creating supportive structures - self care for neurodivergence
a collaborative convo with Elle Bower Johnston
in this video, we go over:
our favorite self care practices
how to build practices/rituals for beginners - for people just learning they’re neurodivergent
what do you do when you fall off the proverbial wagon? your practices go by the wayside. how to reinvigorate them/get re-started?
how to make space for your neurodivergence in your practices
the most surprising thing we’ve learned from our self-care practices
Elle Bower Johnston is a bodywitch. She weaves together breathwork, rest practices, somatics, and folk magic to help creatives, witches and change makers connect with their bodies and cultivate self-trust, so that they can step into their power and live a life that feels vibrantly alive.
Transcript
Elle: Well, hi. Hello! Hi, it's so nice to see you. We’re here today talking about Creating Supportive Structure and Self Care for Neurodivergence.
I’m Elle Bower Johnston, I use she and they pronouns, and I'm a body witch. Which essentially means that my work is an alchemization of breath work, somatics, and rest practices with folk magic. I work with creatives, witches, and change makers to help them get into a deeper relationship with their bodies so that they can be in deeper connection with life and their magic. That's me! And I'm here with Brigitte.
Brigitte: Hi, I'm Brigitte. I absolutely loved hearing all of that. I'm absolutely in the right place, knowing you and having this conversation with you today. I'm Brigitte. She, her also. Self acclaimed systems and self care witch yeah, which I love to hear that out loud!
I build intentional systems for neurodivergent creatives who want to feel proud, successful, and get shit done. I primarily do this in Notion. I make Notion templates that are a launch pad to help you cross the finish line on your projects. And I do that as well as one on one work and custom projects as well.
And so today we're going to ask each other a few questions about our self care practices as neurodivergent people. And are you ready to dive in?
What are your favorite self care practices?
Do you want to go first, Elle?
Elle: Yeah, sure! So, I was thinking about this question and my brain immediately was like, Okay, disclaimer: self care is only half the story. So like, community care and like, naming systems of oppression are so much a part of my own self care and what I do with clients. I think self care is a brilliant and beautiful thing and I also think that capitalism is going to capitalism. It's done that thing where it's like self care is associated with buying more stuff and like, having nice candles and shit.
So that's my disclaimer straight out. Self care is deeply needed and we also need care that extends beyond the self.
Yeah, but when I, when I think about my own self care practices, the question that I come back to time and time again is like, what do I need right now to be awake, resourced and connected to life? What needs to be in place for me to feel really fully alive in my life?
And when I can answer that question I can, you know, be here for myself and take it out into the world around me, you know? I can expand it to my relationships and my community and the way I move in the world.
And the things that, like, personally really resonate, are often also the practices that I teach. So breathwork is really big, and rest practices, which I resist so hard. Even though when I do rest, I'm like, Oh wow, this is magic! Why didn't anybody tell me? Even though I teach this and I have years of training in this!
Brigitte: I feel that so hard.
Elle: It's so embarrassing! I'm literally a rest teacher, and every time I'm like ‘I don't need that really, do I?’
So yeah, breathwork and rest are two really big ones for me, along with somatic movement. I kind of started my journey into self care and wellness world through yoga and yoga teaching. Over time that’s unfolded and expanded into much more wiggly somatics, and knowing the landscape of my nervous system with more intimacy.
My self care movement practices are always super wiggly and come directly from what my body actually needs rather than from, like, some kind of externally determined practice.
Breathwork, rest and somatic movement are things that I circle on a regular basis. And then I also have a lot of magical practices that count as self care too. Tarot, and building little altars around my house are magics that are a touchstone for connection.
Oh and journaling, which is super boring and everyone says it all the time, but it's super helpful for me! And cycle tracking which has helped me know what is happening in my body (where it once felt super chaotic and unpredictable).
And then lastly, being a big nature nerd and foraging and bird watching and just like being out in the world. Being like ‘hello, animate friends, how are we?’
