Music is such a great alternative to direct communication sometimes, especially (but not exclusively) if you're a neurospicy person who experiences any level of alexithymia, verbal shutdowns, or emotional dysregulation.

We often cannot tell people how we're doing or feeling if they ask us.

Even if we know how we're feeling, have the ability to form the words, and have the emotional regulation to describe everything, there are so many other factors that might make it too difficult, even overwhelming, to do so.

By comparison, sharing a song -- even one without any lyrics -- can do the audio equivalent of showing the answer more than we can tell it with words.

We need to remember to do this more often.

#NeurospicyThoughts #neurospicy #neurodivergent #alexithymia #EmotionalDysregulation #VerbalShutdown #music

Our brain wakes up so backwardsly 😅

We were able to think that post before we could make our body move and about 90 to 100 mins before we were able to partially-boot our verbal speech centre 🤦‍♀️ (Does this does count as a verbal boot or verbal startup maybe, like the opposite to a verbal shutdown?)

Mostly communicated with wife this morning via non-verbal communication, as well as non-speech noises, followed by a little bit of basic speech once it finally loaded around 10:30-ish.

Due to both wife and us being AuDHDers, she started unintentionally mirroring our speech pattern without realising 🤭 Even after realising, she still found herself mirroring it back to us.

What's even odder for us is that the part of our brain that deals with song lyrics is seemingly quite separate to normal speech. As such, if we attempt to (poorly) sing song lyrics, or even process speech in the format of a song (like a parody), we can almost converse normally.

Brains are weird 🤣

#neurodivergent #neurospicy #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #AuDHD #VerbalShutdown #VerbalBoot #VerbalStartup

One of the less-than-fun quirks of our very-neurospicy, migraine-prone mind is that we occasionally get overwhelmed / overloaded and our speech centre rather rapidly starts struggling, crashes, and then shuts down for a while, until it can apparently do some maintenance and reboot itself slowly.

We had the "joy" of one of these this evening 😑 It lasted several hours, but has just shown signs of ending as we're heading to bed.

For anyone who's never experienced anything like this, imagine being able to think and hear words and sentences in your head, but gradually finding it harder and harder to push words out of your mouth, until eventually you can at most make only non-verbal sounds orn noises. For us, it feels like figuratively wading through thick syrup or molasses, or trying to escape quicksand.

We've learnt to stop trying to speak during one of these shutdowns, as trying to do so is frustrating, exhausting, and ultimately futile.

We suspect that our very occasional verbal shutdowns may be, at least in part, be an unusual type of migraine with aura, as taking ibuprofen lysine has, in the past, helped us recover sooner. The frequency of verbal shutdowns reduced significantly once we started taking daily supplements that have been shown to help prevent migraines.

Rest and time are ultimately our tried and tested methods if we're at home.

If we'd have had enough mental bandwidth left earlier, we might have remembered to take a sumatriptan to ease the symptoms, but our mind was being an unfocused, tired little fraggle this evening, so the idea eluded us until just now 🤦‍♀️

On a positive note, it's always lovely to find yourself able to say words out loud again as you start to come out the other side 🥰

#migraine #MigraineWithAura #neurospicy #AuDHD #autistic #ADHD #VerbalShutdown #neurodivergent

Today we learnt that there's an overlap between neurodivergence (especially autism) and migraines.

We've had several instances recently, particularly where we've pushed ourselves too far, where we've experienced what we thought were neurodivergent verbal shutdowns, as we're AuDHD.

We'd experienced such things for at least a couple of decades, even before our ASD diagnosis (still waiting on the ADHD one though). We previously attributed it to normal fatigue. Then we'd describe it as a language centre collapse (or a full batting collapse).

However, it was never clear why painkillers like ibuprofen lysine or naproxen (NSAIDs), paracetamol, or codeine phosphate always helped to both prevent or alleviate symptoms.

Warning signs for us have typically been:

• Increasing pain in middle of forehead or above eyes
• Increased light sensitivity.
  • We've often had to wear our prescription sunglasses to keep working.
• Feeling more fatigued and finding it difficult to focus.
• Finding it harder to understand spoken or written language.
• Slurred speech and difficulty writing.
• Making silly errors and typos.

Once it gets fully going, symptoms include:

• Aphasia.
• Trouble with body coordination.
• Partial or total verbal shutdown.
  • One time Evie couldn't even think coherent sentences, so our headmate Hannah told us what to write to communicate with our wife.

