In this email:

1. On tea and tweaking systems
2. Next free workshop
3. 3 Top Videos
4. Recent popular Tweet
5. Feature article: Acceptance vs Resignation

Hi Reader,

Sometimes little things make a big difference. After years of trying and experimenting and complaining and frustration, I have finally got my looseleaf tea system down to an easy and smooth rhythm, with all of the things that I need to make everything from brewing to clean up working in a way that works for me.

I drink a lot of tea (well, not technically tea tree leaves, because I'm allergic to caffeine, but I love tisanes and herbals, often the fruitier the better), and I'm so happy to finally have all of the parts working smoothly so I don't end up with lumps of icky, dried out tea that's hard to clean out of a strainer, or feeling like it's too hard to bother brewing in the first place.

When I see my clients starting to experiment with small things in their life, things that have been annoying them for ages, and they spontaneously start playing around with them and experimenting and tweaking to make them better, I know that they have crested an important hill.

This is what naturally happens when the mind stats starts to shift from how everything is awful, and it will never get better, to feeling capable of making useful changes in your life and doing something about it.

Even if it the things they start changing aren't the big scale things that they most want to, making these little changes is a step in the direction of rewiring the brain to feel like they have efficacy, to trust themself to be able to handle more things. And over time they will take on more and more things and start to see ways to take on the big stuff.

My tea system is just a tea system, at one level. At another level, it's also an indication of how far I have come, and it's just one of very many things that I have made work better in my life. And the more of these little things that I tweak and fix and make better, the more I of my life I enjoy.

In my article below, I go into one aspect of this shift, the difference between acceptance and resignation.

What little things have you experimented with making better in your life recently? How do you feel about being able to do that?

Wishing you a neurowonderful day,
Heather

P.S. By the way, I like and use teabags, too. I've just found that the variety of flavors and mixes that are only available in looseleaf form from local suppliers are lovely. And I like the hands-on aspect of the many steps involved (when the system works smoothly).

P.P.S. An early heads-up: I'm taking off time to rest and restore and come back energized: the last week of March and the first two weeks of April.

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Next Free Public Workshop

What to Expect in the Later Identified Autism Journey

Are you figuring out as an adult that you’re Autistic, not broken, weird (in a bad way), or wrong after all?

Are you working on figuring out what that means for your future, and reframing your past with this new info?

Are you feeling lost and found, happy and angry, confused and clear, questioning and hopeful?

And wondering a lot what to do next, what comes next in the process, and how to make this new understanding of yourself benefit you and hopefully make things better?

That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this workshop.

Based on my own experience and having accompanied dozens of others through the process, here’s an overview of what to expect and some practical tips for each phase of the unfolding Journey.

Tuesday, May 14th
12 PM PT - 3 PM ET - 8 PM BST

3 Top Videos

Links to transcripts are in the video descriptions.
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​Autistic Burnout Recovery Is About Reducing Dissonance​

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​I saw through the social norms​

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​Self-regulation strategies are unique​

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Recent Popular Tweet​
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Heather Cook 🦓🖖Autistic Life Coach @hmm_cook At some point, in a last ditch effort to preserve itself, your body physically shuts down. It says “no, I can't do the things that have been hurting me anymore.”  1/2 #AutisticBurnout #Burnout #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD 8:31 AM • Feb 26, 2024 3 Retweets 31 Likes Read 2 replies

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Acceptance vs Resignation

​Read this on my website here​

I’m going to try to describe something with very subtle nuance. I’m not sure how well this is going to get across what I intend, but I’d like to try.

In my own Journey of figuring out I’m Autistic, reframing my life with that info, and trying to make things better yet running into lots of difficulties and road blocks (both external and internal), I’ve noticed a subtle yet important difference between accepting the situation for what it is and resigning myself to the situation.

Acceptance is more like, “Well, this situation isn’t what I wanted, but this is the current situation and I’ll deal with what it is.” Whereas resignation is more like, “Well, that’s the way it is and there’s nothing I can do about it.” The second is significantly disempowering; it often leads to inaction, to staying stuck in that situation instead of feeling capable of doing anything about it.

Resignation is the one we see more often. It’s this feeling of, “Oh, that sucks and there’s nothing I can do about it, so why bother trying?” And then you just stew in your own juices, often generating resentment, and sometimes learned helplessness.

It’s negativity. Intense negativity and frustration. It leads to lots of complaining, possibly so much complaining and negativity that other people don’t want to be around you, and it may even drive people away (which reinforces the negative thoughts and leads to more rumination).

I’ve been in that intense negative space, convinced that nothing would ever work, that it was useless, that there was no way out, that it was going to be like that forever. That I was broken, and no one understood, and they were all idiots anyway. That the world was against me, and nothing that anyone suggested could possibly work (to be fair, a lot of it didn’t work, but maybe some of it could have if I had been in a different headspace).

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From resignation to acceptance

Clearly, I’m still here and writing this to you, and I have a pretty good life now, so what changed?

It wasn’t my circumstances that changed at first. Those did change, but only very slowly over several years, and only after things started changing inside me first.

The start of it all was figuring out that I’m Autistic, not broken. Realizing that for three and a half decades I didn’t have a key piece of information about myself, and reframing my whole life with that new info.

That wasn’t the only thing that made a difference, but it was the turning point for me.

Unbeknownst to me (until I looked back at it years later), it helped me subtly start moving from resignation to acceptance.

Accepting that this is the brain that I have, and the life that I have, and the circumstances that I have, and that I can deal with it (a little bit at a time). That I can and will face my life head on. Even when it’s hard, and slow, and icky, and uncomfortable, and uncertain, and not what I wanted it to be: I will deal with what it is.

When I made that mental shift, I found parts of my life that I could start trying to change. (Others took a long time before I managed that.)

I think that the shift from resignation to acceptance was about trusting myself to be able to deal with whatever the situation was. Trusting myself (now, every day, and every moment) to be able to face the situation in front of me, and sometimes to be able to do something about it. When there’s nothing to do, at least I’m not pretending or wishing (much) that it were otherwise. I’m simply dealing with the reality of what is in front of me, one moment at a time.

I hope I’m making sense here. What are you getting from this? I’d love to read your take on this in the comments on my blog or by replying to this email.

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About Heather
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Hi, I’m Heather. I’m Autistic, ADHD, disabled, and building a life I love.

I coach Autistic and other neurodivergent humans on creating their own neurowonderful lives.

Want personalized support in making your life more autism-friendly? See if 1:1 coaching is a good fit for you.
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