Sensory Soothers for Trauma and AuDHD this Brigid: Episode 96 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast
Do you want to learn to soothe and support your extra sensitive (whether through trauma/s, AuDHD (autism and ADHD) or anything else) nervous system?
The Goddess Brigid (we had a bank holiday yesterday to honour her, as well as her namesake, St Brigid, yesterday) is associated with so many wonderful qualities. Use her inspiration, healing and wisdom energies to protect and work with your sensitive nervous system instead of pushing through.
I share some of my personal journey with swimming and sensory challenges, offering practical strategies for finding activities that bring you joy (glimmers) as well as triggering more challenging sensory issues. Navigate sensory triggers with self-compassion and create a self-care practice that honours your AuDHD brain.
#brigid
#sensorydifferences
#sensitivenervoussystem
#audhd
#trauma
CHAPTERS
0:00–2:24 Introduction, AuDHD, balance, and nervous system support
2:24–3:13 Honouring Brigid and working with an extra-sensitive nervous system
3:13–6:03 Swimming as sensory soothing, regulation and coming home to the body
6:03–8:16 Glimmers, play, balance and how swimming supports ADHD symptoms
8:16–10:23 The Feel part: identifying glimmers, benefits and sensory blocks
10:23–12:28 The Love part: self-compassion, adaptation, and working with sensory needs
12:28–14:04 The Heal part: community, co-regulation and choosing when togetherness helps
14:04–15:50 Closing reflections, encouragement and next episode
FULL TRANSCRIPT
I love the balancing elements in terms of ADHD, balance is really helpful in terms of working with the cerebellum part of the brain and that’s really helpful in terms of some of our symptoms.
Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham and you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. You can find out more and access older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and you can also access loads of free resources and find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, the column I write for Platinum every month, other titles I contribute to, my work, loads of free resources I’ve created over the years.
I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you haven’t already signed up for my free newsletter, it goes out on a Monday, Míle Buíochas Mondays. Míle Buíochas means a thousand thank yous in Irish, which I’m very slowly learning. It’s polyvagal informed journal prompts to help you each week. There’s the gratitude practice element, figuring out more of what brings you joy on a daily basis, what helps you feel in that ventral vagal state (I call Purr! when I use the rescue cats with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and I also share some of my own gratitudes, some of the things that have helped me feel more in ventral vagal that week.
Some of those will be resources that might benefit you and I also share news about upcoming events, special offers, things like that. The journal prompts also include encouragement to look at what is creating sympathetic survival responses (that Hiss! with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and potentially the dorsal vagal (Freeze!). It’s really helping you learn to map your own nervous system, get to know yourself and to support yourself and it’s all free. If you haven’t already, you can sign up at selfcarecoaching.net and if you have any questions again, let me know eve at selfcarecoaching.net. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Welcome to episode 96 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and this week we’re honouring the Goddess and Saint Brigid. It’s a new bank holiday in Ireland the last few years and Brigid has enormous associations with many, many things but particularly healing, inspiration, wisdom and protection.
I thought that for today’s episode we’d look at ways in which you might be inspired to heal and protect your extra-sensitive nervous system and to have that wisdom to stop pushing through and to actually work with what you need.
We’re going for sensory soothers. A few weeks ago I shared some of the ways in which I’ve made yoga more accessible to myself. Yoga, breath work and meditation as well as with countless clients and students. I was thinking about it when I was swimming and if you know me at all you probably know that I adore swimming, absolutely love it, but I’m also very averse to many elements of it.
Not just the cold getting into the sea but the getting changed, the noise, the hairdryer, hand dryers, any smells if people are spraying things, wet floors and ickiness in general. I struggle with an enormous amount but because I know how much I benefit from being in the water, I do it.
If I’m at the sea [or a lake or river] there’s the cold, the unpredictability of it all. There are lots of things and I think I realised I don’t remember swimming at school as a child, I remember I’ve got a picture of me as a small child at infant school, I remember us going at infant school to a local pool like it was half an hour away or something and everyone else in my class could swim and I couldn’t. I remember walking across the bottom of the pool and moving my arms like that saying, “please let me into the big pool” and they wouldn’t because I couldn’t swim.
