Tag Archives: neurology

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Post Covid Update

I haven’t updated in a while, mostly because I’ve been focusing on taking care of myself and accepting help.

I’ve been doing EMDR and it’s been helping me reframe my memories. At first I was doing it to recover from the trauma of being hospitalized for bipolar disorder. We’ve started working on my childhood trauma since then. This morning I was thinking about how Penelope said that the biggest impact for kids was when their moms got more support. This has been true for us because I’m able to be more regulated and present for my child, which I’ve written about before is their primary need.

One of the things that has come out of my bipolar diagnosis is being forced to focus on taking better care of myself and asking for or accepting help. I’ve been learning that ignoring my needs, such as disassociating from my pain, is one of my maladaptive strategies I’ve brought from my childhood.

One of the first stories I reframed with EMDR was about my elementary school worms.

The school I went to had one of those red dirt tracks out in the field. Whenever it rain the track would be covered in worms. During PE if it wasn’t raining, we would be told to run the track. It took me forever because I was avoiding stepping on the worms. Eventually I’d get in trouble for being squeamish. I was the only one reacting that way, so I was the wimpy freak. Re-examining it I realized that I was the only one sensitive and caring enough to want to avoid killing the worms by stepping on them. And instead of my kindness being honored it was dismissed.

I didn’t find out about the trait of high sensitivity until my late 20s or early 30s, so while I was able to do some reframing on my own, I didn’t realize how many formative memories I had with negative interpretations. And it was only recently working with my chiropractor that I realized how disassociated I was from my body and its pain signals.

I wouldn’t say I feel lucky to have bipolar, but I do feel lucky to have such a large caring network of friends and family to support me while I rewire my brain.

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Ehlers Danlos & Neurodiversity Research

I’m so excited, a friend of a friend just shared all this:

Dr. Eccles specific research areas are Neuroscience, Psychiatric and neurodevelopmental features of connective tissue disorders, Mechanisms of chronic pain and fatigue.

The quickest way to see a summary of all her 67 published medical research with active links to each is here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jessica-Eccles-3

Some titles of pubs just within the last 2 years:

  • Towards a Neurodiversity-Affirmative Approach for an Over-Represented and Under-Recognised Population: Autistic Adults in Outpatient Psychiatry
  • Joint Hypermobility Links Neurodivergence to Dysautonomia and Pain
  • Variant connective tissue (joint hypermobility) and dysautonomia are associated with multimorbidity at the intersection between physical and psychological health
  • Connecting brain and body: Transdiagnostic relevance of connective tissue variants to neuropsychiatric symptom expression

You Tube Videos:

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Names, Face Blindness and Gait

Are you bad with names or do you have face blindness?

What is face blindness anyway?

Depending upon the degree of impairment, some people with prosopagnosia may only have difficulty recognizing a familiar face; others will be unable to discriminate between unknown faces

Some degree of prosopagnosia is often present in children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, and may be the cause of their impaired social development. 

…treatment should be to help the individual with prosopagnosia develop compensatory strategies. Adults who have the condition as a result of stroke or brain trauma can be retrained to use other clues to identify individuals.

Prosopagnosia can be socially crippling.  Individuals with the disorder often have difficulty recognizing family members and close friends.  They often use other ways to identify people, such as relying on voice, clothing, or unique physical attributes, but these are not as effective as recognizing a face.  Children with congenital prosopagnosia are born with the disability and have never had a time when they could recognize faces.  Greater awareness of autism, and the autism spectrum disorders, which involve communication impairments such as prosopagnosia, is likely to make the disorder less overlooked in the future.

Prosopagnosia | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (nih.gov)

I don’t know if I can recognize faces or if I rely on gait, silhouette, voice, hair, clothing (accessories or style).

I can’t tell if my kiddo has it because when we look at photos either the kiddo doesn’t know who is it or someone has said who it is once ever and now it’s memorized.

Is that why my kiddo had such a strong aversion to live action tv shows and videos for so long?

Is that why I hated when my mom changed her hair style growing up – in addition to it being change, did it also make her harder to recognize?

