One of the first things I started doing was packing up my bookshelves. As much as I love being surrounded by books, I don’t use them every day, so they were the easiest things to pack.

I have found it surprising how dysregulating this is.

Even simply sitting watching TV isn’t what it was as the shelves under it are empty of books!

I am realising that books and being surrounded them is part of what makes my space safe for me.

Having bookshelves overflowing with books, some I haven’t read yet, others I have read numerous times, ones I have read once and probably won’t read again, is regulating for me.

These books give me comfort, they make my space a home.

Being surrounded by books is my happy place.

I can’t cope with some bookshops where there is little space between shelves or they are dark and feel claustrophobic for me, but I like being surrounded by books in bookshops and libraries.

Looking around my space that is littered with packed boxes and empty bookshelves is incredibly dysregulating and I can’t wait to be in my new place and arranging those books on my shelves and making the space my home.

This is also something I think I knew in the back of my head, but didn’t have the words for before…

Living in a space with bookshelves is what I need. When I ask if a house has enough room for my bookshelves, it’s not just me joking about how many bookshelves I have, it’s actually important!

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I am autistic and ADHD, only diagnosed a few years ago. Growing up, I was told that being independent is what adults are… the way it was framed was that I should be able to do everything myself. This has made it difficult for me to ask for help.

The goal of being ‘independent’ is often used to shame adult children for living with their parents, for single parents feeling guilty for hiring a cleaner, and so much more.

It’s also a concept that seems so strange when you think about it…

I look at my parents, for example, they don’t have to do everything for themselves. They have each other, and when one of them can’t do something, the other one is there to step in.

Even in the workplace, bosses have assistants and staff, meaning they don’t have to do everything themselves. They are not ‘independent’ in their businesses, they have people who support them and do tasks for them.

I have been told that I need to have a goal of being ‘independent’ and getting to a stage where I won’t need supports such as a cleaner any more. In other words, I am told that I, as a single person, should be doing everything for myself.

This seems to be the goal of the NDIS too… their focus on ‘capacity building’ seems to have a goal for participants to be ‘independent’ and not need supports any more. My question is simple. Why does everyone have to be ‘independent’? What’s so wrong about needing or even wanting supports?

There is a strong narrative around ‘socialisation’ and having a partner, especially as I was growing up. So many people say that humans are social creatures, and that socialisation doesn’t seem to take into account the amount of support those social groups provide, meaning that we are not completely ‘independent’. When it comes to parenting, we often mourn the loss of our village and the support that can provide.

I know independence means different things to different people in different contexts, I still don’t understand why being independent has to be the ultimate goal. What is wrong with needing or wanting supports in order to live our best lives?

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No business mentor has ever taken me as a whole entity. They have all wanted me to pick one thing and focus on that… whether it’s my workshops, Junior Writers Club, books, administration tasks, or whatever. They want me to choose one thing to focus on.

Here’s the thing… my brain simply doesn’t work that way.

Everything I do is simply part of me. It’s who I am.

I simply can’t focus on one thing for too long, I need the variety. It’s the variety that makes my life interesting and helps my brain stay engaged.

I need the more ‘boring’ tasks of bookkeeping and administration.

I need the creative things where I can hide away from people, like writing my books.

I need my workshops for the social interaction.

I need the online, the offline, the craziness of it all.

And here is where business programs fail me.

They try to push me in their box, to make me fit their view of what makes a successful business.

They simply don’t see that my brain needs something different, and if I had the right supports in the craziness that is my brain, it could all be successful, it just doesn’t look like they think a business should look like.

What triggered this thinking is that an amazing opportunity has come up. It’s something that I have been dreaming about for a long time and fits in the big picture banner that is me, however, it doesn’t fit with any of the ideas the business coaches think I should be doing…

I wish that business coaches and business programs were designed to embrace my weird brain instead of being told to reign in my ideas, as when I do, nothing happens!

I also wish that I had the confidence and resources to forget about traditional business programs and find the supports I need on my own… but right now, I don’t have that.

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Over the last few years, I’ve realised how much of that is because I’m autistic and ADHD.

The complexity of the noise, the unfamiliar food, change of routine, being in a house that is not my own, having to have my mask firmly in place to be social and look like I’m having fun, it’s all exhausting.

A couple of days ago, I saw a post on social media talking about how all those traditions are important to someone, and it got me thinking.

I don’t enjoy Christmas day, one of the best was a few years ago when my kid and I spent the day building Lego instead of joining the extended family. However, all those traditions are important to my parents, especially to my mum. She loves having the family there and feeding all of us, and having us there for presents.

It’s also one of the few times I see my brother and his girlfriend as they live on the other side of the state to me.

Because the day is important to someone else, I make the effort to go down to be with the family.

I did a few things to accommodate myself.

I don’t drink, so I brought some alcohol-free wine to drink. I only ate what I wanted from the buffet. When I felt fatigue overcome me, a sure sign of a meltdown, I quietly went to a bedroom to lie down. I had a book with me and had some time reading to recharge. I also went home again in the evening rather than staying there for a few days.

I have also spent today, Boxing Day, hibernating and not talking to anyone much.