And then I learned and I learned by playing. Playing is such a wonderful way to learn and diving for things, so I realised it’s not just the swimming, it’s all the glimmers I get, all the sensory soothing. I love, at the end, the hot shower then getting cooler and cooler and cooler and where I was younger I’d have turned it into a cold shower. Sometimes I do now but I use it very much as a what do I feel like today and where I normally go, you can adjust the temperature really easily in a way I can’t at home (I don’t dare adjust the temperature at home).
In the changing room, I can ignore most of what I find horrific in order to benefit from the jacuzzi jets, the steam room, the being underwater, I adore the sensations, I’m not a runner or anything like that but I love the breathlessness and the getting your heart rate up and the feeling held by the water, feeling immersed and cleansed and reset and especially when I’m in the sea even if it’s just for a minute or less it’s that just coming home to myself.
It was the first “resource” I had when I began my trauma recovery work, my personal trauma recovery work, the idea of myself way, way, way out to sea floating. I love the feeling of being held by the ocean or in a swimming pool if there’s enough room, I love floating face down, what me and a friend used to call Disturbing Position.
The actor Doris Day was apparently prescribed it for her anxiety but it is about breath control and there’s just something so relaxing for me about being face down. I’ve learned along the way (having been told off by a lifeguard in Sarajevo and various people) if I forget, if I get too relaxed it’s like so I generally move from that into an underwater handstand and I just adore my shoulders are much stronger again but I haven’t done my handstands up against the wall in a while.
I don’t want to risk hurting them again until I really feel ready but every time I swim I’ll do at least one underwater handstand and I just love that feeling of being upside down. I love the stretch throughout the body, throughout the abdomen, I love the balancing elements in terms of AuDHD, ADHD, balance is really helpful in terms of working with the cerebellum part of the brain and that’s really helpful in terms of some of our symptoms so these things that innately naturally feel amazing for my body are also helping me with my symptoms.
I love the warmth of the steam room, the heat, I love the feeling for my joints. If it’s empty I’ll do a bit of yoga in there and I love the ahhhh just after exerting myself. I love my DIY snorkel training where I’m at the very bottom of the pool doing things that when I was first learning how to do them I never believed my body would be able to. And I started that in my late 40s.
There are so many glimmers I associate with swimming, it’s a no-brainer for me anytime I’m down, anytime I need a reset. Anytime I need to feel human again I get into the water.
I’m sharing this in hopes that it will encourage you to think of some of the things that you might just have in your week, in your day as something that you know the glimmers make the sensory issues worth it while also having compassion for yourself around the sensory issues.
For the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, identify what it is that you enjoy doing, the things that bring you many, many glimmers that help you feel most like yourself and that are good for you, that it might be swimming. It might be something completely different but notice, identify, list things that bring you many, many glimmers and also identify some of the blocks to doing those things.
I told you (More Joy, Less Angst: Trauma-informed Yoga for AuDHD: Episode 93 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast) about some of the blocks I find with yoga and meditation and breath work. But I’ve depended on them for decades for pain relief, for my mental health, for so many things. It’s the idea of not doing it, I might adapt my practice, I might change how I approach it but the benefits by far outweigh the sensory issues and it’s the same with swimming for me but by identifying blocks it helps me, like the pool that I’m normally a member at, it’s smaller than most pools, it’s smaller than I would like but it’s really lovely in every other way.
And it has sections where it’s adult only times of day where it’s adult only and that is really beneficial for me because I find crowds really hectic and I find noise very hectic. And it’s not that I don’t make noise myself (obviously I’m a human, I do) but finding that quieter time it means I’m not having to psych myself up to endure the sensory issues around the amplified acoustics and crowded hecticness.
Think about things that get in the way for you with the hairdryer, with the sprays, I’ve not yet found an antidote to other people spraying or the smells, oh my goodness, but I have compassion for myself.
We’re moving into the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework and the compassion is enormous. Whereas I would have told myself that I shouldn’t feel that way about everyone else in the changing room spraying and hairdrying, I don’t own a hairdryer, don’t know if you can tell, it’s like a bit haphazard but the noise just, if it’s really bad in the changing room I’ll put in my little loop earplugs, not ideal because I’m not fully dry yet, but I have that compassion for myself and do that with the sprays, I just tell myself I will be out of there ASAP and speed up and get out of there ASAP.
