Building Your Own Safe Space #NeurodivergentSafeSpace #MentalWellness

Hello there. I'm Danielle Ralston. I am the founder and head coach here at ND Out Loud. What is ND Out Loud? ND Out Loud is a team of neurodivergent coaches. We are neurodivergent, every single one of us. TBIs, PTSD, ADHD, autism, ADHD, and so much more. Bipolar disorder, all of the things. We also have a passion for supporting others like us so you don't have to struggle like we did in our past. We have All taken trainings and certifications and all of that so that we can support you in living a better life and upgrading all of the things that are frustrating about your life. What is this session going to give you? This session is going to give you actionable tips. So yes, we're gonna talk about our programs and all of the things that we offer, but I want you to walk away with something actionable for something that is overwhelming, frustrating, or just plain annoying you right now in your life. Or if you're a parent or a spouse of someone with neurodivergence, To help them as well. I want you to walk away with something today. So please sign up today for a free call. We can learn more about each other. Well, good morning everyone. So this is Danielle and Britt with ND Out Loud, and we are talking about building your safe space today because we're not feeling very safe in our world right now, especially those of us located in the US. But according to clients I have all over the world, it's pretty much the same. So not going into politics today. That's not why we're here, because none of us need to talk about that or hear about that or even discuss that right now, because we all know what's going on. End of story there. But I want to talk about— and Britt and I are both— we both have 2 different ways to look at psychological safety in today's world. And mine is malicious compliance and as malicious as possible. But what are you building for yourself so you do have safe spaces? So Brit, how have you been talking about safe space and having safe space and supporting safe space for clients right now?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing, I mean, first I feel like a broken record because I always come back to this, is like one, let's Check in around our basic needs. Like, let's do what we can to meet our basic needs. Are we hydrated? Are we taking our meds? Are we sleeping? Are we eating? Start there, right? Because that is the best way to set us up mentally, cognitively for emotional regulation. So starting there. 2, I, for me and for my clients, something that has been really powerful is creating pockets of joy. Planning pockets of joy, having things to look forward to. So creating pockets of joy and then knowing what kind of rest you need.

Yes.

Because there's a lot going on. Sometimes we need physical rest. Sometimes we need cognitive rest. Sometimes we need emotional rest. Sometimes we need sensory rest. Understanding what kind of rest you need and how to give yourself those different types of rest. Can help you to create safety for yours?

One of the big things is recognizing where your energy is and what your energy is. So what energy do you have right now? And that's not always just physical energy like you just said, but what energy are you putting out right now? Are you putting out angry energy, frustrated energy? What energy are you putting out right now? Because Then you need to take a step back and then look at what type of rest you need because of the energy that's coming out of you right now. A lot of people are in fear, a lot of fear right now. And we're not dismissing anybody's political beliefs again, or any of that, because amen, we get it. But if you are in fear right now, then you need to eat more. Eat more protein, eat more healthy sugars, eat more healthy fat. Why? Because your brain is using up those things a lot faster than your normal. 2, get more rest. And rest does not necessarily mean sleep, as Britt was saying. So one of my favorite things that I'm telling clients to do is go find that old guilty pleasure movie.

Oh.

Put it on repeat and watch it. So what's your guilty pleasure movie?

Oh God, what isn't? Uh, the first one that comes to mind is Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Oh my gosh, okay, I love that. That is not what I was expecting. So my guilty pleasure movie is The Cutting Edge, which is a romantic comedy from the early '90s. It's an ice skating movie. I don't know why that is a thing I like watching when I'm feeling depressed and frustrated. It's not a good movie. Let me just put it out there. Okay, really not a good movie, but it's fantastic. And then the other thing that I have playing in the background a lot right now is Gilmore Girls.

Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Bob's Burgers. I love it because I don't have to think. I don't have to think. I just have to be entertained.

Exactly. And this weekend, I've been reading through the Fourth Wing series, and I got the newest book this weekend, and I found a YouTube channel that plays vibe music that is specifically for the new Onyx Storm book. So there's—

Oh, that's so delightfully specific.

Fire growling and fighting and, like, the war sounds, and, and there are castles and dragons and fire and sparkles, and it's a whole YouTube channel that plays— it's like a 4-hour loop.

I don't know who made that, but I feel like I just— I want to send them like some brainwaves right now.

There's one, and there's a channel like that for each of the books. And then I like this— the Sarah J. Maas books, complete trash. I know they're complete smut fantasy trash. They are smutty trash.

Muddy fantasy trash. All right.

That's what they are. And, and there is a channel to go with YouTube soundtrack to go with each book. I don't know who's doing this, but thank you. My neurodivergent brain is so happy with that right now because I can drown out the world. I can read my book and I do annotations in my book. So I've got the colored flags and the colored markers and the highlighters and like my neurodivergent brain loves that. And they are complete trash. I'm like, I am admitting these books are complete trash, but my brain needs that right now.

