Tag: ADHD

How water helps me

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Underwater video of me jumping in the pool

Being submerged in water has always been one of my favorite things for as long as I can remember. It’s been so beneficial for me in different ways and I wanted to share that with you.

Being submerged in water is a very calming sensory experience for me. It has helped me regulate overstimulation caused by my surroundings. The pressure of being in water makes me feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from me and I can finally relax and breathe. It also helps with my concentration and therefore I do a lot of mental processing while I’m in water because I can process my thoughts more at ease. It’s why I make most of my life decisions in the shower. Water puts out that fire I feel in my brain and calms my overactive nerves. It also brings out the best of me. My hands are flappy happy and I’m giggly when I’m in water.

Drowning is the #1 cause of death in autistic children. I have the advantage of knowing how to swim from a really young age so drowning was always less of a risk for me. I used to elope a lot as a child and I would always go where water was.

Fun fact: I used to swim in the Hudson River!

I love legos

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This is a picture of me holding a flower bouquet made out of legos. If you want to purchase this same set, click on the link https://amzn.to/3sKkFg9. As an Amazon associate, I earn commissions from qualifying purchases.

Growing up I didn’t have my own Lego set. I do desperately wanted legos but my mom always said she didn’t have the money to buy it. Now as an adult, I treat myself to Lego sets whenever I can afford it because I feel that I owe that to my inner child that’s still healing from trauma.

Our home is loaded with legos. I do have children so they obviously love it. But legos is more than just a toy for me. Whenever I complete a set, my confidence level goes through the roof. As someone who struggles with confidence development, legos is an easy way to help boost that. Legos also helps stimulate my brain and helps me with problem solving. I also love the opportunity to be creative. The instructions that comes with it are visual so I’m able to understand it just fine. It’s the perfect sensory tool for me and very therapeutic. It helps decrease stress levels and sensory overload. It helps me build patience and encourages my need to hyper focus on something I really love. It also helps me build a stronger bond with my children. Legos is one of the few things we can all do together that makes us all happy. Also, since I never received occupational therapy as a child for my needs, playing with legos is the best thing for my physical development because it develops dexterity and strength in the fingers but also teaches me control of the pressure applied when building things with intricate detail. I lack body awareness and I’m often heavy handed. Building with legos has taught me what gentle touch is.

Autism poetry book now available on Amazon| Beautifully Wired by Jessica Jenkins

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This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I’m so happy to announce that my autism poetry book called “Beautifully Wired” is now available on Amazon. Click here to purchase and let’s see how many copies I can sell in the first month. Thank you to all who have supported me this far!

Autism & ADHD | What it’s like having both

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I really am excited about this blog post because a lot of people have absolutely no idea what it’s like having 2 different disorders co-occurring. I’ve heard a few people say that autism and ADHD are the same thing. It really upsets me because I know exactly how different both are and how they affect me differently. In this blog, I’m going to explain how both disorders basically contradict each other on a lot of things.

Autism vs ADHD

My autism causes me to be overstimulated and need to shut down but my ADHD causes me to be hyperactive and now I can’t relax enough to restore myself.

My autism insists I need order and routine but my ADHD makes it hard to follow the routine because I get bored and distracted easy.

My autism wants to obsess over a special interest and while my ADHD mostly agrees with that because it makes me hyper fixate on my autistic special interests, I still get distracted and bored easily which makes me unable to stick to one thing for too long. That’s why I have a long list of crafts that I do and continue to add more to the list.

My autism causes me to be sensory avoidant but my ADHD causes me to need constant stimulation so I’m always stuck picking which one will have the least harm done if I ignore it.

My autism makes me not want to be social but my ADHD pushes me to be social because being stuck at home relaxing doesn’t feel good for my ADHD, which then makes my autism very uncomfortable struggling with the lack of social cues.

I need sleep to restore my autistic brain but my ADHD makes me feel restless and now I can’t shut my brain off so I’m up all night with racing thoughts that my autism is unable to process.

My autism wants to organize everything in my space but my ADHD makes it hard to stay focused on a task and both conditions tend to struggle with execution dysfunction.

My autism causes me to have meltdowns due to sensory processing issues while my ADHD doesn’t really care unless it’s distracting me.

My autism does very well focusing on details but my ADHD causes me to easily forget the details and now I need a step by step process broken down.

My autism makes me learn new things pretty quick but my ADHD makes me hyper focus on something else prematurely and now I can’t retain the information I learned.

My autism makes me shut down and occasionally have non verbal episodes when dealing with severe sensory overload but my ADHD makes it hard to shut up sometimes and I talk nonstop.

My ADHD causes me to be impulsive but my autism can’t tolerate unpredictability and now I have to carefully plan it out before it’s executed.

It feels like a constant war in my head between the two. I can’t always accommodate one’s needs without interrupting the other. My depression is amplified due to the confusion and inability to be comforted. I can’t help myself when there’s such confusion.

While there are some similarities between the two, it’s definitely not the same thing and it’s absolutely not the same spectrum. Some people have one or the other but there’s some who deal with both and it’s very complicated. I hope you learned something from this blog because it’s very important to be able to recognize the difference so that you can accommodate your needs accordingly.