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Hello my dears! I had plans for a really fun simple video this week to, like, offset after the Freud one

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and then the AMPTP walked away from negotiations with SAG/AFTRA so we're still on strike and, in solidarity with the influencer guidelines,

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I'm not talking publicly about any struck work until the strike is over So the video is tabled once again and maybe you'll see it someday

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Instead we're going to have a little talk about how I exist as a chronically ill human being because I put a thing on my Instagram story asking what y'all wanted to know about

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and most of the responses were related to that so here we are Also just to cover my bases, none of this is medical advice, I'm not a doctor

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I am simply a disabled human being trying their best to survive in a world where I can somehow stand up to people with insane amounts

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of power and talk to famous people without any anxiety but then still have meltdowns in grocery stores regularly

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Make it make sense So hopefully this can be a helpful resource for other folks like me and honestly even for non-disabled people

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because a lot of these skills are things my non-disabled friends often ask me for help with learning how to do themselves Or will just be like "I wish I could do that" and

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not realize that I only do it cause I had to survive

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which means literally anybody can do it If I can change, anybody can change Also, if you're new here, hi there hello, my name is Sydney my pronouns are they/them,

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I am a white person with light brown curly hair that is shoulder length, I'm wearing a navy blue sailor top? Sort of?

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That was a bad description it– whatever that's what it is I think and I'm sitting in front of a wall with green leaves on it

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And I have a lot of disabilities, I usually just lump them under the category of autism/ADHD, chronic migraines,

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PTSD with memory loss stuff, and then POTS which is a disautonomic disorder And I exist in that weird space where I accommodate myself so easily,

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like it's so second nature to me. that I regularly forget I'm disabled Until I get put into certain unknown environments and I completely short circuit

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Like I don't feel like my disabilities impact my daily life anymore because I'm so careful about organizing my life so that I can function

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that I don't realize that everything I do in my daily life is a direct result of my disability if that makes sense

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But I'm going to be fully honest, after graduating college and moving into a new apartment in a big city for the first time

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I got super thrown off my rhythm and physically felt awful for a bit until I sorted through what my new plan would be and my new take on the world would be

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because it's very different from school And now I have a new system and it's great A lot of that system I really I really can't explain, but I'm going to try my best here

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The first step, I guess, of managing a disability is learning to lean into it I think we've all heard the phrases of like "fighting the flu" or

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"battling cancer" or whatever Like our language around chronic illness, mental illness, and other disabilities is almost always oriented around some element of warfare

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I grew up fighting my migraines and fighting my panic attacks and it was constant, it was exhausting, and it also wasn't super productive or healthy for me

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Because when I would have a migraine I would feel like I'd failed because I didn't try hard enough and I spent all of my time trying to make these things go away

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that I didn't spend the time figuring out how to prevent them or how to handle them once they happened Like if I were to meet my younger self today,

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I would lovingly pick them up, shake them a little bit, and say "you're disabled, that is okay, and change is hard but you–

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you need to do it anyway because you cannot keep living like this. This will kill you" and acceptance is not an immediate thing, it's a process

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It's a continual need to reflect and unpack and work through internalized ableism and all of the baggage that comes along with it

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But I cannot emphasize how truly important it is to at least start that acceptance journey

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I can't really tell you how to go about that because it's different for everyone, but for me the bottom line of it was learning to be okay with the fact that

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my disabled body and my disabled mind are going to do whatever they're going to do And it sucks being out of control because that's really scary

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and feeling physically and mentally terrible and not knowing when that's going to end is really scary and losing abilities is really scary

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And knowing that I'm going to have to change my life forever is really really scary And it sucks to not be able to do the things I used to do, right,

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but bottom line, if I don't at least try to take care of myself, I'm not going to be alive long enough to do the things I can still do

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and find joy in or find the new things I'm going to find joy in that I never would have found

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while doing the other things that I can't do anymore And accepting this doesn't mean that I'm quitting or that I'm giving up or whatever,

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it means that I'm learning to live at peace with myself and where I'm at and there's no shame in that Which again, is hard, it means sticking up for yourself,

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both to yourself and also to other people It means setting better boundaries Terrifying! And learning to be okay with an absolute lack of control

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Also terrifying! But once I got to that point, I was able to start looking at my flare-ups as my body going

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"hey something's wacky and you need to do something about it" and I started to pay attention to it For example, I get really spacey sometimes

