that we miss the point of acts of service. Someone wants to do something as an act of care or support. This is fundamentally a nice thing. If we don’t let them do it, it can actually be quite hurtful to them.
I adore giving attention to animals. I love it when they accept my strokes or gifts of affection. But as a very sensitive individual, I also get hurt when they turn away. (especially cats. They are sooo pretty and charming, but also they can be malevolent beings 🙁 )
So if you’re someone who likes to always be the one that is constantly giving, this may be a good time to reflect what the root cause of that behaviour really is. Are you being a super benevolent person, or are you actually craving affection of others and/or protecting yourself from ever relying on someone?
Yesterday I went to Liege to do an IQ test with a psychologist. The idea was actually to check whether I had an attention deficit disorder, but part of it was also seeing the overlap between that and whether I am a ‘High Potential Individual’
Apparently, in France/Belgium, they speak a lot more about this idea of being ‘high potential’. Essentially, it’s having an IQ above 130. And according to the test, I fit into this bracket.
What’s been a bit weird about this is that the concept of being ‘gifted’ barely exists in anglophone literature. I’m not really sure what to make of it to be honest. One argument I’ve heard is that it’s a way to ‘soften the blow’ of calling someone neurodivergent by essentially telling them they’re smart.
At the very least, it’s pretty clear that I have a neurodivergent disposition. The way I think and speak is rather atypical. What is also quite clear is that this isn’t some level of attention deficit. I did a two hour test without needing a break, and in reality most of my life has included long, focussed work, and I’ve not really had an issue.
My lack of attention is usually due to being understimulated, or essentially bored. This is opposed to a more general difficulty with paying attention to things, which is where it comes closer to a disorder and often diagnosed as ADHD (innattentive, rather than hyperactive).
These definitions are based upon the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). The way that neurodivergence has been classified has not been without criticism. A lot of it is based upon a history of pathologising – autism and ADHD are classified as disorders / disabilities. What also doesn’t help is that the definitions of these ‘conditions’ are rather broad which can make people question how legitimate they are.
From my perspective, neurodivergence definitely exists. Some of these traits can fall into ways that can be debilitating. However, a lot of the issues around neurodivergence come from the way we treat people who are different in society. Stims and abnormal behaviour is often seen as ‘bad’, and kids are taught to stop doing them, leading to them masking these things.
My psychologist was convinced that I was not Autistic (even if this was not the purpose of the test.) My IQ averages were too high, and I didn’t demonstrate difficulties that would be typical of an autistic person.
Yet I can’t help but reflect the issues with the way the data has been built. One of the main influences for me was reading Autism Unmasked. The point of the book was to speak to people who don’t fall into the normal stereotypical behaviour of autistic people.
The book highlights how Autism diagnosed is based upon typical traits for white, middle-class boys. Women, ethnic minorities and genderqueer people are left very much underdiagnosed in this space as this shows up in different ways.
I find myself in a bit of a crossroads here. On the one hand, I can claim I am actually ‘gifted’, and because I haven’t had obvious signs thus far, I can say I’m not autistic.
On the other hand, when I start examining my behaviour more recently, I can see areas where reading about autism has been the only source of actually understanding what’s happening with me.
For example, the term interoception is the ability to process our body’s information. I had never heard this term before reading about autism. But a life experience I’ve had is not knowing when I am full or not, and this has essentially been a perennial experience. Even since I have been a lot more healthy and vigilant of what I consume, I’ve notice that my ability to intuitively eat has just never worked very well. If I eat ‘clean’ for a few days, I usually end up with a day where I feel insatiably hungry, and no matter how much I eat, I do not feel full.
A lot of what I’ve learnt on how to manage this has actually come from Instagram accounts of people with lived experience in this space. One of the issues with psychology is that it is very prohibitive to entry. Whilst this is understandable to some extent – medical fields need a strong level of training and due diligence – it does mean it is slow to change, and most neurodivergent people I know and who could bring a fresh perspective have very big barriers to entry.
