Be Kinder to Your Extra Sensitive Nervous System: Episode 84 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

Struggling to show yourself the same kindness you’d give others? If you have ADHD, autism, or trauma, your nervous system needs extra care—not extra pressure. This episode explores why self-compassion is essential for neurodivergent and trauma survivors—and how to practice it daily.

Topics covered:

• Recognizing when you’re pushing yourself too hard (like working until 3am)
• Understanding your extra sensitive nervous system
• The 20,000 negative messages statistic and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)
• Reparenting yourself with tenderness
• The Feel, Love, Heal framework for self-acceptance
• Befriending your body and mind as they are right now
• Connecting with neurodivergent community

• Workshop at The Yoga Root (Feb 15) - theyogaroot.org
• Sole to Soul Circle membership (from €8/month)
• EFT tap-along for RSD (bonus content)
• Free resources at selfcarecoaching.net
• Book: 365 Ways to Feel Better

📧 [email protected] 🌐 selfcarecoaching.net

#ADHD #Autism #AuDHD #SelfCompassion #TraumaHealing #Neurodivergent #RSD #SelfCare #WorldKindnessDay

CHAPTERS

(0:00–0:33) Why it’s still so hard to be kind to ourselves

(0:38–1:26) Discovering autism and learning to slow down

(1:26–3:00) Overworking, late nights, and holding yourself accountable for rest

(3:08–4:16) Understanding ADHD, emotional pain, and rejection sensitivity

(4:16–5:41) Reparenting yourself and honouring what you’ve survived

(5:48–7:04) Working gently with childhood memories and self-compassion

(7:10–8:14) Befriending your changing body and mind

(8:21–9:17) Finding connection and support within neurodivergent communities

(9:40–10:27) Accepting yourself and allowing healing

(10:27–11:00) Expressing your needs without apology

(11:07–12:09) You deserve tenderness and kindness

(12:09–13:31) Grieving what you didn’t have and helping build a kinder world

LINKS

Love Yourself. Warts and All: I Swear inspired Episode 82 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

https://youtu.be/emoPrbHbc2M?si=HIP2MEp0QaD-E1Mt

Shadow Work with Black Cats and Sharks:

Episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/OudSMFHNDEo

Be More Cat: Episode 70 of the Feel Better

Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/ZJQTjy372GY

Love your inner Smelly Cat this Bealtaine and

beyond Episode 56 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/daQopL3K7BY

Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! Episode 48 of

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/atAcj0HtD6U

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Are you still struggling to be even a fraction as kind to yourself as you would be to anyone else, especially if you knew their trauma history or how much they struggle with ADHD AuDHD autism symptoms?

This episode is to, as all of the episodes, helping people with trauma, ADHD AuDHD take better care of yourself, create a life you don’t need to retreat from and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved.

So this is episode 84 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and I’m still in the early stages of processing the fact that I have autism as well as ADHD and again it’s making so much more sense of my nearly 50 years on the planet and having to be extra gentle with myself.

I was kind of crying every day for a couple of weeks there and other stuff going on but recognising it even though all my work is about amping up the self-care and protecting the trauma survivor and neurodivergent extra sensitive nervous system, realising I was still trying to do way too much and really recognising that’s not friendly, that’s not kind.

Even a little thing, like I worked weekends for many, many years. I’ve been self-employed for 21 years but for more than half of that I was constantly doing additional trainings and getting different certifications and so many additional things.

When I started giving myself weekends off (apart from if I’m facilitating a workshop or at a conference or something) it has translated into often working really late on a Friday night in order to have the Saturday and Sunday off.

The last few weeks, with everything going on it’s been like kind of till 1am, 3am. And that’s not kind to myself. That’s not helping in terms of the ADHD medication.

It’s not. If anyone were saying that their boss was making them do that, I love my work so there’s that but also it’s not sustainable. I’m saying it here to keep myself accountable but if I don’t finish by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock at the very, very, very latest I will get up early on a Saturday to do some because it’s better to have it on a Saturday or Sunday than to be becoming a routine late late late.

You might have other things, I mean for me I think it is the over scheduling that is the biggest thing in terms of my nervous system and also really, really, really having to be gentle with myself.

I’m gaining more understanding about ADHD medication having an impact on things like the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and how, apparently, our pain threshold which is pretty high with ADHD goes down.

Neuroscience shows that emotional pain registers in a similar way, in the same way on brain scans, as physical pain. Rather than telling ourselves we shouldn’t care or that we’re too sensitive or anything like that, just recognising we do care, it does hurt. 2025 is an advanced practice living through everything that’s going on, I’m not going to even name the horrors, natural disasters, human inflicted horrors.

But it’s a lot for any nervous system. Just recognising having to be extra tender with yourself so that’s the Feel part, let yourself feel, give yourself permission to self-regulate, give yourself permission to recognise the pain and the grief involved in learning these skills that seem to come so effortlessly to other people (although they probably don’t).

Giving yourself permission to reparent yourself, imagining having grown up without all the trauma you’ve survived, imagine growing up in a world in which your autism, your ADHD was supported. And your gifts were nourished and nurtured. And you were not made to feel wrong.

