Navigating Life with AuDHD: Finding Balance Amidst the Waves.

 

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Living Between Sparks and Silence

Living with AuDHD feels like standing between two tides that never quite sync.

One pulls me toward fixation—toward passion, depth, and intensity. The other recedes just as quickly, leaving me overstimulated and searching for relief. My brain is constantly in motion, chasing interests, losing them, and then chasing them again. It can feel like a battle—not because I don’t know what I love, but because my brain moves faster than my ability to stay still.

Some days, I’ll pour every ounce of myself into something I love—writing, researching, creating—only to feel my energy evaporate halfway through. Suddenly, the task I was so excited about feels more like a chore.

I judge myself for losing interest so quickly, wondering why I can’t just stay with one thing long enough to feel finished. I notice the frustration and irritability rise inside me, and I feel guilty for even noticing it.

There’s this inner shift that happens. It’s like a switch flipping on without my knowledge or consent. One moment I’ve got a spark, my thoughts are generating innovative ideas, and then the next, that spark dies out—overstimulated by the very thing that once felt invigorating.

It’s complicated because my nervous system is begging me to rest, but my curiosity is still yearning to be fed. I’m unsure which instinct to follow without betraying the other.

Sometimes, I just close my eyes and try to breathe through the tension, reminding myself that I’m not the failure I think I am.

Living this way has meant learning to exist in fragments and waves rather than straight lines. My interests don’t fade because they bore me—they retreat because my brain is demanding something else in the moment. So, I jump from spark to spark, carrying a quiet grief for all the moments I couldn’t follow through. My mind just speaks that way. It’s restless, vivid, and always searching for balance.

I always thought this meant I lacked discipline, commitment, or the drive to achieve. But AuDHD is a collision of two different needs living in the same body. One part craves stimulation and creativity. The other longs for predictability and depth. When those needs clash, it creates unbearable tension.

I didn’t recognize this as a nervous system response. Before I even knew what AuDHD was, I internalized the struggle as something shameful. But I learned to push through exhaustion and force myself to stay engaged even when my body wanted to shut down. When I couldn’t sustain the same level of interest or energy, I added it to the ever-growing list of reasons I thought I was falling short. I still feel echoes of that self-judgment sometimes, and I have to consciously remind myself that I’m not failing—I’m learning.

It wasn’t until much later in life that things started to click. I started seeing myself for the first time in a new light. It’s like I was finally handed the key to open a door that had always been in my dreams—but one that would never let me in, no matter how hard I knocked.

Through that door, I found my truest self: the one I’d kept locked away for fear of being seen. I even let myself linger there a little, just to take it all in—the relief, the recognition, the quiet joy of finally knowing myself.

Receiving my AuDHD diagnosis felt like a lifeline.

Even though I felt confused and hesitant at first, it opened a door to the life I was always meant to live. Not one where I’m constantly pretending to be someone else, but one in which I can stay true to myself.

For the first time, I could see that I’m not inconsistent or lazy. I’m deeply complex, sensitive, and alive in ways most people might never fully understand. And honestly? That relief was one I didn’t even know I was waiting for. It’s like finally letting out a long-held breath—and feeling the tension dissolve…just a little.

Masking wasn’t something I had ever noticed. I had no clue I’d been wearing one my whole life just to exist in the world. It became the persona I created to feel “normal” in society. It was how I survived classrooms, workplaces, and social situations where my differences felt too obvious. I remember feeling proud of my ability to “fit in,” and yet exhausted in ways I couldn’t explain.

But it all came at a cost—exhaustion, self-doubt, and the quiet grief of denying parts of myself that were just as valid as anyone else’s. Just realizing I didn’t have to hide my mind, that I could actually exist as I am, was the first glimmer of self-acceptance.

Even now, it’s still fresh, but I’m learning to honor how my brain responds instead of constantly trying to push it all into a place it doesn’t belong. Sometimes I pause and simply watch myself, amazed at how intricate and sensitive my mind truly is.

