Neurodivergent Voices in Therapy: Part 2, with Eve Menezes Cunningham

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[00:00:17] We looked at, you know, what even is neurodivergence. We looked at getting a diagnosis. We had a little chat about ADHD tax. We looked at fault versus repair. We looked at masking both internally and externally, and the need to practice self compassion. So look, if you haven't checked it out yet, I do urge you to go and take a listen.

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[00:01:19] I mean, how does that sound? It sounds fantastic, doesn't it? she authored 365 ways to feel better, which is self care ideas for embodied well, well being. And she runs the membership called feel better every day. I'll put all the details of that in the show notes, so you can go and check it out. Now, the problem is that it's not a problem, but Eva's got so much.

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[00:02:17] So yeah, she's got lots and lots and lots of knowledge. She's based in Westport, which is the West coast of Ireland. And Eve works online and by telephone with clients and supervisees across the UK and Ireland with some nature based outdoor sessions available in Westport. Phew. So can you see that was just part of it?

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[00:03:00] We're going to look at the benefits of self knowledge. We're going to look at the difference between addictive personality versus impulse control. We're going to explore the importance of rest. and the benefits of yoga nidra. So yeah, take a listen.

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[00:03:36] Do you want to tell us a little bit about your

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[00:04:10] In all the things I trained in initially, I was like kind of just trying to help myself. And then over the many, many years, it became a niche, holistic self care. So focused in mind, body, heart, and soul. and yeah, it was a delight to do. And I still work with all the tools myself. And I guess the reason I did it is because.

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[00:04:41] Jane Travis: I think that's the thing, isn't it? So often people think of self care as bubble baths. Yeah. That's not what proper robust self care is, is it? Proper, robust self care is sometimes things that you don't want to do.

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[00:05:22] They don't need to buy any fancy products or it's all stuff we can do for ourselves. But I think often it is presented as if you buy this thing, then you can, and it's like, no, we've just been conditioned out of taking care of

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[00:06:00] EVE: It made me just

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[00:06:24] EVE: And I think, yeah, I mean, like, in this field, like, we're therapists, aren't we? We know, like, kind of, I've got early, early memories of being praised, of being really good with my grandmother, who was dying for, like, 10 plus years. And that meant just being really quiet and really still. And, looking back, I kind of wished that that little toddler me had been encouraged to have tantrums and express it all rather than having to be good from such an early age, like kind of no disrespect to my family, like everyone's doing their best and all.

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[00:07:20] You work on yourself first. It's coming up for healing for you. It might be that the idea of at some point down the line using what you've been through to help others. Brilliant, but you can't bypass the work that needs doing yourself in order to suddenly be there for others.

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[00:08:01] know, I got my, my strokes, if you like. Yeah. But, I mean, do you think that that's something that is quite prevalent within, like, the counselling community? I

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[00:08:24] And it was basically a, I need help, but I need to know. Like I need, I can't trust anyone else. I have to do it myself. But where you say about rescuer, I think there's an element of distrust in others and of like, you can only count on yourself. You have to. And that was actually a really healing part of my training, the whole rescuer, the, and I love the AC Choi's adaptation of the drama triangle, the rescuer, the victim, the perpetrator.

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[00:09:24] It's making sure it doesn't tip over into rescuing. It's not a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing to be vulnerable. But again, you don't want to tip into victim. And it's an amazing thing that we can all keep learning to be assertive without becoming a perpetrator, persecutor. I'm getting the terminology wrong, persecutor, not perpetrator.

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[00:10:00] Jane Travis: yeah. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that it's one of those things where generally speaking, you know, women or the people in the female gender, I'm not quite sure how to say these things now, but, but it's very often like, A completely different thing, like between the genders that women do get the majority of care giving roles and obviously the men, something that I can remember doing in my training, I'm going slightly off topic now, but one of the really interesting things, in fact, I'm not going to go off topic there, I'm going to stop that right there, otherwise we're going to go down a whole other, a whole other thing.

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[00:10:59] I don't think I've done that. Something that I do want to just ask about is, AH adhd. Mm-Hmm. , obviously AH ADHD is something that's talked about a lot at the moment. Yeah. Which is good thing. And you, you,, have ADHD or you, or you think that you have ADHD? Is

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[00:11:28] also, I had a brain scan in 2013 for. Um, or a migraines and they found a brain, but, the only, what they called an abnormality correlated with ADHD. And at the time I dismissed it because it wasn't, I mean, it was the, or a migraines that were the biggest issue. but. I think with perimenopause, I think the three moves in five months when I moved to Ireland in 2019 that I was saying I was going to change my name to discombobulated because it took a good year or so, like, even now, when I pack, there's that part of my brain that shuts down because it was so much so many times I had nine days of to pack up from the UK.