This is what I have needed to get through Christmas Day, when my ideal would be having a quiet day at home.

It is important to accommodate the needs of others, especially those I love.

For one day, I will allow myself to be uncomfortable and overwhelmed in order to make others comfortable.

It’s one day in the year.

For the next couple of days, I will be resting, hibernating, and recharging.

I also know that my family enjoyed the day and appreciated having me there, and that is important too.

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One thing I’ve been wondering lately is – can being a parent cause trauma to the parent?

Honestly, I don’t feel like I’ve got trauma from my upbringing. Yes, it was challenging, especially things like going to 8 different primary schools in two countries, not feeling like I fit in anywhere, that sort of thing. I’ve come to realise that my childhood was pretty good. It would have been nice to know I was AuDHD earlier, however I don’t think it would have changed things much if at all (I was born in the late 70s and was a kid in the 80s and 90s).

If anything, I feel like more trauma was caused from being a parent.

From being gaslighted by doctors for pains I felt when pregnant.

From having an unsupportive partner.

From having a baby who screamed for three months, only to be told it was ‘colic’ (spoiler: it wasn’t).

From having chronically ill kids and being gaslit by doctors and schools and others when trying to get support.

From seeing my children struggling the way I did and not knowing how to help them even though I fought for them for an education.

From juggling part time work with being a single parent and having little support when I needed it.

From having kids who used me up in every way possible.

From doing the best I could with what I had at the time and being told that it wasn’t enough.

From trying to manage everything and feeling like I’m letting everyone down – my kids, my family, my friends, my boss, society – because I wasn’t coping, I wasn’t thriving.

From completely losing my identity to try to be a ‘good mum’, yet still being told I’m falling short.

I feel like so much out there is trying to force me to blame my struggles (not quite sure that’s the right word) on trauma from childhood. From trying to blame my parents for causing trauma…

I know that my parents did the best they could with the tools they had at the time.

When I look up the definition of trauma, it says “a deeply distressing or disturbing experience”. This is the dictionary definition. With this, my childhood certainly doesn’t fit the box… however my experience of being a parent fits this box much better…

Even doing a search on ‘can being a parent cause trauma’, the results are not helpful. They talk about childhood trauma, there isn’t much about issues caused by being a parent.

Here’s my question, is this a thing?

Can children cause damage to their parents?

Can being a parent cause trauma?

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I understand there are issues with social media. There is bullying, however this is not a new issue. Bullying has been around before social media, I was bullied at school and this was in the early 1990s. Yes, it didn’t follow me home by devices. I have also been the victim of cyberbullying as an adult. Banning under 16s from social media is not going to stop cyberbulling. If only that was so… if someone wants to bully someone, they will find a way.

I also know the importance of connection social media can give to teens. My own kids had chronic health issues and would miss months of school. Social media provided them with a connection to their peers from school, as well as connecting them with other kids with their same health conditions. It also connected them to special interests such as Rubix Cube communities.

Through social media, they learned skills such as video creation, that they may not have been interested in otherwise. Sites like YouTube gave them the opportunities to learn and develop their skills.

As with anything else, there needs to be education around social media. One of the things I’ve discovered is that many kids are more savvy around social media than many adults as this is something they have grown up with. There are cyber programs run in schools to teach kids about how to use social media.

I have learned that there is a lot around social media that is good, and there is stuff that is bad. Just like any other aspect of society. The social skills that kids learn need to translate to online, and these are lessons that adults need to learn too.

The government wanting to ban kids under 16 from social media has so many issues it’s not funny. From forgetting the good things to enforcement. I don’t trust the platforms with my phone number, I certainly don’t trust them with identity documents. I’m also pretty sure that kids will find a way around it. After all, platforms already say they are not for those under 13, yet younger kids still open up accounts.

Instead of banning the under 16s from social media, how about doing more to get rid of the trolls and bots. Shutting down accounts that try to clone genuine users, removing explicit content, especially from DMs, that sort of thing. This policy is short sighted and has so many holes in it.

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Burn out may look different for different people.

For me, I am fatigued, sleep doesn’t make much of a difference. I don’t wake up rested.

My brain doesn’t seem to function properly. I forget things, overthink, can’t settle on anything.

I don’t know how to really enjoy life. I will sit and watch something on TV, but it’s not relaxing, it’s more that it’s existing in the background.

On that note, I can’t seem to relax.

I feel like I am letting everyone down – my boss, clients, parents, everyone! Even if that is not logical.

I am also having events from the last 10 years caring for my chronically ill kids catching up with me as there is no way to deal with things when you’re in the moment.

I need a break, but I’m scared. How am I going to afford to live while I do this?

The first step is that I will be taking December and January off work. I will still be writing and selling books, I will still do the workshops that I’ve been booked to do, but otherwise, I am taking a break from work.

I am hoping that during this time, I will be able to evaluate life and set things up next year so that I can have breaks during the year, as well as set things up so I’m not slipping further in to burnout.

Wish me luck.

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I recently got into a discussion on Threads about this. Someone posted that she was positive her strive for being perfect didn’t come from her parents, and I completely agree.

