anxiety Archives

hypervigilance

Hypervigilance is a state of heightened, sustained alertness where your nervous system stays oriented toward detecting threat, even when no real danger is present. It can feel like being permanently on-edge, bracing for something you can't name. In neurodivergent adults, hypervigilance often extends beyond physical danger into social monitoring: tracking unspoken rules, reading tone, watching for signs you've got it wrong. It is a human response, not a neurodivergent one, but it shows up with particular frequency and particular cost in autistic and ADHD adults.

The neurodivergent brain

anxiety emotions focus food memory motivation neurobiology self-regulation sleep

The brain is the organ behind every neurodivergent trait you experience — from how you pay attention to how you process emotion to how you sleep. Neurodivergent brains use the same basic structures and chemical messengers as any brain, but the tuning is different: different dopamine activity in reward circuits, different balance between excitatory and inhibitory signalling, different default mode network behaviour.

rumination

anxiety stress thoughts

A rumination is a thought or a group of thoughts that get stuck in your head and loop over and over again whether you want it to or not (and you usually don’t). Ruminations get their name from ruminant animals who of animals It can be very difficult to move on from them. Ruminative thoughts …