Battle of the Neurodiversities?

I have ADHD. Obviously, I’ve always had ADHD, and in retrospect it explains so much. The reason I know I have ADHD is because my oldest, who is a teenager, was diagnosed with ADHD, and I recognized in them what I went through and how I behave and react and feel and (over)think. I decided to get tested and the result was unsurprising.

My youngest, who is headed towards ten years of age, has been diagnosed with autism, though his is not quite typical and they are still puzzling out the specifics. (I had previously assumed he has ADHD because he regularly copes through hyperactivity.) He’s always had autism, obviously, and again in retrospect it explains so much of his behavior, his responses, his emotions and his thought processes.

Both autism and ADHD are classified as a neurodivergence – also called neurodiversity – meaning that there are connections and processes in these brains that are just a little different from those in the neuronormative brain. With both my children of school-going age, I have seen a notable distinction in how each is perceived, though: ADHD is generally taken a lot less seriously than autism.

What do I mean when I say this?

There is a difference between the way people respond to ADHD vs autism. Autistic people are, for better or worse, considered defined and constricted by their condition, and as such there is a tendency to understand that certain adaptations and adjustments should reasonably be made in order to allow autistic people to function, even thrive. Schools, entertainment venues and many other places make those adjustments and offer options to accommodate people who have autism. They rightly understand that there is only so much that autistic people can process and handle, and that there are certain things they cannot deal with.

I see this in the amount of help my youngest gets in school, and the modifications his teachers make to prevent him from getting overloaded and shutting down, never mind getting his work done. I’m very grateful for this, and I’m so happy that it’s possible. My son needs the adjustments that he’s getting, because without them he would simply not cope.

My oldest, the one with ADHD, is very lucky to be in a school that does its best to make allowances where possible, but the difference with autism as a neurodivergence becomes clear when we see that there are some teachers who believe that, because they take medication – a therapy, not a cure – which makes it possible for them to focus better and maintain concentration for longer – at the expense of an enormous amount of energy, it should be noted – their ADHD should somehow not be a factor. My kid gets high marks, they pay attention in class. See? If they take their pills, the ADHD is gone and they don’t need anything extra; no difference in approach, no attempts to reduce stimuli, no measures, such as additional preparation time for projects or tests to prevent crushing stress. There is no reason for them to be overly sensitive to sharp tones, chaos or loud noises, expectations, stress, because the pills are taking care of all that and so they now need nothing more than the other students do.

For people with ADHD who are not on medication, it often seems like the assumption is that now that they know they have ADHD they can just put a little extra effort into not being so busy or concentrating a little better. I’ve even heard someone say that ADHD is a lot harder on the people dealing with someone with ADHD than it is for the person who has ADHD, because these ADHD folks are so busy; it’s exhausting!

That, to me, is just delightfully and infuriatingly ironic, because that overload that “normal” people experience when interacting with people with ADHD is the overload that we experience all day every day interacting with a world filled with neuronormative people. On a regular person’s busiest day, I can promise that their heads are likely at most half as busy as mine is on a regular day, even when I’m on medication.

The main disconnect is in the idea that ADHD is still seen by too many people as somehow voluntary, willful, a choice. That somehow, we choose to have filters that don’t work well, minds that are constantly going and in directions we have little control over half the time, heightened emotional vulnerability, a need to vent the constant activity in our heads through excessive talking or movement, difficulty with impulse control. All of this wouldn’t be an issue if we just applied ourselves.

Well, let’s get to the science behind that for a minute. ADHD is essentially a dopamine regulation issue. We all produce dopamine, but where a non-ADHD brain has enough extracellular dopamine floating around to direct it to where it is needed, ADHD brains will re-absorb the extracellular dopamine, causing a deficiency which results in inhibited executive function. This is why someone with ADHD has trouble directing focus, maintaining concentration, sitting still, planning, correctly estimating time and duration, etc. These executive skills can be taught, but for someone with ADHD that simply takes more time and it also requires a lot more energy.

The dopamine deficiency also causes our “filters” to work inefficiently, if they work at all. A non-ADHD brain will make a preselection of what is relevant, interesting or necessary to be dealt with or even enter the brain, meaning that there is far less for it to process because there is a manageable amount of information that comes in.

An ADHD brain doesn’t really filter very well, if at all: every bit of information enters, resulting in a quickly overloaded processing center, because not only is everything that is seen, heard or felt there to be processed, there is no clear order or priority in which to do that. In a normal, calm environment that’s already challenging; now imagine a situation in which there are more and stronger stimuli than usual – a PE class, a free homework period, a class project.