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Dissociation comes along with my experience of PTSD and memory loss and I used to get really angry at myself for getting really spacey and being unable to focus

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But once I accepted that I would always be a little bit of a space cadet and that's chill, I realized my spacey times are my brain telling me that it has too much information in it

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and it can't process all of that at once So whether that's in the sense of, like, sensory overload or topic overload or just too many things going on at once

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Or all of the above, usually all of the above So now when I feel myself getting spacey, rather than, you know, yelling at myself for being that way,

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I instead analyze what's going on Has it been a long week? Is that why I'm overwhelmed? Did something triggering just happen? Is this specific situation I'm currently in the triggering thing,

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or is it something else that happened today or recently? Or is it just random? What can I change right now to make this better for myself?

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And one thing that I learned helps me a lot with spacey brain is journaling because it clears my head a good deal So I journal every day, and if I'm having a particularly bad day, I journal throughout the day

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I also have other built-in ways to let myself just space out, like listening to my favorite music or singing along to my favorite music,

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listening to YouTube videos I don't really need to pay attention to, re-watching my favorite shows, doing something grounding like cleaning my room or cooking

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And rather than yell at myself for being a bit of an unfocused space cadet sometimes, I lean into it I say "okay body, I hear you" and I shift my life a little bit to let my brain process

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in the silly objectively unhelpful way that it needs to process because that's what it needs to do And that has cut down my amount of spacey brain by like 75%

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In the sense of, like, how long each like episode lasts and also how many times those even happen

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because over time I've started to notice when they're starting and I'll jump into my care routines before they get bad

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and so then I fix the problem before it starts And all of this is obviously not the answer for everyone, right, like interoception and introspection are very difficult for a lot of people

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And even after years of careful attention and note-taking and whatever, some people may never feel like they have even a halfway grasp on managing their disabilities

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But at least, in my experience and that of many of my friends, trying to find some semblance of peace between your disabilities and the rest of you,

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because, at the end of the day, they're all very much a part of the same person and how you function, it's not a separate being from you.

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helps make things infinitely more tolerable and easy to manage Even just having the words for things and saying "this is a thing,

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it's probably a result of this thing, and in the past this or that has helped me to get through it" helps more than you think

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And again, it's hard It's really hard to give things up and to say no to things,

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but wrapping your brain around that general mindset is the best way for everything else here to actually be helpful

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And if you want to hear this concept from somebody else who definitely explains it way better than I just did, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard has a video called "I am

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not a warrior' which I will link above and also in the description Highly recommend you check it out That video, for me, was my wake up call about, like,

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reframing this mindset for me and I just cannot recommend it enough Because truly like–

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the moment I stopped trying to find a cure that I knew didn't exist to begin with and started changing how I lived to make it so I didn't

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need to worry about that cure that didn't exist... absolutely lifesaving And it gave me some element of control over something I didn't–

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I felt like I could do something to make my life better and I wasn't, you know, sitting around waiting for other people to make it better for me

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And that helps me a lot to feel in control of things And also changing lifestyle has so much more longevity and flexibility

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and it's helped me to learn how to handle anything else that comes my way in any capacity much more effectively because like–

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I switched from the mindset of "I just need to try harder and it will work" to "okay it didn't work this way, but I bet there's

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other ways that don't involve brute force to get to the same destination" which is just a great mindset to have when trying to solve literally any problem

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So here are my tips within that "not a warrior" category of changing lifestyle to fit the disability because there's no way I can change the disability to fit my lifestyle

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That's not how bodies work If these work for you, amazing! If they don't, that's fine too! I'm not the only disability resource to exist, everybody functions differently,

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and I'm sure the right idea that will work for you is very much out there Also you can just create it yourself And if you have any ideas that I did not mention here, please feel free to put them in the comments

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Now the general way that I describe my accessible lifestyle choices is economizing energy When I studied Commedia dell'Arte, my professor often yelled at us for giving 110%

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cause she said that was unsustainable and we needed to learn how to "economize our energy" to make our 70% look like 110%

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It's not using less energy, it's using the same amount of energy more wisely And I kind of just picked that up for the rest of my life as well

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Because as a person who worked two to three jobs at a time on top of being a student and directing a show in college

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who also has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, if I don't economize my energy I'm screwed

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But what does that mean? So some examples A great example of this is doing everything in one go So for school I would make a list of everything

