Nothing changes for any of us when we feel we can’t be ourselves and then we’re blamed because of it. It wasn’t about creativity, exploration, curiosity, ease and flow, but about productivity, urgency and reaching our potential so we could prove that we could be enough. But I think somewhere along our journeys we learned that wasn’t possible. We all deserved to experience the fullness of our beings and our humanity in spaces where we felt safe enough to be ourselves. We should never have learned that our potential was connected to being in hyperfocus consistently, but instead learned that it was natural to have time to rest and be taken care of afterwards when we did (rather than feel we need to work ourselves to burnout to make up for all the ways we couldn’t get it right). It bothers me that something that might come as naturally as dropping into flow for many of us, can turn into something that we’re praised for as we ignore our bodies’ needs to the point of discomfort or even harm.īut maybe if we had learned about who we were, how we operated and what we needed to be at our best, we never would have had to experience hyperfocus like this and we could have floated into flow more often. I want us all to be seen in our humanity and it bothers me that so many of us know we can’t be. I’d rather be seen in my humanity than having to say things that make me seem better than human because of what I might do naturally that’s different from others. I don’t think of anything that we do naturally to be a superpower, but I do think that people have unique talents and strengths because we’re human and all humans do. So, if I could drop into them both so quickly, when and how did it all go wrong? Where did I learn that the urgency to have something completed, to be right, to be perfect, to be enough superseded, the joy, rhythm and ease I could have felt doing the same thing, if only I had been left to work without fear of what would happen if I didn’t complete it as expected? Those are two different experiences to me. That leaves me checking and rechecking it hours after it’s been posted. Sometimes I can’t even determine what I’m hyperfocused on and when I’ll stop, which would make me feel even worse. But at other times, I can also hyperfocus on the message of a post for hours, spiralling into OCD and still not feel great after I’ve done my compulsions and shared it. I can drop into flow easily when I write depending on what I’m writing and who it’s for. To drop into flow quickly felt like something really powerful, but hyperfocus? I wasn’t so sure. There was no shame or fear attached to flow like I’d eventually feel when I fell into hyperfocus. Flow was about ease, the skill level seemed to match what I could do so I felt more confident, my interest was accounted for. I knew about flow and I realised that this experience was something that hit differently. It never sat right with me that something that I kept getting told was a neurodivergent strength would leave my body in tatters and leave me feeling panicked and never really satisfied after. When did we develop that practice and who was it for? Where did we learn that it was OK to ignore our own needs to the point of agony? Who told us that? Why is something that can drive us to betray our bodies being sold as an ND strength? Why is it like that? Was it always supposed to be like that? When I think about it as something that we might go into easily (but often not by choice of either activity or time), but it can keep us stuck, spiralling into an anxious vortex all while denying our own basic needs, all I got were questions. I wrote that because I wanted us to reflect on when something like hyperfocus goes from supporting us to something that hinders us and why that might be.
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