← The Neurodivergent Experience
The Neurodivergent Experience
Mindful Mondays With Ashley Bentley: Two Hemispheres, One Story | How Your Brain Writes Your State
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Start Your Week With Presence & Purpose
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Welcome, dear friends, to Mindful Mondays, your weekly moment of grounding, meaning and gentle regulation right here on the neurodivergent Experience podcast. And this month, as part of our November neuroscience series, we've been exploring the nervous system not as biology, but as the intimate landscape of the neurodivergent soul. Those of us who feel life on higher volume know all too well how easily we can slide into overwhelm, shutdown or burnout. And how life transforms when we learn how to regulate, how to soothe, how to return home to ourselves. And in the last two episodes, we explored the breath as a bridge between worlds and the body as a doorway into safety. And today we step into our final theme of the series, using the mind. Our stories, our meaning, making our inner narrative a path back to groundedness and presence. Because the stories you tell yourself shape your state, and your state shapes your choices, and your choices shape your life. So today we gently turn toward the mind with curiosity and compassion and just a touch of magic. So neuroscience tells us something astonishing. Your brain is never simply predicting the future. It is always predicting your next movement through the world, moment by moment. And according to cognitive scientist John Vervake, the brain is constantly weaving together two worlds. The left brain, which is logic and data, facts, spatial orientation, basically what is. And then you have the right brain. Imagination, intuition, creativity, which is basically what could be. And your nervous system stands between them like a tuning fork. Every single moment of your day, your brain is asking, based on what I know and based on what I believe, what is my next move? You take a step, you type a message, you hesitate, you reach out, you withdraw, you speak, or you stay quiet. You enter a room, you leave a room. Your stories are determining those movements. Your beliefs are feeding your nervous system information about safety, danger, possibility and meaning. And this is why studying our internal narrative is not woo woo. Narrative is biology. So most people think that the brain is constantly predicting the future. But no, it's predicting your interaction with the future, which means your next move. Your actions, behaviors, and microdecisions all flow from the story of who you believe you are. And you may have heard the saying, behavior follows identity. But for neurodivergent people, this is more literal, more lived than for most. Why? Because your brain processes more data per second. Your sensory world is louder, brighter, quicker, sharper. Your emotional world is more vivid, your intuition is stronger, and your pattern recognition is faster and deeper, which means that your inner narrative is constantly being activated at a conscious level and constantly being reinforced and constantly coloring how you interpret the moment. And when you've lived a life full of masking and people pleasing, being misunderstood or chronically overwhelmed, your stories become protective, but they can also become more limiting. And the mind will always choose a familiar story over a new possibility, even if the familiar story hurts. And this is not your fault. This is your nervous system trying to keep you alive. In the tiny space between what happens and what you tell yourself about it, your freedom is born. Every story you tell about yourself begins in that space. A breathlink pause where you can choose presence over panic, compassion over criticism, a new story over an old wound. And practicing awareness is simply widening that space so that you can step into it with clarity. And your beliefs come down to four basic inner sentences. If I do this, then this will happen. If I don't do this, then this will happen. If I do this, then this won't happen. If I don't do this, then this won't happen. These four conditional ifs quietly drive every nervous system state. You enter fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. All arise from inner prediction. Like if I say no, they will reject me. If I rest, then everything will fall apart. If I don't mask, then I won't be safe. If I stop overworking, I'll lose my value. If I don't do things perfectly, I'll be judged. If I don't keep busy, the feelings will catch up. These beliefs run in the background of your mind like an invisible code. And here's the important thing. Most of these stories were cemented into our unconscious in our first seven years of life as we're building our model of the world. They are not consciously chosen and they come from childhood roles masking social conditioning, trauma, family patterns, the expectations of others, neurodivergent survival strategies and developmental needs that went unmet. So none of this is self blame. It's self understanding, self compassion, self liberation. Because if behavior follows identity, then when you change the story, you change the identity. And when you change the identity, you change the state. And if you caught the recent neurodivergent Experience episode, I Don't Belong, Imposter Syndrome and the neurodivergent Brain. Jordan and Simon spoke so beautifully about this. That feeling of, oh, one day they'll realize I'm not enough isn't a personality flaw. It's a story. It's an old inherited survival narrative written long before we ever had a chance to question it. So Imposter syndrome is not evidence that you are unqualified. It's evidence that your nervous system has been taught to brace for rejection. The mind remembers the past to protect you, but it forgets to check whether the story is still true. And this is why understanding our inner narratives matters so deeply. Because when we change the story, we change the state, and then we change the way we move through the world. The stories we tell ourselves become the worlds we live in. And I'd like to share something with you that blends psychology and mindfulness and simple human truth. Your mind is always searching for proof of whatever it already believes. Not because you're broken and not because you're negative, but because your brain is wired to conserve energy by confirming the story it already knows. So if the quiet narrative running beneath your day is things never work out for me, your mind will faithfully collect evidence to prove it. Not because life is objectively worse, but because your nervous system is doing its job, reinforcing a familiar pattern. But, and this is the extraordinary part, the mechanism works both ways. So if instead you gently ask, how might this get better? Or what small good is happening here? Your brain shifts its filter. It begins scanning for micro moments of grace, a kind exchange, a moment of beauty, a task you finished, a breath that feels soothing. A tiny step forward you might have otherwise missed. This is not toxic positivity. This is not pretending everything is fine. It's simply giving your nervous system a different question to answer. And