Brain Bubble

Alright, this is more about body, but also about my brain's reaction to stuff about my body. For quite a while, I've been aware that I was hypermobile, and that a number of the weird jumping joint issues I've had on and off since I was a kid were likely related to that. When I first started having these discussions, I concluded that, while I was definitely hypermobile, my hypermobility seemed to be different than a lot of my friends, and I concluded that I probably had a non-standard variant of something. I had some vague hypotheses, but mostly settled with the "definitely hypermobile, but in a weird way" and was fine with that. In recent years, more and more of my friends have been getting diagnosed or self-diagnosing with hEDS, and I started to wonder. A lot of the experiences were shared. A lot of things did make sense. It still felt like I was a little different, but maybe that was just the feeling that your own experiences are always unique. Yesterday, I went...

Recently, I went to an osteopath to talk about some joint issues and wandering joint pain. I'm hypermobile, and, because of this, my joints are kind of stupid. This means that, frequently, I'm having trouble with some joint. The complication of this, is that it might be my right hip this week, my left ankle the next week, and my left shoulder the week after that. This means that trying to treat the specific one doesn't really make a lot of sense, because it will be something else next week, and the underlying cause isn't going away. I've heard from some people that osteopaths can be really helpful for taking this seriously and thinking about approaches for moving forward. The one I went to was wonderful, took plenty of time with me and took me seriously. I'm working on following up on her recommendations, and that's all great. That's not really what I'm here to talk about. I was a little nervous going into this, because I've always thought about ...

To be clear, I know everyone deals with impostor syndrome, and I do not have clinical anxiety. As far as I can tell, I tend to think about things in many of the same ways as my friends who do, and have many very similar thought patterns and obsessive thought cycles, but mostly I don't find it distressing. I also don't seem to get hit by rejection sensitive dysphoria the same way that a lot of my ADHD friends do. I think some of this is real, and some of this is very long established coping strategies. But I want to express gratitude to all of you who are following these posts, and seeing yourself in them and comparing experiences. I have a Ph.D. and a good job, and successful relationships. I'm happy and have had the right combination of privilege, luck, and a lot of hard work, to build a life that I love. I also have never had any diagnosis for any of the things I'm describing.  The fact that I don't have a professional diagnosis and that I've done so well for ...