Now, knowing this, compare this with the level of understanding and support given to a student with autism.

I think it’s obvious where I’m going with this: while ADHD often seems less constrictive than autism, often looks more like a case of too much energy, and has pharmacotherapeutical options to help reduce its effects, it is a real neuropsychological condition and the people that have it deserve to be taken seriously. Like people with autism, they need accommodations, adaptations, adjustments, understanding and acceptance. There are things they are not able to do the way neuronormative people can – just as there are things they can do that neuronormative people cannot.

We know enough about autism to know that those who are on the spectrum deserve our kindness, our patience and our best efforts to help them learn, grow and succeed. I really hope that we can make ADHD better understood, so that those who have it will be given the same consideration that is extended to people on the autism spectrum.

In the end, what we should all want is for these children to not only manage but thrive, to have confidence and to enjoy themselves. And for that, they also need our kindness, our patience, and our best efforts to help them succeed.

Losing Mom (cont’d)

This post might get a little personal, just so you’re warned.

First, let me start by saying I fucking hate Alzheimer’s. I mean: as design flaws go, it’s a pretty big one. So, of course, are dementia, Huntingdon’s, ALS, you know: destructive, degenerative shit like that. Not cool.

As you may know from previous posts, my mother suffers from Alzheimer’s and has recently been admitted to a care facility because taking care of her at home became impossible. Trust me, it’s one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to take in our lives. We didn’t want to give her care and living situation over to someone else, but we had to.

So now I visit my mother at her care home, and as much as the Alzheimer’s is already taking her away from us, this seems to have removed her just one step further. She is now entering the stage where her recognizing me is a rare occurrence, and conversation with her has become nearly impossible. She sees a person sitting with her, but speaks to me on the basis of what is going on inside her head, which has some link to reality, but not much. My being there might trigger a memory, or an emotion, but it’s not me she’s talking to.

My mother’s residing in a care home has done something else besides make us miss her more than we already did – and missing someone who is still with you is incredibly hard and disorienting and a bit of a mind fuck. Now that she doesn’t live at home with my dad anymore, I am suddenly being hit hard with anticipatory grief. It’s like this step has pushed me over the threshold into a stage of processing that I think I probably should have already been in.

Usually, I deal with difficult things by learning as much about what’s going on as possible. I’ve tried doing that here too. Turns out, that doesn’t quite work as advertised in the case of watching someone in rapid mental decline. I try to understand what mom is going through, how things must be for her, and my head is spinning. It’s not just that I can’t – how could I with my (ostensibly) healthy brain? It’s that the emotional charge that comes with not only trying to understand her but also coming to grips with everything that now follows as she heads into these last stages of her disease is pulling the rug out from underneath me. I literally can’t pull this process apart into separate pieces for analysis. It’s all tied up together, and every so often I feel like I’ll be buried underneath it all.

Then, when I’ve almost drowned in it all, I’m forced to accept that I can’t do anything about what’s happening to her, and I can only go and see her and know that I love her, even if she can’t know anymore that I do. I can try to be there for my dad, who is going through the same thing but probably more so. I can try to be there for my sister, and for all the people who care about my mom and who hate this disease that is taking her from us, in little bits and sometimes in massive chunks, ejecting shards that cut us all with tiny painful jabs and lacerations.

In light of all this, I write when I can – or rather, when I must – and I hope that somehow my putting this on the page will help other people in similar circumstances know they are not alone, however much that may help, and I truly hope it does.

First and Last

If you really think about it life is a series of firsts and lasts. More firsts at the beginning, more lasts as you go further along. Not all firsts are good and not all lasts are bad but on the whole, it’s the lasts that have been grabbing me by the throat lately.

The problem with lasts is that they’re far more likely to go unnoticed than the firsts. Makes sense, because we can’t see into the future to determine in real time whether some event was, in fact, the last time it happened.

Would it help to know, I wonder? Would I have attached more importance, remembered in more detail, the last time I had a long, meandering yet coherent conversation with my mother about everything that happened to occur to us while we were chatting on the phone now so many years ago? Did I even notice that it was in fact the last such conversation that I had with her? Alzheimer’s works slowly, so while subsequent conversations would not have been as logical, would have contained more questions asked several times over, more statements repeated, the conversations would still have been as rewarding, as valuable to me, if just a little “off”.

And, on the opposite end of the spectrum, when was the first time that something was “off”? Why didn’t I register that it was when it was?