your brain always answers the question you repeatedly ask. This is confirmation bias in action, not as a limitation, but as a doorway to hope, resilience, and curiosity. So be mindful of the quiet stories that run your day. And be mindful of the questions you place at the feet of your mind. Because the way you frame your expectations today shapes how your nervous system feels tomorrow. So we're not just living our lives, we are subtly authoring them. One thought, one interpretation, one tiny shift at a time. And you may remember on an earlier episode of Mindful Mondays where I shared the example of walking down a country lane after rainfall, with all the puddles and mud and fallen leaves. And two people can walk the very same path. And one feels frustration and inconvenience and dread, and the other feels nostalgia, beauty, gratitude. Same scene, different story, different nervous system state. One person drops into agitation and the other stays in soft engagement. Why? Because the story inside them is touched. And here's what I want you to hear. You are doing this all day long. We all are. The mind is constantly interpreting and narrating, assigning meaning and predicting. But the moment you notice the story, you become the witness. And the space opens and the nervous system softens. And presence is the place where you stop being the story and begin watching it. And from that place, your next move is no longer dictated by a conditioned belief. It becomes chosen. And this is the art of regulation from the top down. And remember my sunglasses story from episode eight. Most of my adult life, I could not go outside without sunglasses. My eyes were so painfully sensitive. Bright sun and even cloudy days would sting and burn my eyes until it was unbearable. So sunglasses became my armor. But as I kept learning about the benefits of natural sunlight for circadian rhythm and mood, digestion, nervous system regulation, something interesting began to happen. That learning started quietly reshaping the story I held about sunlight. And without forcing anything, the narrative inside me began to shift. And then one day, when I finally decided, enough is enough, I want the benefits of sunlight more than I want the comfort of my sunglasses. I left them by the door and I walked outside. And my body responded beautifully. No burning, no stinging, no overwhelm. My story had changed, and my body followed. Not by pushing, not by effort, just by gently letting new understanding rewrite an old belief. And we can use the Witness as a regulation tool, because presence, awareness, not passive it's powerful. When you witness your thoughts, instead of being swept into them, your nervous system receives new information. I am not the chaos. I am the one noticing the chaos. And this alone can shift you from overwhelm to orientation, from collapse to clarity, from spiraling to spaciousness. And when you combine this with compassion, the effects multiply. And spiritual teacher Ram Dass often repeated one of the most profoundly useful teachings for presence. Cultivate the Witness. The Witness is the part of you that steps just one breath back from the moment, not disconnecting and not dissociating, but observing. It is the spacious awareness that notices without judgment. And in that moment of witnessing, something loosens you. Shift from being the storm to noticing the storm. And in psychology, there's a question that therapists and researchers and clinicians often ask. Is this state or trait meaning? Is this behavior who you are or simply where your nervous system is at in this moment? Someone can snap or withdraw, overreact, meltdown or shut down. And it may have nothing to do with their personality or character and everything to do with the state their body was thrown into. This lens is so liberating for neurodivergent souls, it means you are not your meltdown. You are not your shutdown, you are not your overwhelm. Those are states, not traits. They are nervous system events, not evidence of who you are. And when you bring the Witness online, you create a tiny space between stimulus and response, a breath of possibility, a moment where you get to say, ah, this is a state. This will pass. I am still here beneath it. Cultivating the Witness is one of the most powerful top down regulation tools we have, because it gently guides your system back toward the truth of who you are, not the storm you're passing through. So if you find yourself stressed, angry, overstimulated, shut down, or despairing, just try whispering to yourself, ah, this is a story. This is a state, not who I am. And states can change. This is a growth mindset. Not the corporate version we hear so often, but the real one. A belief that who you are is fluid, adaptable, capable of transformation, worthy of becoming. So let's return now to John Vervecki's teaching. The brain switches rapidly between the left and right hemispheres, logic and imagination. Not to predict fate, but to predict your next movement in space. So imagine two inner worlds. World A says, I'm too much, I am failing. I can't cope. Your next move becomes bracing, withdrawing, avoiding freezing, masking. In world B, we have, I'm learning, I'm growing, I am adapting. Your Next move then becomes curiosity, trying again, reaching out, resting and regulating. Same situation, entirely different physiology, entirely different life. Your stories do not just color your experience. They shape your nervous system's response. They determine whether you access safety or danger, possibility or shutdown. And it's important to remember we're not trying to positive think our way out of dysregulation that bypasses the body. Instead, we are learning something wiser. To use the mind as a gentle guide, not a tyrant. To unite logic and imagination, to soften beliefs that have hardened into armor. To rewrite inherited narratives and to use attention as medicine. And most importantly, to witness the mind with kindness. That witnessing alone begins to regulate the system. So here's your invitation for this week. Choose one story that your mind tells you often. It could be I don't belong or I always mess things up. I'm too much or I'm not enough. And don't try to fix it. Just add one small sentence beside it and something else may also be true. This tiny doorway invites possibility. It softens certainty. It creates space. Because meaning doesn't always arrive in thunderclaps, often it arrives in the smallest shift, the quietest willingness to consider another truth. This is how we rewire the mind. One softened sentence at a time, one breath of compassion at a time. One tiny doorway of possibility. And that is microdosing meaning. And as we move into today's practice, if you are driving or operating heavy machinery, please ensure to pause the recording until you can safely come back into stillness. And just taking a moment to get nice and comfortable, whatever that means for you today. You might sit, you might lie down, you might curl on your side or lay on your back. Let your hands rest gently over your heart. There's no right way to arrive here. There is only arriving. And as you settle, feel the symbol, simple, honest weight of your body being held, held by the floor, the chair.