There’s that statistic that is still kind of playing on my mind from that 2024 study that was cited in Additude magazine around ADHD children receiving 20,000 more negative messages than neurotypical children by the age of 10.

It really helps me recognise of course so many of us have RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. Of course so many of us struggle with lots of things and letting ourselves laugh at ourselves as well, I regularly laugh at myself, have humour around it but honour the struggles, give yourself time to reparent yourself, let something emerge in terms of any memory that feels okay to work with.

Recognising again this is a podcast. You’re not a one-to-one client of mine. You need to take responsibility for what you’re choosing to work with. But something that springs to mind, something, any memory that might be painful from childhood from any earlier time in your life and imagining how you could have been held better, how you could have been protected, how you could have, if not protected, then helped to understand the grief, the loss, the trauma, the symptom.

And how the wider world isn’t set up and that’s not your fault and you’re not responsible for the emotional labour involved. Although I hope you enjoyed the I Swear episode, Episode 82 a couple weeks ago.

Recognise that. Feel free to email [email protected] if you want to share how you’re being extra gentle with that younger part of yourself. Even acknowledging what you, with 2025 hindsight and all the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years, would do differently to help younger you. Beginning the healing process there. And there are other tools and techniques obviously.

For the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, accept yourself exactly as you are right now. Befriend that changing body and mind as you learn more and more about yourself. I’m facilitating a workshop at The Yoga Root which you can find out more about at theyogaroot.org on the 15th so there’s still time for you to book for that and it’s going to incorporate yoga, image work, special yoga nidra, EFT tapping, all sorts just helping people, myself included, stop arguing with reality. You often find it with injury or with illness rather than recognising, “OK this is where my body is right now, this is what I need in this moment, this is where my nervous system is right now, this is where my energy, this is where my chi, my prana is right now, this is what I need.” It’s like, “Aghhh, I should be able to ____” and that’s just adding the suffering instead of just recognising pain as part of life, suffering doesn’t have to be as torturous as we often make it.

Ask yourself what it would take for you to befriend your body and mind exactly as you are right now. Your soul? Your heart? What do you need from yourself? How can you accept yourself more fully?

And as we move to the Heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, how can you connect with others?

I cannot tell you how beneficial it has been for me recognising first of all how many of my loved ones are already neurodivergent and more and more of us discovering that about each other but becoming part of professional and personal groups where we learn from each other. Where we learn about things that work and haven’t worked for us.

Just being able to laugh with each other about some of the horrors as well as support each other through some of the things that other people might not even attempt to pull off because we’re all used to that spiky profile by now. That kind of being really good at some things and terrible at others.

You are also very welcome to apply to join the Sole to Soul Circle and that’s from as little as €8 a month and tomorrow’s special bonus deeper dive content will be an EFT tap along that will help with the RSD, that will help you when you’re rejecting yourself because that’s the most unkind thing.

And it’s World Kindness Day this week so accept yourself. Let yourself heal. Grieve what you didn’t have and be gentle with yourself. Recognise it has been tough, it is tough and it can get easier.

The more you design your life to accommodate yourself, the more you ask for what you need the better. And next week it’s World Vegan Month and next week we’ll be talking a bit more about expressing your needs and wants.

For me, I find eating out still quite challenging but I have found many, many workarounds in terms of both being vegan and anaphylactic allergy to bell peppers which is in so many vegan dishes.

But just noticing in terms again of that acceptance and that sometimes it’s easy to ask for what you need and want, easy to acknowledge you have additional needs, special needs in whatever area and other times it’s that kind of, “Oh I’m being awkward” and I hope that next week’s episode will help you with that.

Thank you for listening, watching, you can find the full transcript and links in the show note wherever you’re listening or at selfcarecoaching.net looking at the blog, the latest blog episode and you can also find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and ways in which you can work with me including joining the Sole to Soul Circle and there are also loads and loads of free resources, libraries around self-care for anxiety, trauma, menopause, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding more purpose, meaning and joy, all sorts so I hope you find that helpful, I hope you find this episode helpful but most of all I really hope you’ll continue even if it doesn’t come easily, even if you’ve had a lifetime of being told that you’re being difficult or too much or not enough or too sensitive that you will get in the habit of giving yourself a hug, even literally a physical hug and like rubbing yourself like you would a toddler or like you would a kitten, you can listen to all the rescue cat related episodes as well, there’ll be links in the show notes but you deserve tenderness, you deserve kindness, you deserve and you deserved more than you had.

Let yourself grieve how life might have been different as you also help heal yourself and turn that into helping to build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved wherever they happen to be born, whoever they happen to be born to, whatever conditions they happen to be born with, whatever they survive, what we’re doing for ourselves, it’s not just self-indulgent, it helps ripple out.

Please share if you think this will be helpful for someone you know or your wider community and if you feel like it and feel free to leave a five-star review or email me with any comments, any feedback and any questions at eve at selfcarecoaching.net and again you can find all those resources at selfcarecoaching.net so being extra gentle with yourself, I look forward to sharing more next week.