Fathom 32: Resolution, SSASS!

 

Retrospective SSASS-Y Start 😅

• A fateful chance to fill in some ironic gaps, linking my intention (explained below 👇) to my god-given spices 😇
• The irony of my intentional resolve to NOT CHANGE A DAMN THING about myself 🙏

Intentional SSASS 😎

• My steadfast Knowing that IRONY is the language of the Universe 💫🐇
• My 2026 Intention: Sustain Self-Acceptance, Sera Summer (SSASS)! 😎💖
• Self-Acceptance, for me, is no longer optional... a realisation after I finally got an accurate taste of what it feels like 🤤🤯
• Pause, observe, go gently... This is going to take practice! 😅
• I trust this will bring me closer to the joy of being my authentic Self... regardless of whether or not it's due to innate neurodivergence or traumatic events that would benefit from healing 

Fathom 31: A Typically Atypical Christmas Gift

 

What are Our Ideal, Self-Bestowed, Christmas Gifts? 💝

• My spectral forms of the Christmas essentials: Food, Family & Fun! 🍖🎄🎉
• The ultimate gift for me: Understanding, Acceptance & a Celebration of My 'Tism... Finally Belonging! 🙏💖🐇
• The difference between my INNATE 'Tism versus the other fear-based & situational labels I've been handed, but have also healed (WIP!... Always a WIP😅😇)

A typically atypical Christmas conversation with my Sister... with no mention or acknowledgement of the holiday (the proof is in the pudding) 💖😂🤔

Yup, this pretty much sums it up... Merry Christmas! 😂😇🙏🎁🐇

And this was after everything I'd already recorded! 😅
More objective evidence that puts the puzzle comfortably & credibly in place! 💡

Summer's Summary: Pause for the Cause

 

Link to Original Article: Pause for the Cause

Part 1: Main Points

[Genuine note of apology for the poor video quality 🤦]

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Basics... Think-Feel-Do... With narratives, conditioned, false and/or limiting beliefs woven in between 💩
• The brain's bias towards action is actually RE-ACTION, insanity 😅
• Examples of fleeting shifts into PRO-ACTION using the PAUSE... Never easy, but always worth it! 💯

Part 2: Reflections on Reflecting

• An effortful pause for the 'cause' (of preserving my sanity), now a much-loved daily reflection practice (through healthy discipline) 🙏
• How rubbish in our brains drive behaviours... seemingly against our will; sensed as 'not ourselves' / out of control feelings 👿
• The power & JOY of self acceptance, how easy it becomes by surrounding ourselves with the right people 💝
• The many forms of PAUSING, the repercussions of failing to create that space (for me/from my perspective)👌

Part 3: What Pausing Looks Like Now

• Coming to understand the current form of impulse control required, and how I use a PAUSE to achieve it (sometimes) 🙊
• Using a PAUSE to understand & prevent forms of unhealthy distress avoidance, reassurance seeking and 'checking' 🙉
• Ethical maturity literally requires building self awareness of inner narratives, bias & assumptions, all of which require a PAUSE to see these blind spots 🙈
• PAUSING is difficult because it requires overriding our natural evolution! Our prefrontal cortex and ability to prevent insanity gets easier with practice, keep at it! 🌈

Fathom 30: Wellness Wealth

 

Part 1: Wise Energy Investment

• How do we spend our most precious human resource, our energy? Focus on the quick wins versus making wise investments into our long-term wellness 🤔
• Our different energies, spices, and how we might recognise them and also spend them differently 💸
• Key Components 🔑
• Impulse control, Pausing, and SLOWING DOWN are essentials 🚦
• The ultimate Marshmallow Test! 🍭
• Forgoing dopamine and/or endorphine hits takes patience and acceptance 🙏
• Just a few of my own vulnerabilities and how I notice ways in which I utterly waste various energies 🐃💩😅

Part 2: God, Grant Me the Serenity to Cut the Shit

• My own awareness adventure started many years ago with the Serenity Prayer, to this day it boils down to self-acceptance 😇💖
• Nuances between leaning into things that will take effort because it will pay off in the long run, and saying F*&$!-it without wasting energy needlessly... Spoiler alert, there are no black & white rules! 💪🤷
• The benefit of allowing my definitions of 'healthy discipline' to shift and suit my current wellness needs... as well as some more 'typical' examples that may resonate with the broader audience 😅😎

