On dating, dodgy knees and broken clocks…

Today, I want us to talk about dating. But with a twist.

I went on a date last week.

“Huh?” I can almost hear you grunt in confusion. “Aren’t you married?”

Yes, dear reader, I am. Happily.

Now, of course I take my wife on dates, being a not-so-secret hopeless romantic at heart. If there’s interest, and with my wife’s permission, I’ll happily write you a newsletter about how two multiply neurodivergent people arrange and experience regular moments of romantic connection (especially if you’re interested in the business case for why – for some of us – a trip to Poundland is sometimes the most affectionate and heart-stopping experience you can arrange for your life partner…

The twist I promised you, though, is that I went on a date this week…with MYSELF.

Those of you reading for a while will know that this year has been “a funny one” for me, in a few ways.

For years – and especially when I could finally make the most of my ADHD and autism diagnoses – the focus was very much on getting my mental health and nervous system onto an even-enough keel to have a decent quality of life.

Getting curious and problem-solving on what might help, I did a lot to embed things like meditation, walking and journalling in my life to help me feel more settled, and to feel like I happened to the day, rather than the day just happening to me.

This works for me more often than it doesn’t, and those activities happen more often than they don’t and, really, when you think about what counts as a regular practice, something occurring 51% or more is all you really need to say you are “doing” something.

What about the physical body, though? Well, it’s true that some of those things can help with physical wellbeing for some people. But not for everything.

I can’t meditate my way out of COVID. It might help me cope mentally, but it doesn’t get rid of the illness itself.

I can’t journal my way out of painful, exhausting diverticulitis outbreaks. I would definitely journal to help me plan for taking care of myself, but I’ll rely on antibiotics and painkillers to help me with the actual illness, as is my wont.

This year has been funny because – for the first time in a long time – it’s been my physical wellbeing that I’ve needed to turn my attention to. It’s also funny because…what has turned out to help has been odd in some ways.

Because, yes, when I am ill, I will indeed “take the medicine” (of course, a matter of personal choice) but…there can be other unexpected “medicines” that DO help with the body, though you can’t even imagine consciously what they might at the time. In fact, the remedy might not come to you consciously at all.

One thing I have struggled with this year is a heck of a lot of bodily pain and tension. I’ve had a tight lower back, and very sore shoulders and ribs.

There’s rarely a day that I am not sore in some eventually noticeable way. I looked into this, and assumed it was “just stress” or “just inflammation” from whatever lifestyle factors aren’t helping me right now.

But I also had another instinct…

I think that my mind and body are connected. One can affect the other. Sometimes, if my mind doesn’t feel good, then dancing my body to cheesy pop music and singing 1998-2001 UK pop bangers (the golden era, as far as I am concerned) helps my mind.

If my body is really sore, chucking myself down on the floor and counting my breaths or focusing in and out on specific sensations (which I do with care and self-awareness, as it’s not for everyone, every day) helps me to know what bits of my body hurt and allows ideas to creep in about how to help myself.

For this reason, I understand that what might turn out to help with my body, might be linked to something in my “mind-brain”, though in unexpected ways.

Have you ever heard the expression “A stopped clock is right, twice a day”?

One of the diagnostic traits of ADHD is impulsivity, for those, like me, with that kind of profile.

Impulsivity is often seen as something, by the medical profession, to be treated. And, of course, if any impulsivity you are experiencing isn’t helpful to you, and you find something – medical or otherwise – that helps you to experience a relationship to your impulsivity that gives you a better quality of life, then go for it, if that is what you choose.

I am happy that, sometimes, my ADHD meds do give me a little more insight and allow me to slow down my thoughts just enough to decide whether or not I “really” need to buy a second hammock for wild camping as a back up (even though I’ve never used the first one for wild camping).

My impulsivity has, at times, frankly, been a royal pain. For me, it has showed up with severe financial implications, which I am only getting to grips with and rolling back now.

But, a stopped clock, for me, is right twice a day. If impulsivity is a stopped clock, in some sense, it may have some use or some value in some way.

If someone told me I could wake up tomorrow and not be impulsive, I do think I’d turn down the offer.

Just like all humans have emotions, all humans have impulses. We’re meant to.

What is an impulse?

A flash of a desire to act, have, be, conclude, say…a quick drive to put thought into being.

Like with many things in life, impulses can really hinder or they can really help.

It’s not great to have an impulse to transform my life by buying a moped (a fantasy I do still occasionally cultivate) because of the financial impact and the real possibility that – being effectively blind in one eye and having terrible sensory integration – that I or someone else would end up being carried off on a stretcher fairly quickly after the purchase.

That doesn’t mean I want to throw the baby of my impulsivity out with the bathwater.

One of the helpful ways my impulsivity shows up is in idea generation. Creativity is often thought of the ability to produce novel works of art or poetry. But, when we look at what’s classically considered creativity, it’s actually often “just” the seemingly random “smooshing” together of two ideas or more that have never been rapidly smooshed together before.

It might be the use of a finger rather than a brush smooshed together with inspiration from a gallery visit to yield a new pet portrait you never thought you’d paint. It could be two rare adjectives juxtaposed on the pain to create a novel concept of a sunset in the mind of a reader.

It may be a flash of inspiration about what you need today, right now, in this moment.