All this time, we'd been thinking this was solely a neurodivergent overload issue. But now we've found out it might actually be some form of migraine, sand this is potentially something we can get meds for (such as gepants).

We intend to book an appointment with our GP about it to investigate further, as it's happening increasingly often, especially since we entered AuDHD burnout.

For further context, headaches are common in our family and our sister has migraines with auras.

#neurodivergent #neurodivergence #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #AuDHD #VerbalShutdown #migraine #AuDHDBurnout #NeurodivergentBurnout #gepants #NSAID #codeine

Hey folks 👋

We'll try and keep this short, as we are running dangerous low on spoons, which is kinda the purpose of this announcement  

As you likely already know, we are a non-binary, trans fem, disabled, neurodivergent (AuDHD) spoonie, who additionally struggles with major depression, requiring multiple meds daily in order to keep functioning at a full-time job  

Despite this, we have been pushing ourselves regularly beyond our limits, causing increasing tiredness and irritability, exacerbating many of our AuDHD traits, and leading to complete verbal shutdowns at times, as we so very much wanted to help as many people as we could 

This has inevitably led to pretty-much complete burnout 🤦‍♀️

We'd already taken steps back in terms in terms of the amount and scale of support we were giving to people, as well as spending less time on fedi and other platforms, but it's not been enough 😞

As such, until further notice:

• We won't be streaming on our Twitch channel and have deleted our schedule.
• We won't offer private support about gender affirming hormone therapy, mental health, or anything else.
• We will largely be invisible on Discord and will not be on fedi as much as we used to be.

Of course we feel guilty about this, but right now we need to put ourselves first, so that we can fully recover from this burnout, then take steps to reduce the risk of further recurrence.

We want to stress that we are stepping back, not stepping away, from everywhere and everyone.

We'll still be in contact with folks when we have spare spoons, and we'll still interact and post on fedi occasionally.

And we'll still be doing some helpful activities at work and behind the scenes that we can't discuss  ✊

But yeah: you won't see us as much, but it's because we're allowing ourselves to prioritise our own health and needs.

#streaming #streamer #Twitch #TwitchStreamer #queer #trans #transgender #enby #femby #NonBinary #TransWoman #TransFem #CatGirl #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #neurodivergent #neurospicy #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #ActuallyADHD #AuDHD #ActuallyAuDHD #spoonie #NoSpoonsOnlyKnives #disabled #disability #burnout #VerbalShutdown #MentalHealth #depression #SSRI #NDRI #sertraline #bupropion

No spoons: only knives 😔

#NoSpoonsOnlyKnives

Clarification: verbal shutdown

#VerbalShutdown #spoonie

Hey fedi folks  

Just saw an interesting video about the problematic nature of the term "going non-verbal" in relation to autistic / AuDHD people becoming temporarily unable to speak, so we wanted to share the thought and the original video with you all   

The replacement term suggested is "verbal shutdown", and what she goes on to describe is something we have personally experienced several dozen times sadly  

You can find the video by Reberrabon_bon here.

Edit: Something we hadn't thought of until someone mentioned it. We don't think of a verbal shutdown as being all or nothing, but rather a spectrum. You can have anywhere from partial aphasia to a full on language centre shutdown. We don't think the creator meant it in a binary way, but if she does, we'd disagree with her on that.

Edit 2: Okay. We've rewatched this now and we think we get it more. It's a semantics thing (as well as a request from actual non-verbal autistic people). She wants the austistic and ADHD communities to use the terms precisely to avoid confusion.

Someone who is non-verbal can't speak ever. As such, if you went non-verbal, you wouldn't be able to speak thereafter. By comparison, an autistic person can experience a verbal shutdown, but recover speech later. This is where we slightly disagree with the creator, as we see verbal shutdown as a spectrum. What she describes as a verbal shutdown is what we would describe as a "total" or "complete" verbal shutdown.

Also, for anyone who finds themselves unable to speak in certain situations, but can perhaps speak in others, you might be experiencing selective mutism.

#neurodivergent #neurodivergence #autism #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #ActuallyADHD #AuDHD #ActuallyAuDHD #VerbalShutdown #NonVerbal #neurospicy #TheMoreYouKnow #TodayILearned #TIL