There's No Such Thing As Attracting Struggle

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) If you're neurodivergent, have a chronic illness, or

consider yourself disabled, and you are sick and

tired of people telling you to just think

positive, change your mindset, because if you focus

on all the bad stuff that's all you're

going to attract, then this podcast is for

you.

You're listening to Feathermane Soul Wisdom, a podcast

for those looking to rediscover their wild spirit

in spite of life's challenges.

If you're living with a chronic illness, or

neurodivergent, or consider yourself disabled, and you're looking

to connect with your own inner untamed essence,

then this show is for you.

Your host is Kit Kaelstoe, Wild Spirit Storyteller.

Thanks for listening, and now onto the episode.

Hello, I'm your host, Kit Kaelstoe, and welcome

to the second season of the Feathermane Soul

Wisdom Show.

I've decided to roll us over to the

second season now that I've given my website

a nice polish and updated some of the

back-end technology that should make your experience

there much better and make it easier for

me to manage everything, and I've also updated

the intros and outros just slightly.

So, I was driving in my car.

I listened to podcasts on my way to

town.

It's about a 30 minute commute to town

when I go to get groceries and such,

and I was listening to a podcast, and

it's a podcast that I kind of have

a mostly love relationship with, but sometimes they

say things that I'm like, whoa, no, honey,

that is not how the universe works, and

this is one of those times.

I was driving home, and their podcast started,

and right off the top, they were like,

we got off the struggle bus, and first

of all, I hate the phrase struggle bus,

because it implies several things.

When you say struggle bus, first of all,

a bus is like a small cramped space.

You're going somewhere.

You don't have autonomy over like where you

stop.

If there's like five bus stops between you

and your destination, you're going to stop at

all five of those, because somebody may be

waiting to get on the bus.

Somebody may need to get off the bus

at those stops, but there's a good chance

you're going to take momentary pauses or momentary

stops at places that don't necessarily serve you,

and that's fine.

I mean, you know, that's what public transit

is for.

That's what makes it efficient, so you know,

that's how public transit works, but also the

struggle bus to me is a very ableist

saying.

It brings to mind the buses that are

used for students who need extra supports, for

students who need specific mobility accommodations to get

on and off the bus.

It brings to mind the shorter buses that

haul fewer students, and that shorter, that short

bus is often used as an ableist slur

or insult, and so to me struggle bus

kind of fits into that as well.

So I mean, right off the top, they

kind of pinged my sense of justice, my

sense of, hey, you know, we don't use

those words around here, but also right after

that, the host said something that just, that

made me want to scream, frankly.

I mean, it was just me and the

groceries in the car.

I could have screamed if I wanted to,

but they were like, well, we stopped focusing

on the negative, and so we're doing so

much better now that we're attracting more positive

things.

Oh boy, here we go again.

So I immediately came home, went to my

to-do app, and wrote down that very

next podcast I wanted to do was talking

about the fallacy of when you think negative,

you attract negative things.

Now to put on my psychology hat, there,

there are studies that have been done, and

I admit most of the studies I have

been presented with, I have concerns about the

methodology and things, and to get, you know,

really wonky and in the weeds.

But the studies that have been done do

show that, you know, it's the old pink

elephant problem.

If you tell somebody not to think about

a pink elephant, all they're going to do

is think about a pink elephant.

But I also think that the focusing on

the negative, especially for those of us who

are neurodivergent and chronically ill, I think that

there's a lot here to discuss and examine

about how neurotypical brains work and about how

neurodivergent brains work.

And I ran into this yesterday.

I was having an awesome day.

I was doing a bunch of stuff, and

the two sides of my neurodivergence, the, um,

my autism and my ADHD started fighting one

another.

The ADHD was just humming right along.

I was checking things off my to-do

list.

I was getting stuff done, feeling productive.

I had all the dopamine.

I mean all the dopamine.

I was doing great.

I was hyper focusing, and then my autism

stuck its hand up and said, whoa, you've

overwhelmed me.

I need to go chill.

Luckily, that was towards the end of the

day and when I have to go do

an evening, um, chore outside.

And so, like, I spent the next hour

before I went to do those chores, basically

watching show tunes on YouTube.

I mean, I was like totally tuned out.

And I, you know, eased into what I

was doing in the evenings, and I kind

of worked myself out of it.

But I think that goes to show you

that the neurodivergent brain, and depending on your

flavor of neurodivergent brain, or your combination of

flavors in your neurodivergent brain, that you're, it

works differently.

And so, as somebody with autism and with

sensory sensitivities, one of the things that I've

really discovered by tuning into my body is

that on my high pain days, that that's

just so overwhelming to my system.