But like a lot of things in modern society, there feels like a long lag between more innovative, diverse ways of thinking compared to what is actually happening in industry. Our tendency to require qualifications and training for pretty much anything, including entry level jobs can actually stifle innovation. The ability to try new things for many people in western society is probably not worth the years of retraining it requires. This is particularly the case when people without qualifications can often actually be more knowledgeable and better than the official experts. Much of what is taught in schools and classes is quickly out
For the moment, I still have a test to come. I’ll see what comes out of the results of that. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that the amount of time, energy and cost I’ve spent navigating the whole system has been very laborious and tricky.
The long process seems rather at odds with the obvious traits I demonstrate (and share) with the people right in front of me. If I tell those people I’m Autistic, they would not blink an eye.
I was back in the UK this week, staying in my parent’s house.
When I went to take a shower, I saw that a spider had taken over the bathtub. There was an impressive amount of webs that had covered the whole area.
I needed the shower, but I saw that it would most definitely kill it. So with a bit of paper I managed to poke at it. It quickly scuttled up the paper, and started running up my arm. In a bit of a panic, I managed to fling my arm out so that it fell onto the bathroom floor. I was quite happy to see that the spider was still moving on the floor, where it sought refuge behind the toilet.
I couldn’t help but reflect that my act of mercy on this poor spider probably felt like a deeply traumatic event for it. I had come along and essentially destroyed its home, along with hurting it from its fall.
This made me think about how life does similar things to us as humans. An inexplicable event occurs, filled with tragedy. Yet in the end, it might actually be a real blessing, we are just unable to see it at the time.
For those that aren’t aware, Bangladesh has gone through rather seismic changes, with the Prime Minister being ousted following protests. The movement originated as a student movement against unfair quotas for government jobs going to descendants of liberation fighters. The quota was disproportionate and essentially meant jobs for the families of those already in power.
The brutal repression against the student movement ended up turning the public against the government. Eventually, this led to a wider movement, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina having to flee to India; she also announced that she had resigned as Prime Minister. The state has now shifted into a delicate situation with a clear power vacuum.
I’ve been rather fearful as to what happens next. Bangladeshi history has had bad instances of the past where the army simply took control, with brutal repression following. Power struggles are extremely bloody and damaging, and if things go wrong, the country could descend into chaos. Fortunately, the first signs look somewhat positive. Students successfully called for Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yusuf to come in as a chief adviser. It looks like order is looking to be achieved and new elections to come.
I can’t help but feel naive and misinformed about the degradation of politics in Bangladesh. People have been snatched away, and political opponents heavily repressed. Honestly, it’s pretty upsetting to learn about this all going on. Whilst corruption was evident, I hadn’t realised it had gotten this bad. All I can do now is hope that it settles down and good governance is the ultimate winner.
The week has also had a few other events dotted around. The riots of far-right protesters around the UK has been unsettling. It makes me question a lot around our narrative around multiculturalism, and how far we really have come in society when people can be openly racist. The events made its rounds across Europe, to the point that I even had people in Belgium question whether I should go back to visit my parents because of what they heard.
Meanwhile, I’ve been doing several hours of assessments around my neurodivergence. These are several hours of rather tiring questions, jabbing into uncomfortable personal memories on childhood.
I suppose I took it as a compliment that the psychologist described me as an ‘interesting case’. Turns out I am very contradictory in my answers. On the one hand I need routine and repetition. But I also need novelty and colour. I need my peace and quiet, but I also need intense social stimulation.
I’ll have to see what this really means, but it could be a blend of different conditions in play (somewhere between Autism, being a Highly Sensitive Person, having some form of ADHD and/or being ‘intellectually gifted’). What is clear at least is that I fit the profile of a neuroatypical person.
Processing these sorts of events is pretty exhausting. I’ve felt fear, as well as emotionally drained.
But I return to thinking about that spider, running around my parent’s bathroom floor.
The traumatic event it lived through is the reason it lives to see a new, better day.