Those are all of the things I do to care for myself. And when I kind of list them out loud, I'm like, shit, that's a lot of stuff! But I’m not doing all that every day, right? It's a toolbox. Like, what do I need right now? I rummage around and find out.
Brigitte: I am laughing because so many things that you said are exactly what I noted for myself. And I love that you use the word wiggly as a descriptor. That just brought me a lot of joy.
But I also agree with everything you said up front about before you got into your favorite self care practices. I am also really in line with that.
So my, like, quick and dirty favorite self care practices. These are my absolute go to things.
Number one is journaling. And for me it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy because my whole entire life I never thought that I could journal. I had a really strange relationship with it. And now to be like, oh, that's my one thing that I do have to do every single morning. It’s just so wild to me!
How I do it now is a brain dump. I let everything that's in my head come out on the paper. And that's been so helpful for me.
My other one that I do every single day is I have a cycle syncing smoothie. So I also pay attention to my menstrual cycle and I tailor the ingredients and everything that I put into this smoothie based on what phase of my cycle I'm in.
I also do magical practices throughout all of these things. So as I'm making my smoothie, I am infusing it with the, like the vibes or the intention, the affirmations that I chose to hold onto for that week. Like something that I'm like calling in or working on, I'm infusing that into my smoothie.
So that feels really cool too. It's really simple things, but they're impactful.
My other ones are, I go for walks almost every day. Just like a little walk around the block. And then feeding and watching the birds in my backyard, because I’m a birder now and I'm obsessed with birds.
I never thought that I would say that either! These things I need are so surprising to me!
The other one is when the weather is nice, I like to play tennis. I feel like I need to put the disclaimer out that I don't actually know how to play a game of tennis. My partner is teaching me, so it's basically just us hitting the ball back and forth. And that is good enough for us.
It's amazing for energy. It's amazing for getting out emotions. I also know that I need a lot of movement to process things. So I also have a wall in my basement set up that I can just hit tennis balls on, so if I'm feeling any certain way, I can just go down there and move it out.
Elle: Amazing, I love that! Okay, let's wander away from our personal practices for a moment and talk about everyone else's practices.
Do you have any thoughts on how people can choose or build practices if they're new to it? For people who are just learning that they're neurodivergent, what would you hold front and center for building a self care practice?
Brigitte: Okay. So what I would hold front and center is first allowing yourself to be curious and experiment. If you have an open mind, I feel like it's going to be a lot easier to try things.
And considering that these self care practices might not look quote unquote ‘typical’. I would, I would start there and just allow yourself to try things, see what happens, and keep iterating.
A good way that I have figured out how to do that is by making a list. The list doesn't necessarily have to be like bullet points. I've made this in Notion on a cute little Kanban board before. But just starting with an inventory of some things that maybe you already enjoy, that you could count as self care, and then this way, you have something to look at when you're like, ‘oh, I need something.’ It's not like you're trying to pull something out of the air.
When you’re in the moment it can feel impossible to create something from nothing, right? I don't even know what I like in this moment! But if you have a list it sidesteps that. I find that's really helpful for my brain and I've heard that it's helpful from a lot of other people as well. Not trying to pull self care tools from nothing, especially if you're in a place where you might be feeling dysregulated when it's going to be harder to recall those things.
So to be able to have your little toolkit that's like, here are some options of some self care practices, and then you can pick and choose in the moment and see. See what works, see what doesn't work, and keep kind of like building and adding and subtracting and That would be, I think that would be kind of like where I would start if I was just starting.
Elle: Yes! It's almost like making yourself a little menu to choose from. Like, you showed up at this restaurant needing something and you're like, What's here today? What do I feel like? It's a sweet, simple way of caring for yourself.
Brigitte: Oh, that's a beautiful way of looking at it.
Elle: Getting it down is a really big one for me as well. I think it can be so easy, especially as someone who’s neurodivergent, to really bash ourselves up for not just knowing. You can feel like you should know this already, or you should have this figured out. It's such a simple thing to just write yourself a little list.