Yeah. Other things that are like, since you've said that, I've got like a running list of things now for myself. Like, I'm pulling out The Goofy Movie. Is it time for the Lord of the Rings marathon? Yes, it is.

We just watched all the Pirates of the Caribbean and then we just watched through all of the Jurassic Park movies, the old ones and the new ones. Awesome. I mean, do things that you can focus on, but you don't necessarily have to 100% focus. My husband and I had video game, handheld video game systems in our hands while watching movies. What do you need right now? That's building your safe spaces. The other part of building safe space is having a community, and I, I'm going to call it a tribe. I know some people have trouble with that word, but you need a close-knit tribe right now, not a whole huge 20,000-person Facebook community. You do not need that right now.

You need people who you can call up and invite over for dinner.

And if you are someone who is in an area that you can't do that, because I lived in an area for years where my Closest people were an hour and a half away. You couldn't always do that. Zoom is fantastic. And something that I am doing right now, and I talked to a couple members of my team, is we are opening up our body doubling to everyone for free right now for the next month.

Nice.

If you need a space to be able to focus, that's just quiet, to feel like you are with people, our body doubling is 100% free for you for the month. If you want that, just DM me. You can get access to that. I will share the link with you. Because we need safe spaces. Sometimes they're completely silent spaces with just other people on screen. Sometimes they're an online community like we at NDLA. We have an online community. We are sharing memes and jokes and stupid stuff right now because we need that. We also— I talked about Saturday, I cleaned out my closet while watching a comedian. And I just watched comedy for 2 hours while I was cleaning my closet. And I shared that with the community and it was It's Drew Lynch. For anybody who doesn't know him, he is a neurodivergent comedian. He was on America's Got Talent. He has a really pronounced stutter and another ND thing, and his wife is ADHD. The— his comedy about him and his wife and their interactions together—

I love this already.

He is hilarious, and he is just I get it. And it reminds me what my poor husband, what it might be like living with me, because I'm like, I think I was just doing that 10 minutes ago, those things that he was talking about. You know, it's just that complete chaos, brainless type content. And we need to build a community around being able to share those things with each other right now, because we have our spaces where we're stressed out and we're terrified and all of that. And those are important. I'm not saying they aren't important, but I'm telling you right now, that's not what I'm providing.

You can't live there 24/7.

We cannot. It's not—

You will burn up and burn out.

You do not want to go gray before your time. Take my word for it. You do not want to look 80 at the end of this 4 years. We need to find—

Don't feel 80.

I already feel 80 every day.

Girl, I know.

We already have health issues and are neurodivergent and have EDS and POTS and all of those things. We don't need to make ourselves feel weird. And I want to be really clear. That this level of stress is going to exacerbate your POTS, your Ehlers-Danlos. It's going to exacerbate the MS, cancer, whatever. It's going to make these things worse if you don't find safe, fun spaces. So what are— you've got a list growing in your head. Share your list. What are you thinking about you want to do to decompress and have some more fun right now?

Okay, well, definitely thinking of all about like things I enjoyed in my childhood, that, that, and I'm very lucky, I had a very healthy, safe childhood for the most part, right? Like, things were good. So this is, this feels good to me. But the things I enjoyed doing then are a lot of the things I can call upon now to help build a sense of safety and also a sense of agency. I think a lot of the fear that we feel right now comes from a lack of control. And that's normal.

Absolutely.

I'm not judging that. I get it. So what are the things you can do that you can control? So for me, like cooking and baking are really powerful ways to show love to myself and to my loved ones, right? Have some friends over for dinner and also allows me to get some energy out and do something that I really love. I'm thinking of all the like childhood movies and TV shows I watched that like give me good nostalgic feelings. So Growing Pains.

Oh my gosh, I haven't watched that in years.

Okay, I'm making a note of that.

Friends.

Oh, Friends.

Friends. Oh my gosh. How about Punky Brewster?

Oh, that is just before my time.

So, so that's my time.

For me, that would be Punky Brewster.

Or, but going through and watching Aladdin again and Cinderella, if all of those things.

I will rewatch The Magic School Bus and I will cry at the theme song.

I— so how about playing Uno? Sit down and play some Uno with some friends, or Monopoly, or Life, or just find things. Just be, but enjoyable be, not be when all of our conversations revolve around the fear The frustration, the anger, everything in life, then we start to feed on that and we start to spiral in that and I want to give you hope. Not saying those things aren't valid but you have to remove yourself from that in order to be able to function.

Joy is a tool. Rest is a tool. Community is a tool and a powerful tool.

So powerful.

They're not afterthoughts. They need to be in heavy rotation.

Absolutely. Read a book.

It's a tool.

