The Neurodivergent Couple

07/09/2025

We all know the feeling: not even our favorite-favorite shows, foods, or activities sound appealing… On those days, I choose whatever is going to annoy me the least, because I know it’s not that my preferences suddenly changed - just that my happy center is rebooting.

The irony is that I usually pick something I end up enjoying more than I thought!

❤️ Amanda

07/05/2025

Post-Holiday Burnout! The 4th is now the 5th, and I crossed several things off our To Do list…. but my social battery is now permanently at 2%. Today I am handling the burnout. And I knew it was coming. It sent me ETA updates repeatedly yesterday in the pain and anxiety I felt as I scrubbed the fridge and tried wrangling everyone to start our D&D session. Now every cell in my body and brain is saying, “How’d that work out for you?”

Here’s how you know it’s burnout and not just a Monday-kinda-mood:
• You’re irritable and/or emotionally flat — like nothing can quite break through the fog. But if it did, you’d still want it to go away
• Your executive functioning is in shambles. You forgot to take your meds, brush your teeth, and oh no — the laundry has marinated in the washer.
• You’re physically sore, touch-avoidant, or hypersensitive — the fabric that was fine yesterday feels like sandpaper today. Personally, my feet are freezing, but the feeling of socks is a “Nope!” today.
• You feel guilty for needing recovery time… and yet the idea of another conversation makes you want to crawl under the bed with the cat and declare yourself Lord High Keeper of Dust Bunny Lore.

This is not a weakness! It’s our bodies’ equivalent of the check engine light. Refuse to check your functioning, and things caan grind to a halt.

3 Ways to Recover (Without Masking Through It)

1. Recalibrate Your Sensory World

Take stock of what actually helps your nervous system feel safe.
Not “relaxed.” Not “socially appropriate.” Safe.
Turn the lights low. Switch to monotone podcasts or white noise. Wrap yourself in fleece and eat something that gives you texture joy.
Rest is not just about stopping. It’s about reclaiming your sensory baseline.

Pro tip: Put on the exact same outfit three days in a row if it feels good. No one’s grading you.

2. Name the Masking & Normalize the Crash

You don’t need to earn recovery time by proving how hard the holiday was.
But it was hard. The eye contact, the small talk, the family politics, the neurotypical expectations… even if you were “fine,” your nervous system remembers.
Say it out loud: “I masked through that.”
Then: “No wonder I’m tired.”
Then: “It’s okay to need downtime now.”

Pro tip: Write a “holiday debrief” just for yourself. What helped? What hurt? Use it to advocate for future you.

3. Create a Gentle Reentry Plan

Jumping straight back into productivity culture is like trying to sprint on a sprained ankle.
Instead, triage your life. What’s essential? What can wait? What can you delegate, automate, or just not do this week?
Do one small, satisfying task — not because it’s on your to-do list, but because it gives you back a sense of choice.

✦ Pro tip: Make a “soft schedule” for the week. Leave white space between every block. That’s not wasted time. That’s your buffer zone.

Reflect & Reset

You’re not broken because you’re tired. You’re not weak because you need quiet.
Burnout isn’t failure — it’s feedback.
The goal isn’t to push through it. The goal is to emerge from it with a deeper respect for your rhythms, your boundaries, and the beautiful, buzzing ecosystem that is your brain.

Burnout is real.
Recovery is radical.
And you, friend, are worthy of both.

07/04/2025

It’s July 4th - Let others party with fireworks and flair. You can choose soft lights, quiet rooms, and radical rest. This is your revolution, too—and no one gets to decide what freedom looks like in your life but you.

10 Challenges Neurodivergent People Might Face on July 4th (and What We Can Do Instead)

🔷 Fireworks: A Sensory Siege Disguised as a Celebration
Fireworks don’t whisper, they detonate. They arrive with no warning, no consent, and no plan for your nervous system. What’s billed as “awe-inspiring” may feel more like an attack from the sky.
Instead: Noise-canceling headphones, blackout curtains, or a well-timed road trip to literally anywhere quiet. Freedom includes skipping the explosions.