Back to lasts, however, because, as I said: it’s the lasts that are biting me in the ass right now. Last Christmas marked the last Christmas I will have spent with both my parents together at either of our houses. My mom’s last birthday: ditto. Last dinner together, last walk, last vacation, last you name it.

There’s a limit to how consciously you can experience your life, and the moments in it. If you spent every moment of every day in the full realization that something could be a first or a last something (and not the kind we do pay attention to and celebrate or mourn because we know) you’d both exhaust yourself and drive yourself mad all at the same time. Also, you’d be living your life through the lens of anticipatory grief, which removes you from truly just experiencing your life in the moment.

Still, those lasts with my mom … I would have liked to have been prepared for some of those, and probably should have been. I wasn’t – maybe I was optimistic, maybe stupid, maybe just not ready and so opted to ignore it – and it’s going to take some time to come to terms with that.

Clash of the ADHDs

If only my living room could look at tidy as this one. Just for a minute…

I’ve not written a post in two weeks for various reasons, and in this post I will address one of them.

As I’ve previously mentioned, we live in a house with one diagnosed ADHD person (my eldest), one undiagnosed but certainly ADHD person (myself), and one person who most likely has ADHD (my youngest). My brave husband is, as far as we know, mostly if not completely neurotypical.

Just in regular circumstances, we have to work decently hard at keeping the discipline to get things done in such a way that everyone can feel comfortable in our shared spaces. It’s a struggle on occasion to keep everyone on task: emotional dysregulation stemming from both ADHD and teenaging/pre-teening tend to get in the way when reminding folks of chores needing to be done and routines needing to be maintained. As for myself, I’m occasionally just effing bored with being a housekeeper, if I’m allowed to oversimplify for a moment (which I am; it’s my blog).

Added to this is the fact that a pretty prominent feature of ADHD is the absence of a filter for incoming (sensory) information (also for outgoing information) which makes processing in real time near impossible sometimes.

Now, no two people with ADHD are exactly the same, though there are certainly similarities in the ways ADHD expresses itself in people. In our house we have three distinctly different ways of dealing with what comes at us in a day. The eldest likes to either go inline skating or – more often – dive into their phone for entertainment or contained conversation with friends in various parts of the world. The youngest likes to jump around, hum, sing, talk (a lot), make noise and want to engage with his sibling, who is just looking to disengage for a while. Clash number one.

I just need to escape into a book or a movie, or do some physical exercise, or really engage in anything I need to focus on (focus is hard) without being interrupted by either directed remarks or questions, or a barrage of sound. Against a backdrop of vocal expression and arguments by the eldest that they need to not be disrupted by the youngest, that’s clash number two.

Now, all the above is just in regular circumstances. This past week, we’ve had extraordinary circumstances, because the only reasonably normal person (I use the term tongue-in-cheek because what the hell is normal?) is laid up and isolated with COVID. Leaving ADHD senior in charge of ADHD junior nos 1 and 2. The being in charge part isn’t the problem, that I can handle. I know what needs doing and I will get the essentials done, but having to manage the clash of the ADHDs on top of that has been a challenge for me because the overload is off the charts at the moment, and so I’ve found this week to be particularly challenging.

Keeping a handle on the household has been an, uhm, interesting exercise. Not because I can’t tidy up a space or do dishes or laundry, but because the junior ADHD (for both the preteen and the teen) also brings with it an enormous amount or unregulated chaos, since keeping organized is notoriously difficult for even well-regimented ADHD folks.

[Thought: there has to be a market for tidying shows like Marie Kondo and The Home Edit geared specifically to people with ADHD. Anyone?]

So I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out how to get a handle on things in the house while my husband recovers from COVID. For now, the only solution I can come up with is more discipline, and directing each of the kids towards their own spaces in which they can process their overload in their own way, away from the shared spaces.

To what extent is my solution realistic? No idea. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Wish me luck. 😏

Schedules and Boundaries

Just a brief post today to follow up on my post about schedules from a few weeks ago.

After a few weeks of trying to keep ourselves organized as agreed, I have learned that no schedule works without boundaries. And boundaries don’t set themselves; we have to do that.

When we crafted our schedule, we were careful to include in it not only the things that needed doing, but also the things that each of us wanted to do. Now, a little over four weeks into it, it turns out that the parts of the schedule we don’t meticulously stick to are exactly the personal preferences we made sure to fit in.

We all, but specifically my husband and I, have shown a tendency to set aside our personal wants for the general needs. While on some level that makes sense – what must happen must happen, after all – there is one very important level on which it makes absolutely no sense at all: taking time for the wants keeps us charged up for the needs. It’s pure self care, and self care is important.