If Monet had not followed his impulses, would we have the beautiful picture of the low, red, glowing sun lighting up the Thames? No – very possibly not. And would I have moved forward this week with my aches and pains if I’d stamped mine down and corralled it because all impulsivity must be reigned in, always?

My impulsivity helped me with my body the other day. I had a really sore, swollen, warm knee and my brain was feeling foggy and sluggish. I couldn’t get going. Even for things I like. That’s usually a sign for me that something needs to…something.

I know from my academic adventures-in-boredom when I first had COVID that being injured or ill can tank my executive functions. Inflammation interacts with dopamine functioning, it turns out. I wondered if I simply needed to fix my knee, and my brain would follow suit. That was my first conscious instinct.

I hobbled downstairs pathetically to find my wife to tell her about my knee.

She listened and asked what I needed. I paused.

I didn’t have an answer right away, despite my initial hypothesis.

After asking permission to make suggestions (because we work around each other’s demand avoidance), my wife began…”What about?…” A bath, a nap, some food, a cuddle…

I shook my head. I blurted out:

‘I need to go to Manchester. On a date. With myself. RIght NOW.” I said, emphatically.

I was as taken aback as my wife was, as if someone else had uttered the words and not me.

I got up. Grabbed my bag, kissed my wife, and walked out almost as quickly as I’d sat down on the bed to talk.

My impulsivity knew what I needed. The stopped clock was right. In fact, I realised, the stopped clock wasn’t stopped at all. I had just developed the ability to judge if I wanted to entrust my day to its timescale or not.

Within an hour I was in Manchester. I walked around, listening to podcasts about coaching and psychology to wake my brain up. I touched (and let’s face it, smelled) plushies in a range of shops. I ate a cheap Chinese meal because I had craved a sit-down one for weeks, and we don’t have a sit-down Chinese restaurant in my little town.

I walked through Waterstones bookshop, tilting my head sideways to read the spines of the books. I headed to the psychology section and told myself “Today, just see what grabs you. You know what you are interested in and what you need. Go with it…”

A small book – “The Examined Life” – leapt off the shelf at me. I bought it. It was full of stories about people’s therapy experiences. I knew I would devour it. I wondered for a moment about why I had chosen this book. Why was it THESE stories…why had I gone for STORIES at all?

I began to tire and my knee was sore but my brain felt so much more ALIVE. More alive than it had felt since I had had COVID about 5 weeks ago. I could almost feel the neurochemicals fizzing in my brain. My mind was coming back online.

I texted my wife and said I wouldn’t be too much longer, but that I NEEDED to journal. I found a quiet cafe, got out my notebook and pen (I never leave home without them), ordered a strong coffee and sat down.

I wrote down WHAT DO I NEED MORE OF in huge letters, and underlined it firmly.

I need…

More stories, more fun, more interest, more joy, more learning, more reflection, more dates with myself, more…sharpening the saw.

As I was on a roll and allowing my impulsivity free reign to throw up to me things I know but “I” don’t know, I had not expected myself to write “sharpening the saw”.

I reflected.

Sharpening the saw, to me, means choosing an area of my life – even if it’s one that’s going well – and seeing how it can be polished, refined or improved because, even something going well can stagnate or degrade over time. Just as the finest axe blunts unless you sharpen your tool.

I wanted to sharpen the saw of my coaching, and I felt it would be stories – and maybe games – that might help me get there.

I don’t know fully what that insight means yet. But that’s not the point and, indeed, it is surely the subject of another newsletter.

The point is that I came home, sat down and breathed for a few moments and…my shoulders were that little bit less tight, my knee had calmed down and, for the first time in a week, I slept like a swaddled, utterly untroubled baby.

I felt brighter in both mind and body the next day. It wasn’t medication or a bandage that did that.

The point is that…What my physical body needed was a date. With myself. I needed to connect with myself. I needed to allow my whole, authentic self to just be and do as it naturally pleased, just for a couple of hours.

I needed to give myself chance to think freely and see what came up and, boy, even though I don’t know what it means yet, I came home with the sense that something profound had shifted for me. Imagine if I’d had the thought to go to Manchester and had simply squashed it down, pooh-poohing it with “Ah that’s just the impulsivity talking. Your clock is broken, so don’t trust it.”

Imagine, indeed.

Sometimes the clock IS telling the right time.

I told someone about this experience and they said to me “But what if you don’t have a spare 40 quid to do this?”

A fair question.

I can’t always go to Manchester. I might NOT have the cash.

But I might be able to grab a blanket, choose a podcast, grab my dog, and sit wrapped up cosy in a chair in my yard with a cup of tea, watching the sunset. Whenever I feel a can’t, I look for anything – however small – that I CAN. I often say in coaching that, for a great many things, as long as you know WHAT you want, the next stage, the how of it, is just a problem-solving exercise.

Watching the sunset is a date, too. I’d have loved that, as well, I am sure.

Because I am dating myself, I get to make that date as personalised and loving as I can with what I have to hand and…I think that’s what counts.

It doesn’t matter if the flowers you get cost 3 pounds or 30, provided thought goes into them – in fact, if they were roses cut with time and care from your partner’s own garden, couldn’t that mean more?

You can date yourself with what you have to hand and it can be more than enough. It’s the check-in that counts in the first place, I feel.

I started today’s newsletter by hoping that, if your weekend was not so good, you might experience something small today that brings you a little joy or hope or some other emotion that you fancy encountering today? Is there a micro-date you could arrange with yourself, if you wanted to?