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[00:12:47] It's that deep rest. it boosts dopamine by up to, 70%. It's a guided visualization, a guided meditation. Translates as yogic sleep, and there's so much going on in terms of the instruction that your, your consciousness kind of drifts off and comes back, but you're constantly the practice is to keep coming back to the instructions.

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[00:13:38] But I think the more that's understood around neurodivergence, certainly the bulk of the people I know are more neurodivergent than neurotypical. But It's something that, like with anything, our anxious parts, our creative parts, our people pleasing parts, it's wonderful to own them, but remember that there's more to us than them.

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[00:14:27] Jane Travis: sense. I mean, I, ADHD has been talked about a lot recently and I can see a lot.

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[00:14:51] I just felt really awful. That

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[00:15:17] You wouldn't. But I know for me, it's been really beneficial to actually listen to what people were telling me and to own that part of myself and to work with it. So I've. I've always been very, very organized, which goes against what you think of with ADHD, but as I understand more about it, that was because I had no working memory.

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[00:16:07] I also, I drank way too much as a teenager, so I killed a lot of brain cells then. I've been sober since 2001. But I think I used to beat myself up about not remembering things or not like say getting, you know, the security code and looking at my phone and trying to type it in and having to do that maybe 10 times with a six digit number.

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[00:16:47] Jane Travis: Yeah. And to me, I think that's the positive thing at the moment because there are more and more people learning about ADHD and thinking, hang on, that does sound like me. And it's not a big negative thing. It's not like, Oh my ADHD. That's terrible. But it's like, it's just literally learning a bit more about yourself so that you can then do the things that are going to help you.

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[00:17:14] EVE: Yeah, it, it, there's things that I already knew were massively beneficial, but then I didn't realize just how beneficial. I recently got, this, Garmin body battery watch that I literally, I unpacked it this week. I'd ordered it weeks ago when someone said, You need this, her son has ADHD and she was saying, it's amazing.

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[00:17:56] Just having it has me. paying more attention to the advice that my acupuncturist and my herbal medicine person has been giving me. Because I started going for herbal medicine because the brain fog was so bad a few years ago. So there are things that are around. I'm vegan, but I eat a lot of processed like fake meats, not as much as I used to.

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[00:18:38] And it's like, well, how can I support myself with that rather than spending? Yet more decades beating myself up for something that has always been the case.

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[00:19:00] Addictive personality. That's what I would say. I get very, it was, and this is one of the, this is one of the quite good things. I think I throw myself into things. So I threw myself into my business to absolute nth degree and become obsessed with it. And then if I'm not careful, then I get burnout. I mean, is that how it is for you?

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[00:19:47] And I still, it's that kind of like, Ooh, I have a very expansive. Um,and I remember like when I. First started out 2004 and I did some sort of like training and they were talking about picking one offering and really focusing on that. And I was like, okay. So I narrowed it down to six offerings to really focus on and looking back, I could have like taken one in turn over and over and over, but I really struggled to, Decide I'm much, much better at it, but.

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[00:20:49] To rest, and I was aware of the work building up and also my brain was not right. I could not, the COVID was really weird. so I thought, I know I'll choose new colors. I'll choose, I chose a new template because of COVID brain. I temporarily lost my website, but when I got it back sorted, it was perfect for those two weeks, just every day doing a good few hours, but in front of the telly, just in a very.

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[00:21:38] Yeah,

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[00:21:58] You have a day where you get on and you do all those things and you're like on fire and then you have another day where it's like, you just can't get into doing any of it. And I can't remember what it's called, but flow, ebb and flow, I think it is. And it's like when I have one of those days where I'm on fire and I'm working.

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[00:22:35] But I'm still doing some stuff, so I feel okay doing that. So yeah, I kind

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[00:23:00] It really, really, really, really benefits from rest. And it really, then like ADHD burnout is different to regular burnout because it's much shorter cycles. But recognizing that and thinking, okay, it, it's, it's listening to yourself. It's knowing from experience. what you can't get away with anymore, and also recognizing just how much more wonderful life is when you're not burnt out, and when you're like, kind of, when you are taking better care of yourself, and like, when you're recognizing the consequences, and yeah.

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[00:24:01] EVE: And I think a lot of it, I mean, so much of it is self compassion and self acceptance and you're saying that, and I did blog about it a few weeks ago because we'd gone to Norway. This was the first visit when my uncle was dying and it was a long, long day of travel crossing Ireland and then like kind of going to Norway did two flights.

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[00:24:40] I know enough. I need to get stuff out of my body. Anyone, anxiety, stress, the more we get out of our body, the ADHD, it's so. beneficial. And of course, with the yoga and as an adult, it's easier to control. But I thought, I'm just going to play. So I climbed into this toy aeroplane with my 47 year old creaky joints, not having done a proper yoga practice all day.

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[00:25:30] But I thought, you know what, Evie, that is exactly what you needed. And it got me then to our final destination. And it's that kind of thing, whether it's a bit embarrassing or whether you need to sleep or whether. You need to make sure you eat well. Whatever it is, it's recognizing you are worthy of whatever it is that's gonna support you.