I love to have index cards of my rituals. So that when I show up at my altar or on my mat I have like a card that reminds me - how I open this space for myself, the options of what I could do when I'm there, and how to close the space when I’m finished. So that I don't have to carry it in my brain all the time. I can just put it down. And I'm sure one could do that in Notion as well! I am a very analogue girl, but like you could definitely do that in Notion as well.
Brigitte: Oh my god! It's like having an SOP for your witchcraft practice. Like having your standard operating procedure.
Elle: Exactly! My girlfriend and I have taken this real far. SOP’s for our whole life. I love having a little reminder of all of the options that I could play with so I can pick what I need. Giving yourself that containment. I think it's so easy to be really resistant to constraints, but for us neurodivergent folks that containment can be such a gift. It gives you that boundary that you can then be playful within.
Brigitte: I think it gives you freedom too. Because then you have all your creative and magical brain space open to do the practice. You're not trying to pick and choose and decide and recall. All that space freed up. That's a big one.
Elle: Exactly. So that's my really practical recommendation - write it down, give yourself a system. That system can change and evolve, but trying to stay with it for a little while and seeing what you need within that containment.
And then beyond the practical, an attitude that I wish I had been offered when I first started doing my own practices is meeting yourself where you're at. What if your practice is something that you’re doing to care for yourself, instead of to ‘fix’ yourself? What if there is nothing to fix about you?
So you can show up exactly as you are. Messy brained, big feelings, scattered, exhausted, whatever it is. And your practice has space to hold you in that. Your practice gets to be shaped for you and your needs rather than needing to look like some measurable external metric of what a successful self care practice looks like.
Brigitte: Yeah, I think that I had one of my most revelatory moments in therapy when I went in and I was going through a really rough mental space and I was telling my therapist about all of these self care things that I was doing, right, to try to feel better. And she was like, holy shit, Brigitte, you get like the gold star of all clients everywhere taking care of their mental health!
And I was like, yeah, but I still feel terrible. And she gave me exactly what you just said, that the point of self care is just showing up and taking care of yourself. The point of self care isn't necessarily that you're going to feel this certain way afterwards. It's just knowing that, like, you're just showing up and you're taking care of yourself.
And look at what you're doing for yourself even when you feel so terrible. It's that act of self care, that self love, that makes it important and worth it and worthy and enough. And that really helped to change my mindset, right? Because then I wasn't looking for certain outcomes or for my practice to have to look a certain way.
And instead I just hold on to the intention that I'm just showing up and caring for myself, and we're going to see what happens. Bring in the curiosity.
Elle: Yes, yes, yes!
Brigitte: So on to the next one.
What do you do when you fall off the proverbial wagon? If your practices go by the wayside, how do you reinvigorate them or get restarted when that happens?
I really like this because I literally visualize an old timey covered wagon. That's exactly like what I'm seeing in my brain as I think about this question.
Elle: I mean, that's the one, right? I have spent the last eight years teaching people how to practice in different ways and I'm not always great at practicing what I preach.
I have fallen off the wagon or been distant from my practice so many times. So many times! And the thing that really helps me is almost taking an animist kind of approach to your practice. Your practice is not a thing that you’re creating. It's something that you're in relationship with.
You can move closer and you can move more distant. But say I don't speak to my best friend for two weeks, or if I don't call my mom for a month, that relationship isn't gone. I'm not starting from scratch. I can just come back.
It took me so long to realize that I didn't need to be beating myself up when that happened. I didn't need to be chastising myself. Why can't I commit? Why don't I have any discipline? Why is everything so hard to do consistently?
And instead I could just be in this relationship. For whatever reason, it got a little distant and I feel like I want to get back to it. So how do I get back to it?
Brigitte: Yeah, it's so funny that you brought that up. I never have thought about a practice in that way, but it makes so much sense. And it's exactly a conversation that I was just having with somebody else the other day about when we have fallen off our things like our yoga practice, or I was specifically talking about my walks.
