In yesterday’s post, I was going to talk about why I don’t do groups–and I’ll get to that (eventually)–but I went waaaaay off the rails as I ended up talking about burnout instead. I decided to go with it because it’s obviously on my mind, and I want to get it under control before I completely lose my shit.
It’s ironic. Weapons have saved me, and now weapons are my burden. I am being completely honest. I can do the warmups/stretches with no problem. Then, my brain goes, “Uhhhhhh”, and I procrastinate. I have to force myself to go through it all. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it as I’m doing it–I do. It’s just a small (or not so small) part of my brain going, “I’m soooooo tired.” To be fair, my sleep has been really shitty lately. I don’t think it’s pneumonia again (hopefully), but I can’t rule it out. I’m not as tired as I was when I had it, but I’m pretty groggy.
Also, it’s not that I physically can’t do it; I can. It’s my mind saying it doesn’t want to. And, yes, my body is tired (as I usually am), but I’m not in any distress while practicing.
Here’s how this relates to my neurodivergence. I tend to go overboard when I’m into something. Way overboard. I don’t know where the ‘this is an appropriate amount of effort and time to put into this’ line is.
Here’s a related tidbit about me. My hunger gauge is completely broken. I struggled with anorexia and bulimia when I was younger. Remember, my mother put me on my first diet when I was seven and hounded me about my weight until I put my foot down in my thirties. It was too late by then, though.
Ok. I had a hunch about neurodivergence and not recognizing internal body signals, and I was right. The ability to know what is going on in your body is called interoception. It’s how you know you’re hungry, tired, thirsty, etc. People with neurodivergence (I could find more about ADHD than autism) have a harder time recognizing their internal signals. Whether it’s because of hyperfocus or just bodily issues in general, people who are neurodivergent tend to be more susceptible to eating disorders as well.
I say this because I cannot tell when I’m hungry or thirsty. I’m pretty good about drinking regularly, but I’m very bad at eating. I don’t like breakfast, so I don’t eat when I first get up. I like to do my Taiji/Bagua practice before I eat, which means I don’t eat my first full meal* until two or three hours after I wake up.
Side note to the side note: I don’t do breakfast. I never have. I realize this is heresy in this day and age, but it’s also propaganda that was pushed by Christians as a morality power play and a way to sell bacon. I mean, it makes some sense to eat when you break your fast as it were, but there’s no reason it’s morally better to eat when you first wake up–or what you eat when you first wake up. In fact, in the old days, it was pretty much whatever was leftover from the night before.
Oh side note in tandem: eating late at night isn’t necessarily bad for you, either. That’s also something that’s pushed heavily. Both as a moral thing and as something that’s bad for your health. This article by the University of Rochester dispels some of the myths about eating before you go to bed.
Basically, I don’t eat until three or four (or more) hours after I get up. Then I have a few dishes with my coffee. That is my breakfast. Oh, and I always have an orange. I was having aches, and my Taiji teacher told me to eat an orange a day to break up the lactic acid. She heard it from a bodybuilder, and while I was skeptical, it worked.
Then, I munch my way to lunch–which is about three hours later. That’s my one big meal of the day, and I snack my way through the rest of the night. Which means a bowl of cereal here, a bagel with cream cheese there (all GF/DF), etc. Chips, too. two or three servings of fruit, and a few servings of veggies.
Yes, I know three square meals, blah, blah, blah. Breakfast most important meal of the day bullshit. Don’t eat before you go to sleep or you’ll blow up. It’s all fucking bullshit, and I’m tired of it. I have never eaten on a schedule that was considered normal, and I probably never will. Or rather, I should say this is a ‘flaw’ that I will not be correcting. I put flaw in quotes because I don’t view it as one whereas others might.
I think this might be in the same ballpark for me as my basic anarchist beliefs. What I mean is that as long as whatever someone is doing doesn’t hurt anyone, leave them the fuck alone. That includes me, by the way. If what I’m doing doesn’t hurt anyone, then why shouldn’t I do them? Including how I eat.
I realize how frustrating it must be for me to say that I’m going to write about something, only to be sidetracked almost immediately. That’s part of my neurodivergence, though. I start down one path and then I get distracted by my own thoughts. And in my mind, they’re related. I don’t care if other people see it or not because it’s so clear to me.
This was something I’ve always had difficulty with, by the way. I would make connections in my brain that made so much sense, and I would not bother to mention them in my writing because it seemed so obvious to me. I got in trouble with my Algebra II teacher for not writing down every step, but I couldn’t write down each step because I was making some intuit deductions.
See, I’ve done it yet again. I’ve gone off in a completely differentt direction, and I’m not all that sorry about it. It’s a part of me, and, again, it’s something I’m not very interested in changing about myself. I’ll just have a go at it again tomorrow.
*I eat a bit of something to take my third med. I have to eat my first one without food (and then I eat the second one with it), so I wait half an hour and eat the third one with food.