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that needed to be done that week for each specific class and I would do an entire week's worth of work for each class in one go

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so I didn't need to have my brain jump between topics as much which took a lot of extra energy and focus

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to try to, you know, do three assignments due Monday and for three different classes and then three assignments due Tuesday for three different classes,

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I just did each class in one go I do the same thing here, now that I have to cook all of my food At the beginning of each week I generally dedicate a few hours to cooking all of my food for the week

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and then I don't have to get up the energy to cook four or five times throughout the week Which is great cuz I would get too tired and just stop eating

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I also do my dishes while I'm cooking so that it doesn't become a separate task I have to force myself to get up the energy and

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executive functioning to do after my food is done I just do it at the same time It's also a really great way to trick your brain into thinking it's a smaller task

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because I only ever do like two dishes at a time rather than a huge mountain at the end I also have a rule that, when I pick something up, I don't put it down until I'm done with it

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I.e. I'm not going to make a messy pile of something in one place and then move it to be a pile in a different place that then grows larger

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If I pick it up I'm not allowed to move onto the next task until that thing is put away So this includes things like countertops– if I were to do something on the counter,

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I'm not allowed to walk away from it until the counter is clean If the trash is full, I'm not allowed to walk away from it until I've have taken the bag out and replaced it

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This rule also carries over to dishes Once I'm done with a dish, I have to rinse it and put it away, I can't just leave it out

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A lot of my examples related to kitchen things I really hate kitchen tasks so I take– it takes a lot of rules and tools for me to get through dealing with a kitchen

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But also now that I have a structure system I'm starting to actually like the routine of it I also recently got really good at making the perfect pancake so I'm a real chef now

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Anyway these things all sound very simple and intuitive when you say them out loud but if you're not used to thinking about them and putting them into words,

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they're not simple or intuitive until you have the language for it So hopefully this gives you some language My years as a camp counselor having the phrase "if not you, who? If not now, when?"

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drilled into my brain over and over really help me to develop this life skill Getting into the habit of pausing and looking around before changing

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activities was truly so beneficial for me because I stopped leaving chaos piles everywhere that I went and I felt so much more relaxed and organized in general

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Other things that help economize energy are routines I naturally fall into routines cause autism brain likes routines,

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but I know that routines can be very hard for other people So if that is you, set alarms! Or like print out pictures of what you want your routine to

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look like and put them up on the wall somewhere When I first was diagnosed with memory loss, I forgot things regularly

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I would just write things on sticky notes and stick them around my walls so I would remember stuff That worked for me, that was effective

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I also, back then, had a very hard time remembering when it was time to do things cause my internal clock was destroyed So I had alarms when it was time to eat each meal, when it was time to brush my teeth,

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when it was time to take my meds, like literally everything And if you're the kind of person who just turns off alarms and misses the task,

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I have a really great app called Alarmy, it's free, you can set it so that it won't turn off until you do specific tasks

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So, like, if your alarm is to brush your teeth, you can set it so that it won't turn off until you have scanned the barcode on your toothpaste

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Also I think there's autism/ADHD-specific routine apps That's not my thing, if it is your thing and you have resources please drop them below

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I also know that, like, for me, if I skip a routine one day, I'm liable to screw up the whole system and never do it again

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So I have a rule that, no matter what, I cannot break my routine unless it's a super special occasion or I feel really truly ill

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And for some reason that rule works for my brain The thing that's really great about routines, in the sense of economizing energy,

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is that if you have set parameters and rules for yourself, you don't have to use your brain power to make decisions

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Routines always have a calming and regulating effect for people because they are the same thing every single time you do it And when you're doing things that are different from the routine during the day,

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you're less stressed about what's coming next because you have the routines to fall back on so you're less stressed doing the initial task as well

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Also one simple thing I cannot recommend enough is waking up and going to bed at the exact same time every day There is significant research into this,

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but basically sleeping in extra 3-4 hours on the weekends screws with your circadian rhythm so much that you feel groggy and sloggy all the time

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You can shift things about 30 minutes to an hour every now and then and be okay, but generally keeping a consistent schedule with meals and sleep

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is a really great way to make your body feel a whole lot better My need for routine also extends out to my foods

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I have hella food sensitivities (and also textural sensitivities but the food sensitivities is a bigger problem)

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and my whole life I've been told like "oh you need to have a wider variety in your diet cause you only eat a handful of things"