When I just had COVID and I wasn't able to go for my walks and I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I'm just not somebody who walks anymore’. And she's like, ‘ummm Brigitte’
Elle: Ha! Like excuse me, ma’am.
Brigitte: Like, wait, what? But it's so easy to get caught up in beating yourself up about it. And I think that that really is really helpful to look at it in the same way as a relationship with a friend. You just connected some good things in my brain here!
Elle: I think the interesting thing about the analogy of a relationship is that sometimes a relationship does have to change, right?
Sometimes you've stepped away from a practice because actually it's not the right fit anymore. And you need to kind of reassess. Maybe doing 30 minutes of yoga every day was really working for a while, but it's not working anymore. What do you need now? That falling off, or that distancing can be a point where you can check back in.
Get curious and ask why? Why have I let go of this? You know, maybe, maybe everything got too busy. Maybe I had a massive life change and I just didn't have the space or the capacity for it. Maybe this doesn't feel nourishing to me anymore.
You get to just kind of recenter yourself and be like, great, well, what do I need now?
Brigitte: That's exactly that's exactly what I was going to bring up. Getting curious about why I fell off or what was going on in my life. Assessing and then reassessing the situation.Letting things shift. Seasonal shifts are a big one for me. As seasons shift, my practices shift.
My other thing was giving yourself grace and compassion when it does happen. That allowance to be curious and experiment with your self care practice. Find out how you might want to change it, or try something new, or try to do it in a different way, or let it fall off entirely. That can feel hard. To let things go. But sometimes it's just time and it's time to go to your list and pick out something new off that list.
Elle: I think it's so funny the way we get taught rigidity. As if you're meant to be the same all the time. You're meant to choose a thing and then just be the same. And generally as humans, we're not that. We are inherently prone to change.
And especially as neurodivergent humans, we thrive on that change. We really have to walk the line between knowing when change is needed and jumping off the wagon before the magic happens.
The thing that I always come back to in terms of discipline is that discernment of when to stick and when to twist. Bringing a sense of devotion to the practice you’re doing. If the practice still feels really resonant, still feels like it takes you somewhere, but there's a resistance coming up for whatever reason, then you devote yourself, right? You need to bring a holy monk kinda energy to it.
But if you suddenly find the thing that you're trying to devote yourself to doesn't feel magical or connected or connective, then, yeah, then you get to change. And that's because we're human. That's cool.
Brigitte: I love that.
So how do you make space for neurodivergence in your practices?
Brigitte: Allowing myself to experiment and find out what works for me. And then writing it down and being diligent with the follow through. I think that devotion speaks beautifully to it that.
Say I’m in the place where I know that this self care practice is something that I'm craving, I know that when I practice this I feel fulfilled, I get the benefits from it, it makes my world a better place, it helps me to show up better, but I'm like having hella resistance to it for whatever reason?
Then I have to also figure out what is going to be the best way for me to do that practice.
And that might mean that I also need something else and it's okay. My biggest example is that I have a hard time doing a yoga practice at home. Yoga was my first foray into myself, into connecting to my body and finding me.
And so I know that this it's my highest. I carry everything that I have learned from yoga throughout my entire day. It's just how I live my life now. But getting to an actual mat for an amount of time, sometimes it feels absolutely impossible.
I got curious about my yoga practices over the years and I looked at when I was doing yoga almost every single day and I asked - what are the conditions that helped make that possible? And then I can apply that. So I noticed that I do really well when I go to classes in person.
Like, I had a studio that I really loved. There was a schedule. There was somebody else instructing me. I am handing my money over to somebody and they are telling me what to do. And I am showing up and I am practicing. And so while I can't necessarily check all of those boxes here at home, I have done my best to kind of adapt those pieces of it.
By putting myself on a schedule or maybe finding a virtual class to attend or even just getting the accountability of it from checking in with a friend and being like, ‘Hey, I want to do my yoga practice every Thursday night. Can I check in with you every Thursday and tell you if I did? And if I don't text you, can you text me?’
