And we are not talking about an Air BnB or anything. Over the past few weeks I have been having tutoring sessions with a service that focuses on dealing with neuro diversity and how people cope in their day to day lives.
To say the sessions have raised some interesting questions and points would be an understatement. Coping mechanisms, triggers, and other observations on how I and others function day to day.
I have a provisional session with Learning Support who referred me to Genius Within who offer the tutoring. During that extended call lots of questions were asked and scenarios run through. I am sure I posted about this previously.
I always find it interesting to have discussions about these things as it makes me actually think about the processes I go through and how I deal with things, rather than running on auto pilot and just doing whatever it is I do day to day. I think I have previously mentioned this, and reflected on the similarity to giving driving commentary, and becoming more aware of your thought processes.
As we travel through life we take things for granted, learn to deal with things without thinking about them, and almost become unaware of just how good we have become at dealing with lots of things at the same time, without a second thought.
While that is an excellent skill to have, it is also a weakness when it comes to identifying issues. Imagine a car, you buy it from new, everything is going fine, but as time goes by you are so used to it being reliable and working well that you start to neglect it a little. Don’t check the oil, or service it because all is going ok. When something starts to feel a bit wrong you have no idea what might have caused it. But because you have never check anything you would not know where to start finding the problem. Probably not the best comparison but kinda makes sense.
Well, if you understood that, now apply it to the brain, and how we sometimes don’t pay attention to both how we process things and how we feel. At least not until it is too late. Once you realise you are not feeling great it is often after you have really started to not feel right, or how you have started just coping with things you struggle with. That can be over a relatively short period of time or in some cases many years.
For me, having these conversations allows me to become self aware and gain a better understanding of how I work day to day. How I have learned to cope with things that I have previously struggled with, and most importantly identify the things I still occasionally have a problem with. This is the really important thing for me, as I know I am terrible at learning to cope or get through things, but usually badly or to my detriment.
These sessions are an opportunity for me to take a step back for a second and look on as a 3rd party. While being guided by a tutor who is knowledgeable and has suggestions of ways of identifying times and tasks I struggle with, and discusses them with me so I can have a better idea of dealing with them and can offer coping mechanisms and alternative ways of approaching such situations.
I had my 3rd one hour session today, and I made a number of observations. Firstly just how comfortable I am doing these sessions. They are on Teams, which previously would have made me very uncomfortable, but on these I am at ease. The nature of the conversation helps no end. A structured conversation had with a very casual approach. Almost like shooting the breeze with a friend, and occasionally hitting on a few poignant topics.
The next observation is just how many coping mechanisms I have put in place over the years. As we spoke about challenges that arise, and situations where I feel myself starting to shut down, I offered a number of examples of ways I work through such situations. As I did so I started to realise that I have put a lot more things in place to help me get by than I knew. From taking a moment to breathe, through to approaching the situation from an alternative angle.
Just like my CBT sessions, it was enlightening and also a little rewarding to realise just how well I was doing on my own. Rather than being offered a plethora of strategies, I almost get confirmation that I am doing the right things, while being shown a few other ways of dealing with things when my usual methods are not working. I hope this is making sense!
Anyway, I have my final session next week, then the report is written up and fed back to me to offer to Learning Support at work to see if there are any adjustments needed for me when it comes to my day to day and learning new processes. I am sure my line manager will be understanding if this is the case 🙂
Anyway, that is off my chest now, and I feel better for it. It feels like an eternity since I wrote anything here, and I know I need to try harder to make entries, even if it is short and sweet ones. It is definitely something I need to do more of for my own sake and sanity.
Right, I am off!
Oh one more thing….. One of the goals of this process is to determine if I actually fall under the label of any neuro diversity so to speak. It is not a goal or an ambition for me to have letters to describe me, but as regular readers will know it is something that definitely interests me, even just to know.
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