What we need to remember is that the schedule was set up to accommodate both business and pleasure, for lack of better terminology. If there are times when something has to give, what gives needn’t always be the pleasure. Sometimes the business can be put on hold.

So in order for us to get the most out of this schedule of ours, each of us needs to set boundaries and protect them, because it is all too easy to step over our own interests and preferences. We should remember that everything we’ve created space and time for is there because we felt it is important, and act accordingly regardless of the nature of the task.

Did I HAVE To Say That?

I’d like to talk about something I’ve been struggling with lately: social awkwardness. It’s an issue that doesn’t just affect me, who displays it, but also the people who have to deal with me.

My social awkwardness is conversational and stems, I’m pretty sure, from my (suspected) ADHD. I have no filter for things going in, but I also have no filter for things coming out. What makes it worse is that I’m actually pretty sensitive to situations, emotions and context, and my verbal expression sometimes feels almost involuntary.

Painful example: this morning I was at a shop that I regularly visit, and there’s a lady that works there that has tics. We are quite familiar with tics in various forms – we know someone with Intermittent Tic Disorder (also known as Transient Tic Disorder), we know someone with Tourette’s – and for some reason I mentioned it to her. God knows why, to be honest, because it clearly embarrassed her, and I felt awful right away about that.

I suppose on some level I wanted to mention it because I hate how little understanding there is of and for these disorders, and so I think that actually talking about it would help a great deal. But that’s my feeling about it, and I shouldn’t foist that on others.

On a related note: I should probably considering shopping somewhere else from now on.

These kinds of things – the awkward interactions – have been happening more regularly of late, as the (suspected) ADHD has become less controllable for me and I hate it. I’m really hoping that an ADHD diagnosis and treatment will help bring this (and various other things) under control.

All this is to say, I suppose, that a) maybe I should just not speak when in public, b) I am going to feel horrible about this for the rest of the day and possibly longer, and c) the sooner I get my diagnosis and hopefully medication and psycho-education the better.

Is It Too Early for Halloween? 👻

We love Halloween! Seriously, in our house Christmas may last a little longer, but there is nothing like the feeling of an approaching Halloween for us. Once October 1st rolls around we are ready to go and we have to hold ourselves down until the 15th (completely arbitrary date, incidentally) to start decorating, which we do fairly low-key for all our love of the holiday. We’ll put up a dark wreath on the front door, witches will fly outside our front window, slightly spooky lanterns suddenly pop up in the living room and sometimes even in the bathroom (what is a bath if not a more pleasant smelling witch’s brew, really…), and our black cat is suddenly not just a pet but also a lovely real-life Halloween decoration.

Our Ichabod: suitably named for Halloween, he is our year-round interactive spooky beast.

And so, as the end of August and the start of September approach, it is time to start planning for our annual Halloween party. (This might be a good time to tell you that I’m not necessarily known for doing things at the appropriate time always, while we’re on the subject. For example: I will happily watch Christmas movies in May – seriously: not a problem for me. At all.)

The party itself is not a massive shindig, if I’m honest. It’s not a full-on come-to-our-haunted-house-in-full-fancy-dress type thing: it’s really more of a chance for the English speaking kids that our kids have befriended over the years to get together, catch up, and do some light Halloween celebrating, Anglo-American style.

I do always look forward to it very much: it’s fun to see them all every year, another year older, some of them having gone off in different directions as they’ve gone on to different schools. The Halloween party is a chance to reconnect for them and us. It’s also quite a challenge to organize so I begin thinking about it already around this time of year with anticipatory glee. Since I’m in the Halloween-planning mood already, and you can never begin too early, for this blog post I thought I’d share some ideas for family-friendly Halloween get-togethers. Here goes.

Halloween Quiz Lots of people love celebrating Halloween, but how many know its origins, or its equivalents around the world with their accompanying traditions? There are dozens of fun factoids you can pour into this quiz. All you really need to do is read up on this holiday, maybe branch out a little into witches, ghouls and superstitions, and before you know it you’ll have a ton of questions to choose from. Of course, there are also a bunch of ready made quizzes available online; I just prefer to make them myself because, well: control freak, nerd, show-off – take your pick!

If there are younger kids at the party, do take care to keep the questions and answers accessible to all – or make some questions that are better answerable for the older kids, and some for the younger ones, then team up older and younger kids to give them even chances. Surprisingly, I found that some of the “younger” questions were actually quite challenging for the older kids as well.