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But now I can't eat most foods medically and so I can eat three things and nobody cares

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And I got into the habit at school of literally eating three things consistently in my college dining hall because I could not safely eat anything else

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Hello hello, editing Sydney here I want to clarify cause I explained this very poorly

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When I say eat the same three things, I do also mean that you need to get all of the food groups

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So like when I was at college I had a rule that I always– every single meal had a protein, a starch or grain, and a vegetable

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So I always had chicken, rice, and vegetables for every single meal every single day Like that was consistently what I ate

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And I was told I needed more variety, you need more variety in your diet, whatever But I got all the food groups in,

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I didn't really need more variety because it was the only things I wasn't allergic to in the dining hall first of all

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But second of all, like, I got all the things I needed in my body So what I'm saying here is that if what is in your diet that you're eating every

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single day is healthy for your body and includes all of the nutrients, the concept of "there's something wrong with you for eating the same thing every meal",

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if what you're eating is making you healthy and making you feel good and and it makes you happy, like,

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you do you, you know? Hopefully that made sense I had a much better relationship food when I knew precisely what I could expect from every single meal

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and I have continued that here I have like five recipes I eat interchangeably but one of them I eat all the time and that's it

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Which is totally fine and there's no judgment to that because how cool is it that I'm getting all the food groups and getting enough to eat every meal and not getting sick from it

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That's great! It eliminates so much food anxiety for me The other thing that I love about routines is that, since I keep a lot of my life fairly similar,

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it's really obvious to me what the cause of something might be Like if I suddenly get a migraine, I know precisely what one of two things may have caused it

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because I only did one or two things different within a given time frame so it's pretty obvious And that gives me the ability to more quickly identify triggers and issues

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and come up with solutions for managing things next time around And now I can change things very much on the micro scale,

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that take minimum effort to avoid and do differently but make me feel worlds better in the long run, and it's wonderful I love it

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One micro thing that was life-changing is that I noticed when I get really sleepy it's actually not that I'm sleepy, it's that my salt content is low

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And now I have emotional support tortilla chips and Ritz crackers and they get me through everything Like I can want to go to sleep at 4 pm and then I will just eat a package of Ritz crackers

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and I will be happy and ready to go for the next like 3 hours It's wild, bodies are weird Other low-effort things that make a world of difference are organization

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Which, again, can be very hard for lots of different kinds of disabilities But there are so many different ways of keeping

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track of things that could be more accessible for you Like I mentioned earlier, I journal every night to get the events of the day onto paper,

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then I feel like my head is clearer because I don't need to remember that information anymore That's an organization tactic I also used to use an app called Bearable

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I highly recommend it by the way You can basically log various chronic illness symptoms and moods and foods and medication

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and it helps you to visualize your own data for you And there was a time like 2 years ago that I started a new medication and I was just logging my symptoms regularly

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and I discovered that I was having really adverse reactions to more foods than usual cause I saw my symptom spike via the graph on the app

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And then I went off the medication and I saw how it improved and I was able to manage my care better that way

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I no longer use that app because I don't need it anymore, but I do highly recommend it as a tool if you do need that

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I also have heard that Rocket Money is a really good ADHD friendly budget app? I'm more of a "save the receipts make an elaborate spending spreadsheet" kind of person,

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but having a strong grasp on spending and average spending and whatnot also helps a lot So if there's ADHD friendly budget apps that you all like, drop them in the comments

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My big thing is I find that every now and then I'll, like, get myself a little treat cause we all deserve little treats every now and then But then time blindness is a thing and I can't

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remember if my last treat was like 3 weeks ago or yesterday and so it's really easy to accidentally spend like

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$5 on a treat every other day for like three weeks straight and not realize it's happening and then at the end of the month realize that you went over budget

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or just be like "oh I'm out of money why did that happen? I don't buy myself things that often Groceries must have been expensive this month"

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And so keeping track of that, that doesn't happen to me anymore It eliminated so much stress I know what the heck I'm doing and where I'm

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spending and what I'm spending things on and it's wonderful I'm also a big to-do list person I feel like I have a really old video somewhere

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about how I used to have like seven planners going at once If that video still exists I'll link it above I'm down to like two or three planners, maybe four

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My chronic illness friendly to-do list method is rather than break things up by what I need to do each day to get things done, I chunk it by week

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I just keep it in a list for the week, giving me the ability to wake up every day, assess my energy level, and what thing on that list interests me the most or is the most urgent

