It's time to toughen up, princess?

Hiya,

I was upside down with my hair plastered to my face and in my eyes and strapped in so tight I was having trouble breathing.

Underwater and every scrap of training I'd been given, gone.

This moment happened in an indoor unheated pool. In a helicopter carcass that had been hauled up a steep incline ramp and tipped in to the pool on purpose. Because getting out to a ship running seismic testing in the Timor Sea meant passing underwater helicopter escape training first.

The second I was plunged into the freezing water with the noise of the splash feeling overwhelming, everything I'd learnt about what to do in this situation disappeared. My brain went straight to the oldest alarm it owns; the one built over a few hundred thousand years to keep humans out of upside-down underwater situations exactly like this one and it was screaming at me to abort mission.

There were divers stationed in the pool, ready to pull me clear if I couldn’t do it myself. On the poolside edge, I had two coworkers from the office, one who'd already been dunked and knew exactly what I was about to feel, and one who was next in line and cheering me on anyway.

I made it, not because I was tougher than my internal panic, but because I wasn't actually alone in there,and I knew that if things weren't working, they would get me out.Sunday mornings were food shopping, same-Ish order, same stalls, same walk home past Camberwell Green.

And now, Clifton Hill, it's still Sunday, with Simon and the dog, a local cafe, Two Bob, same seat under the tree out front. Porridge for me. Eggs benedict or the Reuben for Simon, he genuinely debates it every single week like it's a new question.

No waves this time. Only the tick tick tick of the pedestrian crossing across the road. Different soundtrack. Same job.

Here's my two cents worth based on who I am and what I do.

Some of us are wired like me. I need the sameness. The same seat, the same order, the same hour, and something in the body settles. My ADHD shows up in creativity and colour and movement.

Others are wired like my husband, who feels boxed in the second something turns into a fixture. Too much of the same thing and he's climbing the walls and looking for an escape.

There's no right, or normal way for your brain to be. They're different jobs the nervous system is trying to do, that's all.

If you're the sameness type, the thing you keep doing every Sunday without quite knowing why is naturally regulating you.

And if you’re another kind of sparkly brain, the one who needs room to move, that's not flakiness either. That's a brain that needs attention often, movement, new thoughts and that’s how it settles.

(not my pod, but you get the gist!)

There's research that explains why that mattered so much.

Psychologists call it social buffering, when someone who has already done the same thing is right there with you and your nervous system calms down. This also brings in co-regulation at the same time; you are borrowing their calm until yours catches up.

Your body reads their presence as proof. If they made it work, so can you and then your brain takes this advice and implements it.

Doing things together work better than doing them alone. (Side note – I googled together forever to do a giphy here, and the results were really creepy – you can thank me now…)

That's actually the whole idea behind Sparkle Club. I built it because you don't need to be tougher, to be the lone wolf, to show that you can do it on your own, you need divers in the water and someone on the poolside who's already been dunked.

I hadn't thought about that day in years, not until a conversation about storytelling dragged it back up this last week. The conversation was around resilience, and I realised that I had pushed the helicopter experience way down below memory level, and reliving it gave me a moment of pride that I had done that.What a badass (my mum hates that word)

I keep a physical box, cards, testimonials, memory scribbles as proof I've made it through many hard things before. I forget it exists until I need it. The last time was a couple of months ago, in the middle of a genuinely hard week. I've added my helicopter story to it now.

Sparkle Club exists because of situations we face like the pool. You already carry self-judgement of every dropped ball, every unfinished thing, every Monday that was going to be different, and you've filed all of it under something being wrong with you instead of under your brain working exactly the way it works.

Sparkle Club has been built to be your divers in the water and your crew on the poolside, so you're never doing the hard things on your own and learning to celebrate when you get it done.

Mel x

P.S. If you don't have a box for your positive moments yet, start one today, since an old shoebox and a handful of screenshotted messages will do the job perfectly well and done is better than perfect. Your future self will thank you when they remember how much of a legend you are.Follow me and come say hiya:

ADHD Village- PO Box 475, Clifton Hill, 3068, Australia