🔷 Cookouts: Chaos Served with a Side of Social Anxiety
There’s no script at a barbecue. Just errant frisbees, shouting children, overcooked meat, and an infinite stream of small talk you didn’t ask for. It’s like being trapped in an unedited group text thread—live.
Instead: Host a small, predictable hangout with your chosen humans. Or don’t. Loneliness and solitude are not the same thing.

🔷 Disrupted Routines: Independence Day, Code for Disorder
Neurotypical people call it “holiday magic.” Neurodivergent folks call it “where did my schedule go and why is dinner four hours late?” When your sense of safety is built on rhythm, July 4th feels like someone’s stomping on your metronome.
Instead: Keep anchor points—your morning coffee (or tea or smoothie), your meds, your nightly wind-down. You don’t need to perform chaos to prove you’re festive.

🔷 The Unrelenting Anxiety of Unscheduled Fireworks
The bombs bursting in air don’t stick to a calendar. They start on July 1st, crescendo on the 4th, and keep right on through your attempt at peace on the 7th. Hypervigilance becomes a roommate who never pays rent.
Instead: Try predictive coping—white noise machines, weighted blankets, or a cheeky little escape to a cabin without a single neighbor.

🔷 Masking Patriotism: The Performance of Festive Neurotypicality
Smile! Pretend you’re not overwhelmed! Pretend the sensory assault is magical and that you enjoy being seen in public! Masking becomes the main event, and your authentic self slips out the back door.
Instead: Celebrate as you are. Or don’t. Authenticity is more revolutionary than any fireworks show.

🔷 Conflicted Patriotism: This Land Is… Complicated
For those who straddle multiple marginalized identities, “freedom” may sound more like marketing than truth. The celebration of liberty hits different when you’ve spent your life navigating systems that never planned for your liberation.
Instead: Reclaim the day. Journal. Protest. Rest. Honor your ancestors in your own language.

🔷 Food Sensitivities: The BBQ Buffet of Texture Nightmares
What’s a treat for others may be a sensory gauntlet for you. Smoke in your eyes, mayo-based mystery salads, the wet crunch of coleslaw. Social norms demand you smile while your gag reflex quietly screams.
Instead: Bring your own comfort food or skip the food entirely. Nourishment isn’t a group project.

🔷 Trauma Triggers Masquerading as Fireworks
For some, the boom-boom-pow is a PTSD tripwire, not a party trick. Military veterans, survivors, and anyone with a fragile startle reflex aren’t being “overly sensitive”—they’re experiencing a full-body revolt.
Instead: Build a trauma-informed plan. Inform your people. Create a sensory bunker. Choose safety over spectacle.

🔷 Heat: The Overlooked Sensory Offender
It’s not just heat. It’s the sticky, the itchy, the can’t-breathe, the get-this-shirt-off-me-before-I-die kind of heat. Sweat becomes betrayal. Sunscreen feels like regret.
Instead: Embrace nightfall. Stay indoors. Drape yourself in linen and praise the gods of air conditioning.

🔷 FOMO and the Lie of the Perfect Celebration
You didn’t want to go. But then you saw her Instagram story. Their family photo. That glittering, curated illusion of fun. Suddenly, your quiet choice feels like failure.
Instead: Curate your own feed. Mute. Log off. Joy doesn’t need an audience.

07/04/2025

Bubbles are HUGE with some of my clients. I love that I can find bubble juice solutions that give us huge, lasting bubbles that are also skin sensitivity-friendly. Because bubbles that pop as soon as they come off the wand are just less fun! Simple. Beautiful. Universal.