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or would be the most satisfying to be able to say that I'm done with And then I do that without the "ah I'm not going to finish my to-do list for today" panic situation

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It also gives gives me the ability to more easily schedule time off for myself because it doesn't feel like a consistent daily to-do list slog that one can easily get into

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It feels like a list of things for the week and when I have time in between I can relax and do fun things and it feels like I have more autonomy and

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more ability to pick what kinds of things I want to do and more choice Also if I suddenly get a bad migraine or I feel really spacey or something,

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I could take a potato day and be able to actually rest and get better faster without panicking about how things are going to get done

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And from an actor and activist perspective, sometimes random projects and auditions and opportunities just kind of pop up

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and it completely derails your whole week This method of organizing my to-do list gives me way more flexibility to incorporate those opportunities into my life

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without feeling like my world is on fire constantly And I do think a big part of what helps minimize stress in this area as well is planning ahead

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At school my friends always got annoyed with me because at the beginning of the semester I would make a spreadsheet that had all of my assignments and their due dates in it for

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the full semester and always operated a week or two ahead My professors also got annoyed by this I still do this with my videos if I can

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Or sometimes I'll do two videos in one week and then take a week off Obviously sometimes things show up, the deadline gets really short, and you have to scramble,

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that's what I'm doing right now, but a lot of life things I can kind of plan ahead on and do in advance so when the scramble comes I can just put the current project aside for a few days

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and not panic about whether I'm going to be able to get everything done on time I'm not always the best at doing that, I thought I had this month's videos and

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reviews under control and now I'm working double time to catch up, but what is considered late for me is usually about 3

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to 5 days early so it's not the end of the world Also there are some tasks that feel like a daily slog,

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such as dishes or laundry or putting away clothes the second you finish the task it somehow starts back over again

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My method for this, as we talked about earlier, is doing those tasks as I'm doing other tasks related to it so it doesn't feel like a new thing

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Such as, like, putting my clothes away when I take them off, or washing my dishes while I'm cooking

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I also know that showering takes a lot of energy for me cause it's a sensory change from, you know,

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taking off clothes, getting wet, getting dry, having wet hair, you know, like that's a whole– that's a whole process

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So now I wear my hair in a way that I only need to wash it every four or so days rather than the every other day I used to when it was naturally straight all the time

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because I really hated having greasy hair And so that was a big helpful change for me I also have an excessive amount of socks and underwear so I only do laundry every 3 to 4 weeks

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because that's an exhaustingly large task for me so I've made it easier for myself I cook everything in one go so I don't have to

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cook every single meal cause otherwise I just wouldn't eat When I talk about accessibility in traveling, I often talk about how if the ticket for the direct flight is

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an extra $50 than the flight that has a layover, pay the extra $50 to save the stress that is dealing with a layover

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And that concept carries over into daily life for me as well If a little extra work on one side saves me a lot of anxiety down the line,

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it ends up technically being less work and less energy in the long run because I've removed large levels of stress from my life

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And stress is usually the thing that stops people in their tracks the most And again, these things are different for everyone

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You're going to need to figure out your own tools and what little things work best for you But figure out what is necessary when and then try to figure out

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how you can cut the amount of energy that it takes in half for that by reorganizing the task, by paring down aspects of it,

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by giving the task more longevity so you don't have to do it as frequently, looping that task into something else you already do

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And there are all kinds of ways that you can make things easier for yourself in the long run by doing the absolute bare minimum that you need to do

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Creating new habits is exhausting, it's hard, it takes time and deliberate focus and effort, but once you have those habits solid, which can happen in just a couple weeks,

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the amount of extra energy that you will suddenly have at the end of every day is going to surprise you

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My friends may tease me for my silly little systems and my rules, but they also will often talk about how surprised they are that I continue to keep moving and working at full

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speed all the time and they call me the energizer bunny It's because I'm not working at full speed I'm working at like 60% speed but it looks like full speed

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Also in the realm of paring things down, pare down what you do outside of the house Cause once I started paying attention to these things,

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like how certain environments or situations made me feel, I started to realize that certain people I was around made me really exhausted

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and made me feel terrible every time I hung out with them And like... I get the feeling of "I'm so glad somebody wants to spend time with me

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it's okay that I'm exhausted with them and they treat me terribly because it's not actually that bad and people are better than not having people"

