Compassion and Pandas with Louise Lucas

That values-based guidepost of what are the things that are most important in this moment, what’s going to move me towards it. I always say it’s about intentions, it’s not about goals, I don’t like goals because they become sticks to beat ourselves with, but these gentle intentions of what’s the need now, what’s going to best serve me, what’s going to best serve my values. Sometimes they’re not quite the same thing, but we navigate and we do it and we take that moment.

Welcome to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. In today’s episode, I’m delighted to welcome Louise Lucas back. Her new book will be out in a few weeks, so delighted to have her talking about that as well as her ideal and actual self-care, pandas and more.

If you are new here or if you simply want to access older episodes, more information, free resources, I’ve got hundreds of body-mind practices and more about the book, more about becoming an adventurer, go to solestosoul.ie, so that’s s-o-l-e-s-t-o-s-o-u-l.ie, and let me know if you’ve got any questions, comments, what you found most helpful, and thank you for being here.

I hope you love the episode as much as I enjoyed talking to Louise again, she’s fantastic. So welcome, Louise Lucas, delighted to have you back.

Thank you, it’s so lovely to be here with you, Eve, thank you so much for having me back.

It’s such an exciting time for you because your book is nearly out.

I don’t quite know how we managed to get here, but we did manage to get here. It’s out at the end of September, which has been the most amazingly difficult and tricksy journey, but I’m in that place now where it feels like lots of the hard work is done and I can just enjoy the, I’ve got a book, which feels like a ridiculous thing to be saying, but I know Little Louise is just like, “This is what we were supposed to do.”

I’ve been privileged to already read it and it’s delightful and so needed and I want to just say you were on as Louise Brown, so there’ll be a link to that episode in the show notes and it was before I knew about the autism but I knew about the ADHD but it was such a helpful episode for me personally as well and we met through a neurodivergent therapist community, which has just been incredible.

You’re such a beacon of hope and light and I’m so glad you’ve got this book coming out to show other therapists because I’ve been in practice now 22 years next month and you were one of the people a few years ago where I really began to understand my differently wired brain. That helped me, I still want to say rebel against some of the training, which was, it helped me make sense of so much of the shame I’d felt during so much of the training. I did a lot of different trainings and thank you for being you, thank you for all you do.

Would you like to say a little bit about what you do, how you got into it, and where people can find you online?

Thank you so much for your really kind words, it makes all the bits that feel icky and difficult really worthwhile when I know that it’s made a difference to other people.

I’m a therapist, a supervisor, a trainer, I do all sorts of things. Everything I do you can find on my website which is curiosityspot.co.uk and I’m on all the usual places, social medias and LinkedIn, so come and have a nosy around and a poke around.

I’ve tried to make the website reasonably intuitive, so hopefully people can find the bits that they’re interested in by anything neurodiversity related, about how do we create inclusive and spaces that are welcoming and allow us to do what you’ve done, which is find the ways that work for us without shame and blame, it’s really important.

Do you want to say again for people who might be listening while driving where they can find you?

That’s www.curiosityspot.co.uk.

There will be links in the show notes, but I know not everyone reads the show notes, so I would like to start. I’ve adopted this from Anita Rani’s podcast with a conscious breath, like connective breath, so listeners as well, viewers as well, if you want to just, obviously we’re breathing 24-7, it’s what keeps us alive, there’s no right or wrong way to breathe, this is just a noticing what’s happening with your breath right now and allowing yourself to connect with it and to connect with your inner wisdom, your inner guidance, that stillness and a bit of peace.

I’m really conscious doing this on a podcast, thinking I don’t want people to think, oh, it’s not working, but thank you for joining me in that.

Louise, as always, I love asking people about, self-care practitioners, about their ideal and their actual self-care, because so many of us think if we’re not doing all the things we’ve been sold and told, then there’s no point, especially AuDHD is all or nothing, no point, not going to bother, whereas something is always better than nothing.