Part 3: Overcoming Default Settings

• It's all about adding to our wellness wealth by making wise energy investments and becoming aware of areas we're prone to be a bit wasteful with our energies 🤑
• Being a Human is hard and some of our thoughts & emotions are rubbish! 🦄
• Regret (particularly upon reflection) as an apt wellness wealth energy investment check! ✅
• If & when our default settings leave us broke, unwell in some way, or feeling the 'naughty stick's' epic sting, it's time to build some awareness, and practice making wiser investments 🧘

Summer's Summary: Healing for Humanity

 

Link to Original Article: Healing for Humanity

Part 1: Main Points

• How and why healing shifts over time, but the take-home message remains the same... We all have a right to heal 💝
• It ain't for the faint of heart! Nor can our brains' distinguish between real & perceived trauma 😲
• Essential healing ingredients; becoming aware of blind spots, integrating our spices & listening to our narratives 🙈🙉🙊
• Indulge in the IRONY and lean into the Shadows (link to historical meaning, new meaning in Part 3) 🤯

Part 2: Reflections

• A Velvet Sledgehammer approach to healing, radical self responsibility & ownership as the purest forms of self esteem 😇
• Brains suppress trauma & distressing emotions to protect itself, without working to uncover these... shit can go magnificently pear-shaped 💩😅 
• Understanding what healing IS NOT in these days of motivational, post-modern, flowery BULLSHIT! 🙏
• An admitted bias against Therapists & tendency to prefer Mirrors 🫡
• There's nothing more natural than getting Pissed! 😠😂

Part 3: What Healing is For Me Now

• The pitiful history, for context, and finally confronting healing that's been 3 years in the making 🙏💖
• An apt analogy for healing... Bringing that deep infection to the surface for some Sun! ⛅
• My new definition of healing (below), and loving ourselves enough to put ourselves back together 💔🍳
• My realisation about reving up to Mach-5, why I had to leave my slow paced home & creating a shadow that I then ran away from 🤔🤯

Fathom 29: Transformative Taste Testing

 

Part 1: A Tasty Epiphany & Saccharine Serenity

• A significant insight pulled together everything I've been working through lately, my 'Seasons', exploration of Acceptance & remembering that I'm American... a decidedly different taste from Kiwis 🥝💥
• Appreciating a period of clarity, finally able to work with the tough Feedback I got & sort through the chaos in my brain 🙏
• Ah Ha! Small wonder I'm not to everyone's 'taste' (even my own from time to time) 😅💩
• The flavour of my Heart intensity, passion, it's quirky love languages... & it's formidable persistence 💝💔💞

Part 2: Saliferous Spirit

• I'm a whimsical salty spirit! And this taste is bourn of embracing my intuition, Knowing, core Values & Spirituality 🤤
• Aligned to my WHOLE Self, who I want & aspire to be... the 'Higher Self'... who feels connected to my purpose & sees beyond current struggles 🥳
• Forever treading the fine line between packing a tasty punch, being too salty & accepting that I will be both at once depending on the people/situation 🪽🧂
• A 20th century watch-out regarding the next topic, our Tiny Human Egos, as well as a total diversion into particle physics & my interpretation of the Energy that connects everyone and everything in the Universe🤓🤯

Part 3: Spicy Superiority

• Strap in for the Spice of Survival Mode! My Status-, Fairness-, Certainty-driven Ego forgets about the aforementioned connectedness to the Universe 😅😎
• Spicy Ego, Spicy Life! Few people find this appetising or easy to stomach, and it inevitably inspires shame... I turn into a complete Asshole 💣💩
• Yikes, conceding my ego doesn't give a shit about my values or higher purpose, and this is how I lose my way... why I spiral; but knowing this enables me to turn it around! 🙏
• NOTE: I wrote about this in a poem years ago to help me distinguish between my 'i' / small self and 'I' / Higher Self
• A TASTY MEAL NEEDS ALL FLAVOURS IN THE RIGHT BALANCE... I need to consciously Slow Down, ask for feedback and do frequent taste tests to get the seasoning right for any given situation 💖 
• Switch from ghost pepper hot Limbic Brain (see SCARF Model below) to Prefrontal Cortex deliciousness (i.e. bring in all the spices!)
• NOTE: I didn't record a 4th part 😂👍

Fathom 28: I'm Afraid of American(s)

 

• Let's have a light & fun one! And no, this is not about Spiteful America-bagging 🥳🤦
• Passionate, intense, neuro-diverse... Or simply American?! 🤔😅
• Understanding my home-coming struggles in a new light 😇🙏
• The part the 'Ego' has to play, cultural nuances of Ego-development, and some foreshadowing of next week's exploration! 🔗
• Remembering why I left & the person I was, and knowing the pain that caused was worth it... New Zealand healed me, bringing me closer to who I want to be 💖