Halloween Mad Libs It’s mad libs, Halloween style! There are plenty of mad libs templates you can find online for this, but if you’re feeling creative, you can come up with your own stories as well.

Halloween Creations There are a bunch of games that will allow kids to be creative and really run with their own ideas. It’s great fun to see what they come up with! Here are some options:

Witch’s Brew: have everyone come up with their own witch’s brew – what’s in it, how would it taste, what would it do, what spell goes with it?

Draw What You Hear: play some Halloween songs or haunting melodies and have the kids draw something that’s described in the song or how it makes them feel. Some good songs for this are Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt Keepers, and Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley, or for more abstract pictures Erutan’s Transylvanian Lullaby, and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre.

If I Made a Movie: Have them think up a movie title for a Halloween movie they would, and have them explain what the story would be.

Or just play a game of Once Upon a Time… Give a (spooky) story prompt, then hand the tale off to the next person to add their few lines, then to the next person, and so on…

Who Are You? For this game, you ask everyone to answer 6 questions about themselves – questions like: favorite scary monster? favorite Halloween candy? etc – then collect the sheets. Without revealing the names, you read out the answers on each sheet and see if the others can guess whose sheet it is.

Fun food You can dress up a lot of easily made drinks and snacks as something else. Pink lemonade? Unicorn wee. Snack sausages? Severed fingers (just slice a little sliver off the top and tear the other end off, then leak some tomato ketchup out of the torn end). Lasagne: entrails and sinew with a layer of grilled ectoplasm (who knew you could grill that stuff?!) Cola? Witch’s brew: just pour it over into a lightly more ornate bottle and stick on a homemade label. Be sure to list the ingredients, like snail slime, eye of newt, you know – the usual.

If you have the time and you feel so inclined, you could of course also decide on some Halloween themed snacks of your own creation, such as cupcakes decorated with flying bats made out of fondant, monster shaped cookies, or mummified sausages (sausages wrapped in ribbons of puff pastry).

Home-made Halloween and fall themed gingerbread cookies.

One time, I actually made something that looked almost too disgusting to eat: I had carved a nauseated face in a pumpkin, and then put some risotto con fungi in a heap in front of it and some in the pumpkin’s mouth. It took a while before I could get anyone in the house to eat risotto again…

Of course, standard fall treats are always fun: roasting marshmallows over a fire, making smores, serving pumpkin spiced lattes and hot cider. To make them more Halloween-y, you can do these wearing a witch’s hat or a vampire cape, and possibly playing some eerie music in the background.

Gift bags or baskets We put together a little something for the guests to take home afterwards to extend the fun a little longer. I usually make a Halloween crossword, a word search, or a word scramble to put in the bag, with a cute pen or pencil. I’ll add a small bag of candy, or even a homemade decorated cupcake, and a spooky thank you card.

One year, when I was feeling particularly inspired, I even spent quite a bit of time making stuffed Halloween monsters out of old socks and scarves. I placed them together in a big basket with a sign in front of it saying “Adopt a Monster”. (They all got adopted, even though they looked fairly awful and amateurish. I am NOT good at sewing. It’s the thought that counts, I guess.)

Honestly, I could probably keep listing and coming up with Halloween party suggestions, but seeing as how it’s still only August, I think I’ll leave it at this for now. Knowing myself, I’ll be writing a few more blog posts to do with Halloween in one way or another between now and 31 October. So if you love the season like I do, check back for more over the coming few weeks.

Stick to It

Featured photo by Renáta-Adrienn on Unsplash

Today school starts again for my youngest, and tomorrow the oldest also begins the new academic year. The youngest does not want to go. The oldest is actually kind of looking forward to it.

When I ask the youngest why he doesn’t like school, his answers are both true and hilarious: “It takes all day!” and “You have to work all the time!” (He’s really not going to like adulting.) When I ask the oldest what they like about school, it’s mostly the artistic and creative subjects and extracurriculars, and there are many of those – it’s one of the main reasons we chose this school.

But while my children have opposite feelings about being in school, what they have in common – and in common with us as well – is that the academic year brings both order and chaos for them. So yesterday we decided to try something that is new (well, to be fair, not actually new at all – we have tried this before, but this time FEELS different and therefore new) for us as a family: we made. A. Schedule.

That’s right: the household with three ADHD people and one seriously outnumbered neuronormative guy (who doesn’t really like schedules that much either) came up with a schedule.

Freedom in discipline, we hope.

The main goals for us are to not be driven nuts by either our activities, each other, or ourselves. Of course, for us to find out whether we’ve actually made a good schedule this time we have to do the most challenging thing of all, and where all previous attempts at organizing and structuring our household have failed. We have to … wait for it … *whispers* stick to it.