I love hearing about the ideal. If you had all the time, all the energy, all the money, all the resources in the world and what the essentials are, especially if you’re ill, if you’re travelling, if you’re really busy, what would be the one thing in each area of the framework, but I always feel guilty and evil saying limit it to one thing, so if you want to say more than one, then feel free.

The FEEL. bit, the FEEL. LOVE. HEAL. framework I developed, the FEEL. bit is what most people think of with self-care and it can take some bandwidth, it can take energy, it can take the executive function to get started.

For me, when I quit drinking alcohol 25 years ago, swimming became my whisky, but it would involve a long cycle to get to the pool but I also know it really helps me, yoga, like so many things that are active at the moment, I’m covered in paint from painting, which is really helping process some grief and also send love out to the world because I’m doing a giant heart mural, multicoloured heart and multicoloured fences.

All these things, or cooking, nourishing food, all these things, they take a certain amount of bandwidth, they take a certain amount of energy and time, so it can sound really simple and it can feel like the hardest thing in the world.

If you were to think of your ideal and your actual, what would you say there?

I so resonate with what you’re saying, that part of me that’s like, well, obviously, the ideal is we do all of the things, so for me, that’s a yoga practice, that’s cooking from scratch with good nourishing vegetables and lentils and beans. The food that hugs you from the inside, it’s exercise, it’s connecting with community, it’s creativity, it’s doing a daily draw of my tarot cards and journaling.

It expands to fill all of the available space. I don’t think I could list all the things that my brain tells me it is, or it should be, or it would like it to be and I’m never quite sure with, at different times, different ones become shoulds and woulds and coulds so it’s huge.

I think my ideal morning ritual would probably take me till bedtime, if I did all of the things that I know are helpful to me to do first thing in the morning but the reality is my actual self-care is often about what I don’t do. It’s the permission to put things down, it’s the compassionate, the response, the what do I need right now and that what do I need right now could be a 16% imperial stout, because beer is one of my special interests, so there’s something really nourishing for me in engaging that.

It could be spending time with my Lego, it could be spending 12 hours playing Stardew Valley, which has been a very recent hyperfixation, although it’s stretching out quite long, it might be moving into special interest territory now.

It could be going to a yoga class, or there are a hundred things that it could be, but it’s that that pause is the practice and for me that pause is a panda, because my compassionate self manifests itself as a panda, they’re the best animals and I love them and they just remind me and they’re everywhere in my house.

You might be able to see, I’ve got a little plant pot up there, there’s teddies, there’s pandas on my socks, they’re all over the place, because every time I see one, it’s that reminder to go, what am I doing right now, what do I need right now and that’s the bit for me.

It’s the pause, it’s the question, it’s the what can I put down, what don’t I need to be carrying today.

I absolutely love that. I wrote the book 365 Ways to Feel Better and in the index, or in the introduction, I’m like, you can go through the index, you can ask for guidance and open it at a random page, or you can use it as the calendar, as it’s written, but even that, it felt like it’s not always going to be right, but you check in at any given moment.

It’s why I use the cat so much with the Polyvagal Purrs approach. I have loads of cat stuff. I have visual anchors all over the place, but even them, like, jumping in my lap, even though I’m allergic, it’s that pause, that the more we can remember we don’t need everything, we’re decolonising ourselves, in reconnecting with our inner knowing, we don’t need everything we’re being sold.

It’s just reminding ourselves, we know in any given moment, what do we want to move towards, what do we want to move away from.

It’s exactly that. That values-based guidepost of what are the things that are most important in this moment, what’s going to move me towards it.

I always say it’s about intentions, it’s not about goals. I don’t like goals because they become sticks to beat ourselves with, but these gentle intentions of what’s the need now, what’s, what’s going to best serve me, what’s going to best serve my values. Sometimes they’re not quite the same thing but we navigate and we do it and we take that moment and with so much around self-care, it’s not like the same thing is always self-care, sometimes that is punishing, that is punitive.

I want to see more of your pandas. I know I’ll be illustrating the graphics to go with this episode with pandas.

Excellent, we need more pandas.

Moving into the LOVE. part of the framework, that’s like the love archetype in psychosynthesis, the knowledge when we remember that we are already perfect just as we are.

We’re part of nature, we’re part of the divine.

I’m looking at my panda everywhere.

I’m far from perfect but when you have that, don’t need to do a thing, all is good, what kind of practices in an ideal world and as essential, help you reconnect with that ever-presence, ever-present self, uppercase Self, that miraculous self.

The sea. Absolutely, being by the sea.

I grew up on the coast. I grew up, the sea was there, it was part of my everyday and I am now landlocked, it takes me an hour to get to the sea.

I didn’t realise how much I needed it until lockdown, when I couldn’t go to the sea, I couldn’t travel back home and which I used to do regularly, so I was kind of getting my fix.

Bless my wife, she was finding what are the biggest bodies of water that we could cycle to in our allotted exercise time, so we visited every kind of lake and mirror and large pond and stream she could find, but there is something about being on a boat, or standing on a beach, or a cliff and just the enormity of the sea.

I’ve got two homes, wherever I am, the other one is always home and we can do both, but whenever we drive, I can almost tell the point where the air changes and I start to inhale that kind of salty sea air and I feel like my whole soul just kind of takes in a breath and just goes, OK, we’re all right now.

It’s that thing about awe, isn’t it, of being in these vast open spaces, these things that are bigger than we could ever possibly imagine, that just reminds us, all the other stuff actually isn’t important, here we are in this moment.

It just nourishes my soul, it reminds me, I need to, I’ve got a week off and I need to plan a trip to the sea, I haven’t been for a little while.

Absolutely, I was going to say, for me, at least once a week, swimming in the sea and I’m remembering, I was doing somersaults underwater, in my wetsuit and snorkel gear, went for a snorkel with my partner, into a blowhole and it felt like a hug from the earth, with the kind of cave, cliffy type around us and just being held and the conditions.

I’ve done so many beautiful, majestic, incredible snorkels but I’ve also worried about dying a bit. There’s that part where it’s like, hmm, I am a strong swimmer, whereas the conditions on this particular day, it was last Sunday, not yesterday, at no point did I worry, at no point did I feel anxious. The whole thing just felt holding and hugging and like what you say, looking out at it, being in it, remembering how tiny we are, how insignificant we are.

I don’t get to swim in it quite enough, we’ve got an open-air brine pool in the next town over, which is about as close as I get.

I’m wanting to ask, can you move to be closer to the sea?

Oh, I would love to, I’m not sure my wife would be quite as keen, she’s a forest person, so whenever we go on walks, it’s like, can we get a walk where there’s a forest and a sea and we can kind of both get our fix of what we need.

I go home fairly regularly, so I kind of get it that way and we try and go at least every couple of months and that kind of tides me over. Any water kind of tops me up in between. There’s a couple of nice lakes nearby that we can visit and as I’m talking, I’m thinking, why am I not going more often?

I’m going to build that into my plans, I think, or set an intention to go a little bit more.

I remember when I was finishing my yoga therapy training in London and I did so much training in London and at that time, I was about 35 minutes outside by train, but by the time you add in walking to the station, being early in case you miss it, but I remember people talking about the sea and at that time, I wasn’t sea swimming and it was like I’m going to go and the indulgence of going an hour out of my way in the opposite direction, changing trains to get to the sea and it changed my life, just going once a week at that time, just in the summer but it felt like the most indulgent but I was also telling myself I was worthy of that, it was safe to do that, to leave work for a few hours and everything wouldn’t collapse around me.

Sorry, I’m being a bit of a sea evangelist.

No, no, no, no, no, I’m here for it, absolutely here for it, it’s lovely to meet a kindred spirit.

What would be your essential when you’re at home, where it’s not possible, what helps you connect with that sea energy?

I have pictures of the sea around, sometimes it’s just that. I have amazing friends who, if they go to the sea, will just send me videos of it, which is just wonderful.

Sometimes it’s just going into the garden and looking up at the sky and just, OK, there’s that vastness is still there. I love weather, so it doesn’t have to be a blue sky, I like clouds and really active weather gets me very excited.

Moving to the HEAL. part of the framework, so that’s the community care, the co-regulation, the ways in which you hold space for others, as well as the ways in which you let yourself be held, what would you say, in an ideal world, so they might be communities you’re already part of, or ones that you’re imagining and do you want to tell me a bit about that?

I’m really lucky that I have some really amazing communities, kind of around me, that I get to be parts of.

I have a beer community that I’m part of. I am part of, we call ourselves the Ladies of Darkness, we’re an inclusive dark beer drinking group of mostly women but open to all folks who like to go and drink really strong imperial stout. Sometimes some people be a little bit surprised by the drinks that we’re drinking and that’s just this beautiful group, we brew beer, we connect with other kind of women’s drinking groups. The beer people are good people, generally. I’ve met amazing people through that and that’s a really lovely, quite often, low-cost way of just being in connection with people.

I also have an amazing yoga studio locally that’s run by a couple of friends of mine. It’s just one of those buildings that you walk into, and again, feel the shoulders drop.

It was one of the things when I was quite poorly with Long Covid, I couldn’t do my yoga practice, it was really hard for me to maintain it and I’ve just, in the last kind of six months, got back to it and it was there waiting for me to come back all along. That’s a beautiful thing.

I have some fabulous professional communities that I get to be part of, kind of groups of neurodivergent therapists, a couple of different memberships that have just, turns out, mostly, or high proportions of neurodivergence in them, because we find each other, even when we don’t know that’s what we’re doing, so places that I can take that.

My family is a really important one. I have really good relationships, it’s why I go home so often, is to connect with them, that’s the kind of support that’s always there, our family group chat, which now has with cousins and their children and partners, there’s so many of us in there, but it’s a really nice way of connecting when we’re in lots of different places, it’s always still there.

I’m not sure what I would add in because actually, maybe some of the professional ones that are pretty much all online, it would be nice to do some more in-person connection, but other than that, I think I’m really lucky with the communities that I’ve already got there.

I would feel especially evil asking you to pick one of those, but I will ask for when you don’t have the bandwidth, when you are, like, kind of tight on time, whatever, what helps you decide which community to co-regulate with?

It depends on the context, so it’s ever-changing. When I am tired, or feeling quite dysregulated, or overwhelmed emotionally, I know the yoga community is the one that I need.

When family, my wife is the link to that and is very good at telling me what will be helpful.

When I need distraction, then I would go to my beer community and talk about absolute nonsense and try the most ridiculous beers that you can. I didn’t know beer could taste like cake, until I found out that it could and it’s the most wonderful thing, or my friend who really likes to encourage me to try beers that I will absolutely hate but just because I’m really curious and I want to understand all the styles.

They are so accepting of all of these parts of me. I know I can turn up in that community, dysregulated, really struggling to use language, sit in a corner and stim and just be in the presence of other people and listen and nobody’s bothered. That’s who I am and then other days we’ll be talking about, would you rather have a squirrel come and talk to you every day about the book he’s reading, or a snail. All those, would you rather, or stupid things, or deep conversations, there’s space for a lot of different things there. It’s a really lovely place.

I am moving to the cardamon pod question. I love this question. I sent you by email, because you’re the second person I’m asking and it’s inspired by Meggan Watterson’s work and she’s the feminist theologian, who talks a lot about how women were deliberately eradicated from Christianity, when it went from being a radical religion of love and like, kind of justice and equality and peace and became co-opted by the state and Mary Magdalene’s gospel was erased, Paul and Thecla, Thecla was erased, but in her story, The Girl Who Baptised Herself, Thecla baptised herself while sentenced to being put to death by the lions in the arena and when she kind of saved herself, the women in the arena stood as one and they helped her by throwing spices, including cardamom pods and rose petals and it kind of chilled the lions out, because it wasn’t the lion’s fault.

We’re living in really challenging times for so many people, there are so many people from marginalised communities who are having to almost justify their existence, there’s so much hate, there’s so much terror and there’s also so much love and there are so many amazing people doing amazing things and I just want to ask, like, some of those people might feel like Thecla, some of those people might feel so alone and so out there and so visible and vulnerable, who would you like to throw some cardamom pods for?

So many people and so many communities at the moment, that are, as you say, being told that they don’t deserve to exist, that they’re not welcome. It’s a tough time for a lot of people. I was at the weekend, I was at the Pink Therapy Conference and there was so many, it was all about hope, but in order to talk about the hope, we had to talk about all that was hard that was going on.

There was so many inspiring speakers and this question has been going round and round in my head since we first spoke about me coming on the podcast, because there are so many people.

What I landed on was, I would like to throw it to the people that hold space for other people and make space for other people. The first person that I think I would like to throw it to is Zena Nicholas, who runs the, the Counsellors’ Staffroom Facebook group and The CoPractice Community membership, who I’ve been working with a lot recently and she’s ace and we work together really well but what I love is the energy she brings to any space of who is being missed here.

It’s a question as we’ve been working together on some training, we’re going to be delivering together in a couple of weeks. Every time we’ve talked about what the reflective questions, what the things that we want to bring up, who might we be missing, who else might we need to make space for and she brings that into The CoPractice Community, where she’s kind of creating all of these different spaces and recognising those different needs.

I think she’s such an amazing force for good and just wants to help support other therapists, and people in our profession who are doing the work and maybe needing help and finding different ways of doing things.

She’s quite an inspiration to me and she will probably hate that I have done this because she underestimates quite how incredible kind of her ability to do something that is really hard, which is hold space for people whose only thing in common is their profession, who come from so many different contexts, so many different identities, so many different needs and she’s so able to recognise the conflict that is inherent in that and her whole ethos of, but we make space for everybody’s needs, we come with curiosity, we don’t question people’s identities, we don’t question their lived experience, we don’t have to agree with them, but we meet them with compassion and kindness and curiosity, which are the three words that I live by, they’re my core values and I see it in everything she does, so I would like to throw it to her, for her to realise how much she’s doing and for other people to find the spaces that she’s creating, because I think there’s something quite special in them.

Wonderful, that’s gorgeous, and there’ll be links to her work in the show notes.

If you were to throw yourself some cardamom pods, a younger version of yourself, love, compassion, wisdom, anything that you would have benefited from at any earlier stage, what might that be?

Some knowledge, I think, would have been a really big thing. I grew up as a queer autistic girl in the times of Section 28, when queerness wasn’t spoken about and when I had no knowledge that I was autistic and what that meant. Some knowledge of what that meant for me, but also of the wider community that existed, would have made a huge difference and hopefully would have led to some community a bit earlier on, which I think Little Louise was in sore need of.

She did have pandas, I think she realised quite how important they were, but there were a lot of pandas in her room.

I love it, I love it and even you saying she did have pandas, how old were you when you connected with pandas?

Oh gosh, forever, I think. They were always the animal that I was drawn to, always. Nobody cares that panda’s really stupid and can’t really look after itself. If you watch videos of them, nobody knows how they survive, they shouldn’t survive, really, they need to eat so much and they have no coordination, which dyspraxic me really likes seeing. They fall over all the time and nobody cares and they are deserving of love and care and being cherished.

There was always something in that that really spoke to me.

I love that. I think I’ve always felt like that with feral cats and certainly in the last few years I’ve been working with feral cats and I had to get a tetanus shot the other day because of a feral cat but they’re kind of, what you’re saying about pandas at the risk of offending the feral cats, they’re kind of cuter, aren’t they? You don’t have to get beyond all the smelly cats, fear stuff, they’re just, like you say, adorable and loved, just as they are and I mean all creatures.

I love it, I’m looking forward to choosing panda images.

I can’t wait to see which ones you choose, there are so many.

If you have any favourites that you want to share, feel free, but thank you so much for joining me again, absolute delight, as always. Do you want to plug your book, I can’t remember if you mentioned the title earlier.

Yes, I suppose I should and I’m not sure who would like me to do that.

It’s called A Therapeutic Workbook for Supporting the Wellbeing of Neurodivergent Clients, which is the least sexy book title, but it does what it says on the tin.

It’s a really practical guide for therapists. It’s the book that I couldn’t find when I started working with neurodivergent clients and realising this is what I’m doing, was that, OK, so I’ve done my kind of neurodiversity 101, I know the basics, I already have a lot of that knowledge, what do we do in the therapy room, how do we really support clients that are wanting to dig into that part of their identity?

It’s got a kind of theoretical basis, the Two Spirals Model, which is kind of the model that I developed, which is actually about all the things that we’ve been talking about. It’s about kind of foregrounding the self-care, the regulation as a way to support ourselves and to find balance and sustainability, rather than getting caught in that kind of capitalist productivity.

We are what we do and we must be productive in whatever way that kind of means to have worth. It’s saying that we have worth just for existing, just like a panda and we are allowed to do self-care in the way that works for us.

It has three sections based on the threads of knowledge, understanding and acceptance, and for each of those threads there’s a number of practical exercises that you can do with clients. There’s worksheets, there’s suggestions on when it might work, when it might not work, what kind of things you would get out of it.

I see it very much as a jumping off place. These are the things that I have found helpful, these are the things my clients have found helpful, this is how I have done them, take them and kind of make them your own. It’s very much meant to be a practical and experiential book and it is out on the 21st of September.

There are book launches, there’s an online one going on on the 21st with online events, anyone who is local to South Cheshire in the UK, we are having an in-person book launch in a brewery with a beer that I have made to celebrate the book. It’s a Black Forest Gateau Imperial Stout called It’s Not Just Emotional Feelings, because I believe therapy with neurodivergent folk is not just about emotional feelings, sometimes it’s about the practical, how do we meet your basic needs, how do we understand your sensory profile and because I wanted to make a beer, because why would I not want to make a beer.

All the details about it are on the website and all people are welcome, there will be stickers. I’m just hoping that it will help therapists who are in the position I was in. It’s a different landscape now. It’s really interesting, when it was first conceived of, there was so little. There was very academic stuff, very medicalised stuff and there was a lot of basic stuff. There wasn’t much going on in the middle, now there has been a proliferation of lots of amazing pieces of work, so it’s really nice to see it sitting alongside other people’s work that’s coming out and what other people are doing.

You were a pioneer in this, you were one of the first people doing this, don’t underestimate your contribution to the much-needed proliferation.

Thank you, that’s really uncomfortable to hear, but I’m going to say thank you and sit with that.

Thank you again so much for joining me, absolute pleasure.

It’s been absolutely lovely to be here, always a pleasure to speak to you, when else do I get to come on a podcast and talk about pandas and the sea with someone who is equally as excited about them as me.

It’s been an absolute joy, thank you so much.

You’re welcome, take care.

Before you go, please take a moment to ground the episode by just pausing and scanning your parts, all your parts, from the soles of your feet to your sole, so you may want to keep your eyes open, you may want to close them, but planting your feet firmly on the ground, lengthening through the spine if that feels comfortable for you, letting yourself feel held by the chair, or whatever it is you’re sitting or lying or standing on and taking just a moment to scan your whole self, your whole body, your whole energy field and ask yourself what you’re going to do for yourself right now.

It might be as a result of listening to the episode, it might be something else, it might be a nap, it might be something to eat, it might be some kind of movement, but let yourself ground, let yourself get into the habit of connecting with your inner wisdom and notice what you need and give yourself what you need.

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you haven’t already and would like to, please like, subscribe, comment, engage across the platforms wherever you may be accessing this and you can also email me eve at solestosoul.ie.

Thank you for listening, I look forward to sharing more next week.