Elisabeth Bahr on Habits and Helpful Strategies for Squiggly Brained Creatives
Today Michelle and Wallis are joined by wonderful North Node member, prolific creative, and whip smart entrepreneur Dr. Liz Bahr, to muse on managing a creative life with a neurodivergent / squiggly brained diagnosis.
Liz is a writer, creative expression facilitator, adjunct professor, clinical mentor, consultant, entrepreneur, and Doctor of Occupational Therapy. She holds a Doctorate from Boston University and Master of Science from NYU, 500-hour yoga teacher, and specializes in working with ND people and populations — Sensory Processing Issues, Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD. She’s the founder of Pegasus Wellness, and The Magic Word, a podcast about science, creativity and storytelling (the first season out this spring!).
We muse on
How to identify sensory processing and sensory wellness preferences and which environmental accommodations to seek
Being diagnosed at various ages and what this does for your learning and development
How to identify when getting help for a specific diagnosis is helpful
Strategies for planning and externalizing your thoughts when dealing with ADHD and executive dysfunction
The practice of “junk journaling” for psychic release for squiggly brained creatives
Strategies for coping with overwhelm and getting out of our heads and back into our bodies
Episode Corrections
Neurodiversity, as a term, rose to prominence in the 1990s
Join our free community of intuitives and creators here!
✨
Join our free community of intuitives and creators here! ✨
“Yeah, I have some science background and stuff like that it can help figure some stuff out. But at the end of the day, the individual is going to be the expert on their own life. And I’m really there to support them.”
“That’s why it’s so important for people to know their own sensory preferences and be able to self regulate throughout the day. Because that’s going to be the first step… It’s really a two fold issue, and the first step is definitely self awareness of what we need as individuals.”
“An operational definition is a very agreed upon and specific definition of a certain concept, or a certain term, so that it’s replicable for either research purposes or for understanding.”
“Everything can change in a year; your whole life can change in a year. When I think about where I’m going to be a year from now, I see like a blank space, a black hole. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have visions for myself. It just is so hard to leapfrog to that point for me personally.”
Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or RadioPublic
-
Not having access to specialists is among the major issues with our healthcare system
Neurodivergent versus neurotypical
In what ways do individuals' sensory processing patterns differ?
Is sensory processing dysfunction a real disorder?
What sensory hyper-responsiveness is, and when it becomes a problem
Sensory under-responsive and sensory craving defined
Interactional breakdown between these two neuro types
Why is it crucial for individuals to be aware of their own sensory preferences?
When you exhaust yourself so rapidly and believe that nothing you do will make a difference
How we might better understand these aspects of us so that we can govern our behavior without being unkind to ourselves throughout the day
Areas of executive functioning
A mismatch between knowledge and action
Who is Elisabeth Bahr as a creative writer
Seasonal Goal Setting: flowing with the cycles of our external world to serve as a reminder of our internal world
Why so many new year's resolutions fail
Seasonally cycling through your goals
Temporal discounting versus time blindness
The significance of engaging in a daily creative ritual
Resources for further exploration
SPD in Adults | STAR Institute has programs for people with sensory issues
Austin Kleon, a writer who draws
This podcast is edited by Softer Sounds Studios