As I confessed earlier, we have tried to organize and streamline things many, many times before in this house, but for some reason making the plan and then sticking to it has proved unbelievably difficult for many different reason: unexpected events, low energy levels, hyperfocus, no focus, emotional responses to not quite being on schedule resulting in veering even more off schedule (it’s an ADHD thing, I’ve been told). You know: reasons.

But we keep trying. We spent a fair amount of time for this latest attempt making sure that the goals we’ve set ourselves are actually feasible, and that there is room for the unexpected. We’ve also built in repetition, and regularity for the things we want, not just for the things we need.

I think that might be where we’ve gone wrong in the past: we placed the emphasis only on the things that were needed, not on the things that make us feel good, happy, and creative. That’s different this time around – we made this schedule to meet our own needs as well as others’.

There will still be challenges, of course, but we also have one more thing that we didn’t have before and that is a better understanding of at least three out of four brains in our family (the ADHD ones). It means we can take each other and ourselves into account more, and that in turn means both more realistic plans and more reasonable expectations.

The academic year has just started so I have no idea how well or even if this time we’ve found the winning formula, but with everything we’ve learned the past year, and a new approach based on kindness and fulfillment as well as goals and achievements, I feel like this time we have a good chance at success.

Random Thoughts on a Monday Morning

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been developing some pretty unhealthy holding patterns since this pandemic started, despite my best intentions. At the start of the first lockdown, the husband and I thought we’d try to set up some good habits, like lunchtime walks, time spent with the whole family at the end of the afternoon – you know, stuff like that. It lasted for all of two weeks, and even then only off and on, depending on the demands of his job and our children.

It’s not only that it’s too easy for these resolutions to make way to daily demands, though. It’s also that the increase in mental load has put extra pressure on things: what is going on with this virus, how do I manage the risk assessment, how do I keep everyone safe yet not turn us all into peculiar hermits?

I notice a pattern in that the resolutions I’ve tossed out the window the most easily have been the ones to do with self care. There is so much other care that seems to take priority that the time left for self care became more about just sitting down and doing something mindless than, say, getting some exercise, meditating, even studying (which is something that I actually really enjoy – don’t @ me).

But now that schools have started again here (I spent the better part of an hour lying awake last night wondering how long before COVID clusters will shut down our schools again, what with inadequate measures and poor ventilation in most school buildings; then I finally fell asleep and dreamed about COVID clusters in schools, so yeah, that was a good night’s rest 🙄), I have a better chance of establishing a more healthy routine again for myself, and beginning to restore my energy levels. Because I finally have some time again.

With that intention, I practiced yoga again this morning for the first time in a long, LONG time, and it felt great! There I was, on my mat, just doing what I had been doing for years on end and somehow had suddenly stopped doing – injuries, lack of energy, lack of time, general lacklusterness – and I enjoyed it so much!

I selected a Yoga with Adriene video – if you want a good start to your day, find yourself a YwA video and go for it, trust me on this! – and as I was stretching, relaxing, focusing and applying myself to alignment and awareness, I noticed some things (in no particular order):

I am pretty flexible still for not having done yoga for such a long time.
My thighs aren’t nearly as fat as I imagine (I guess Baz Luhrmann was right).
I don’t need to always be perfect at everything all the time.
I really, really want to learn more about yoga; I’ve been studying the movements and postures for years and I’m still only scratching the surface. Having been handicapped for a while with an immobile hand and wrist that wouldn’t support my weight I had already been forced to examine the parts of yoga that were not purely about pose achievement, and now I want to dive back into it.
I can’t control everything.
My grippy mat seems less grippy somehow.

And so here are my new resolutions – may they last: I will focus on being kinder to myself; learning more about yoga; learning to accept what I can’t change, change what I can’t accept, and trying to know the difference; and saving up to buy a new grippy mat.

So there it is: random thoughts on a Monday morning.

What Is Going On With Me??

Just a quick warning: this (very long) post is going to be about a topic that is not necessarily for everyone: (peri)menopause. So if you are not interested in reading about that, this post is not for you. Otherwise, let’s move on without further ado.

I am now of a certain age and over the past year and a half, maybe two years, I’ve begun to notice certain changes in myself. At first, I just figured maybe it was stress, or those odd, unexplained things that sometimes ail you and then disappear as suddenly as they appear. As for my thoughts occasionally being a bag of ferrets – well, that’s not entirely new to me though the degree to which was definitely a few levels beyond what I was used to.

