Trauma-informed and Neuro-affirming Self Care Rituals for NYE and NYD

Happy New Year!Do you love New Year’s Eve? Do you hate New Year’s Eve? Do you feel indifferent to New Year’s Eve?However you feel, I hope you have a wonderful New Year! Watch or listen to episode 91 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast wherever you get your podcasts for some of the self-care rituals and practices that I do every year or most years.I hope they’ll help you work with your own ADHD brain, AuDHD brain, and also to continue to heal from any trauma. Use this time of year, where there is so much external pressure in terms of how you might be thinking you should be celebrating or what you should be doing to go for it with all that appeals and ignore all the rest![Link to selfcarecoaching.net/blog for show notes, full transcript and more]le grá (with love),EveLINKSSign up for Míle Buíochas Mondays (Polyvagal-informed and more every Monday) hereWestport Lunar CirclesYour vibe for 2025: Episode 38 of The Feel Better Every Day PodcastChoose your transpersonal quality for the year aheadHappy New Year and bring what was good about the break into your year aheadMake the most of the seasonal energiesCHAPTERS0:00 – Mixed feelings about New Year’s Eve?2:28 – Checking in with what actually appeals4:53 – New Year intentions and PDA-friendly resolutions6:01 – Lessons, blessings and reflecting on the year8:18 – Choosing a guiding word or theme for the year ahead10:26 – Clearing space and symbolic release rituals12:02 – Self-acceptance instead of self-improvement13:39 – Community, connection and designing New Year’s Day16:12 – Creative visioning and sensory mood-settingFULL TRANSCRIPTDo you love New Year’s Eve? Do you hate New Year’s Eve? Do you feel indifferent to New Year’s Eve?However you feel, I hope you have a wonderful New Year and in this episode, episode 91 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, I’m going to be sharing some of the self-care rituals and practices that I do every year or most years in order to help you work with your own ADHD brain, AuDHD brain, and also to continue to heal from any trauma and just to really use this time of year where there is so much external pressure in terms of how you might be thinking you should be celebrating or what you should be doing and they’re very tentative invitations in terms of if anything appeals, go for it and ignore all the rest.I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m an author, columnist, trauma therapist, self-care coach and senior accredited supervisor specialising in ADHD and ADHD friendly trauma-informed, neuro-affirming, transpersonal and somatic approaches.I help people heal through self-care practices that honour your body and your brain and your nervous system as well as your Self, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.With new episodes every Tuesday, you can either subscribe or follow to make it less likely that you’ll miss new episodes and if you’re new here, even if it’s nowhere near New Year’s, when you’re listening to this, you might still enjoy this episode. It can be great for a fresh start at any time of the year.The PDA, “Don’t tell me when to celebrate New Year! I can redesign my life anytime I choose!” but you might also enjoy some of the older episodes and access deeper dives with the Sole to Soul Circle, access free resources and more information at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.comAs you listen to today’s episode or watch today’s episode, ask yourself what appeals. Just check in with yourself.Notice how you feel. Do any of the ideas make your heart sing? Do any of them feel really heavy, too much pressure? You don’t have to do anything. You can completely ignore the New Year!It is just another day and it can be a wonderful time to reset, to remind ourselves of all the choices we have in terms of doing things differently. As always, it’s aimed especially for trauma survivors and people with ADHD or AuDHD brains and I’ll be going through the Feel. Love. Heal. framework that I developed in order to share these ideas.We have different levels of bandwidth at different times and (have I forgotten to record? Nope, I haven’t forgotten to record, I had forgotten that it’s not a touchscreen screen) with different levels of bandwidth, sometimes we might be very able to do the things that we know are going to help us feel better, the Feel part.It might be reaching out to someone. It might be some form of movement. It might be anything at all that helps you regulate, that kind of lowercase self-care.Other times you just have to accept where you are because bandwidth is too low. Other times that Love part, the acceptance, the support, the self-love, it can feel more challenging than the Feel part.It can be harder to accept ourselves exactly as we are, to love ourselves exactly as we are. In those cases, the more regulatory things can be easier.And the Heal part, the more collective self-care, the co-regulation. Whether that’s you offering space, holding space for others and, just as important is you accepting the space that others hold for you, finding spaces where others can hold you because you deserve holding and that might be something that you want to build more into your life.Perhaps you’re very much about giving and you find it harder to receive? As we move into the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework this week, we’re looking initially around any PDA you may feel around New Year’s resolutions.That Pathological Demand Avoidance (or Persistent Drive for Autonomy! Because let’s face it, if you are neurodivergent and if you were conditioned out of knowing what you knew was right for you from even potentially pre-verbal, it would have manifested as Pathological Demand Avoidance and doing the opposite of what people wanted you to do but it’s that part of you that can’t be tamed. And honouring that, recognising you can do Resolutions your way.) You don’t have to do them at all but you might want to think about something that is going to help you live a life that is more fulfilling, more meaningful, more joyful and that enables you to thrive.Be curious around that. You might want to do something I do each year again in terms of making a note of the Lessons and Blessings from 2025.Lessons might have been really painful things that occurred, things that you survived, things that you might still be dealing with, challenges that you’re still facing. Being open to what might be trying to emerge at a soul level with even the most challenging of situations, whether that’s around setting boundaries or asking for help or whatever it might be, if you’re able to think in those terms, it’s not going to make the challenges go away but it can make it a bit easier to bear. Just asking how you can learn from each problem, how it might be trying to help you. And I realise that it’s one of those really frustrating things to hear and it can be very helpful to reframe things that we struggle with in this way.With Blessings, again, it might be that with hindsight you see some of the challenges turned into Blessings or it might be things that were utterly joyful and you can immediately, but it can just be a lovely way to connect.I have the Míle Buíochas Mondays newsletter which helps you create and sustain a gratitude practice that hopefully honours your whole Self, your whole nervous system. It’s not all about love and light. It’s also acknowledging the times not only when you’re in ventral vagal, when you’re in Purr!, when life is good, when you feel connected, when you feel safe, when you feel happy. But it’s also about the things that move you out of that into sympathetic survival, into that Hiss! or even dorsal vagal, that Freeze!You might want to sign up for that if you haven’t already and you can just ask yourself now, how does it feel to think back over the year? It might be that you take one month at a time, a Lesson and a Blessing for each month.Or just write or – for some embodied journalling – record yourself talking or as a video or even just talking at your reflection. Just ask yourself what have you learned, what have been the themes? Ask your Self.And there’ll be a link in the show notes to your transpersonal quality for the year in previous years or as you think about the year ahead. It may have already occurred to you and I often begin thinking about this before my birthday in November. Next year (and I’m recording this in 2025) Freedom has stood out for me.In previous years, it’s been like for 2025 it was Harvest, for 2024 it was Pleasure, for 2023 it was Ease. I’ve had Joy, I’ve had Love,...