I’m embracing my curiosity without shaming my fatigue.

I’m accepting my intensity without fear.

And I’m trusting that my nervous system knows exactly what it needs.

This newfound self-understanding has shed light onto things I never thought possible. In that understanding, I finally give myself permission to exist as I am—and truly appreciate the beautiful, restless, brilliant mind I was gifted with.

What parts of your mind or personality have you felt pressured to hide? How might your “restless” or intense traits actually be guiding you toward your own brilliance?

~

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Nicole Greco  |  Contribution: 11,745

Nicole Greco is a writer, mental health advocate, and creator of Embrace the Unseen, a gentle space for neurodivergent souls navigating identity, healing, and quiet living.Wit… Read full bio

author: Nicole Greco

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Editor: Molly Murphy

Love is Learning to Play.

 

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*Editor’s Note: this is an excerpt from Kim’s upcoming book, The Art of Embracing Change: On Creativity, Contemplation, and Midlife Transformation. You can learn more about it here.
~

The week the contractor handed me the key to my new art studio in Crestone, I met Steve.

It was the middle of the pandemic. I had built the studio as an escape—or a plan B—from a one-bedroom condo on Denver’s Capitol Hill, a place to wait out the lockdowns in a tiny mountain town most Coloradans have never heard of.

I wasn’t looking for anyone to share it with.

Years earlier, on the eve of 50 and after yet another disappointment, I’d sworn off relationships. I was tired of pining for something that was not happening in my life. I accepted the fate of being a never-married woman, and I put my focus on making my art.

I moved to Denver and joined a coop gallery, rented my first small studio, and took workshops learning to paint.

One full-moon evening in July, sitting my shift at the gallery, I met an artist with a green glint in his eye at the neighboring gallery. He invited me for coffee the next day.

A few weeks later he drove down for the weekend with a gift: a roll of butcher paper and a box of charcoal.

The studio in Crestone was still bare. I had a table, an easel, and nothing on the walls. The unfinished floor was still blinding white.

We cut long sheets of the heavy brown paper and tacked them to the wall. I put on a playlist. He spread the charcoal across the table. Then we took turns making marks without saying a word.

I drew a circle. He drew a squiggle. He drew a horse, and I gave it something to eat.

Sometimes our marks overlapped. Sometimes they sat side by side. Sometimes one of us would drop the thread completely and start something new. Without speaking, we were asking each other questions. What happens if I do this? What will he do next? How do I answer that?

It was so fun. We laughed the whole time.

Once we’re out of childhood, “fun and games” picks up a bad reputation. We decide play is a waste of time. When we’re in the middle of a big life transition, many of us do the opposite of play. We work harder, or try to prove something. We treat every new beginning like a test we might fail.

I know, because that’s how I approached love and life for decades.

When I finally accepted my aloneness, I built my art studio so I could play. A week later, my future husband showed up.

When I was studying contemplative psychology at Naropa, we heard one phrase over and over while learning to be therapists: it’s about process, not content. Listen to the feeling tone of the session, not the storyline. The growth happens in the interaction between two people, not in picking apart old stories.

I might even update that phrase: It’s about play.

That afternoon with Steve was all play. No history to explain. No future to negotiate. Just two people finding out how the other one responds.

Play is permission to release attachment to outcomes. In play, there is no failure.

I think that’s why we cut through each others’ defenses. If either one of us had arrived with an agenda or a plan, we might have balked. Instead, we brought openness and invitation and laughter.

A year later, he proposed. The year after that, we hiked into the wilderness and married each other, just the two of us. I was 58.

Now the studio floor is stained with encaustic wax and oil paint. We share the studio on different schedules, which is why it works. I still believe we each need a room of our own, a place to make bad work without anyone looking over our shoulder—a place to play.

Most of us take life, and ourselves, far too seriously. I’m absolutely guilty of this. When I notice this these days, my go-to remedy is to get in the studio and start moving my hands. It makes no difference what I am doing, but the act of making helps me get out of the analyzing mind. It lets my mind rest.

And a rested mind is ready to play.

Next time you find yourself getting too serious? Get some recycled paper and charcoal, put on a playlist, and let the music move your hand. Notice what feels fun, and let that guide you to your next steps.

~

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Kim Roberts  |  Contribution: 3,510

Kim Roberts, M.A., is an artist, author, and meditation teacher based in Crestone, Colorado. Her new book, The Art of Embracing Change: On Creativity, Contemplation, and Midli… Read full bio

author: Kim Roberts

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Editor: Nicole Cameron

Taurus Full Moon:

 

 Excavating Wounds & Fears to Alchemize Pain back into Power. {October 26}

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0Boost ScoreAnna Palmer (35,750)
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“Whether it’s science or magic, if it’s of fun benefit, enjoy!” ~ ed

~

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson

~

We are circling the drain now, deep into the depths and chasms of the psyche and self, down in and through the sewage of the inner and outer waters, clearing and cleansing out with mud and sludge like precision.

It has felt messy, jumbled, chaotic, distorted, and inverted somehow for the last month and beyond. How did our world as we know it and our former sense of self, safety, and security get turned upside down in the blink of an eye? The collapse of worlds we once existed in (not thrived in but merely survived in) now turned on their heads.

More often than not, becoming the inner master, alchemist, and high priest(ess) within is forged through the fires of purification. Painful as all hell at the time, scraping our egos off, like scraping off the caked-on mud in our car tire wells from years past or scraping the fascia of chronically overtightened muscles, tension patterns, and points in our bodies. Painstakingly slow this process is, as much as we would like to speed it up. We cling to the familiar and what was, our egoic fearful minds screaming to turn back. For God to save and rescue us from our own soul’s process of transformation and necessary evolution. So we run. We flee. We fly before our roots have planted themselves in the new soil and ground.

Like a plane taking off at full speed down a S-curved runway, as we take flight, we clip our wing, our Achilles’ heel, screeching now to a sudden halt, immobilizing us like the plane now forced to abort its mission and return to the ground. Forward movement driven by erratic fire, fury, and instinctual impulse to run now completely stalled by injury. Like healing an injured bird’s wing, we are humbled by the painful lesson of forced rest and stillness. Pain is a powerful teacher and one many of us only receive when the medicine is needed. Pain is a messenger and portal. Because perhaps the physical wound, injury, or ailment was the exact medicine we needed to make the life pivot we’ve been asking for.

We do all we can to escape the inevitable moment when we have no choice but to surrender to the medicine in the wound. To the change and loss of former sense of stability, self-value, and security previously dependent on outside sources. To what is already underway, our former attachments and self-bondage cast into the fire for alchemical transformation and purification. A five-pointed star, a pentagon, a fiery flame flickers out from the fire, a symbol of this deep soul change already in flux.

We are the change we’ve sought. We are becoming the fire of alchemy. Our attachments and fears the kindling we add to keep the fire burning. Burn, baby, burn, as the fire melts away what has served its purpose, melting away the old and leaving ash as fodder for the earth. Only the chasm of the space left from what has been released. We exhale into the space. The void of the in-between. The liminal space between worlds. Who are we now? Who are we without these former attachments, fears, sense of security, and stability predisposed on things staying fixed and unchangeable?

We are not meant to be fixed and frozen in time. We are meant to be fluid and flow like the wind, move like the waters, with trust of the current guiding us forward. All we have to do is loosen our gripping hands and unfold our clenched bodies, surrendered on our backs, belly to the sky and trust we are being carried by a wisdom of life that exists within us too. To know that the inherent wisdom of life is taking us to where we need to go and grow now, even if we can’t see the pool of possibility and potential we are being led to just yet.

The nature of these times is poignant, potent, and full of potential for the cycles and seasons of life to show us when to hold on and when to let go like auburn, autumn leaves dusting the earth in trust and surrender of the winter to come, knowing that new life in spring will bud in due time. That life has its seasons of hibernation and rest, a wintering of the soul, a time to recharge and to go within so that new life can form from the void spaces of darkness.

By going into the darkness willingly and in trust, we say to life, “Form me like clay from the mud of the decayed earth I am letting go of now. Mold me into the form I am meant to take now. Make my life the art of death and creation it was always meant to be. Remind me of the innate, cyclical intelligence of nature within me. Help me to remember that I am nature. Remind me that nature too must rest and retreat. So new life can be generated from the soil and seeds of the womb-like darkness here to hold, nurture, and nourish our seeds of new creation taking root in the earth below us.”

Some of us are scraping the bottom of the barrel of old survival and deeply engrained and grooved neural pathways of fear programming. Life tower moments of collapse, destruction, and abysmal conditions playing out in real time. As we find our way back to center of truer self, we wonder how we got so disconnected, severed off from our values, inner alignment, and life force in the first place. Call it conditioning. Call it karma. Call it ancestral trauma. Call it patriarchy. Or remember it as divine assignment and mission.

We have been moving through the depths of Scorpio waters for a few weeks now since Venus (the planet governing the feminine energy within us all, our values, self-worth, money, and relationships) has been retrograde since October 3 and will remain until November 13 with a two-week shadow period following this underworld journey. Venus remains in the Scorpio waters until October 25 and will move back into the more at-home sign of Libra until the end of its retrograde journey.

Venus in Scorpio has been anything but comfortable and cozy. Scorpio rules the unseen, hidden emotional worlds and truths, the repressed shadow, the underworld, the subconscious fears, and in the shadow sense, the inner addictive patterns of toxic, unhealthy, codependent attachments. Scorpio season (of which we will be in beginning October 23) amplifies the Scorpionic snake and phoenix rising out of the flames (of all that which was meant to destroy us) journey we have all been on whether consciously or unconsciously. Relational patterns have been under an intense microscope, the ways in which we connect, ghost, disconnect out of fear, and go to war with others’ shadows and demons (or bring out our own).

These past few weeks have been a deep-sea diving time where our souls needed to go through the fires of transformation and alchemy to be shaped like the pearl out of the moistness of the slime-like environment. Similar to a pearl forming in nature’s element, an irritant-like grain of sand or parasite (perhaps a job, life, or relationship unaligned with our core values) entered our energetic or physical shell. Resembling the mollusk or oyster coating the irritant in response with nacre over several years, nature creates the beauty of a pearl. This is the process of Scorpio energy we have been steeping in. Highly uncomfortable, irritating, and forcing us to walk through the fires of change to become the pearl we were always meant to be. But first, the death, the loss, the letting go of what was. And in that free fall, the surrender to our inner guidance leading us now to align with our soul-held values, no longer tied and anchored to others’ (or our own ) ego expectations or attachments to us. When Venus enters Libra, we will hopefully have already excavated our subconscious fears around money, relationships, and our self-value, more equipped to restore balance, reciprocity, and right relationship with these things.

The month of October has been chock-full of Plutonic undertones, with two powerful fixed T squares playing out (one earlier in October and one for the full moon in Taurus), pressuring us to evolve. T square energy is when two planets form a challenging opposition and make at least two or more squares to two or more planets. It is a growth pressure cooker asking all three planets and signs to evolve. The pressure has felt immense at times and inescapable. Currently in fixed sign energies, these signs (Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio) resist change until they have chosen it for themselves and have the internal sense of safety to commit to the change. Pluto here initiates these personal planets (Mars, Mercury, and Venus) into a crucial time of evolutionary change, to unlock and free us from deeply embedded patterns and habits, showing us that we are more than our comfort zones.

We may have felt deeply challenged this last month by external circumstances that felt immensely destabilizing but pushed us to grow and evolve to make a more permanent life change. Big life pivots and choices beckoned so we could create a whole new reality. Pluto in Aquarius reminds us that we have a bigger network of people who are also connected to this higher soul consciousness path and we have the support to align to our future path. As writer, mystic, and author Joseph Campbell once said so wisely, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” And Pluto is the hidden cave where the soul wisdom resides.

Pluto has been on its own retrograde journey since May 6, stationing direct on October 15. The last five months have been a time to go within, into the caves and taverns of our subconscious blocks and fears, to meet the shadows within to excavate the golden shadow of our hidden and repressed gifts. Pluto’s journey into the underworld of Aquarius has shined a light on where community is the missing resource and link for many of us to feel more supported and in our power. We need others. And others need us. There is nothing wrong with needing each other. But we need each other fully in our power and no longer dimming our own individual light and power source out of fear of shining too brightly. Diving headfirst directly into our fears takes courage, bravery, and a true commitment to the soul evolution that only few will know and even lesser will actually walk.

Pluto will be a major key player for the second T square configuration and for this upcoming full moon in the sign of Taurus on October 26 at 12:12 a.m. EST and at 2 degrees of the fixed, earth sign. Taurus energy is stable and steady, fixed, and often times unmovable and unchangeable. Pluto squaring the full moon in Taurus demands change even if at the cost of our former sense of security and sense of self-worth. Taurus energy is slower moving, focused on getting its material needs for safety and security met, having enough resources, and being fairly comfortable and cozy in its home. Taurus feels most secure with stable financial flow. Money is energy though. We can always make subtle micro or more macro adjustments in how we use, spend, and invest our money. Taurus energy is of the body and our embodiment journey in these bodies and how we are connected (or not) to the earth. How resourced and supported and safe (or not) we feel on this earthly plane. Taurus values safety, security, stability, and what is known and familiar above all else, even if to its detriment of self-evolution.

Taurus energy is governed by the planet Venus, so Venus retrograde energies will be illuminated here, while Venus also makes a square to Pluto. This includes the values we are being asked to reprioritize. Taurus ruling this full moon is exalted, stable, and at ease. But, Pluto here is the irritant to the pearl, the discomfort, the fears we are clutching tightly onto while simultaneously resisting alchemizing. Our former sense of stability and safety is under pressure here to transform so we can rise into our more authentic power.

Square to Pluto, deeply held psychological fears and neurosis stir, yet we have more power than we even know to face and alchemize them now. The sun in Scorpio amplifies the T square energy with Pluto and our subconscious fears. Fears may be made manifest, playing out in real time as perceived, material loss. But what we don’t see while in the thick of the material loss is the inner power we are reclaiming. This second T square highlights the discomfort of change and shows us what needs to be built or upgraded to align with our soul values.

The Taurus energy is steady and grounding, anchoring us as we undergo these deep, emotional, Scorpionic transformations. As we meet the depths of our inner psyche and emotional fears, Taurus energy connects us back to the elements and to Gaia to reawaken and reconnect us to the elemental realms and to the inner earth, where we can anchor into unshakeable stability amidst the external, seismic, cataclysmic fluctuations and shifts.

Taurus rules our throat chakra asking us to speak the truths we have been silencing. Free the voice (Taurus) by communicating our deep-held emotional truths (Scorpio). Mercury retrograde in Scorpio from October 24 to November 13 will aid us in this process of truth reclamation and expression, even if we hit sticky and sludgy points along the way. Any repressed fears we are carrying of speaking our truth asked to be excavated here, so we can speak from our power and truth center more effortlessly, less attached to how our truths are received by others.

Chiron, the Wounded Healer, retrograde back in Aries until April 14, 2027, will be conjunct to this full moon in Taurus at 28 degrees of Aries. Chiron will also be opposing Venus in Libra. Chiron in Aries will be illuminating our physical wounds and the wounds of self and self-identity we’ve already been healing but perhaps be resurfacing in intensity. As well as how we carry this sense of wounded self into our relationships and how we value ourselves. Do we feel like we are too much or not enough? Perhaps, both at once. Old physical injuries or body ailments may be popping up here too, as Aries governs our physical body. These can deeply trigger those old survival stories of fear and how worthy we feel to receive. If we’ve tied our worth to the fluctuating health of our bodies, when they change or falter at all our former sense of identity is up for debate.

Knowing the body as a sacred vessel and ally will be key as we move into a deeper and right relationship with it. To honor our bodies as the sacred messengers of the soul they are, here to alert us to anything misaligned or harmful to our spirit or perhaps emotions unassimilated and in need of digesting and feeling our way through. The body is the messenger and we the receiver. And sometimes pain and woundedness is the message we need to hear to remember how to feel safe and connected again in our own bodies and emotions.

Chiron in Aries brings about the tender points of our particular brand of wounding in regards to the body or our sense of self or identity and asks us to build a truer foundation of inner stability and security. Insecurities will be highlighted here. How to feel safe in these bodies no matter their current state of health or how they look to the outside eye. Safety is an inside job after all. And it is up to us to give that sense of safety to ourselves. We are ending survival, fear-based cycles, and many of us are enduring events and tower moments in our lives (physical injury, natural disasters, job and income loss, relationships ending) that are triggering our wounds so we can do the healing needed and make the pivots and course corrections of inner stability so outer stability can form and materialize to truer self-value now.

This full moon and the next six full moons in a row will all be in the early degrees of each respective and ruling sign, reactivating the Barbault’s basket from a few months back. The collective change is continuously ramping up. As old systems and structures continue to collapse, we feel the inner collapse of the systems we’ve held within our own psyche and makeup. A harmonious sextile between Uranus and Neptune spiritually stabilizes the energy for this Taurus full moon, bringing in ample spiritual support for the changes we are undergoing and making. To know that we have all we need within to navigate our way through these times of systemic collapse, even as extreme weather events continue to move through the earthly plane and Gaia grid, shifting us in the process of upheaval for our highest soul evolution. This Taurus full moon is the medicine we need to remember and reclaim our inner safety and stability amidst the sweeping life changes and overhaul energies.

Let this full moon energy stabilize you into truer root of foundation of self. Release the attachments to what has kept you stuck and stagnant. Trust the free fall you are in. Know that the collapse is making way for the rebuild. Let this full moon restructure your values into soul-led truths. Clear the inner waters and root deeper into the inner earth. Let this full moon reconnect and anchor you to truth. To the roots of your inner soil and soul.

Allow this full moon to remind you of the safety you have been building and fortifying within. The. Inner. Earth. Is. Rising. Within. You. Now. The. Medicine. Carrier. You. Are. Earth. Wisdom. Keeper. Reclaim. The. Wisdom. Within. Remember. You. Were. Always. Enough. And. Never. Too. Much. Root. Down. Deep. And. Rise. From. The. Fires. Of. Life. Rebirth. Yourself. From. The. Soil. Of. Darkness. Back. Into. The. Soil. Of. Nourishment. Light. And. Truth. Return. To Root. Of. Self. Rooted. In. Self. Let. Your. Roots. Reconnect. To. All. That. Is. Meant. To Nurture. And. Support. You. Let. Yourself. Be. Supported. And. Nourished. Worthy. Vessel. Of. Life. Here. To. Bring. Life. Through. Every. Breath. Of. Creation. You. The. Seed. Of. Life. And. All. Creation. Aho. Amen. And so it is.

~

Check out Anna’s podcast on the Taurus full moon on Spotify or Apple.

~

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Anna Palmer  |  Contribution: 35,750

Anna Palmer has been on a self healing journey since she was 12 years old and developed an eating disorder (ED), coupled with pervasive anxiety and depression. This propelled … Read full bio

author: Anna Palmer

Image: katja.perez/Instagram

Editor: Lisa Erickson