The first hint I had, though, of something feeling truly different was when I had my first, honest to god, uncontrollable mood swing. I was suddenly, inexplicably, and without warning pissed off at everyone and everything and for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. And then as suddenly as the Grump-from-Hell showed up, she was gone again. For me, that was weird, because I don’t get mood swings; I didn’t get them when I was pregnant, I’ve never had them when I had my periods. But my mood this time was literally beyond my control: it was like I had nothing to say about these feelings, no way to calm down, just … nothing! I felt like one of those ants that gets invaded by a parasite and then just turn into zombies, except I was an angry zombie and I had no spores growing out of my dead head (thank goodness).

Anyway, that’s when I started to take all those changes a little more seriously. What follows is an enumeration of some of the things I’ve been going through. The reason I’m writing this post is because this is a pretty turbulent time for me and I imagine I’m not the only one who feels this way. At times, when another symptom hits or the same symptom hits again I become downright suspicious of my body: “What is this pain/discomfort/weirdness? I’ve never had/felt this before. Is this normal?? Is my body trying to kill me?”

As always: this post only outlines my personal experiences. Every menopause is different, though there are common signs and symptoms. If you are concerned, contact your doctor. Some healthcare systems actually have doctors specializing in menopause.

Enough introduction. Here we go.

Hot Flashes

I thought I’d start with a very common symptom: hot flashes. My core temperature is pretty low, and I am more often cold than warm. And my first hot flash felt bizarre. Literally from one minute to the next I felt flushed, with hot skin, began sweating, and it was like nothing I’d felt before. It didn’t last long, though it felt plenty long to me. I vividly remember trying to cool myself down by standing in front of the freezer with the door open. More about hot flashes (also night sweats) here.

Stiff Joints

The next thing I started noticing is that, even though I am still pretty flexible – probably thanks to yoga – I have these periods of stiffness in the joints. From one day to the next I will suddenly have inflexible hips, very little neck mobility, or stiff shoulders. This stiffness can last anywhere from days to weeks, and it makes every yoga session an exciting new adventure (that was sarcasm). Here is some more information about age and menopause related joint pain.

Weird and Unexplained Aches and Pains

I’ve noticed some weird aches and pains not related to joints as well. A sudden cramp here, a sudden stab of pain there. Nothing worrying, but rather annoying. If you are experiencing unexplained aches and pains and you are worried, contact your doctor. Don’t hesitate, just call. That’s what they’re there for.

Weight Gain

This is a funny one. Not funny-ha-ha, funny-weird.

All of my life, any weight gained always went straight to my hips. I’m not kidding: nothing ever, ever went to my stomach. Then one morning all of a sudden there it was: a tummy! No matter how many sit-ups or Russian twists or airplanes I do, that fat ain’t goin’ nowhere!

I’m not complaining, it’s just not anything I’ve ever had any experience with. I’ve literally never had to worry about my tummy; it was always just flat. Now, my butt, that’s a whole different story…

The abdominal weight gain is apparently a function of your body looking to replace the estrogen whose levels are dropping during menopause, and the fat provides that. This article explains how that works, exactly. For me, the only upside I can see is that it means I need to update my wardrobe. Mostly, though, I have been having to get used to a different body with a different shape. It’s weird for me and it’s not easy, not least because my moods are also affected during this time and so feeling anxious about the way I look comes a lot more easily. (More about this later.)

Painful Breasts

Now this is the one symptom that is really tripping me up. Until a few years ago, my breasts were just my breasts: part of my body, part of my shape. I have had some issues with them (cysts) but on the whole they were just part of me and I didn’t worry about them. That’s changed.

Sometimes I have entire weeks when my breasts just hurt, sometimes one and sometimes both. Like a lot of women, I regularly self-examine (here’s how to do that and what to look and feel for) and a while back I felt a lump. I called the women’s breast cancer department in my hospital directly (this hospital throws up no barriers for women who are concerned about possible breast cancer – if you feel something, they will schedule you in for an exam as soon as possible) and had a full exam, including a mammogram and an ultrasound, and was then seen by a doctor who also performed a hands-on exam. I was cleared, but it turned out I did have another one of those cysts I mentioned earlier.

Moral of the story: I was lucky and fine, and cysts are sometimes painful, and any lump you feel in there is likely to cause you some worry. And I won’t lie: there are times when I seriously contemplate whether one (or both) of my breasts is going to make me sick or, even worse, kill me. It’s not a fun way to feel about a part of your body.

