Healthcare is highly specialized these days. As a healthcare worker, I get why. I work in a highly specialized field. If you have something wrong with your brain or nervous system, we are your people.
If you have a gaping wound on another part of your body, if your endocrine system is off-kilter, or your heart occasionally breaks into a gallop or takes up interpretive dance – then, we have to call in OTHER specialists to deal with those issues.
The benefit of this is that the specialists are really good at knowing what to do with these isolated issues, but I’m never sure if any one of them sees the entire person in front of them.
I’m not sure if anyone has ever seen all of me.
Last year on this day, our family celebrated the birthday of our second daughter. She had submitted a detailed list of what she wanted ahead of time. Among other things, she wanted a party.
We’d just gotten back from our trip to Tobago. We were exhausted. Our state had just gone into lockdown. Like most of the country, we were utterly frozen. I hate birthday parties, and would have taken ANY excuse not to have one: The pandemic was an easy, universal, and necessary NO to nearly every social engagement.
I’m easily overstimulated. It only takes a few variables to leave me close to a meltdown. In the worst case scenarios, I’m essentially blind and deaf – my vision and hearing literally shut down when I can’t take it anymore. Equations like:
loud music + 2 kids talking to me at the same time + being tired
OR
hunger + someone talking to me + trying to execute a left-hand turn
These can easily equal tunnel vision, no vision, or a brief loss of hearing. This has happened while driving and in social situations and it is terrifying.
After reading several books with protagonists who were on the Autism Spectrum, I started to wonder if maybe I was on one end of that, but it didn’t quite feel right. I don’t think it’s that I experience the world that differently from other people, I experience it MORE and LOUDER.
I don’t remember how I came across the books written by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D., about highly sensitive people. There are a number to choose from, but I went for The Highly Sensitive Parent: Be Brilliant In Your Role, Even When The World Overwhelms You, which I then kept for way past its due date at the library.
Have you ever had a period in time where your body wasn’t keeping up with your mind? You had ideas or dreams, but were too tired or unwell to chase them? Oh maybe it’s your mind that’s fatigued by the continual stress of living in the current world.
I’ve been feeling that way lately. My brain is full of inspiration, but I have very little energy to act on it. Some days, regardless of how much energy I have, my brain sad, unmotivated, and stressed.
Usually, slow-paced books make me want to saw my leg off. These books are not so much slow, though, as thoughtful. They make you want to take a breath and re-calibrate.
I keep trying to find ways to introduce this book. All of them are depressing reflections on the ways my life has changed during the pandemic (no more quiet time, whether I like it or not). I have struggled to balance the emotional and physical drain of daily life with activities that energize, allow my brain and body to rest, and make me laugh.
This book book did all of those things.