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But if I can recommend anything, do not do that Cause time and energy is precious and there is no reason to spend a significant portion

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of it in spaces that make you hate yourself Because not only does it suck up your time and energy in that moment

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that you could be doing something cooler with. but it also has after effects that can last a long while and can damage your confidence long term

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so you're less likely to, you know, be the best version of yourself You deserve to surrounded by people that you love and who love you and who you feel energized with

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And if you don't have that right now, spend the time that you would spend around people you don't vibe with finding the people you do vibe with

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Which I know is so much easier said than done, believe me, making friends as an adult is hard, it's really hard But I have found all of my best friends in life almost

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immediately after leaving unhealthy friend groups My one exception to this rule– if a group is exhausting but beneficial,

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like a lot of networking things, for example, are exhausting but in the long run they help you get jobs and learn about the career

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And frankly just meet really people A lot of my, like, real life friends I've made via networking This is a worth it cost-benefit analysis to me

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And everybody's cost benefit analyses are very different Knowing your own worth is very hard But truly, if you notice that your energy is constantly being sucked up

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by something or someone that you don't like that you're able to walk away from, always walk away from it

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Being alone is scary, I get it, believe me, but finding the tools and skills that come along with the comfort of being alone

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help you a lot in making new friends, making better friends, making healthier friends, and taking care of yourself between relationships because being between relationships happens a lot

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You are your best agent and your best advocate and your best carer for yourself So pay attention to yourself and learn how to manage your wants and your needs

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and then you can better help people to support you The other brain trick that helped me a lot was figuring out what motivates me and basically lightly manipulating myself into making things I do in line with that motivation

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Chris McCarrell on TikTok has a video about low dopamine motivators and how we can work with our brains to help ourselves do a better job in the world of theater

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I'll link it below I'm working on a video right now about dopamine and pretty much how the way that we think dopamine works is not how dopamine works

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But regardless of the dopamine situation these tips are still super helpful so I'm going to include them in here anyway

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Also if you're a neurodivergent human in the arts, please go watch every single one of Chris McCarrell's TikToks, he's a magical human who explains the industry

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in a logical and straightforward manner and I appreciate him for that Now he breaks down motivation into four things - pressure,

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novelty, passion and interest, and competition So in a theater sense, pressure would be the live aspect of it - an audience has its eyes on you

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Novelty is the excitement of starting a new project Passion and interest is the feeling like what you're doing is interesting, it's fun,

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you can feel a community and like you're doing something important And competition is pretty self-explanatory For me, I find that my primary motivation lies in essence in the idea that

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I want everything I do to be geared toward helping other people have things easier than I did, seeing themselves represented in a way that I never had,

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and feeling better about themselves So when I have a hard time taking care of myself, I remind myself that if I don't take care of myself

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I will not have the energy to take care of others So one example of this in action, I really like Broadway

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That should be obvious I really want to see shows, I really do, I live in New York City oh my gosh it's so easy to go see shows

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But I get so nervous spending money on things and I get really anxious about going out of the house So I started making access reviews and now I go to the shows

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because I know that me doing that thing creates a resource to help somebody else have an easier time when they go see it And I have a much easier time going cause I feel like I have a solid reason to

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Part of why I loved working as a service dog trainer way back when was because I knew that being responsible for and constantly looking after and training a puppy

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would require me to be responsible with myself And I did not sleep through the night for like 3 weeks with that little guy when he was still being potty trained

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Not potty trained– the dog version of potty trained Housebroken whatever that's called I was still healthier than I had been in months,

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even not sleeping through the night for 3 weeks straight I'm now at a point where I'm starting to teach myself how to do things because I want to do them and then that–

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that is enough But I still struggle sometimes So I figure out how to explain things into a way that what I do helps me help somebody else

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and then all of a sudden I have the bravery and the energy to do that thing It's probably not the best method, like my desire to take care of me should definitely not

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be rooted in my desire to take care of other people, there's definitely something to unpack there, but it gets me to the same end goal and it makes me feel purposeful

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so it has helped me a lot Anyway, the last group of questions I got were in relation to how to manage and balance disabilities and rest

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with school or work or just generally participating in life things And the honest answer is it's really up to

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your boundaries and what you value and what you want to do There are things that are wholly inaccessible to me in most spaces

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but then when they are connected to something that I love, they become accessible to me Literally like all of theater Like makeup on my face and bright lights stuff I