As my doctor told me during my follow-up appointment: breasts react immediately to hormonal changes, and sometimes that can feel pretty damn worrying. Do keep in mind in all of this that the same hormonal changes that your breasts are responding to can also be responsible for enhancing those worries, sometimes creating some real emotional turmoil. Speaking of…

Worries and Feelings

The worrying. Ugh. And the feels. Sometimes all the feels at once! Hormonal shifts during menopause often result in mood swings but also mood disorders and based on my own experience this is not something to take lightly. All this worrying and the sheer force of the emotions that well up sometimes out of nowhere is definitely not something I think I could have prepared for. Like undoubtedly everyone else I have had times where I worried about things and sometimes perhaps excessively, but this is of a whole different level.

For me, regular exercise and meditation level me out a little bit, but there are also times I decide to just ride the wave, put on a sad movie and just let it all out, or do a happy dance when the hormones decide it’s time to feel giddy. Mostly, though, not being on an even keel half the time is exhausting and because I would like to be able to function as a not-insane adult there are times when I use up a lot of energy managing my moods.

Brain Fog

Here’s another one I wasn’t ready for: my brain slowing down or just downright taking a mini break in the middle of my day. Reading a paragraph and promptly forgetting what I just read. Or reading a paragraph but having the information bounce off my brain as though it was shielded against content somehow. Or remembering there’s something I have to do and then immediately forgetting to do that thing. Six times a day. That same thing. Or going into another room to get something and forgetting what I was going to get as soon as I am through the door. Or putting my phone down somewhere and spending the next hour looking for it. Or starting a sentence and then not –

The official term for this type of “brain fog” is menopause-related cognitive impairment, and this too shall pass, but while it is there it can be seriously disruptive, and not a little scary. As I have a family member with Alzheimer’s, the specter of dementia looms large and with the hormone-induced increase in worrying, this, again, is not exactly a fun symptom to have.

Migraines

Yay. Migraines. Such fun. I am used to migraines, as I’ve been getting them since I was 19. The thing is, I didn’t get them very often. Now, the intensity of the migraine itself is less (though there’s still no painkiller that will even make a dent in the pain), but I get them more often, and they bring an increase in brain fog with them. So I am pretty much functionally impaired at least one day a month these days.

Difficult and Irregular Periods

Even though this is what menopause is all about – the end of periods – I’ve saved this one for last, because it sort of ties all the symptoms I have discussed so far together. As I recently discovered when I talked to a friend about this, I’ve been pretty lucky with my periods for most of my life; they’ve always been extremely regular and they have barely bothered me at all. Sure, there was blood, sometimes a lot of it, but hardly any cramps, no mood swings, no fatigue, no headaches, no bloatedness, nothing! That began to change a little under 2 years ago. First with increased moodiness and fatigue, and cramps, then migraines and pelvic pain were added, and now I regularly have the full spectrum: bloated, hot flashes, migraines, fatigue, mood swings, diarrhea, cramps, pelvic pain. Quite the smorgasbord, no?

And on top of all that, my periods are becoming more unpredictable: sometimes a little ahead of or behind schedule, rarely just weeks early or late, sometimes light, sometimes heavy … it’s anyone’s guess, really.

Changes in periods can feel very concerning. Like my breasts, I feel like my uterus could just as easily pull a fast one on me and develop abnormal cells, with symptoms that can also be attributed to (peri)menopause. Would I notice if something was wrong? (Once more, I would like to refer to the paragraph dealing with hormones turning your usually rational brain into a bag of ferrets.) Again, if you’re worried, contact your doctor.

So, that’s it: a run-down of my experience with the run-up to menopause. It’s a rollercoaster, and there are as many different experiences of menopause as there are women. And while it can be a time of physical and emotional turmoil, it is also a natural process and it will end at some point. Having said that, please remember that just because menopause is a natural process that doesn’t mean you have to suffer with it. There are treatments to lessen the impact of these hormonal, physical and emotional changes and asking for them is nothing to feel bad about.

As premenopausal, perimenopausal, menopausal and post-menopausal symptoms are being taken more seriously and are studied and researched, and as this part of women’s lives is finally becoming less hidden, there are things to take comfort in. First , we know a lot more now about what happens to women’s bodies in this phase of our lives. Second, there are treatments that can help mitigate some of the disruption caused by menopause and the time leading up to and away from it. And finally, we can talk about this, about how we feel physically and emotionally, and hopefully knowing each other’s stories will help us feel more supported and less overwhelmed during such a turbulent time in our lives.

Claudette Kulkarni

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