Fathom 27: Seasons of Summer

 

Part 1: The Feedback

• Strap in folks, this one is one hell of a rollercoaster as I navigate a 'case in point' of aforementioned 'objective & subjective evidence of my lack of Normalcy, and the most fatefully timed Feedback I've received to date ⏰🤯
• Shame? Acceptance? Anger?! It's all there ... Whee!! 😃💩

Part 2: Discerning My Tastes

• Perhaps my first sense of authentic Self Compassion 💖
• What's well-seasoned for me versus what's well-seasoned for others 😋🤮
• Uncovering the insecurity of being 'Too Much' via tapping it out of me on a random beach in Hawaii, and coming to grips with the shame-sabotage-spiral it led to in my present... BLEAK!✊😅

Part 3: Re-aligning to Gratitude & Self Belief

• An unexpected upside of Resentment 🤔
• My realisation that entering deliberate mindsets, like while Coaching, allows me to naturally adjust my energy by getting out of my head & away from my own BULLSHIT 🤠🐮
• SLOW DOWN... PAUSE... That's my only hope to consciously Choose how I can think, feel and act in more healthy and balanced ways; to stop the shame-sabotage-spiral 🤔💭

Fathom 26: Bolstering Blind Spots

 

Part 1: From Organic Chemistry to Enlightenment

• How the consistent insistence that we use observation & deduction as budding scientists foreshadowed my future existential fervor 🤓
• My first blog, Analytical Ramblings of Scientific Mind, as an unintentional means of providing myself feedback through this observation-deduction process! ✍
• Feedback is FUNDAMENTAL, for ourselves & others 😉 
• Ahhhh, the nuance of judgments and our brain's vulnerability to common decision-making biases
• Building self-awareness by exploring blind spots through deliberate pauses, reflection, tools, requesting feedback and/or receiving feedback (whether we wanted it or not) 😅
• 'Knowing' feedback is a gift 💩🎁

Part 2: Spiritual Will & Neurological Niggles

• Reminiscing on Summer 1.0 & how horrific heartbreak instigated the adventure of self-discovery 💔💣
• Being The Watcher & how to the process started 👀🔍
• Course correction by consistently asking myself the questions: 🤔
• "Is this how a mentally and emotionally healthy human behaves?" 
• "Will I be proud of myself tomorrow?"
• The neuroscience of changing habitual behaviours, why it's so difficult and how to overcome the challenge 💪

Part 3: The Fine Art of Offering Feedback Sans Unfair Judgment

• The gift of feedback & how it facilitates course-correcting blinds spots for ameliorating awareness, healthy discipline and freedom from self-limiting patterns 🙏 
• Exploring the nuance between Deduction ☝& Judgment 👎
• The neuroscience behind being a judgy prick & the ability to prevent it from becoming a harmful and/or unjust emotion(s) or behaviour(s) 🎉

Part 4: Providing Feedback With More Velvet Than Sledgehammer

• Learning to give the gift of feedback with more Compassion 💞
• Blind spots don't deserve to be demonised, they deserve to be developed 🌱
• Giving and/or receiving feedback will never be comfortable, but it can always be worth it 💯 
• Effectively using diabolical feedback & resisting the urge to perceive providers as absolute assholes 😘 

Fathom 25: Shame-Based Spice Assessment

 

Part 1: Shame Versus Guilt

• Tripped over a rabbit hole listening to a recent episode of the Ologies Podcast 🐇🕳
• Driving reflections on my grapples with & pursuit towards Self-Acceptance 💩
• I love a hot-f*ing-mess!... but apparently don't accept it quite as easily 😇
• The subtle nuance between guilt & shame 🤔

Part 2: Nature Versus Nurture

• Why I don't experience guilt... 1) Make a decision, 2) Detach from the outcome... 👍
• Why self exploration is fun! 😅
• The 'nature' of my shame (DNA-level)... I'm neuro-spicy! 💥

• The 'nurture' of my shame (Experiential Self Blame)... Good ol' fashioned trauma response! 💣

Part 3: Adjusting the Spice Levels

• The subjective and objective indications that I'm decidedly 'not normal' 😎
• What I'm learning to appreciate is my ability to adjust my spice levels and hone my powers for good, which helps me accept myself and shift away from the shame 💖

My Spice Levels : How I feel & How I Act 😅🧨