Finding out what I needed to have in place in order to make this happen, and giving myself that grace and compassion. It's okay that I need these things and having that also be part of the practice.
Elle: I love how systemized your brain is! My brain does not work like that! It's wild and magic to me. I'm here for it.
Magic systems-thinking aside, I practice at home by myself mostly. I really know what I like, and I really love to build containers that let me shape my practice to exactly what I need that day. Setting timers, writing a certain amount each day, following rituals; giving myself parameters to work within is a big part of supporting my neurodivergent brain in my practice. These little containers that hold me and my practice.
It also really helps me side step decision fatigue to habit stack. Like, I know that every morning I go downstairs with my girlfriend. We eat breakfast. I come back upstairs and light some incense. I open the container. I do some movement. I write in my journal. I close the container. Every morning that’s what I do. This post-breakfast ritual and then the rest of my day happens. Giving myself that pre-made decision so I don't have to be constantly questioning if I’m going to practice today, or what time I’m doing it?
And I think in terms of really meeting myself where I'm at, I give myself so much space to be authentic in my practice. I don't have to be still or quiet and I don't expect that of myself. There’s this idea about meditative practices, that we need to be still, and we need to be quiet, and our brains need to be still and quiet. My brain is very rarely still or quiet! And so I try to let my practices meet me in that.
Oh and the other little container that I found really, really, really helpful has been creating little playlists. And I only started playing with this like last year, just like 20 minute playlists. That's the container. I put it on, I put my headphones in, I do the thing. It's been so helpful for me.
Brigitte: That's a really cool idea.
Elle: It's great. I can recommend it.
Brigitte: And that brings us to our last question -
What is the most surprising thing you've learned from or discovered about your self care practices?
I think this is my favorite question.
Elle: I honestly found this one the hardest to answer. And I know it was a question that I proposed but I realised I didn’t have an immediate answer!
Brigitte: My answer really surprised me!
Elle: Come on, tell me. I want to know!
Brigitte: Okay. So I have realized that my ADHD symptoms are more manageable when I'm taking better care of myself or devoting enough self care to myself.
And I didn't realize this until I started sliding off, right? Falling off of that wagon. And then I started noticing my symptoms getting way more challenging. I was starting to have a way harder of a time. And I was like ‘What the fuck's going on?’ It was a great benchmark to look at all the stuff that I’m doing to care for myself and see that it's like really having a big impact.
That was a moment of acknowledgement. Like, ‘Oh, I'm doing a really great job and these things actually do make a difference’.
I think the biggest way that I notice it is typically I’ve had a really hard time falling asleep at night. I would lay in bed and my mind would be fucking everywhere. And I have a technique that I've gotten from therapy that helps me to essentially bore my brain enough so that I can fall asleep. The one that I do is going through the alphabet and naming fruits or vegetables that start with each letter.
And I typically fall asleep before I hit the end but I've noticed that the times I get in bed and my brain is absolutely going off and I am just tossing and turning and like nothing's working, that's when I know that I didn't do my typical practices and now my ADHD symptoms are running wild. I’ve overwhelmed myself or pushed myself too far.
Elle: I think it's so funny because the whole point of a self care practice or a regular practice is that it becomes regular.
And so you don't necessarily see an immediate change. It's a slow drip and then it's only when it's taken away that you become aware that it was doing something.
That slow build was one of the things that came to me as the most surprising result of my practice. Twenty something year old me who first walked into a yoga class because she wanted to lose weight had no idea of all of the things that self care practices would give her.
Things that have nothing to do with how my body looks and everything to do with how much more present and aware I am within my life. How much more powerful and like how much more agency I feel like I have in my life.
God, there's so much that when I scratched the surface, I was like, ‘Wow, I love that little 20 something year old me, but I do not recognize what her internal landscape was like at all!’
It’s been a complete sea change because I've done these tiny things on a regular basis, right? We can just tell ourselves that this isn't doing anything and then you're 20 years down the track, like I am, and it’s completely changed your whole life.