Yeah, it is. Read a book, color, get a bubble machine out. So I was in Disney 2 weeks ago. We all know that because, hello, if you see me anywhere online, you know I was in Disney for a week. I bought myself a Mickey bubble wand while I was in Disney World, and my dog and I are having so much fun with the Mickey bubble wand. Oh baby, even my 12-year-old really ancient dog who sleeps 99% of the time gets so excited when I turn that on.

I love that.

But find things that are enjoyable. Take a hike, shut the phone off, delete Facebook, Instagram, like delete the social media from your phone.

If that is causing you more harm than good. Yeah, some of us, that is our communication lifeline, maybe a business lifeline. If it is not one of those things, and it is causing you more panic and stress and lost sleep than not, you don't need it right now. You can always get it back. You can always get it back.

I'm a huge proponent. Like I have an online business. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram—all of those things are my lifeline to growing my business. I can't completely delete my accounts or anything. I can't. I lose my business. And I know that, but I will on my phone. I will delete it every weekend and reinstall it because the temptation for looking at it right now to make sure everybody's okay and that what's the newest disaster, all of those things is too much. So I've removed them from my phone, so I don't even have them on my phone so that I can take that hike, play that game, read that book, watch that crazy stupid ridiculous movie or TV show or whatever and not Have something right next to me that I I can easily get drawn back into the chaos and depression and anger and frustration, and it's not hard to reinstall it. It's very very easy. Your phone, if you especially if you're on an iPhone, well, I think Android does this too. It saves all your information. You can easily reinstall and log back into everything. It's not it's not an executive dysfunction issue. It really isn't that hard. Okay. Just putting that out there because I know that somebody is going to say that it'll be too hard to reinstall. It's really not, I promise. But it just, we need those breaks. We need safe spaces. We need safe spaces. And this is something I've talked about for years, community and safe spaces. And it's something that a lot of neurodivergents have a hard time building, but let me tell you right now, we really need them.

We do. We absolutely do. If not, A nice to have.

It's a necessity. It's one of my necessity tools. And I've talked about that for years, that community is one of the reasons why I have success in life. Yeah. So what does community do for you that boils over into daily life, not just while you're in the community and have those feelings of being in, in that moment?

Oh God, it refills my cup. It refills my cup. Um, it refills my energy. I'm an extrovert, so for me, like, being physically present in community refills kind of like my energy reserves because being with people is just like— who is also a petty queen. I think it also, like, being in community reminds me like why I do what I do, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, I love people. I do the work I do out of a, out of a love People. And so being physically present with others just like helps like rebuild that motivation and that reminder. It allows me to feel seen. The community allows me to feel seen in times when I feel alone or like crazy. There's always at least one other person to say like, hey, it's not just you. You're— it's not time to go. check yourself in just yet. Like, you are not alone. Me too. At the same time, that community is the first people to step up and say, hey, I think something is really wrong and you might want to consider getting some additional support.

Absolutely.

They help, they help with my barometer.

Yeah, absolutely.

For what is going on. It infuses fun back into my life. And it allowed— like, being in community helps me get out of my own head, which is a really fun but also like incredibly chaotic and sometimes very anxious place to be.

Absolutely. So community, for me, one, I get— I do get an energy spike from it because I'm also an extrovert. Actually, I'm becoming less of one these days, and I only can do it in, in batches, but I think that's health-related, not The fact that I'm not an extrovert anymore. I just— my health, it takes too much energy. But for me, community— the things that community does for me are a little different. One, it fills my cup, all the things that Brit said. But I have less really close community because I moved 1,200 miles away from my community.

Yeah.

And I left my really close community behind. So I've had to find other ways to have community. So my community is 99% online. We check in with each other constantly. We're always asking. But my community helps me keep my house clean.

Mm.

My community helps me get my work done and helps feed me being petty and my malicious compliance to levels like you wouldn't believe in the last 2 weeks. My community supports me when I'm in bed all day and I can't do things the way I would like to. Frustrated and all of those things. My community keeps me from falling down into that spiral for that. My community helps me remember to eat lunch because I forget lunch often. My community also reminds me, and Brit is a big part of this, that taking a day off and resting and sleeping is acceptable and okay and needed. And last week, I Of my own volition, messaged Brit and said, no spoons today. Can't go live.

It's true.

And I don't think I've actually done that. I tend to be like, well, yeah, I can do it. I'll go live today and I'll push through. And I'm learning to just— nope. I need a break. That's what my community does for me is allows me and reminds me to support my body, support my house. Support my puppy, whatever that looks like. Because when my house is clean, then I don't have to panic if my husband brings somebody in the house last minute. There's none of that. My house is clean. I don't even have to worry about it, which means I'm less overwhelmed with my space. I had to clean out my closet this weekend, which was an executive function nightmare. My closet was a disaster. I still have— I moved from Western New York that gets 8 feet of snow to— Where I barely need sweatshirts 90% of the year, okay? And I'm pulling Under Armour stuff out of my closet going, I've lived here for 5 years, why do I still have this? I had a stack of wool, like wool-lined sweaters, polar fleece-lined sweaters. Why do I still have these? Like, through— and I cleaned them all out. I filled— I have a huge jacuzzi tub.