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The bed.
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Held by gravity itself, held by something older and wiser than your thinking mind. And let your breath arrive as it wants to. Not forcing, not shaping, just noticing the soft rise and the soft fall. Like waves, like remembering, like being called home. And with every exhale, just let yourself melt. See if you can get yourself even just 2% more comfortable. Let the jaw loosen, let the shoulders drop, let the belly soften. Good. That's right. You don't need to perform anything here. You don't need to be impressive or productive. Your only job is to be breathed. You can feel that you are breathing. And equally, you can feel that it is breathing. You. And right now, allow yourself to feel both the breath you choose and the breath that chooses you. And now imagine that your mind, your beautiful, creative, neurodivergent mind, is a night sky. And thoughts twinkle in and out like stars, some bright, some faint, some rushing across like meteors. You don't need to chase them, you don't need to dim them. You don't need to make sense of them. Just notice the sky. Wide open, spacious, unhurried. And if a thought comes, imagine it as a firefly drifting gently across the sky of your awareness and then floating away again without effort. No gripping, no pushing, just noticing. This is cultivating the witness, the part of you that sees without judgment, that feels without becoming overwhelmed, and that notices without needing to control. You are sinking from the surface mind into the quiet behind the mind, into a place where nothing needs to be solved, nothing needs to be fixed. Just breathe and feel the sky widen. And imagining now that beneath this sky there is a vast ocean. This ocean is your deeper self. The quiet beneath the noise, the stillness beneath the stories, the calm beneath the waves of thought and emotion. Begin to sense yourself drifting downward, gently, slowly. With each breath, you drift deeper into this inner ocean, deeper into stillness, deeper into safety. And if thoughts appear, imagine they are surface ripples above you. You can see them, but they cannot disturb you. If emotions arise, imagine they are waves far overhead, felt but softened. And here, in this quiet place, you are held. You are safe. You are allowed to rest. And just let yourself float here, buoyant, weightless, supported from below and soothed from within. And noticing now, from this deep, quiet place, the subtle shapes of your inner narratives, the stories you carry, the beliefs you inherited, the thoughts that echo like old whale song from childhood or cold culture. Notice how different they feel from here, How the urgency softens, how the edges blur, how the tightness in your chest loosens. Because you are not the story. You are witnessing the story. You are not the storm. You are the ocean beneath the storm. You are not the thought. You are the awareness holding the thought. You are not the old narrative about who you were supposed to be. You are the consciousness, spacious enough to reimagine it. Just let the stories come and go gently. They have never needed to be pushed away, only seen and seen from here, from stillness, they lose their grip. Your body softens, your mind untangles. Your breath moves freely again. And take a slow breath in through your nose and a long sigh out of your mouth. And gently wiggle your fingers and toes and gently move your head from side to side. And feel the room begin to reappear around you. But notice the stillness hasn't vanished, you're simply bringing it with you. And whenever you're ready and not a moment before, you can feel free to gently open your eyes. Thank you so much for joining me this week on Mindful Mondays and together. All this month we've traveled through essential realms of the nervous system, the breath, the body and the mind. This core architecture of how a neurodivergent being comes home to themselves. This is the bedrock beneath everything else we'll explore in the months ahead. And the most beautiful part? We're only just getting started. There's so much more to say, so much more to explore. So many tools, metaphors, stories and practices still waiting for you, both bottom up and top down, and all of them woven through the neurodivergent experience of living life on higher volume. And if today's episode resonated with you, if you felt something soften or open or return, I want to invite you to go deeper. You can join me on Insight Timer, where you'll find my Nervous System Regulation Mastery course as well as guided meditations, yoga, Nidras bedtime stories, and an entire library of resources created to support your beautiful neurodivergent nervous systems with gentleness, science and soul. And as always, this isn't a one way conversation. We love hearing from you. Your reflections, your stories, your metaphors, your questions, they all shape this podcast more than you know. So feel free to email me anytime on mindfulmondayspodcastmail.com and next week we step into December and we're beginning the month in the most special of ways, exploring a meditation that cultivates love, acceptance and forgiveness in the most unexpected and deeply transformative way. And I won't give it away just yet, but trust me, it's one of the most powerful practices I've ever known. Until then, may you meet your nervous system with kindness and your mind with curiosity and your body with the tenderness you'd offer a dear friend. And remember, we are all just walking each other home.
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