Motivation is like gold dust. When we have it, complex tasks can feel so simple. But when our motivation runs dry, even the most simple of tasks can feel extraordinarily difficult.
‘Refinding’ motivation is a search many of us go on. There’s an abundance of motivational slogans, inspirational quotes and an industry of positive-vibe speakers to cater to this need.
Unfortunately, most of these external sources of motivation have a rather limited effect. Whilst these things can give a temporary boost, they are no match for genuine, internal motivation to succeed.
Books like Grit by Angela Duckworth highlight as much – someone with an intrinsic motivation is far more likely to accomplish a goal than someone who is doing it for some form of external validation. Doing something for the love of it means we will persevere for far longer than doing something just because we want to become rich or famous.
The funny thing about motivation is how wavering it can be. Some days, it can feel like it we are abundantly motivated. The next day, it can feel like it has completely disappeared.
The key to understanding this is that it’s not the activity that’s changing, it’s us.
The way we think and feel about something shapes our reality. The more time we spend dreading a task, the harder it becomes. We can flip this by committing to actions come rain or shine, as well as focussing on the positives, or pleasure that we get out of something.
This is all stuff that I had learned several years ago. Yet putting it into practice is always the most challenging part. Life also finds new ways to test us at different periods of our life.
My recent period of fatigue has had stretches where I had no desire to do anything at all. I had no motivation to move. I had to push myself just to eat. My body’s response was to slow down, making me just want to stay in bed.
Things have improved since then, yet motivation still can feel scary – asking myself what I want opens up deeper, existential questions about what I’m doing in life.
I went to a festival last weekend. It was a lot of people, and I did have rather strong bouts of anxiety at several points. But it was also really fun. The weather was (mostly) good, and I felt alive after passing a few days on my feet dancing.
Afterwards, I felt a jolt of energy in life. This was despite being far more physically tired (and rather sleep deprived). My therapist described it as a sort of reset to my dopamine controls.
When I reflect on it, creating fun for myself got simplified in my head. Going outside when it’s sunny is something fun and enjoyable.
This is in contrast to my more recent ways of thinking about ‘fun things’. I had inadvertently learnt that fun was meant to be challenging and/or educational – there needed to be a ‘point’ to everything. It’s probably why I found myself in such a humourless state recently.
Doing things for the joy of them can return us to a more innocent, childlike state. In our adult lives of routine and responsibility, we can lose the ability to have fun, like we did as kids. Part of the recipe of wellbeing is reconnecting with this side of ourselves.
For some people, recalibrating is instead doing less. We may be overdosing on our dopamine hits, making us crave the hits we get from it. Knowledge about social media addiction is pretty prevalent now, but most of us have experienced how all-consuming it can get as to whether we get likes or not. Time away can give perspective that perhaps we’re getting too engrossed in that one thing.
I don’t doubt that my life will be a see-saw act between being overly invested in something all the way back to a sense of ennui, or boredom. But finding the sweet spot of general motivation is important. It’s what makes us take care of ourselves and accomplish our goals.
Anger is often seen as a negative emotion. Anger is often synonymous to being petulant or violent. We get angry because we are not accepting something that we ‘should’.
In many social settings, it’s seen as better to refrain from displaying anger. Anger is seen as impolite, or inconsiderate. So instead, we bottle it up until it comes out in a messy burst. It’s certainly a reverse culture shock to come back to the UK and see how these uncontrolled emotions spew out on the streets when people get drunk.
It’s true that uncontrolled anger can be unhealthy, and even dangerous. When we are consumed with rage, it can be hard to think clearly. We might act on impulse, or enter into violence.
But the problem is that by trying to avoid conflict, we often unintentionally suppress our anger. Suppressed emotions doesn’t lead to a healthy emotional status.
I’ve had the unfortunate double whammy of being an ethnic minority as well as being neuroatypical. Being a minority with a moustache and beard, the perception of my actions tend to be seen as more aggressive, predominantly by white people. Unfortunately, white people are the majority in the spaces I inhabit, and are the ones who also tend to be the power holders in my life.