I filled the jacuzzi tub full of clothes, okay? I love those.

But my community helped me get that done. Somebody body doubled with me and we watched Drew Lynch on comedy and laughed hysterically while we both did a thing that we didn't want to do. That's what community can do for you if you just open yourself up to building one. And again, don't look— Facebook groups, I'm going to tell you right now, Facebook groups are the devil. I've decided for the most part right now because they are Just sharing news articles and sharing their fear. Like, everybody is feeding off of each other's fear and frustrations and everything right now.

Great trauma dump.

It is. And while we need trauma dump spaces too, not gonna deny that we need that. Sometimes we need spaces that are joy and happy and supportive and just fun. Yeah. So what fun and joy are you gonna bring into your life today? If you don't know how to bring joy and fun in, just ask Brit or I. We have a million, and Brit is adding to her list and I've been adding to my list as She mentions things during this call. Just have some fun. What are those guilty pleasures? What was that thing that at 5 years old you found so fun to do, or 9 years old, or 10 years old, or 12 years old? Whatever that is, go do that.

It's so fun.

It still is fun. And that little voice in the back of your head that says, this is for little kids and I shouldn't be enjoying this, tell it to shut the hell up and just go have fun. Bubble wand, coloring books, Scented crayons or markers, whatever it is you need to have some fun, do that.

You want to play dress-up? I'm not going to stop you.

That would be so fun.

You want to arrange your food in a smiley face on your plate? I'm not going to stop you.

If you want to eat chicken nuggets and smiley face mashed potatoes for dinner, go for it. Do it, whatever it is. And I will tell you, mashed potatoes is a perfectly acceptable dinner.

Some food is better than no food unless that food will poison you. But you know what I mean?

Yes, exactly.

I'm a big fan of putting rainbow sprinkles on my oatmeal.

I love that. So I have edible sparkles, edible glitter right now, and I put it on my mashed potatoes yesterday. I should have taken a picture. It just made me so happy that my mashed potatoes had purple sparkles in them.

I have so many questions, number one of which is not appropriate.

Yes, that's exactly where they came from. So if you're wondering where I got them, that's exactly where I got them.

No, I'm wondering where they end up. Or we don't know yet.

We don't know yet.

That would also make my friggin' day.

Okay, now I'm going to be thinking about this. Okay, anyway, where ADHD brains go when we talk about these things. So have fun. Have unicorn—

Spend time with your pets.

Have unicorn toast for breakfast. Who cares? It's better than a Pop-Tart, believe it or not. And if anybody wants to know what unicorn toast— my favorite version of unicorn toast is toast with cream cheese, sprinkles, edible glitter, and maybe some marshmallow too.

Oh, hell yeah.

Go for it. Do the things that bring you joy right now. I really want— we really want to encourage you to bring joy to your life.

Uh, Rhonda's getting joy from climbing all over my—

Being in your face. Yes.

Yeah, be a cat, you know, do what you want.

Do what you want. Like, seriously, pick a space. And we can't— we're adults, we have littles, we have furballs, we have jobs, we have to do some things that are a necessity. We have to pay the bills because we have to. But at least take your weekends Take a little bit of time each day to get the support you need. Find some joy because you can, and it is possible, and it doesn't have to be complicated or expensive or any of those things.

No.

If you're looking for free body doubling, again, it is silent, but that is a bunch of faces. I've got 6 faces on screen right now in body doubling. Come join us. It is absolutely free till end of March. Please, please just come join us. I want to give you a space that is safe. Come be safe and come have fun with us. I will share my YouTube channels with all the vibe channel stuff with everybody because it's just amazing. So if you want stuff, ask, DM us. We're here to support you. ND Out Loud is absolutely here. And if you want to experience a whole entire community, it is $20 a month for group coaching, a community you could share anything you want except for political stuff because we are all about the joy and all about living life. No freaking— I'm just done with that. Just come enjoy. Come get the support you need. Come set goals that you actually like because we don't actually call them goals around here because they suck. I hate goals. Goals are boring and I will never complete them. But if I set an intention to have some fun maybe around a task that I got to do, then I'm more likely to get it done when other people are—

What's the next one?

I— oh, I have side quests all day long. Come join me on a side quest. I love quests. Have an amazing day. Come find some joy with us. Again, DM Britt or I at any time. We are happy to answer your questions.

We're here.

Yeah, we are. You are safe here. You're safe. Have a good day.