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[00:26:08] EVE: Okay, so first of all, you're saying one, my anxiety levels go through the roof.

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[00:26:13] Jane Travis: one! Just one, okay. Hondra, go for it. Thank

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[00:26:37] It's too distracting for me. And again, I used to give myself a hard time over it. Now it's like, nope, I have that extra sensitivity to sound and that's okay. I'll listen to one where I like the voice and where it doesn't, like, have background music. So Yoganidra, it's just a wonderful, you can get a 10 minute one, you can get a 30 minute one, you can get a 2 hour one.

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[00:27:17] So I think That, but most of all with self compassion, because like I've been teaching them for, I was going to say hundreds of years, it's been like just over a decade. But I always tell people just as sometimes with a physical practice where stronger when more flexible, we've got better balance, or not maybe strength, so our physical.

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[00:28:01] Let it nourish you. So, that if it appeals, but most of all, just get to know yourself, get to know how you. Feel best like you've learned about taking the laptop in front of the telly and that helps on those days. It's enough to keep and you're not on fire. It's all good. But you know that there will be other times when you're much more creative, much more energized and you'll do those.

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[00:28:41] Jane Travis: my cat, Rainbow Magnificat.

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[00:29:14] And Rainbow spent an enormous amount of time under the duvet. And, because of the work I did around nervous system regulation, I would join her, and I would, like, just give myself, I was trying to sort out admin stuff, like life admin, getting my identity stuff sorted. All kinds of issues. I had no signal there.

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[00:29:54] Sometimes it will be like, I'm going to go for a bike ride and swim. And other times it's like, I'm going to join Rainbow under the duvet. Or if she's not there, I'm going to go under the duvet and see if she wants to join me.

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[00:30:14] And it's like, sometimes for me recently, I've been going through some personal stuff. the best thing for me is when I'm really not feeling very good, just go and sleep. Yes. Just sleep. Yeah. Feel better far faster. If you just

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[00:30:39] So the instructions help me come into that. Or I often do a really simple, if I wake up in the night and I'm struggling to sleep, it will be, as well as connecting with the breath, deepening the breath, that longer exhalation to support rest digest. I'll just go, thank you toes. Thank you feet. Thank you ankles and just work up the body.

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[00:31:23] I hadn't had the time I had to do it and I was going away the next day again. And it's far from ideal. I know it sends everything. Kind of, it becomes, it's not sustainable, but there's no point when you have to do very long days, it's part of being self employed. It's, it's like, yeah, in an ideal world, it would be more measured.

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[00:31:52] Jane Travis: Exactly. It's self care to make your business run. Yeah. Let it go under. Yes. Although that is, that's part of the not so pleasant self care, isn't it? Because it's like, I really do have to go and do this and making that happen.

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[00:32:12] EVE: But it's all about self compassion, whatever you choose to do, give yourself some grace around it.

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[00:32:40] I'm trying to open that part of me and, just practice being in a more spiritual place, so it's lovely talking to you. I'm definitely, I've been making some notes. I'm going to go and check out what this Garmin body batteries does. Yeah. I'm going to have a look at the yoga. And, maybe if you could give me a link, I can

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[00:33:01] Yeah, absolutely. So selfcarecoaching. net has loads and I have an ADHD page as well. If that's of

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[00:33:24] EVE: I am in post production. thank you so much for being one of my first guests. I still haven't published any of them. I'm in post production, which means I am in the process of figuring out how on earth to get it from the gorgeous interviews, which have been one of. The favorite things I've ever done professionally, it's been such a delight to figuring out how to edit it and how to make it more public.

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[00:33:53] Jane Travis: but I like your format for the podcast. It's a specific format, isn't it? Fantastic. And I'm really looking forward to listening to tell us what your

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[00:34:16] So I've got like a dance instructor, I've got therapists, I've got coaches, I've got neuroscientists, doctors, nurses, like loads of different people. And we're all talking about our ideal, like all the things we know we ought to be doing or know we feel better when we do. Do I like, I hate the word should.

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[00:34:59] Jane Travis: Perfect. Yeah, it was. Yeah. I really enjoyed coming on there. So again, so, so yeah, thank you so much, Eve. I've really enjoyed this and, I'm going to ask you to come on again sometime.

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[00:35:17] Jane Travis: Lovely. Oh, bless See, I told you that she's amazing. Now I could talk with Eve for hours and I just love talking to someone that's a very spiritual person. Cause you know, I'm not very spiritual at all. So I just love learning, you know, looking at things in different ways. So look, be sure to check out her resources, which I'm going to include in the show notes.

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[00:36:04] So keep an eye out for that one. Now, then thank you so much for tuning into the grow your private practice show. Now, if you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on my latest content, please be sure to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform, because by subscribing, you'll never miss an episode and you'll always be the first to know when I release new content.

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