But the Love part, that self-compassion, the acceptance, the recognition, you don’t need to change a thing about yourself, you’re already part of the divine, part of nature and it’s about understanding yourself better, working with yourself better, supporting yourself better, so the last thing you need when your sensory issues are triggered is beating yourself up about it.
For example, with the snorkelling, I really struggle with the wetsuit still. I hate it, I hate everything that goes with it, the boots, the gloves, all of it. And I know that they enable me to stay in the water for much longer and with the snorkelling to go that bit deeper, decide for yourself the payoffs, what you can navigate, ask Brigid to help you, ask Brigid to inspire you and guide you and help you use that wisdom in terms of your own lifestyle, your own schedule, your own glimmers, your own triggers and I would love to hear how you get on.
In terms of the heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, so that’s the more community, collective care, we heal through co-regulation. I know for me with swimming, when I swim alone it is heaven, it’s just heaven. If I have the pool to myself and I’m able to float and open up and meditate and in the sea as well, often there’ll be lots of people around and it’s nice to say hello and I’ll go basically in a direction where other people aren’t, I sound very misanthropic, I’m not, I just do like quiet a lot.
Think for yourself whether whatever it is you want to do, it will benefit from community, like for example the yoga classes, they’re wonderful because of the community, swimming, it’s lovely to see people at the sea, it’s lovely to chat to people in the changing room but notice for yourself the times and days where you benefit from community and the times and days where that is potentially that bit too much and how you might make it easier for yourself.
Or how you might potentially bring your own community, like arrange with one other person to go for a run or a walk or a swim or a bike ride or whatever it might be for you, help keep you accountable as well as you being able to connect side by side, co-regulate and do something that feels wonderful for both of you in ways that don’t cost too much in terms of sensory issues and being able to soothe them for yourself.
Let me know how you get on, next week I’ll be sharing my interview with the delightful John Wilson from Online Events and I look forward to hearing from you.
This is Meadbh’s tale and I’m sharing more soon, there she is and have a gorgeous week. Thank you for listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, this episode like all of them was produced by me, your host Eve Menezes Cunningham and if you haven’t already and would like to, your subscribing or sharing or leaving a five-star review or comment, engaging in whatever way feels good for you, feels right for you, it helps me reach as many people with ADHD and trauma histories as possible.
I want to be able to help as many people as possible with this free resource, so please do if you think of someone, share it or leave a comment, leave a rating and of course reach out, get in touch with me direct if you’ve got any questions either in the comments or email eve at selfcarecoaching.net you can also access loads of free resources at the site selfcarecoaching.net, older episodes of the podcast at thefeelbethereverydaypodcast.com and you can book a free telephone consultation, you can find out more about all the other elements of my work, lots of free resources, lots of ways in which we might work together and most of all I hope you’ll come back next week.
Thank you for listening and I hope that we’ll put some of what you’ve heard into action and go easy on yourself as you heal your trauma and befriend your AuDHD brain, thanks again for listening.
Transcript
I love the balancing elements in terms of ADHD, balance is really helpful in terms of working with the cerebellum part of the brain and that’s really helpful in terms of some of our symptoms.
Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham and you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. You can find out more and access older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and you can also access loads of free resources and find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, the column I write for Platinum every month, other titles I contribute to, my work, loads of free resources I’ve created over the years.
I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you haven’t already signed up for my free newsletter, it goes out on a Monday, Míle Buíochas Mondays. Míle Buíochas means a thousand thank yous in Irish, which I’m very slowly learning. It’s polyvagal informed journal prompts to help you each week. There’s the gratitude practice element, figuring out more of what brings you joy on a daily basis, what helps you feel in that ventral vagal state (I call Purr! when I use the rescue cats with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and I also share some of my own gratitudes, some of the things that have helped me feel more in ventral vagal that week.
Some of those will be resources that might benefit you and I also share news about upcoming events, special offers, things like that. The journal prompts also include encouragement to look at what is creating sympathetic survival responses (that Hiss! with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and potentially the dorsal vagal (Freeze!). It’s really helping you learn to map your own nervous system, get to know yourself and to support yourself and it’s all free. If you haven’t already, you can sign up at selfcarecoaching.net and if you have any questions again, let me know eve at selfcarecoaching.net. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Welcome to episode 96 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and this week we’re honouring the Goddess and Saint Brigid. It’s a new bank holiday in Ireland the last few years and Brigid has enormous associations with many, many things but particularly healing, inspiration, wisdom and protection.