And so, so strong of a sensation that

that's all I can focus on.

It's, it's like somebody is, you know, walking

around behind me with a big megaphone and

shouting in my ear.

You know, if that were happening to you,

that would literally be the only thing you

could think about.

You'd be like, excuse me, could you like

not do that?

And with the body, it's much the same

way.

When my body is in really bad pain,

which it, it has been quite a bit

due to some weather situations, and the fact

that my medical team doesn't really care that

I'm in this much pain.

Then, you know, I do what I can

to alleviate it.

I, you know, just for those who are

new to the show, I'm a yoga instructor.

So I do yoga, I do meditation, I

do breathing, I do mindfulness, I'm really gentle

with myself.

And I love the practice of self acceptance.

So I do all the things that they

say you're supposed to do.

But when my body feels like somebody is

literally pounding on me with two by fours,

then that's all I can think about.

And of course, that's all I'm going to

think about.

Now, am I attracting more pain by that?

You could argue that since I'm focusing and

noticing on that, that maybe in my brain,

there's something going on there.

But the truth of the matter is, my

body hurts, whether I think about it or

not.

My body hurts at a variable rate.

And so when it hurts less, then I

can, you know, I don't think about it

as much, although I still do think, you

know, Oh, God, you know, that knee is

bothering me or all my shoulders are so

bad.

And that's just one small example.

When you are dealing with socio economic things,

when you are dealing with financial issues, then,

you know, you have to think about them

to some extent.

Because you have to figure out, you know,

what's my budget?

Do I have any more any opportunities to

try and do a side hustle?

Do you know, am I using social media

effectively to promote my business?

There, there's a million things that you need

to think about in relation to your finances.

And thinking about those things is not going

to attract more poverty into your life.

In fact, I would argue that thinking about

those things is going to make you take

more action.

Now, if you are referring to the, you

know, Oh, woe is me, I don't have

any money.

Acknowledging a fact does not attract more facts.

I mean, you know, Oh, woe is me,

I'm in pain.

You are allowed to feel upset about the

state of your existence.

You are allowed to state the truth of

that and how that feels to you.

And so I think that's the first point

I'd like to make is that when somebody

says, you know, Oh, only think positive.

They are wanting you to deny the truth

of your existence for their comfort.

And I don't know about you, but as

somebody who received my diagnoses very late in

life, and has, you know, now reached a

point in life where I'm expected to be,

you know, basically angry all the time.

I don't make myself smaller, deny my existence

for other people's comfort.

And I don't think you should either.

That's part of connecting with our wild spirit.

That's part of, you know, connecting with your

wild untamed nature.

You're not going to tame down any part

of your experience for somebody else's comfort.

I also think that we need to think

about, and this has come up actually in

several things that I have run across over

the past couple of weeks, that everybody kind

of throws out all these, you know, handy

meme worthy things, you know, think positive, get

off the struggle bus, do this, do that,

without thinking about where all of that came

from.

And the truth is that all of that

positive thinking will change your life.

A lot of that came from a guy

called Napoleon Hill.

I believe that was his name back in

the 20s.

So the other thing is it came out

after his death that pretty much everything he

said in his book was a lie.

He claimed that he, you know, got rich,

made all these connections, had this wonderful life,

because he thought positive and changed the way

his mind was going.

And it, no, he was just a grifter

selling some snake oil.

Not only did everybody in the 20s buy

it, because of course everybody wanted to be

a part of the gilded age, but people

in the decades since have bought it to

the point where it's been packaged and repackaged.

The secret, the law of attraction, so many

things.

And so I feel like that the people

who tell you that don't quite know the

history of it, aren't quite willing to look

at the history of it, and aren't quite

willing to look at the fact that what

they're selling you are the same, it's the

same snake oil, just packaged in a more

modern packaging.

It's like if you look at Coke cans,

Coca-Cola, if you look at the cans

of Coke, you know, through the decades, the

Coke cans that we have now don't look

like the Coke cans we had in the

80s, but you still recognize it as Coca

-Cola.

That sort of thing.

And so I think when we do that,

we uncover a couple of things.

And we uncover some fundamental differences between the

neurodivergent brain and the neurotypical brain.

And those differences are really about who gets

to connect with their wild spirit, who gets

to connect with their untamed spirit, and who

doesn't for the sake of a neurotypical society.

I'm going to take a deep breath here,

because I will be honest, maybe it's the

perimenopause, but like I am reaching the point

where this is getting me really angry.

Because for me, I could no more tell

the storm to calm down for my comfort.

