Feeling Triggered to Advocate for Change

I just finished up the 20 hours of continuing education I needed for my health coaching certification and am still bothered by some things.

I have always had a tumultuous relationship with my body. Throughout the time I’ve become a trainer and coach, I’ve worked really hard to heal that relationship - and it’s ongoing - it always will be.

I have to do the same thing with research here as I do with research on autism which is trying to ignore the triggering things. Autism research is so offensive to read as an actually autistic person… and it can be similar to listen to some of the coaching stuff as a person who’s brain doesn’t function the way this stuff is designed for.

Throughout my education and training to be a personal trainer and health coach, my pattern recognition was working overtime and this is when I truly connected the dots about the relationship between stress and health. And by health, I mean health, NOT the way the body looks - the way it FUNCTIONS.

The only common denominator when it came to poor health outcomes across the board was stress. This was when I realized that any “healthy behavior” that causes stress is actually… unhealthy. (You know, that whole “reclaim the shame” thing).

One thing that can be extremely unhealthy to someone with brains like ours is the gaslighting around things deemed “healthy behaviors” and pushing folks to just “try harder” because so many of these actually fall within the realm of executive functioning. And a lot of the language used and suggested for these areas is very…. Not neuroinclusive, I’ll just say that. Like, I could make a part 2 video about shit that breaks my neurodivergent brain, you know?

Anyway.

It’s almost 7 a.m. on Saturday; I’ve been ruminating on this since yesterday afternoon. I woke up thinking about it. I’m so tired of us being misunderstood. Underrepresented. Unintentionally gaslit.

I’m going to reach out to them - the American Council on Exercise - and see if they’d be open to working with me to develop a continuing education course for coaching clients who have experienced trauma.

Why trauma? Well, according to my research so far, the traumatized brain has many neurological similarities to the autistic brain. NOT identical, and trauma in the brain CAN be healed, but the physiological effects, especially to the nervous system, are similar. By offering this information for individuals who have experienced trauma, we’re not only including those who are autistic and adhd, but the millions of us who are living with the trauma backpack.

So I’d be offering to develop a continuing education course for professionals in my industry to train them on the impact trauma has to the brain and body, and how that can change the way those clients need to be supported/coached/trained.

I want to change the way the world views us and talks to us. I want to change the way the world views trauma and how it impacts us. I want to change the way the world empathizes with trauma. Is that unrealistic? Probably. But maybe this is a place I can start.

What do you think?

Shauna