04/17/2025

"Let's talk correlation and causation, for a moment. There's a lot of chatter lately about finding the "real cause" of autism. But it's important to remember that autism affects individuals - and is expressed - in a multitude of ways. There is no "typical phenotype" when it comes to autism. Yes, there are some factors that appear more common, but while everyone is obsessively looking for the "molecule of autism", as it were, we are rapidly losing sight of what it will entail to create an inclusive picture of ASD.

Currently, some people are latching onto RFK Jr.'s promise to find the cause of autism by September. There are plenty of other professionals who have explained that getting approval for a study with considerations from the IRB don't align with that timeline, so I won't go into that here. Among them, I recommend Dr. Zachary Rubin's explanation for being thorough enough without being too dry.

Looking at it logistically, it would really be most feasible to have this kind of turnaround with a qualitative study, most likely a meta-analysis that examines the results of existing studies. The problem with this kind of study is that it rests on the quality of the studies used and the validity of their results. Just as examining all results that have ever been released presents a mountain of data to analyze, it also means researchers would have to examine each study and reach a consensus regarding whether the study shows and biases or conflicts of interest that might skew results." - excerpted from an article I am writing.

As a comparison, consider this study on the effects of early intervention for children with an autism diagnosis, "Missed Early Intervention Opportunities for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder", Daniel E. Lidstone: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.70043. I recommend reviewing section 4.5 concerning the study's limitations. Even though the study used data from a national survey administered from 2021 to 2023, you will see that multiple limitations are listed. Among them is the reliability of participant recall, which is something everyone faces when they have to remember details further and further after an event occurs.

With regard to a meta-analysis, it can affect results if the original researchers are unable to recall data concerning the study. Contacting original study authors and their teams may seem unnecessary since the results are already published, but if there is concern about data validity, interpretations, or possible ethical conflicts, the study authors and participants are the ones who have the most complete version of events. However, our access to new methodologies, greater understanding, and higher standards of treatment means that, in most cases, a new large-scale study would likely provide more reliable data than studies even a decade old.

Early intervention (EI) is essential for improving developmental outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, participation during the critical neurodevelopmental (0–3 years) pe...

04/11/2025

Did you know there is science behind Spring Fever? I don’t just mean the typical urge to literally clean house - we also get the urge to “clean house” when it comes to unhealthy habits and relationships. If it suddenly seems like you feel the need to rid your life of toxic energy - it’s not just you! Longer days and the return of UVB wavelengths associated with increased Vitamin D production leads to the energy to do more than just hunker down and hope for the best. And with warmer weather, more daylight to enjoy, and maybe some newfound energy, you may find others are also taking time to reconnect with old friends or try new places to build better experiences.

04/09/2025

Autism Acceptance Month! While awareness is important, sometimes it can feel like true acceptance - embracing neurodivergent communication, sensory needs, and so many amazing perspectives - is still lifetimes away. Each of us is valid and valuable just as we are, not just on some future day when we’ve been “perfected”.

04/08/2025

There was a time when women didn’t have ADHD - they were “just” lazy, daydreaming, flibbertigibbets. Let’s recognize how far diagnoses for women have come, with so far still to go.

The aim of this review was to explore the impact of living with undiagnosed ADHD and adult diagnosis on women. A systematic literature search was completed using three databases. Eight articles were considered relevant based on strict inclusion ...

03/27/2025

Even as a born extrovert (now ambivert), even I find socializing can be draining, especially for neurodivergent folks. Learning your energy limits and scheduling recovery time can prevent burnout. Do you prefer frequent short interactions or deeper, less frequent ones?

Also, I am trying out one of the Visible Health armbands to trying managing my symptoms better. It hasn’t even been 30 days yet, but I notice it helps my husband understand how my body handles shared tasks, like grocery shopping, compared to his.

03/25/2025

Forgetting important dates, chores that go undone, messages that will never see the light of day…. Executive dysfunction isn’t laziness—it’s a neural network alteration. Sticky note reminders, alarms on your smartphone, calendar sharing with your partner - there’s lots of ways we can adapt. What’s your favorite go-to?