I get, you know, thunderstorm rolls in at

like three o'clock in the morning, you

know, big crashes of lightning, big, you know,

big booming reverberating thunder that shakes the house.

You wake up, you're like, oh, you know,

oh my god, we're gonna die.

Maybe that's just me.

You know, I could no more than like

go out on the front porch and be

like, excuse me, thunderstorm, could you calm it

down?

I'm trying to sleep.

The storm is going to be like, haha,

here's some more thunder and lightning for you,

crazy person.

And so I want to be the thunderstorm.

Not in that I want to, you know,

make noise and wake people up, but in

that I want to be firm.

And this is who I am.

This is my nature.

This is, you know, this is it.

And so we could, you know, we could

take this down several notches.

Squirrels love to raid bird feeders.

You can try to do everything you can

to squirrel proof your bird feeder.

But there's a chance that your squirrel is

still going to steal the food out of

your bird feeder.

The squirrel will find a way.

Is it cute?

It could be.

Is it annoying?

If you're the one buying the bird seed,

probably.

But the squirrel is going to squirrel.

And we have to accept that.

We have to acknowledge that that's the situation.

And we can do two things.

We can either scream at the squirrel not

to squirrel, to which the squirrel is going

to pretty much ignore the big screaming monkey

on the front porch.

And I say monkey because we're primates.

And so, you know, theoretically, that's kind of

how a lot of nature looks at us.

You're going to tire yourself out, stress yourself

out, and not change the squirrel's behavior.

And with that, you could ignore the squirrel.

But the fact is, you'd still be spending

extra money on bird seed.

You would still be, you know, trying to

fix the parts of the bird feeder the

squirrel broke.

The situation would be there even if you

tell yourself, well, the squirrel's not, you know,

the squirrel's not raiding my bird feeder.

Well, it is.

You're just ignoring it and deluding yourself.

And so, I think that's where when people

say, well, don't focus on the bad things

without giving you any other context, then they're

telling you to delude yourself.

They're telling you to ignore the squirrel raiding

your bird feeder.

They're telling you to, you know, no, it's

not thundering and lightning.

And there's no severe thunderstorm warning.

Just for the record, today it's sunny.

But we're in the Midwest.

It's spring.

We're supposed to get storms in a couple

of days.

It happens.

You know, you could tell yourself that.

But if you don't take cover during a

severe weather warning, you do risk very serious

injury or worse.

You do risk getting hurt.

And so, if you acknowledge the situation, I

am in a lot of pain today, or

that light is too loud, or my God,

I can hear the electricity in this room.

I have got to do something about it.

Acknowledging the situation is not going to attract

more of that situation.

My husband and I hate overhead lights.

We're both autistic.

Can you tell?

But if I, if he, he's usually the

one that turns on the overhead light to

do some, to clean or something.

If he turns on the overhead light and,

you know, I'm on the bed like going,

bright light, bright light, as I'm working on

my laptop, like I'm some sort of little

moggly from the movie or something, then, you

know, that's not going to make all the

other lights in the house turn on and

like march and, you know, increase the illumination

in the room I'm in.

That's simply an acknowledgement that, hey, you turned

on the light.

I hope you had a good reason.

And obviously, we communicate better than that.

Once you have that acknowledgement, you can then

figure out what to do to fix it.

That might be on a high, high pain

day, giving yourself grace, saying, you know what,

my body hurts today.

I can't do what I wanted to do.

I'm going to curl up with a blanket,

a book, the favorite show I'm streaming, whatever

makes you feel better.

If it is the case of like bad

sensory inputs in a room, it's going to

be, you know, hey, can you turn the

light off?

That's really hurting my eyes right now.

Or, you know, is this going to be

quick?

Usually in our case, it's like, you know,

if it's not obvious, I'm like, why did

you do that?

He tells me and I'm like, okay, make

it quick.

Acknowledging it and even, you know, even if

you're groaning and, you know, growling about it

the entire time, you can still do that.

You can still understand the situation is what

it is, and you can still do what

you need to do to make any changes.

There's a big difference between working through the

situation as it is, working to find a

better place, and just completely deluding yourself that

the situation doesn't exist at all.

And the other thing is, notice that even

with like the sensory issue, there's a two

-way communication.

And this is the other part that really

got me when I was listening to this

podcast.

So it is a spiritual metaphysical podcast.

They talk a lot about new age style

topics.

They do teach classes.

I suppose people could turn to this podcast

for a guru, and you've got to be

mindful of that.

I mean, if you're putting yourself in a

position where you're teaching people, you need to

be mindful that if you're teaching people, people

will do what you say.

Hopefully, maybe, or at least they'll consider it.

