mental health – Cat McGill – Neurodivergent musician and author

Finding our feet

We’re getting there. By my reckoning we’re approaching the end of week 4, and we’re starting to find things that seem to work. I’m being deliberately vague, as there’s still a voice in the back of my head that says it’s not ‘working’ yet because we’re not doing regular hours on regular days, but I’m doing my best to ignore it. Yesterday for example, we read four chapters from two different fiction books, studied the famous ‘elephants on acid’ research and talked about ethics of using animals for science experiments, and discussed LGBT+ history and in particular how terminology has changed over time (including what has needed to happen in order for those changes to occur, and how they have impacted Alex’s generation) as well as quite a lot about binaries, categorising things, and whether you can represent the human experience using the numbers 1-7. We had a mini session on languages and tried our hands at Welsh, Swedish, German, and Spanish, and designed some cover art for the podcast we’re planning to start to document our Home Ed journey. Today, by comparison, it’s nearly twenty past four and we’ve managed a grand total of one short walk.

March 19, 2021 No Comments

Stimming for mental health

Yesterday was tricky. I was doing a new thing that I’d never done before, and which necessitated me being around lots of noisy children for a prolonged period of time. (Tap dancing in a showcase, if you’re interested.) When we got home, I told my husband that he was not allowed to talk to me until I came out from under my duvet. Up until now, my duvet has been pretty much my only coping strategy, and as life is going through a difficult phase I feel like I’m using it all the time. Often I get home from work and go straight to bed. I’ve been eating meals in bed. I’ve been working in bed. It’s good, because it does help me feel better, but it’s quite limiting, and it’s affecting my relationships with my family, particularly my children.

December 17, 2018 No Comments

A day in the life

My alarm is going off at 6.40am. I’m awake enough already to switch it off; not quite awake enough to hit snooze instead. Luckily, I have anticipated this and set a second alarm for 7am, which is when I absolutely HAVE to get up. I think I only woke once last night, to get up for the loo around 2am. I’m not sure if it’s my sleep apnoea or my age, or just stress, but I don’t often manage to get through the night these days. It’s unusual for me not to have woken again around half five, dragged to consciousness by the shouting in the next room. Perhaps Husband has done well at keeping Tickle quiet this morning, or perhaps I’m so tired I just don’t remember. We have been trying out something new lately, trying to teach Tickle that morning really doesn’t start at 4am, that his bedroom light stays off until 6am whether he likes it or not. We’re having mixed success. Well, I say ‘we’, but I really mean Husband, as he is the one who sleeps on a mattress in Tickle’s room. It’s been almost a year since we regularly slept in the same bed.

October 11, 2018 No Comments