New Year’s Goal Setting Strategies for Neurodivergent Spoonies | PART THREE

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Welcome to part three of my New Year's goal setting strategies for Neurodivergent Spoonies series. If you missed parts one or two, I'll link them in the cards above (Part One | Part Two) and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss part four next week. We've been talking about how to become the hero of your story in 2023. In part one, we talked about how you are not the villain, that instead

ableism is the villain. And in part two, we used the hero's journey to debunk the toxic myth of achieving your potential. Today we'll be focusing on three other concepts that might be preventing you from becoming the hero of your own story. The idea of finding yourself, the idea of having a purpose, and the idea of doing what you are meant to do, and the idea that that will

heal your body. I wasn't originally going to talk about the concept of finding yourself, but I had a wonderful conversation with one of my clients last week and it feels too important not to share. They were asking me about how to feel like themself again. I am all too familiar with the concept of finding yourself but what came out of me, I was beyond foggy at the time,

surprised me by how profound it felt. So I thought I'd share a clip from the coaching call recording. It's interesting 'cause I remember having that fear that I wouldn't feel like myself again, but something that has helped is remembering that I never really got to be a kid. So the myself I'm nostalgic for was also really traumatized and going through hell. And so I've shifted a bit and

I've never really put this into words before, so apologize while I, but instead of thinking like being myself, I've shifted to liking myself. And I'm not sure if I shared this, I think I did, oh, I think I shared it in last week's YouTube video, but when I saw my Christmas picture of myself, which in the past it was a picture that like I would hate so much

'cause I look so sick and also, even though I'm so far into my body self-acceptance journey and I'm never going on a diet again and a lot of times I think I'm cute, seeing a picture is different, 'cause it brings up a whole bunch of like, I'm not thin and but this time I saw that picture that normally would make me feel that way and I was like,

I don't hate myself. And it was transformational. It was, I was like, I am 36, practically 37, and this is the first time I've ever had that reaction to a photo of myself and that feels more impactful and meaningful and valuable to me than feeling like myself. Anyways, that's a very freshly verbalized take, so do with it what you will. So if you struggle with wanting to find

yourself or feel like yourself again, and that resonated with you, let me know down in the comments. I also want to add that after having that discussion with my client, they mentioned that that perspective helps them realize that instead of trying to find themselves or feel like themselves again, the goal is now to focus on no longer dissociating and derealizing because those are the actual things that are

preventing them from, quote unquote, feeling like themselves right now. Now to the stuff that I had originally planned for this video, I want to talk about the martyrdom of wanting to have a purpose because there is a lot of new age woo woo rhetoric around being disabled, being neurodivergent, and that if that is who you are, there is an underlying purpose to that, that you are here to

change the world. And that is a very heavy burden to carry. And can it be true? Yes, I welcome possibility for that, but just to automatically assume it's true seems really harmful and burdensome to me. I believe you get to be here for you. Your life is right here, right now, now is all you get, and part of the trauma of seeking potential, seeking purpose, seeking that which

is outside of your control and hoping to accommodate yourself until you're essentially behaving able bodied and neurotypical, is a way to dissociate from your life. Do I believe in higher purpose? On good days I do, but you know what I've also come to believe, it isn't necessarily for us to know. It's impossible to be absolutely certain of our purpose and believing that it is possible to be certain

stops us dead in our tracks and keeps us from truly living. Now I wanna talk about one of the extensions of wanting and needing to find your purpose that tends to be attached to that rhetoric when it comes to disability and neurodivergence. And that is the woo woo idea that if you find your purpose and you follow it, your body will heal, and you have the potential to

become able bodied. You have the potential to cure what ails you essentially, simply by finding your purpose and following it. I'll be honest, that was actually one of the things that started me on this path that has led me to coaching because I was desperate for something to help me because western medicine wasn't helping, alternative medicine wasn't helping. And because of my disabilities and neurodivergence, my mental health

was and still is a struggle, but it was bad. The idea that there was something inside my control that could possibly heal me, cure me, that is the shiniest of shinies. There's a lot of hope in that. But what I found is that that underlying hope and belief has since led me to feel like a failure on the path that I'm on and after thinking about that critically,

I realize that it's a very unhealthy belief and hope to have. I am a spiritual person. I believe that stuff is possible. But what I am shifting towards is acknowledging that that kind of miraculous healing is not something within my control. I can radically accept it's outside of my control and let it go and as I lean into that, I feel so much better. That's not to say

that there isn't grief. Letting go of the hope that healing is within your control can be very painful to do. But I can say that out the other side of it, I feel a lot better. I am able to meet my disabilities in the moment every day and care for myself instead of shaming myself for yet again not having done my purpose well enough to be cured. There's

another aspect I would like to address and I think it can be explained by my concept of the three gas tanks. I'll link up here a post where I talk about those more in depth but essentially I see us all as having three gas tanks, a physical one, a cognitive one, and an emotional one. Often the somatic experience of being out of spoons, we tend to automatically ascribe

that to the physical gas tank but by having that granularity, it can help us know if there's something else going on. And so the other thing that I've found on this journey myself is that the more I care for myself the more I learn to be kind to myself, the more I support and accommodate myself and the more I lean into things that inherently bring me joy and

fulfillment. I find that my emotional gas tank has greater capacity more often than it used to. And simply by nature of that gas tank being fuller, more consistently, more often than it used to, the burden of being out of spoons in my physical and cognitive gas tanks is more tolerable. So I end up feeling better but it's not because I've cured myself, it's because I have increased my

emotional capacity by not draining it so thoroughly all the time through that radical self-acceptance and self-compassion I was talking about in last week's video. And that perspective makes me wonder how much of the woo woo follow your passion and you will be healed rhetoric comes from simply finally being kind and compassionate with yourself such that your emotional gas tank becomes more resilient and has more capacity more consistently.

So just something I wanted to throw in there. So I realize this video is shorter than the last few weeks but the last two videos were doozies and I wanted to talk about these things today because if you think of achieving your potential as one side of a coin, these concepts that I talked about today felt like the other side of that coin. The thing they all have

in common is the idea that there is a right version of you written somewhere in the cosmos and it's your job to figure out what that is and essentially not F it up. This causes you to spend your time seeking what's right instead of living your one wild and precious life. And this makes me want to ask, is that what you want for yourself? Like the last two

videos, I'm going to share the following because after what you've learned today I believe it will be even more meaningful. What if in 2023, instead of continuing to see yourself as the villain, instead of fighting to change yourself, you choose to see the truth that ableism is the villain and you are the hero. What if in 2023 you choose to support yourself unconditionally instead? Can you imagine it,

the end of fighting yourself, the end of hating yourself, the end of feeling broken and at fault? If you are ready for your hero story to truly begin, it's time to put down the sword and offer yourself a compassionate hand instead. This is how the transformational change you are seeking, begins, with a simple yet profound shift to see yourself as the hero instead of the villain, to choose

to offer yourself radical support instead of infinite, undeserved shame and cruelty, to write your story from the perspective of the hero, not the villain. If you want to dive even deeper into this lesson, here's another journal prompt for you. What would it mean if I didn't have to find my purpose? Subscribe so you don't miss part four next week. And if you already know you wanna attend my

free workshop at the end of the month or receive the recording of it, make sure you're subscribed to my mailing list. Again, here's my post about Anytime Pages if you wanna do some journaling. If you liked this video, hit that like button and be sure to share it with your friends. See you next week for part four,

bye. You wanna say hi? You wanna say hi? Oh no. you don't wanna say hi.