I’m writing this newsletter in the last few days before my kids go back to school and I return to work after a six-week summer break. As lovely as this time has been, we’re all looking forward to getting back into our regular routines and I’m reminded just how much of my life is built around meeting particular needs…
I’ve never liked self-help gurus. So often, when people give an outline for a virtuous life, advise on self-care, or tell us what we all should really be doing for our health and wellbeing, I just can’t relate. How I like to live - what instinctually feels good and right for me - doesn’t necessarily line up with the advice given. What’s more, the implication that comes with most self-help material is that if you’re struggling, you need to try harder. They’ve given the recipe for a good life, and if you don’t get the same result you must be doing it wrong.
We all have things we need to flourish, day to day and throughout our lives. At the most basic, none of us can keep functioning for long physically without nutrition, water, and sleep. Furthermore, none of us will do well psychologically if we go a long time without things like safety, connection, autonomy, meaning, or peace. However, what situations these needs show up in and what we need to do to meet them varies a lot from one person to another. It depends on so much, like our past experiences, our living situations, our personalities, and any physical disabilities or health conditions. And apparently, as I’ve recently learned, it can also depend on the neuro-type of our brains.
Being able to identify our own needs and know they are understandable and valid is so important. When we’re struggling, when we’re reacting to something, when we’re feeling down or stressed out, being able to name the unmet needs helps us make sense of those feelings. And, hopefully, we can at least start looking at how we can address those needs and ask for support from the people around us.
Learning about autism made heaps more sense of the ongoing struggles I’ve had to get my social needs met. I’ve also written here about the lifelong work of trying to get my spiritual needs met - things like the need for identity, meaning, and purpose. But other needs are common to most autistic people but haven’t been a huge issue for me, and now I realise it’s because my life is set up pretty well to meet them.
Basically, my brain seems to have two modes:
Hyper-information input, analysis, reasoning, creativity, and problem-solving
orAutopilot
So many of the little quirks of how I like to keep my home and my daily routines relate to the specific needs that come from this. I’ve only got so much capacity for hyper-processing in a day, so the more tasks that are on autopilot, the more I can give to the things I’m really interested in or that take more mental energy. What’s more, having a home environment that feels comfortable and soothing and not too distracting or overwhelming to my senses makes it easier to cope with things that are more intense throughout the day.
I want to acknowledge a whole lot of privileged stuff here. I know we don’t all have a ton of control over how our homes are set up or a lot of what we do when we’re there. I also want to acknowledge how super supportive my husband is, and how fortunate we are that we are generally on the same page. I know it’d all be quite different otherwise!
So here are a few examples of things that seem a bit weird to others, or totally unappealing, or just aren’t something that you particularly need, but that make life for me more bearable on the toughest days and more joyful on the better ones.
THE NEED FOR ORDER
The world feels chaotic enough, so my home needs to be an escape from this. I’m fairly minimalist, and everything needs to have a place where it belongs so that tidying takes as little thinking as possible. I know that people talk about tidiness like it’s a virtue, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. The the magpie collections growing in one of my children’s bedrooms doesn’t make them immoral, and my overwhelm when I look at it and don’t know where to begin with putting things away doesn’t make me more righteous. It makes me a person who needs order. And as my children get older, it increasingly makes me a person who needs them to keep their bedroom doors closed so I don’t have to see the chaos on the other side.
THE NEED FOR PEACE
As well as hearing me talk about my need for order, my kids have got very accustomed to having me ask them to please give me some peace. We’ve each got our own sensory stuff in my household with things that we find extra annoying or distracting, so we generally respect those requests from one another. The ultimate in peaceful, sensory-soothing places for me, however, is in nature. Amongst greenery, listening to the sounds of birds, smelling the flowers, snapping dry leaves with my fingers, and collecting seeds. At home, that means heading out to my garden whenever I get the chance or tending to my balcony plants when I lived in an apartment. Most work lunch breaks throughout my working life have been spent outside walking in a nearby park or along the waterfront, and in some jobs, it has been the only way I could return happily enough to a windowless office, a computer screen, or a difficult coworker dynamic for the afternoon.
THE NEED FOR NUTRITION
Food is something we all need regularly, and compared to many autistic people I don’t have a lot of sensory issues around food. I’m the person in our household who’s responsible for the family’s nutrition and I enjoy eating, but I don’t want to spend any more thinking energy on it than I need to. My husband does most of the supermarket shopping, but the grocery-list making and the cooking itself need to be autopilot tasks for me. Simplicity is key. So for as long as I remember I’ve had a standard grocery list and a limited number of different meals I make, all from pantry items and seasonal vegetables. Most meals can be made in about 20 minutes, I very rarely cook anything that I need a recipe for, and if you recommend a recipe and it includes ingredients I don’t keep stocked (or a Thermomix) it’s just not going to happen. I’ve eaten the same breakfast every day for decades, I make the same lunch for work each day, and I’m quite happy with my familiar evening meals that take minimal thought, thank you!
THE NEED FOR REST
I reflect on things a lot. You might think I’m overthinking, and I reckon you’re probably underthinking. But although I generally really like the way my brain works, it can be exhausting! I can easily get stuck in thought spirals about problems in life that I’m sure I can work out eventually, but that really might have no solution. Eventually, I need a break. And my perfect brain break is a puzzle. Logic puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, sudoku puzzles. Games like Candy Crush are a great, distracting puzzle for me, with a soothing repetition along with some problem-solving. I’ve heard about how we’re apparently all meant to be having an hour of screen-free time before bed, but I’m calling bullshit on that. I sleep best when I get to do my daily logic puzzle on the iPad before bed. A chance to rest my brain from racing thoughts in preparation for resting my body.
What needs come up a lot for you? What ways do you find to meet those needs that might look a bit different to other people? Does it feel inappropriate or selfish to prioritise the things you need day-to-day to flourish? I hope sharing a little bit of my weirdness is an encouragement to listen to your own instincts and take your needs seriously.
I have recently been using ear plugs when my 1 year old’s noises get to be too much, and don what I have been calling my “armor” on my days home with him (clothing thick enough where I won’t get irritatingly hurt when he pinches and grabs me. Also I just started seeing a neurodivergent therapist (!!) who, after I described my son, wondered if he was showing some signs of autism and this new framing has been massively helpful in our interactions (he’s a high sensory/proprioceptive needs child, which is NOT my style but I can learn to adapt!)
The weirdest thing about me is I don't know what my needs are, but I reckon I share some similar to yours.