Is that another reason that a limited wardrobe or a signature accessory is useful/preferred?

Do any of you recognize people by their gait?

This study is telling clinicians to look at how autistic kids walk to figure out how they feel since autistic people have such a hard time saying how we feel.

A friend said: faces have so much information on them that I can’t sort fast enough and I like recognizing people by their gait.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050915038065

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Microbiomes

Small ecosystems.

Our bodies as galaxies or universes.

Our organs as planets in a star system.

The biota as the inhabitants of the planets.

We are as gods to the bacteria and cells in our bodies.

They can tell there is something more, and they do not know what.

They can only respond to the environment around them.

They must do the best they can in each moment.

Each has a task they were born for.

They do their tasks to the best of their ability.

If they are not able to, they let that be known.

If the system is functioning properly, they will either get the support they need or be released from their duty.

If the system is not functioning properly, it will ripple outward until the entire system collapses or the impact is large enough to get the attention it needs.

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Focus of Attention

Focus is a skill.

Focus is how we direct our attention*

Attention is the process by which we make observations.

Observations are the process by which one question is answered and another is identified.

I choose to focus internally to be ready to focus externally. This is self regulation.

Dec. 17 2022 log:

*Attention is the most valuable thing anyone can possess.

More valuable than time, money, power and perhaps even love – depending on your definition of love.

The ability to control our attention is the most powerful ability any human has. And perhaps that’s the defining trait of humans. Free will – the ability to choose what to pay attention to and when.

My knowledge of Christianity suggests that at least one religion agrees with that assumption.

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Thinking Thoughts

Thoughts are stories we tell ourselves.

We use thoughts to understand the signals our brain sends us.

Not every thought we have is true.

“I’m having the thought that….”

Thoughts have power. Consider the placebo effect.

The way we have thoughts is that there is electrical activity in our brains. Electricity is energy, energy can also be called power.

Thoughts have power.

Will you control your thoughts, or will you let them control you?

We have free will.

We can choose to control our thoughts.

Our life is only predestined to follow the path set for us by our predecessors if we do not pause, evaluate, and choose.

If I am choosing, I can choose to make it harder for my descendants to choose, or I can make it easier.

I choose to make it easier. This is my intention.

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Pain and The Bad Place

When I notice that I’m thinking painful and likely untrue thoughts, I think of it as my brain trying to go to or already in The Bad Place (aka: negative sentiment override, assuming the worst, being pessimistic, running a maladaptive schema, bad programming, telling yourself bad stories, feeding the bad wolf, sending out negative energy, trauma response, being triggered, starting to get flooded).

When I am in the Bad Place I can still function, but only just barely. Others see it as me being rude, inconsiderate, stupid, ridiculous, mean, unkind, self-centered, selfish, stubborn, bossy, pedantic. I’m trying to get into the habit of wearing noise cancelling headphones so I can tune out other people until I’m functional again. So far just keeping my mouth shut as much as possible if I’m in the bad place is working ok.

Headphones would help, I’d need active noise cancelling headphones: Bluetooth, comfortable.

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Tracing collagen through cell adhesion

Laminin – Wikipedia

Basal lamina – Wikipedia

Fibronectin – Wikipedia

The Relationship between Autism and Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes/Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders – PMC (nih.gov)

Brain-like organoids grown in a dish provide window into autism (medicalxpress.com)

activity & adhesion (see collagen)

Home page – Sensitivity Research

So if 30% of people are environmentally sensitive (or HSP) and 40+30 are standard or low sensitivity:

What if EDS is or is one of the traits that allows/causes the sensitivity?

What if everyone with Autism is HSP (but not all HSPs are Autistic)? Is the Autism our response/coping with the health problems? Is that why some folks “cure” Autism with diet changes? They are still HSP, but not acting Autistic because they aren’t coping with the health problems caused by toxins (that they are more sensitive to) in their diets?

From WikiPedia:

Collagen is not only a structural protein. Due to its key role in the determination of cell phenotype, cell adhesion, tissue regulation, and infrastructure, many sections of its non-proline-rich regions have cell or matrix association/regulation roles.