I thought that for today’s episode we’d look at ways in which you might be inspired to heal and protect your extra-sensitive nervous system and to have that wisdom to stop pushing through and to actually work with what you need.
We’re going for sensory soothers. A few weeks ago I shared some of the ways in which I’ve made yoga more accessible to myself. Yoga, breath work and meditation as well as with countless clients and students. I was thinking about it when I was swimming and if you know me at all you probably know that I adore swimming, absolutely love it, but I’m also very averse to many elements of it.
Not just the cold getting into the sea but the getting changed, the noise, the hairdryer, hand dryers, any smells if people are spraying things, wet floors and ickiness in general. I struggle with an enormous amount but because I know how much I benefit from being in the water, I do it.
If I’m at the sea [or a lake or river] there’s the cold, the unpredictability of it all. There are lots of things and I think I realised I don’t remember swimming at school as a child, I remember I’ve got a picture of me as a small child at infant school, I remember us going at infant school to a local pool like it was half an hour away or something and everyone else in my class could swim and I couldn’t. I remember walking across the bottom of the pool and moving my arms like that saying, “please let me into the big pool” and they wouldn’t because I couldn’t swim.
And then I learned and I learned by playing. Playing is such a wonderful way to learn and diving for things, so I realised it’s not just the swimming, it’s all the glimmers I get, all the sensory soothing. I love, at the end, the hot shower then getting cooler and cooler and cooler and where I was younger I’d have turned it into a cold shower. Sometimes I do now but I use it very much as a what do I feel like today and where I normally go, you can adjust the temperature really easily in a way I can’t at home (I don’t dare adjust the temperature at home).
In the changing room, I can ignore most of what I find horrific in order to benefit from the jacuzzi jets, the steam room, the being underwater, I adore the sensations, I’m not a runner or anything like that but I love the breathlessness and the getting your heart rate up and the feeling held by the water, feeling immersed and cleansed and reset and especially when I’m in the sea even if it’s just for a minute or less it’s that just coming home to myself.
It was the first “resource” I had when I began my trauma recovery work, my personal trauma recovery work, the idea of myself way, way, way out to sea floating. I love the feeling of being held by the ocean or in a swimming pool if there’s enough room, I love floating face down, what me and a friend used to call Disturbing Position.
The actor Doris Day was apparently prescribed it for her anxiety but it is about breath control and there’s just something so relaxing for me about being face down. I’ve learned along the way (having been told off by a lifeguard in Sarajevo and various people) if I forget, if I get too relaxed it’s like so I generally move from that into an underwater handstand and I just adore my shoulders are much stronger again but I haven’t done my handstands up against the wall in a while.
I don’t want to risk hurting them again until I really feel ready but every time I swim I’ll do at least one underwater handstand and I just love that feeling of being upside down. I love the stretch throughout the body, throughout the abdomen, I love the balancing elements in terms of AuDHD, ADHD, balance is really helpful in terms of working with the cerebellum part of the brain and that’s really helpful in terms of some of our symptoms so these things that innately naturally feel amazing for my body are also helping me with my symptoms.
I love the warmth of the steam room, the heat, I love the feeling for my joints. If it’s empty I’ll do a bit of yoga in there and I love the ahhhh just after exerting myself. I love my DIY snorkel training where I’m at the very bottom of the pool doing things that when I was first learning how to do them I never believed my body would be able to. And I started that in my late 40s.
There are so many glimmers I associate with swimming, it’s a no-brainer for me anytime I’m down, anytime I need a reset. Anytime I need to feel human again I get into the water.
I’m sharing this in hopes that it will encourage you to think of some of the things that you might just have in your week, in your day as something that you know the glimmers make the sensory issues worth it while also having compassion for yourself around the sensory issues.
For the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, identify what it is that you enjoy doing, the things that bring you many, many glimmers that help you feel most like yourself and that are good for you, that it might be swimming. It might be something completely different but notice, identify, list things that bring you many, many glimmers and also identify some of the blocks to doing those things.