It’s been a constant source of frustration that I cannot display my displeasure at a situation without being perceived as threatening. I’ve received countless sets of feedback about the ‘way’ I raise an issue. At first, I believed that this was something for me to work on. But after a while, I realised that this was an impossible standard. My carefully planned statements of unhappiness still get perceived as threatening.
The frustrating part about this is how acceptable it is for white people around me to verbalise their emotions in a shocked, emotional or angry way without it being an issue. I’ve seen countless times how the reaction of a white person is excused due to emotions running high, but no such benefit of the doubt is given to me.
I had a situation recently where I pointed this double standard out. I even highlighted the inherent racism within. How did the white person across me respond? At the mention of the word racism, they got up and stormed out of the room (while I was still speaking). A few hours later they told me off for implying she was racist, as well as highlighting that I should be sorry for the hurt I had caused her.
As I’ve explored my neurodivergence further, it’s become apparent how difficult I can find it to be caught by surprise. Whilst nobody likes having a last minute change, it can sometimes affect me quite deeply. This can also throw people off guard, as the things that can upset me don’t tend to be the ‘normal’ things that I should get upset about.
I’ve learnt to be very careful about the way I express myself, even when someone has done me wrong. Expressing my upset can actually be dangerous, as I can be branded as threatening or aggressive. Of the conflicts I have had, there were countless times where it actually started from someone else doing something disrespectful to me. Yet the original issue is glossed over upon, and the focus instead turns to how I reacted.
I actually talked to a (white) professional about the situation I had with the white woman recently. She actually suggested that it was better for me not to try and explain my point. In the situation I was in, the people in the room were most likely never going to accept my point of view, as they had basically already made up their mind. Alas, I learnt to take the loss and move on.
A lifetime of suppressing my anger for fear of being perceived negatively has taken its toll. I feel fear at the idea of expressing anger, and I usually have deep anxiety attacks after I have done it (even when I have been justified for doing so). I recently felt an intense pain in my throat because I did not know how to express the frustration that I had built up within.
Although I have learnt the importance of standing up for myself and setting my boundaries, I’ve learnt to do this by simply accepting the suffering it causes. I know that I will probably be branded a troublemaker, aggressive or impolite. But it is better that then getting walked over. Yet it is still painful.
I’m now looking at new ways in which I can express my anger in more healthy ways. Excercise and physical contact can be a good space for this, and I’m learning to use these powerful emotions in a way that is conducive to my performance. Anger can be a very good motivator, and I am looking at how I can use it through artistic expression when moving my body or dancing.
I’m also becoming a lot more conscious as to where the spaces I am in, and how safe they really are. Whilst many left-leaning areas purport to be ‘safe’, there tends to be a lot of white fragility around mentioning race. That doesn’t mean that I cannot participate in these spaces, but I need to be wary that there are certain topics that are better to not be touched upon. It’s tricky to explain this to well-meaning individuals who see these spaces as safe for themselves. But it’s important to trust my own instinct as my experience will be different to the majority of people.
The positive side to being more conscious is realising whoare genuinely open to understanding, as well as finding the spaces which are more accepting. These do not need to be necessarily minority led spaces (although that can sometimes help). Instead, it’s finding people who have the emotional intelligence to genuinely have discussions of issues in an open minded way.
Fundamentally, anger is not a negative emotion. It is just an emotion, like any other. It’s more about how we act upon the emotion. We can use anger to drive us to destruction, or to constructive change. Without anger, our sense of moral justice would be totally flat.
I can’t pretend to have exactly figured out how I can most healthily express my anger, but I think I’m on the path towards it.
What I do know is that I feel healthier and happier when I feel more in tune with what I am really feeling.
Forgiveness is one of the key words in the world of spirituality and religion. This makes sense – it’s better to forgive than hold on to a grudge for many years of our life.