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hate in regular life but find super energizing in a theatrical context And in general, right, I had to learn how to pace myself, how to use my energy economization tools,

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learning how to weigh the benefits and the risks of things And over time, as I played with that more, I became more firm in my boundaries

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Like Sydney from a year ago regularly ate things they were allergic to in the dining hall because it made them happy but the more I did that and the more that I felt actual consequences from it,

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the more I realized that the immediate joy of eating a really good chicken finger is not worth feeling terrible for the next 48 hours

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And now that I have to go and spend money on those same things to be able to eat them And in New York City they're very expensive, I just don't have them in the house

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I don't buy them at the grocery store, I don't think about them anymore, it doesn't impact me anymore And when they do appear in my vicinity,

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like if my roommate brings home, I don't know, McDonald's fries, I'm going steal a couple But I don't get sick from it now because my body

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is stronger from me taking better care of it in general that it doesn't affect me as much I feel like a lot of what I've been saying in this video is

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that it's okay to say no to things and to set boundaries and it's hard– it's hard to accept that you will never be able to do some things again,

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that your life needs to change forever because of your bodymind, but really only by starting to let go of what you wished you were

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and what you could do and what you used to be able to do, are you able to see the new and cooler possibilities of what you can do now

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And I'm lucky in that, in reorganizing my life for my disabilities, I no longer operate with huge chunks of my life labeled burnout and huge chunks labeled functionality

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I exist consistently between those two categories all the time fluidly and I'm able to manage both of them and take the best care of myself

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And it has given me the ability to, from the outside, seem to operate pretty much normally for the first time in probably a decade

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And I'm now able to do things that I have not been able to safely do in a decade because slightly altering things to accommodate my needs is second nature at this point

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And frankly nobody even notices that I'm doing it most of the time The biggest part of managing things for me is realizing what genuinely matters to me

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Not what used to matter to me before I got sick because we are very different people, but what matters to me right now

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And sometimes that means doing something that I know will force me to take a day or two off to recover from because that thing matters to me

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But I know my bodymind well enough that I can now plan for that and be deliberate about it And by planning for it, it's always way less bad than I expect it to be

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I've learned to see rest as revolution and proudly include it as part of my daily life, fitting in resetting quiet moments everywhere where I possibly can

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Even if sometimes I have to turn my restful activities into technically being for work so that I feel less guilty about doing them

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I'm a bad role model, I acknowledge that I am a bit of a workaholic who constantly tells people that their productivity is not equivalent to their worth

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and that they need to slow down and take it easy but also that doesn't apply to me cause I have a job to do It's a problem, I know it's a problem,

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but I've figured out ways to organize my life in a way that it lets me count things like listening to an audiobook all day and

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painting or going to see a show or going to a museum as technically being for work so it's not as bad as it used to be

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The running joke throughout Curious Incident was that everything needs to be made accessible to everybody in the cast and crew except for me because I don't want to

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And I'm getting better at it, I'm working on it, it's fine My advice, I guess, would be that it's okay to grieve what

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you can't do anymore and what you can't be anymore Feel that, process it, grieve it. and then shift your thinking to be at peace with who you are now and how your body is now

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Turn self-care into a full-time job for a bit while you figure out what methods of economizing your energy work and which ones don't

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Learn to see your medication and your therapy and your doctor's visits as just tools and your toolbelt, not magical things that are suddenly going to cure you

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And stop fighting your bodymind It's exhausting and you deserve to use your energy in much better and more healthy ways

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that are going to help you long term There are many different ways to get to the same end goal and that end goal looks different for everybody

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So just be kinder to yourself This stuff is hard, it takes a willingness to change your life which is scary because change is scary

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and you also don't feel the impacts immediately But in the long run, at least for me, it made me feel so much calmer and so much more in control

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and dropped my migraine days from like 15 a month to one every other month, if even I don't get them anymore

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It took a lot of time and energy and work, but I would not trade it for the world But anyway, that got deep

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That's all I have for you today Again, if you have any other questions/advice/whatever, please drop it in the comments we love creating supportive little community on this channel

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Also if you want to stick around feel free to like and subscribe, but no pressure Though next week's video is one of the most fun videos I've ever

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made so you really should stick around to see it But anyway, as always, thank you for listening, thank you for learning, remember it's never too late to start over,

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and I look forward to seeing you, my dear, in the next one