I told you (More Joy, Less Angst: Trauma-informed Yoga for AuDHD: Episode 93 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast) about some of the blocks I find with yoga and meditation and breath work. But I’ve depended on them for decades for pain relief, for my mental health, for so many things. It’s the idea of not doing it, I might adapt my practice, I might change how I approach it but the benefits by far outweigh the sensory issues and it’s the same with swimming for me but by identifying blocks it helps me, like the pool that I’m normally a member at, it’s smaller than most pools, it’s smaller than I would like but it’s really lovely in every other way.
And it has sections where it’s adult only times of day where it’s adult only and that is really beneficial for me because I find crowds really hectic and I find noise very hectic. And it’s not that I don’t make noise myself (obviously I’m a human, I do) but finding that quieter time it means I’m not having to psych myself up to endure the sensory issues around the amplified acoustics and crowded hecticness.
Think about things that get in the way for you with the hairdryer, with the sprays, I’ve not yet found an antidote to other people spraying or the smells, oh my goodness, but I have compassion for myself.
We’re moving into the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework and the compassion is enormous. Whereas I would have told myself that I shouldn’t feel that way about everyone else in the changing room spraying and hairdrying, I don’t own a hairdryer, don’t know if you can tell, it’s like a bit haphazard but the noise just, if it’s really bad in the changing room I’ll put in my little loop earplugs, not ideal because I’m not fully dry yet, but I have that compassion for myself and do that with the sprays, I just tell myself I will be out of there ASAP and speed up and get out of there ASAP.
But the Love part, that self-compassion, the acceptance, the recognition, you don’t need to change a thing about yourself, you’re already part of the divine, part of nature and it’s about understanding yourself better, working with yourself better, supporting yourself better, so the last thing you need when your sensory issues are triggered is beating yourself up about it.
For example, with the snorkelling, I really struggle with the wetsuit still. I hate it, I hate everything that goes with it, the boots, the gloves, all of it. And I know that they enable me to stay in the water for much longer and with the snorkelling to go that bit deeper, decide for yourself the payoffs, what you can navigate, ask Brigid to help you, ask Brigid to inspire you and guide you and help you use that wisdom in terms of your own lifestyle, your own schedule, your own glimmers, your own triggers and I would love to hear how you get on.
In terms of the heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, so that’s the more community, collective care, we heal through co-regulation. I know for me with swimming, when I swim alone it is heaven, it’s just heaven. If I have the pool to myself and I’m able to float and open up and meditate and in the sea as well, often there’ll be lots of people around and it’s nice to say hello and I’ll go basically in a direction where other people aren’t, I sound very misanthropic, I’m not, I just do like quiet a lot.
Think for yourself whether whatever it is you want to do, it will benefit from community, like for example the yoga classes, they’re wonderful because of the community, swimming, it’s lovely to see people at the sea, it’s lovely to chat to people in the changing room but notice for yourself the times and days where you benefit from community and the times and days where that is potentially that bit too much and how you might make it easier for yourself.
Or how you might potentially bring your own community, like arrange with one other person to go for a run or a walk or a swim or a bike ride or whatever it might be for you, help keep you accountable as well as you being able to connect side by side, co-regulate and do something that feels wonderful for both of you in ways that don’t cost too much in terms of sensory issues and being able to soothe them for yourself.
Let me know how you get on, next week I’ll be sharing my interview with the delightful John Wilson from Online Events and I look forward to hearing from you.
This is Meadbh’s tale and I’m sharing more soon, there she is and have a gorgeous week. Thank you for listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, this episode like all of them was produced by me, your host Eve Menezes Cunningham and if you haven’t already and would like to, your subscribing or sharing or leaving a five-star review or comment, engaging in whatever way feels good for you, feels right for you, it helps me reach as many people with ADHD and trauma histories as possible.
I want to be able to help as many people as possible with this free resource, so please do if you think of someone, share it or leave a comment, leave a rating and of course reach out, get in touch with me direct if you’ve got any questions either in the comments or email eve at selfcarecoaching.net you can also access loads of free resources at the site selfcarecoaching.net, older episodes of the podcast at thefeelbethereverydaypodcast.com and you can book a free telephone consultation, you can find out more about all the other elements of my work, lots of free resources, lots of ways in which we might work together and most of all I hope you’ll come back next week.
Thank you for listening and I hope that we’ll put some of what you’ve heard into action and go easy on yourself as you heal your trauma and befriend your AuDHD brain, thanks again for listening.