I think we know this intrinsically. Yet it’s a lot more challenging to do in practice.
My recent months has involved a lot of exploration and experimentation. This has meant there have been bumps along the way. People have been hurt. Sometimes I have hurt people. Sometimes people have hurt me. Sometimes, it’s a mix of the two.
Forgiveness has two aspects. Firstly, forgiveness for ourselves. We can be some of our biggest critics. When we berate ourselves for every small action that we might have done wrong, it can be very hard to find a sense of peace and happiness. A lack of self-forgiveness is probably why we see so many people with low self confidence in today’s society.
Then there is forgiving others. Understanding better why people may have done some things, accepting that they may have had their reasons, and, if they give one, accepting an apology. Even in a space where disagreements persist and no apology is made, we can choose to forgive someone for what we believe they may have done against us.
Forgiving ourselves and forgiving others go hand in hand. If we judge others harshly, we implicitly are setting rules for ourselves of what we should or should not do – ‘That guy is very obnoxious, I would neverbe so loud in public’. We are binding ourselves in a construct about how we should act. Without realising it, we are restricting our own freedom.
I’m generally one who is relatively quick to forgive. Admittedly, this is by my own estimation, but even then, I would say that I tend to be more on the empathetic side. Yet I’ve also felt quite frustrated with forgiveness, especially in the last few years. Despite focussing on getting better at forgiving, I wondered whether I was excusing the actions of people. I’d find myself giving a reason as to why someone acted negatively towards me, without feeling like I could actually address the issue with them.
In an attempt to avoid uncomfortable conversations, I feel that we often sweep issues under the carpet. This has often left me in an uncomfortable position – do I endlessly hold a grudge because I feel unsatisfied by the actions of someone I know, or do I get on with life?
In the end, I cannot control the actions of others. I would wish that there was more space for open conversations, yet I also recognise that many of us were not equipped for such style of conversations. I’m sure I’m no saint either in this.
The key distinction I learnt this week is that I can forgive people for their actions, without necessarily conceding my point. This includes actions (like some that have happened to me this week) that have done me a lot of harm.
Forgiveness does not necessarily mean that I concede my point of view. Instead, it’s understanding where the other person is coming from and seeing that they had their reasons for their actions.
In some senses forgiveness is somewhat selfish. It’s a way to let go of the past and move on with life. I do not want the actions of someone else to have a constant hold on me. The memories stop provoking anger, and ultimately I stop thinking about them.
Recently, I realised how boring I had made my own life.
That’s not to say my life is objectively ‘boring’. To many it probably seems I do lots of fun and adventurous things. But subjectively, it’s felt unexciting. The things I’ve been doing haven’t felt particularly enjoyable.
In the quest for commitment, consistency and hailing ‘the grind’, I seemed to lose the idea that things were meant to be fun.
It’s probably no wonder that by the beginning of this year I found it so hard to motivate myself to do pretty much anything. Everything seemed tiring and exhausting.
Through this process, I think I lost a part of myself. I was modelling myself on the ‘boringly consistent’ types – gym everyday, unremarkable but consistent small gains leading to exponential growth.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be said about this way of being. And I’ve certainly learnt lots about the importance of committing myself to what I say I will do.
I think I have been suppressing my chaotic nature. I’m an emotional being who thrives upon a mix of planned and spontaneous excitement. It’s what makes me buzz and really thrive in life.
In the quest to be regulated individuals within a society, I think a lot of us implicitly learn that being quirky is something to lose with age. Such ways of being are tolerated with youth, but in adulthood we are meant to give up such frivolities.
In my own effort to grow up and become independent, I think I lost that sense of fun and freedom in life. Everything needed to be a goal to be achieved, or something to improve upon. Only in my 30s am I taking the time to regain my sense of liberty.
My life realisations don’t come without challenges. My life feels more like a rollercoaster than ever – with greater vulnerability comes greater lows. These can be pretty damned tough. But the highs are also far more satiating and joyous. And now that I’ve experienced them, I couldn’t imagine a life without those amazing feeling again.
I’ve realised how much I enjoy people’s company. In some senses this isn’t a surprise for those people who have seen me going around speaking to people. Yet I’ve also had intense periods of reclusiveness too. I think this paradoxical nature has made it hard to understand what was going on. But I think this has been down to me finding it hard to find my place. In those spaces, it was easier to withdraw into a nihilistic pessimism to protect myself.
The challenge now for me is to figure out how I ride this rollercoaster without crashing. As my energy slowly returns, the temptation is to just fill my days with more people and events. Yet I’m not actually at a state where my body can quite handle that either.
Part of understanding my neurodivergence is seeing that my brain does not work in a particularly logical way. The more logical way of seeing the world would be that we have so much units of energy in a day and that therefore we can complete that many activities.
But for me, sometimes a small task can take me hours, whilst at other moments I can also do an incredible amount in an extremely short amount of time.
Before ever realising that my brain was wired different, I always saw the importance of momentum. There have been weeks where I have done the amount that people would do in several months, whereas the last few months have been extremely slow going. There were points that I put off simple tasks like folding my laundry for weeks on end, only to find it took me 15 minutes.
It’s why it’s so important to connect with ourselves to really understand how to live. The moment we try to overly rationalise the way we work as humans is the moment that we lose our understanding of what our bodies are really saying.
As an example, let’s take the idea of a night out. Many of us experienced this during our university days. We kept insisting to our friends that we were tired to go out. Later on we find ourselves buzzing with energy on the dance floor at 3am.
If our energy was based upon rational, measurable units, this would not be possible. Yet our bodies abilities to seemingly create energy is abundant. It’s probably why we feel more awake after exercising than before it too.
What makes this difficult is understanding the difference between what activities will revitalise us, and when we are doing something by simply struggling through. This is confusing because the same activities can be both things depending on the circumstances.
I’m much more on the overcommitment scale of things. I love having new and exciting things for me each day. But I’ve also learnt the importance of empty time without needing to rush around too. I’m still a work in progress on this, and probably will be for the rest of my life
But fundamentally, it’s important to keep doing things that feel fun. Fun is so subjective that sometimes these can be very mundane things. I see that for many people, they don’t need their lives to be so spontaneous – they are happy with the daily rhythm and stability.
Just as I arrived at St Pancras, my internet reconnected. I refreshed the BBC Sports page to find Ollie Watkins score a 90th minute winner. Welcome home. Perhaps football will be coming home too? But is the UK actually home for me anymore?
Not only that, but this was the first time coming back to the UK since the General Election. The result was both a mix of momentousness and anticlimax. For the first time in a long while I felt like I could actually be somewhat content with the result. That’s probably the first time in the last ten elections I’ve followed.
Sadly, being actually into politics meant that I had to kill my own joy by delving deeper into the analyse. An increase in the far right vote in the UK is hardly a cause for celebration. Nor is the fact that in real terms, this was more the Conservatives losing their votes than necessarily Labour gaining a whole lot.
More fundamentally though, I find myself falling into the sense of questioning how much will really be different. The mood of the country hasn’t felt all that different in the short time I’ve been in London, whilst even a massive majority for Labour can’t hide the fact that there is serious turmoil and economic difficulty. The elephant in the room of Brexit is going to be ignored for as long as possible.
I used to believe far more in a centrist ideology. My ideal approach was around uniting people through sensible reform to bring meaningful change. But my recent reflections have made me doubt whether this actually works all that well. Our societal fear of discomfort means that the softly softly approach can often lead to avoiding them.
Maybe I’m accepting the more radical side of myself. I thought that the answer has been to tone down my beliefs to make them more palatable. But I’ve actually found that this makes me just compromise on my core beliefs.