Brigitte: Oh, that made me think of Instagram the other day. You posted something about going on a silly little walk for my silly mental health. And I was like, that's exactly when I go for my walks. I'm not walking for fitness, which I think that is maybe originally how it started, right?
My walking is my walking meditation. That's where I'm processing through the thoughts in my head. I'm able to like be moving and get it out. And I'm not walking for fitness. I'm walking for my being. For this whole thing.
Elle: I think that was the other thing that really surprised me about my self care practices was how much they have radicalized me. How much doing these things that bring me in touch with my needs and my desires also brings me into connection with people beyond myself, right? With the whole of aliveness.
It sounds huge and like hyperbolic, but when you practice these little things that remind you that you're not separate from everything else then it stops being about weight loss or how your body looks, or even what you can get out of it.
And it becomes something that I’m doing to have the capacity. So that I can show up for everything else here in the world. To fight what needs fighting and build what needs building. And unlearn what needs unlearning. And this thing that started off as a little yoga class back in like 2000-whatever has evolved into an embodied understanding of the need to burn down the internal empires that we've learnt and creating something better.
Brigitte: That's exactly how I look at my practices. Like my journaling every morning, I know that by taking that time to dump everything out of my head, I'm then able to show up in such a different way throughout my day, like for myself and for everybody else.
And without that care for myself. You know, I wouldn't be able to really tap into those parts of myself and the connection with everybody else. So yeah, that's exactly how I think of my practices as well. And that's it's beautiful to have this conversation and to realize that and realize how far I have come. That's just part of my life now, and that's really beautiful.
Elle: Totally! It's like we learn how to care for ourselves at some point and then we can keep relearning and expanding it out. It's great. Such a gift.
Brigitte: Yeah, we're doing a great job.
Elle: We're doing a great job! I love this for us.
Brigitte: In closing, shall we let people know what we’ve got going on?
Next steps
Brigitte: I wanted to give a little shout out to my ADHD Notion dashboard template, which is a digital portal into self care and empowerment for folks with ADHD.
There are a ton of different really great goodies on this dashboard but some of my absolute favorite sections are the Health Progress and Medication Tracker.
You can jot everything down, all the details about how you've been feeling. And so it's easy to reference info and things in between appointments (or just for yourself). That’s been huge for me and my chronic illness. Being able to see everything in one place has been really helpful.
And the other big part is, there’s a self care toolkit included in there. It's in a cute little board. It's got cute little emojis in it. So, if you want to get started on having a list of resources to help you regulate your nervous system, that’s a great place to gather everything.
It's customizable. You can experiment with what works best for you. You can put your notes on each page. You can save whatever you want there. Add your own. Subtract the ones that you don't like.
You can check that template out in my gumroad shop on my website at brigittemarieenergydesign.com. And you can also find me on instagram @brigittemarie.energydesign
Elle: Well, I feel like I'm slightly less organized than you 'cause I definitely don't have any of it written down! But this whole conversation is the work that I do. Creating practices that accommodate neurodivergence and queerness.
If you’re interested in creating your own practice and containers that give you the capacity to meet yourself as you are, then I have a course coming up called Resourced.
It’s a three month one-to-one programme where you’ll create a self care practice that connects you with your aliveness.
We'll talk a lot about the systems that we live within and how they show up in your experience of your body and, and the rules that you think that you have to follow. We'll do a 30 day challenge, because I love a 30 day challenge of daily practice to gather lots of data about what works and what doesn’t work. And you'll also get lots of support and guidance for how to find a practice that really fits you.
You'll come out the other side with three months worth of information, testing, play, and a practice that really supports you. A practice that gives you the resources and capacity to deal with everything that comes at you in this insane world that we live in.
If you want to find out more, come check out my website - ellebowerjohnston.com. You can also find me on Instagram @ellebowerjohnston
More where that came from
If you’d like to see more posts about adhd, check out the others by clicking on an image below:
