Happy 100th Episode to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham (formerly Feel Better Every Day)! Am sorting all the links to ensure my biggest rebrand since 2010 and some aren’t there yet so while I’m hoping you can watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts, please let me know if you have any issues (as well as any feedback, comments or questions!)
Am so delighted to have the fantabulous Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas back with me to talk about how his self-care, Self care and collective care have evolved (since episode 24!) and his new book, ADHD Body and Mind: A Compassionate Guide to Rewilding Your Nervous System with Neuroscience, Nutrition, and Gut-Brain Health.
Described as “a book that speaks to both your biology and your belonging. It’s a unique, neurodiversity-affirmative resource that reframes ADHD as a natural neurotype, a different way of living and making sense of the world, rather than a disorder. It expands neuroscience beyond the brain and into the whole body. Showing how gut, microbes, breath, heart, hormones and immune system are always in conversation. ADHD Body and Mind reimagines nutrition and gut-brain health through a non-diet lens, offering flexible, compassionate tools that nourish body and mind without rules, shame or restriction and extends gentle invitations, not prescriptions, to honour your ADHD as a whole body-mind experience, rather than reducing it to symptoms to be managed. In a nutshell, ADHD Body and Mind is a companion, offering space to breathe, reflect, and return to yourself, again and again. It will help you reconnect with your body’s natural rhythms, release some of the weight of shame and perfectionism, and discover a way of living with ADHD that feels not just manageable, but meaningful.”
I am so looking forward to reading it! I’ve pre-ordered my copy (it’s out on 21st April!) and you can too, wherever you buy your books.
In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed talking to him again.
le grá (with love),
Eve
LINKS
Dr Miguel Toribios-Mateas:
Listen to our previous conversation, episode 24 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or at https://evemc.substack.com/p/the-feel-better-every-day-podcast-b80?utm_source=publication-search
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmiguelmateas
Website:
My new site
CHAPTERS
(Maybe slightly off as re-recorded intro to go with the rebrand from Feel Better Every Day to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD)
0:00 – Being present and meeting others with kindness
0:47 – Celebrating episode 100
0:54 – Introducing Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas
2:09 – A compassionate guide to ADHD body and mind
6:14 – Listening to your needs without forcing others
12:11 – Mindfulness, love and connection through animals
20:50 – Community, belonging and protecting your energy
27:24 – Learning self-acceptance over time
31:04 – Where to connect and final reflections
32:02 – Podcast closing and listener invitation
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Present means that if there is somebody else in the room and they have other needs, you appreciate that their needs are different, and how can you be kind towards them so when you expect them to understand that you need to stand up and fix the curtain, whatever that might be for you. The situation of the curtain is going to be different to different people, and how can you do it in a way that you’re kind to them so when you expect them to be kind to you and not tell you god you’re such a weirdo and feel oh I feel attacked because I’ve just been told that I’m like I’m a weirdo, but you know do things in a way that you find the middle ground and present.
Previously the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, this is now Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham. Learn to love and care for all your parts (including your trauma and AuDHD) from the soles of your feet to your soul.
Welcome to episode 100 of the formerly Feel Better Every Day now Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD Podcast. I’m delighted to welcome back one of my early guests from episode 24, Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas.
I still remember how nervous I was sending him that initial message asking if he’d like to be a guest when I was beginning. And he was the first person I heard the term AuDHD from, and he’s been such an inspiration and kind guide on this journey for me personally, just an absolute delight, so I’m so happy to have him back where he’ll be talking about how his own self-care has evolved but most excitingly his new book.
I hope you love the episode as much as I adore this person who has done so much to help me and others accept and work with our differently wired brains. Let me know what you’re going to do differently as a result of listening.
So thank you so much for coming back Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas.
Thank you for having me.
You’re so welcome.I wanted you here to help me celebrate my 100th episode.
Oh wonderful, that’s great, I’m honoured.
And I also want to celebrate you and your work and your new upcoming book, so can you say a little bit about that?
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got a book coming out, it’s called ADHD Body and Mind and it’s a guide, it’s actually the title goes on, it’s a compassionate guide to rewiring your nervous system with neuroscience, nutrition and gut brain health, and that’s what it says on the tin basically.
It’s a guide, it’s not a prescription, it’s not a protocol for fixing your ADHD, it’s about celebrating the fact that a lot of people will resonate more with certain aspects of it, some people may resonate with other aspects of it, some people might feel that they struggle more and I talk about the struggles, some people might think that it’s actually a source of creativity and I talk about that, so it’s quite balanced in that sense, but also it goes in four parts.
The first part is that kind of introduction to what is ADHD, how do you experience it, you know whichever way you experience it you can just make it your own, and then I move on to the brain and the nervous system, so what happens in the brain and the nervous system when you have ADHD and try to explain things up because I find that when I understand why something is happening it sheds light on it, so it’s not kind of like a mystical thing anymore, so you can understand better why we may be better at reading instructions as opposed to maybe hearing them, so we may be in a way saying yes I’m getting this and then it’s coming in an ear and going out of the other one, and when you try and remember something like you know three minutes later it’s gone because your working memory is not having a good day that particular day.
I talk a lot about all of those processes in plain English so people can understand them, nervous system, the gut-brain access and the gut-brain connection, nutrition and also spirituality and self-care, and that’s kind of like it builds up towards that because I find that with the best of intentions if you just focus on the biology of things, on the molecules and the, you know, eat this food because it will help you with focus or restrict that food because it will help you with RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) or whatever it is, you’re kind of like missing the fact that we are multi-layered beings and we have a layer that needs connection and rituals and kindness and spirituality, whatever that means for you, whether it’s religion, whether it’s just connecting with your Self or with nature or whatever that means for you.
There’s a wide range of spiritual practices and I think that’s really really important, and it’s not something that people talk about so much about AuDHD and spirituality, but I think it’s a really important part of it and it’s full of exercises that bring you back to the body. The whole thing that kind of like elevates the pitch in a way is that I feel that a lot of people with ADHD are, we are in our heads a lot of the time and not so much in our bodies, so I try to bring you back to the body with loads of kind of somatic kind of exercises throughout the book so you can return to your body, so you can feel more at ease in your body and that is going to have a knock-on effect on how you feel in your mind as well.
Yeah, wonderful, so I’m really looking forward to how your ideal and actual self-care in the various parts of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework have evolved, so the Feel bit, the regulatory, the things we can do to help ourselves, and you were saying before we started recording about the curtain, I don’t know if you want to say anything about that, but what are like your essential daily and regular practices and what would be your ideal?
Yeah, I think it’s from when we talked last time, I mean we talked about movement and that’s still important for me and particularly walking because I find walking really relaxing, so I know it’s exercise but it’s also really good for my mental health and I start the day with a long walk anyway with my dog and that sets me up for the day.
But also we were talking about these curtains, I’m in the room, I mean I’ve got these like heavy curtains at one end of the room and one of them had kind of come off the pole and I was looking at it the other day and it was completely doing my head in, it was literally just breaking my brain thinking oh my god I’m going to need to stand up from this meeting and go on and tuck the curtain into the pole because it’s just come off and it’s just distracting me.
And I had to do this because then I forgot when I finished the meeting and I went to do something else and then I sat with you and I was seeing it and I said I need to stand up and fix it otherwise I’m going to be distracted all the way through this as well. And I think celebrating those works and actually thinking, OK, well I’m not weird, it’s not that I’m broken or that I’m like, you know, I’m not an alien, my brain works like that and so what? Somebody else’s brain is going to work in another way.
And also doing it in a kind way that is not forcing your behaviours onto other people, like a get out of jail card, it’s not an excuse to behave in an unkind way towards people. So just because your brain might work differently or your nervous system might have different needs that’s fine and it’s excellent to celebrate that. At the same time what I don’t agree with is to force it on other people as a you know what I’m like, you know my brain is like that, and then being unkind to them because of any behaviours that you engage in.
It’s just finding that balance as well, I think it’s really important. Yeah, it’s finding that balance that I find quite regulating in itself because I catch myself sometimes wanting to use that as an excuse and I think OK now hang on, hang on a minute, I know I’m different and I know I do things in a different way but I also need to understand that other people will have other ways of working as well whether they are also neurodivergent or neurotypical, and I cannot force my way onto them, so I need to find the space where we can interact and respect each other.
Absolutely, and I just so loved what you said about the curtain this morning and also movement, so important, but it is that self-empathy, that recognising this thing that sounds little is going to have an enormous impact on how much more relaxed I’m able to be and that is a good thing, and also like you say it’s so important to not be inflicting our needs on others, and it is, being human is a constant balance isn’t it, human with other people.
And I’m so sure when you raise that awareness that we so much talk about, you know, what’s the point of bringing, you know, raising this increased awareness and, you know, and being increasingly mindful if you don’t do anything with it because it’s not, it’s mindfulness to me, it’s not just this kind of like buzzword, you know, practice that I’m going to be mindful for five minutes and look at the trees and admire them or I’m going to close my eyes and I’m going to have a lovely cup of tea and I’m going to be mindful, and now it’s actually being present.
And present means that if there is somebody else in the room and they have other needs, you appreciate that their needs are different, and how can you be kind towards them so when you expect them to understand that you need to stand up and fix the curtain, whatever that might be for you, the situation of the curtain is going to be different to different people, how can you do it in a way that you’re kind to them so when you expect them to be kind to you and not tell you god you’re such a weirdo and feel oh I feel attacked because I’ve just been told that I’m like I’m a weirdo but, you know, do things in a way that you find the middle ground because I think that that’s how we’re going to grow as a society otherwise it’s going to be an element of like us and them always with like neurodivergent, neurotypical, gay, straight, male, female, black, white, whatever, all of that.
And I’m thinking I remember hearing Jon Kabat-Zinn hundreds of years ago in London and he was saying that the root word that the mindfulness, it sounds very mindy, but the word, it is it etymology that it comes from, it was basically heartfulness as well, so mindfulness without that compassion for yourself and for others isn’t mindfulness, it just doesn’t work.
Exactly, absolutely, yeah I agree completely.
So moving into the Love part, that part that, we’re part of nature, we’re part of the divine, there’s nothing that needs changing, nothing that needs improving. What helps you connect with that kind of love archetype and that supportive acceptance, both ideal self-care and actual Self care and that would be the upper case s, the more spiritual, the transpersonal, your miraculous Self?
Well I think for me I find my dog really grounding. Having an animal I think is just really grounding because, and I guess it’s an animal, it can be children, it can be anything that makes you realise that it’s not all about you, yeah.
And I think when I think about when I lost my two dogs that I had and I loved them dearly and they died and that spell that I had between that and now having my dog, my new puppy, well he’s going to be two next month, but I just felt OK I might have more freedom because I don’t need to think about like holidays, you know who is he going to stay with, and he never went into, they never went into kennels, my dog, so like my cats there was always somebody who came and stayed with them or yeah, you know, so I didn’t have to worry about that.
But also I felt there was a need for me to care for something other than myself, yeah and in caring for something other than myself then I’m cultivating love for myself as well because I realised that it’s not all about me, it’s about how love is a shared experience, yeah, and to have love for yourself in the first place you need to be able to share the love with other people.
So yeah it sounds kind of, it might sound like intuitive, but that’s the way that I feel it.
I’m working on a book about my Polyvagal Purrs approach where I use the rescue cats to help people understand Polyvagal Theory and part of is exactly that. It is that we are part of nature and that we become like, I know this sounds really weird, this is going to sound so weird, but like I took one of the ferals to its new home an hour away so I had to get it into the carrier to the vet.
It had got to the stage where it had been Angel Houdini Cat, it’d been attacking Meadbh the mammy that I adopted, but it had taken over a year before I could stroke it and then it started coming to me for strokes before breakfast, same as Teri Crews Cat, but then in the past nine months or so he was letting me pick him up and then he kind of actively wanted to be picked up outside the back door and carried across to the shed where I fed him.
And every day when I’d do that it was like he’d curl into my neck, nibble my ear, rub my nose, and I’d just be like purpose and meaning, like this is just like, or when I’m a bridge for my original cat Rainbow and she leaps to wherever, and I just think it makes me feel like power but in the best possible way, like me being bigger and able to feed and clean the litter tray and all the things, it’s that real connection with being able to do more to protect, to help facilitate their joy, and I don’t know I’m sounding like …
No no it makes complete sense, I think because at the moment at the end of the day you are kind of ensuring their safety and in doing that if you kind of like cultivate your own safety it’s kind of like shared safety. You create a safe space for both of you because they couldn’t be safe without you because they are helpless.
Yes.
So if they were just out in the world they wouldn’t be able to fend for themselves because sadly that’s the way we’ve kind of like, you know, make these animals, you know they depend on us, so if they were completely wild yes of course, you know like a wolf doesn’t need us, you know like a cat wouldn’t need us, but the way that we’ve domesticated animals they do need us.
And in creating that shared space of safety you’re creating safety for yourself and you’re kind of like feeling you’re part of something bigger, they are part of something bigger, you’re part of something bigger and it’s that shared element of, for me, it’s a really spiritual experience having a pet, it’s not just having a pet.
Yeah.
In fact I’ve used that experience but I hardly ever use the experience having a pet itself, it’s more like it’s a companion, it’s like a soulmate, it’s like me.
Yeah, yeah.
I look at my dog’s eyes, I look into his eyes and I kind of like see the universe in there, he contains wisdom and intelligence, and you know and I’ve got fish, I’ve got a pond with big goldfish like you know like this big. I lost a few last year because the oxygen pump started working and we actually lost some of the bigger fish that were about 15 years old, that was quite sad.
But yeah we’ve got some new ones and they’re growing and some of the old ones are still there and when I feed them and they come up and they react to my voice, so I’m thinking there’s intelligence in there.
And I have in my conservatory, I might be able to pick one up in a moment as well, I have ladybugs that just come to the house for the winter and they just go into corners of the house and I leave them there, I don’t pick them up or anything. Some of them die because they don’t make it for the winter but some of them are in my kitchen, I literally get hundreds of them.
And I think how intelligent are they that they, for warmth and safety, the moment there’s like a warm day, you know the sun is out, they start flying around in the conservatory, so it’s like all these insects flying around in the conservatory, and I’m thinking some people would think I’m completely mad because they would just spray them or remove them but I actually like them because I think they’re intelligent beings and they are here trying to feel safe and I feel like responsible for them.
Yes.
And I’m thinking all of that is being part of something bigger, they are part of this universe that I’ve created for them and I’m part of another universe that you know is there and it’s always kind of like universes with one within another almost like Russian dolls, and it makes me feel a bit like that having an animal in the house.
Yeah.
And I’m thinking like something you just said, it made me think about I got this tattoo star to remind me to trust and surrender when I was 34, I was doing my psychosynthesis training and it’s a transpersonal psychology and what you’re talking about with the animals I think their trust in us helps us trust ourselves more and also just in life more.
I think so.
I’ve got this like ladybugs, this is like a little turkey tail mushroom that grows in one of the bushes in my garden and there’s a ladybug, can you see it?
Yes.
Oh and I’ve got all this like cacti in my conservatory and they just go into the plants and stuff. I don’t know what they eat, they probably just survive on dust or something, but there’s hundreds of them that actually make it onto the spring just because they come into the house and then in the spring they just leave, so I just provide this kind of like shelter for these insects to make it through the winter.
I used to want a red car and I was going to paint giant black flowers on the top so from a distance it looked like a giant ladybug, but I have a white car and I haven’t done anything, but thank you so much for that.
Moving to the third part, the final part of the framework, the Heal bit, it’s about the co-regulation, the collective care.
What helps you in an ideal world as well as your essentials, both in terms of you’ve created a community for people like myself and like your incredible, the work you’ve been doing for years and years, what communities do you benefit from, like how do you let yourself be held as well as holding others?
I think holding others is really important for me and I feel that in my teaching as well. When I teach at university as well and I see younger people and you know how curious they are and I feel like partly responsible for ensuring that they understand the nuances as well of the science and the diversity in the science as well because I don’t know that in the mainstream of a university it’s always communicated clearly, so I make a point about talking about neurodiversity and diversity in general and I think that that’s quite important.
I think in terms of how I feel held, well I think I feel held by a network of people who are really kind like you’re one of them. We’re not like friends as in like we’re texting each other at night saying how are you, but we’re part of this again kind of like bigger thing that we all resonate with and so we’re part of this wave of change.
And even though it sounds ethereal and kind of a little mystical I do feel held by knowing that there are people out there who are in their own scope of practice doing similar things or they are doing things in a different way but they have the same kind of feelings and drive to share those emotions that they are experiencing and making sure that lived experience and how we take care of ourselves in different ways is communicated to other people.
And I think being part of that through a lot of it through social media, so I know that social media gets really bad press, it’s like oh it’s really bad for you, but it also has a lot of positives that it’s allowed us to connect, like we connected through Substack, and there will be other people as well that have connected through the years through Instagram or whatever that they’ve become kind of like an extended layer of friends that I know that they resonate with my message and I resonate with them, and I think that that is community at the end of the day in 2026, so it doesn’t need to be a face-to-face community which is lovely and I appreciate that a lot of people need that a lot more than maybe others.
And I do need the physical contacts of friendships, for example, are really important, so I had a meeting yesterday and I went to see a friend afterwards and I find myself sometimes with my social battery is like I have to really judge whether I have the energy to meet people even though I like them or not because I’m thinking okay well I might be struggling for energy at the moment because I’ve been doing a lot.
My parents are elderly, I had a very complicated situations with them the last couple of years and it’s just drained my energy a lot more than maybe if I hadn’t had that situation as well, so I’m more aware of that.
But equally I met this friend, I ended up going to her place because it was raining and she’d just been to the hairdresser’s and she said you know why don’t you come to my place instead and we have a coffee here, so I did that and we chatted like non-stop literally, both neurodivergent, so we were just chopping and cutting each other like every two sentences we were saying something and we don’t take offense and it was like that for like three hours and I just felt actually quite energised. I thought wow that was actually really healing, it was a really healing chat.
We chatted a lot about personal things, we almost, you know when you do this like brain dump kind of thing and it’s almost like I’m just going to update your Miguel operating system, let me just give you my latest upload, you know my latest download of my operating system and she did the same and we chatted about loads of random things that we hadn’t shared for months.
And then she walked me, she drove me to the train station and she stood there while I was taking the train. I’m thinking that was the whole thing. I thought actually I felt really held by how kind she was and that was a wonderful experience and I think, you know, sometimes I don’t do more of that because I’ve grown more aware of my own, as I was saying, like my social battery, sometimes just judging how replenishing that’s going to be versus how difficult is it going to be to meet them logistically, am I going to have to take the train, is it raining, is it, and then all of those things play in my head and detract from the enjoyment.
So sometimes I don’t go into that kind of situation because of all of those steps that I think oh my god it’s draining me just thinking about it, but I do enjoy the face-to-face contact, I think it’s really really healing, but otherwise the extended layer of people who I know are there and I may miss out on what they are saying because maybe the algorithm is not showing them on my feed but then they pop up like weeks later and I think oh she’s lovely and you leave a comment and they leave a comment back and you feel that there’s a connection in there and I think that is healing as well.
Yeah, so thank you so much. If you could send any love and wisdom back to a younger you at any stage what might it be?
Probably just thinking you are amazing and you didn’t see it because like now even I look at photos of myself from the times that I thought I hated myself and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and I wasn’t sure what I was doing but I was doing loads of great stuff, it was just organic. I didn’t have it all worked out, I didn’t have a plan that I was following step by step but it did happen.
And then at the more kind of superficial physical level I’m thinking why was I so worried about, why wasn’t I even more on podiums dancing like naked, you know, just to show off, because I was actually really good looking, you know, like 20–30 years ago, but I was looking at myself in the mirror and I’m thinking oh my god I don’t want to look at myself in the mirror, I didn’t like myself, I hate my body, I hate my face.
And I’m thinking wow why did I do that, and I think it’s all a matter of how, and I’m not saying that I’m stunning, you know, either, I don’t feel like that even now, but I’m saying it’s all about how you see yourself. And I was thinking why was I so worried about how my hair looked or my nose or my teeth or whatever, you know, and why was I always thinking people were not going to like me or why didn’t I feel that I was good enough compared to somebody else.
Whereas those comparisons now I’m just thinking I still feel them, don’t get me wrong, but I think they’re less meaningful. In a way I kind of like just thought you know what I’m me, I am me, I’m not going to be anybody else, I’m not going to look any different, even if I tried to look different why would I want to try and look different, this is me, this is who I am, this is what I look like, this is what I do, some people are going to like me, some people are going to hate me and it’s life.
And I think if I had known that a little bit that would have been amazing, but also I realise the whole point of growing up is that you don’t know it. You’re not too cocky when you’re 20 and you’re not fun and you do what you need to do and you go through life and you experience your insecurities because they teach you that later when 30 years later when you look back you think oh wasn’t I just a silly bugger, you know, like 30 years ago, but you know that’s the whole point, you gather wisdom and you create who you are through life and that’s the whole point of life, we’re learning, it’s a learning journey.
And I love the compassion and love for the younger youths that shines through as you even say that. Thank you so much for joining me again.
Absolute pleasure.
Thank you Eve, always a pleasure for me as well.
Where can people find you online?
Well I’m most active on Instagram, so if you find me on Instagram as Dr Miguel Mateas that is my handle, and I’m on Substack as well but I’m kind of like almost on two minds, I mean two minds, as to whether to continue with Substack or not because it’s become really noisy the last year or so, so I’ve been thinking about starting to write my newsletter actually from my own website.
So yeah, so maybe just find me on Instagram because that’s the best place.
Can people subscribe to your newsletter?
Yeah, so if you find me on Instagram then you’ll find my website as well drmiguelmateas.com and all the links will be there.
Really looking forward to reading your book.
Thank you so much Eve.
Thanks again.
Thank you for listening to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham. This episode was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. Find out more at solestosoul.ie/podcast