So here we are with a new government. I do imagine it will be an improvement. Yet in a bid to win the election through being more centrist, it’s hard to see it being much fundamental change. The rhetoric on immigration is still similar. Many Muslim family members are dismayed at the hypocrisy around Israel. Meanwhile Wes Streeting wants to keep the ban against puberty blockers for trans people.
These events also happened to coincide with my 31st birthday. I still am not sure how I feel about birthdays, yet this one was nice and quaint. I have little desire to overly reflect on the last 12 months as I have done in the past. Perhaps that will come in a time when I am feeling less fatigued and burnt out.
Connecting to my roots isn’t just about coming back to the UK. Whilst I am British, I am also Bangladeshi. The actual reason I came across was to complete my application for my Bangladeshi National ID at the High Commission.
It’s a challenging experience in many respects. I went to the High Commission with forms filled in in Bengali. I can’t really read them very well. Most of the conversation was in Bengali, of which I can only speak at a broken level. It doesn’t help either that our language is actually Sylheti, which whilst similar, was different.
A lot of this was trying to negotiate the form correctly. It’s not so easy to write the correct full address for our ancestral home in the village, especially when it needs to be written in Bengali. Fortunately, my brother had already gone for an appointment, so I could learn from the corrections he had to figure out. Still, I did need to phone my dad just to figure out some specific questions.
It’s hard not to feel some level of dysphoria with the different identity connections I have. I find it embarrassing that I can’t speak my maternal tongue better, whilst my connection with the UK, my land of birth, feels pretty mixed. I don’t really have too much energy to properly comprehend the Belgian or EU elections quite honestly, but suffice to say the results were not feel-good.
Right now, I’m looking to just connect to my own sense of beliefs. Sometimes, it’s not worth trying to mentally ‘figure out’ what all these things mean. After all, if I do enough social deconstruction, the idea of being from a certain land is, in reality, a figurative concept.
What really matters is where I am now. And I am grateful for what I have.
This week, I’m doing a speech around how to keep focus on the positives at my local Toastmasters club.
I chose this speech because it seemed a pretty relatable topic. If you’ve been following my writing, you are probably aware by now that I’ve been facing a fairly substantive burnout period. So it’s been particularly important to keep the positives in mind.
When our life routine gets thrown up in such a huge way, it can be hard to not fall into a sense of despair. I’ve questioned myself a lot. Sometimes I’ve felt guilty for taking time for myself. Other times, I’ve wondered whether I’ll ever recover again.
These are legitimate questions, and is a key part of the process. Nonetheless, solely focusing on them only leads to a downward spiral of anguish. Our brains tendency to think negatively is much stronger than its ability to look at the positives. It’s part of our survival mechanism, and it was necessary to keep ourselves alive during our evolution. So it is up to us to set a better balance.
The beauty is that every situation can have a positive if we choose to see it. For example, my fatigue has given me a chance to rest my body in a way that I’ve not really done for over a decade. I’m breaking out of the pattern of always needing to have a plan of what I am doing, instead allowing time to simply be in flow with life.
I believe that this burnout period happened for a reason, and I would not have faced it if I wasn’t able or ready to. The situation has pushed me to look into understanding my own brain, and in particular my neurodivergence.
Despite reading about psychology extensively in the last five years, I had little idea that my brain functioning was so atypical. It’s only when I started looking more into autistic burnout symptoms and reading further into it that I had any clue to better understanding myself.
This revelation has put so many things in my life in context: such as understanding why my reaction to things are so different to the people around me, and why I found it so tricky to make friends throughout my life.
This period is a relatively short time in the wider span of my life. So I know that taking the time now is not making me ‘miss out’ on anything. On the contrary, I think it sets me up for a far more joyous and expansive life for the coming decades.
The best thing I can do for myself is enjoying the moment I have now, as well as appreciate the things I do have. I’m very grateful that I have the space and support systems to allow me to recover. I also appreciate myself for having constructed my life in a way that allows me to have these things too.
When I hone in on this space of gratitude, my life feels lighter and easier. I can feel the anxiety and stress lifting. Life becomes just that little bit sweeter.