Looking back, the messages I got growing up about being perfect mostly came from school. There was a bit of a back up from parents & grandparents (my grandpa would pay us for the number of A, B and Cs we got on our school reports), but it was mostly from school.

The messages would sound like some of these:

Being told our work wasn’t up to scratch, and that we could ‘do better’.

Being marked down if my working out on maths problems weren’t what the teacher wanted, even if the answer was correct.

Being awarded for getting 100% on a test as well as those who got the top marks getting awards at the end of the year.

Being told off if things weren’t exactly as expected.

Do these sound familiar?

These were the sorts of things that were drummed into me from a young age. I can remember one teacher give us a hard time if we didn’t get anything less than 100% because, according to her, anything less was a fail! This is the only subject I cheated on tests as I was struggling and her threats didn’t make it feel safe for me to ask for help.

In my adult life, these messages have stayed with me and are often reinforced in society. It’s those high achievers that get ahead, they are the ones who win awards and are put up as being examples and people we should strive to be, and anything less is a failure. Even in online games, there are ones that will literally say ‘you fail’ if you don’t pass a level.

In many business programs I’ve done, the trainers teach perfectionism. They teach that your content has to be perfect to get customers, your product or service, your speech, whatever… they say that everything must be perfect or close to perfect for you to be a success.

There are some that are changing now to teach that done is better than perfect, however those early messages are hard to ignore…

When my kids were at school, the grading system in reports changed so that C meant you were at the expected level, B was 6 months ahead, and A was 12 months ahead. It will be interesting to see if things change for the next generation as they grow…

The strive for perfection isn’t always a ‘trauma response’, it can be, but not always. Sometimes it can be years of grown ups, teachers, and experts rewarding those with perfect grades, being told that being perfect is the only way to succeed, and believing them…

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I was one of those kids who found things easy.

I would be taught a concept and understood it, especially if it was something I found interesting. I would then go down a rabbit hole to learn what I could. Back in the 1990s, it wasn’t as easy as it is now.

I would do my best on assignments that didn’t make sense.

The undiagnosed ADHD part of my brain left things to the last minute and, for the most part, I got good marks.

Fitting myself into the box was ‘hard work’.

I was constantly told to ‘work hard’ to get ‘ahead’ or to ‘be successful’.

So I continued to work hard.

I learned skills that didn’t come naturally in order to be paid to do a job. With some of these skills, I mastered them and now I’m good at this particular thing, even if it doesn’t suit my brain.

I work hard.

The flip side to this is something no one expected, not even me.

Because I was told to ‘work hard’ and that this hard work would be valued (it’s not always, but that’s a whole other post), I dismissed or undervalued the things that come easy to me.

Writing a story is easy for me.

Running my writers’ groups is easy for me.

Inspiring kids and others to create is easy for me.

Coming up with creative ideas to do things is easy for me.

Talking about the weird and wonderful things in my head is easy for me.

However, none of these are things that I felt was of any value… simply because it wasn’t ‘hard work’.

Even in my business, I keep overthinking anything that I find easy, thinking that is something that can’t possibly work and bring me success because it’s not ‘hard work’.

I think we need to downplay the ‘hard work’ narrative and let people know that it’s okay to lean in to what is easy. That it’s okay to follow your passions and go a path that brings you joy. And that it’s okay to outsource some of that hard work to someone who finds it easier!

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I’ve been reflecting on this lately, wondering where the messages that I’m somehow not good enough come from.

Recently, it hit me…

At school, my ‘worth’ was based on my grades. No matter how hard I worked on something, someone else would sit there with a red pen and mark them to show me if my work was good enough. If it wasn’t, then I was told to work harder. This was especially difficult in more creative subjects. In ones like maths, it was simple, there was a right and wrong answer, however for essays, for example, it was harder.

It was the same at university.

It didn’t matter that I love learning. It didn’t matter that I was trying my hardest. All that mattered was the mark on the assessment, on the reports that went home. If those numbers weren’t high enough, I wasn’t good enough.

At work, I was told by someone else if I was good enough at the job, whether it was in a review or how much I was paid, this was all set by someone else.

When submitting books to publishers, someone else decides if the stories are good enough. I know that whether or not a book is accepted is more than simply the quality of the story, however the RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria) can kick in, telling me I’m not a good enough writer because they don’t want to publish my story, even though I know people love reading them.

In business programs, if I’m not getting the results that the coaches promise, then I get told that I’m not working hard enough, even though I’m pushing myself to burn out. If I decide to listen to my body and do things differently or decide it doesn’t work for me, I get told that I’m not good enough.

Don’t get me started on the messages and ‘advice’ around parenting!

These are just a few examples of how society has told me that I’m not good enough.

If I don’t fit into the box, I’m not good enough.

If I’m struggling, I’m not good enough.

If I don’t do what I’m expected, I’m not good enough.

These are messages that are hard to shake. It’s hard to see that my efforts are enough, because I’ve had decades of messages saying that they’re not.

I’m trying to shake them, to forge my own path, one that suits me. One that has everything around me telling me that I am good enough. It’s hard, really hard… I hope that one day soon, I can leave these messages that I’m not good enough behind and truly see myself for the amazing person that I am.

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