You know, I mean, I don't want to

be all authoritarian because that's not the case.

I really encourage people who listen to this

podcast and who take my classes and that

to try.

You know, have a curious mind.

That's all I ask.

And the tone of this basically was, if

you don't stop thinking about whatever is a

pain point in your life, if you don't

stop focusing on that, nothing is going to

change.

You're only going to attract more, and it's

going to be your fault.

It's the last part that really got me.

It's going to be your fault.

Hello, victim blaming has entered the chat.

And so with that victim blaming, that's a

whole new layer of not good.

Because there are so many things that go

into even what appears to be a cut

and dried situation.

So for those of us who are neurodivergent

and have a chronic illness, the easy knee

jerk thing to do, you have diabetes, you're

clearly not eating right.

You know, whether it's a medical provider or

somebody, you know, you know, nothing.

It's all on you.

Oh, you have chronic pain and you're not

losing weight.

Well, that's your fault.

That is their way, again, of making themselves

feel better and absolving themselves of all responsibility.

But more importantly, they're basically absolving the socio

economic cultural systems of all their responsibility too.

I just got done writing an essay talking

about how being chronically ill really connects us

with this planet, which many would argue is

chronically ill right now dealing with climate change,

and just the weird things going on with

the weather.

And that, and you know, one of the

points I made was that, okay, a single

tree in the forest has to take in

nutrients, water, air, all of that good stuff

to survive.

And so in to some respect, it is

on that tree to do that.

However, that tree is affected by all the

other trees in the forest.

And whether that's, you know, a little forest,

like the one I have in my backyard,

that's kind of a little buffer zone between

us and the properties around us.

Or whether it's, you know, thousands and thousands

of acres, like the Mark Twain National Forest,

or any national forest that, you know, is

in the US.

I happen to live in the Ozarks.

There is quite a bit of the Mark

Twain National Forest not too far from where

I live.

Acres and acres and acres and acres of

trees.

But even something as big as a section

of the National Forest, and in the case

of the Mark Twain National Forest, it's actually

several large forests in a very vast geographic

area.

It's not just like one national park.

There's a whole bunch of little pieces of

it scattered throughout the Ozarks.

But those little pieces are, you know, many

thousands of acres.

And, you know, the health of that is

based, in some respects, to the land around

it and what the people do.

I'm thinking about, like, the Emerald Ash Borer,

I think its name was.

When it first showed up in Iowa, all

of a sudden it was like, okay, you

can't bring in your own firewood.

You need to buy it only from authorized

dealers.

Because people bringing in firewood from other states

moved this pest across state lines and brought

it into Iowa, where it really proliferated.

When we think about the invasive species here,

the invasive species that we have came over

from long distances and in ways that, like,

people didn't even notice.

If you're dealing with an invasive species, you're

dealing with something that somebody basically either thought

was good that they introduced into an ecosystem,

or that they didn't even know was there.

And then all of a sudden you got

this big problem.

You can't blame, for example, the Ash Tree

for its Emerald Borer infestation without actually looking

at all the other factors.

And, you know, okay, the, you know, the

people moving firewood, how did this pest originally

get into the U.S.? There's so many

factors.

And I don't see this as a neurodivergent

tangent.

I see this because it connects with our

thoughts.

If I'm having a bad pain day, okay,

yes, in this moment, I have pain signals

going to my brain.

I have signals going to my brain that

my brain's interpreting as pain, and they're localized

in various parts of my body.

I could catalog them.

You guys probably aren't interested in that.

I wouldn't be if I was listening to

this podcast.

You know, and there are different sensations, and

they're caused by different things.

But all of that is connected to other

things that happen, that are connected to things

that go back, you know, 50 years.

Because that's how old I am.

And that all those experiences have built to

this moment.

And so for me to just say, you

know, oh, well, I'm not in pain today,

doesn't do anything to address the 50 years

of damage that have been that has been

done to my body and nervous system, by

various factors, including people who did not want

to see that I was neurodivergent, or who

did not want to believe my lived experiences

around some trauma that I experienced.

And so, you know, I always believe that

when you blame the person that that's the,

you know, that's, that's the coward's way out.

That's the cop out.

Even now, like with our political situation, you

can tell somebody, hey, your vote caused this

to happen.

But then you have to look at why

the people voted that way, what caused it.

And that goes back decades.

And it's so much wider than just going,

you know, haha, you voted for this, now

you're getting hurt.

That's probably another show.

Maybe not.

But everything is connected.

And that to me, that's, that's what my

autistic brain has taught me.

Everything is connected.

Patterns upon patterns upon patterns upon patterns.

And when you start to put those patterns

together, which is