Bee.In.Harmony

09/04/2026

When boundaries fail, it can be for a wide variety of reasons

___________________

1) Unrealistic expectations

Expecting the other person to follow through on your boundary,

when in reality boundaries are about dictating

YOUR actions,

not theirs.

___________________

2) Setting the boundary in a way that isn't actually setting a boundary.

It's communicating an expectation or expressing a need,

but you're not actually communicating your boundary.

Even if you only ever say your boundary out loud to yourself,

that language and your actions thereafter make it clear to them and to you that

there are no consequences and follow-through for

when they don't respect your boundary.

___________________

Yes;

The other person MAY very well react badly to your boundaries;

They MAY BE destructive

- to themselves

- to you

- to your loved ones

- to your stuff

After all, this is WHY you are setting the boundary to begin with:

A healthy person will be grateful for them;

An unhealthy person is the one who needs them.

___________________

3) You're setting it from an emotion that is not authentic to you as a person.

If you don't see yourself as a "malicious person,"

and you see setting a boundary as a "malicious act,"

then why would your subconscious ever follow-through on it?

___________________

4) You're setting it from an emotion that is not authentic to the relationship you have or want to have with that person.

Likewise if you're setting it from a place of "care about the other person",

but you're actually at the point that you don't care if that person stays in your life or not,

you'll continuously compromise on your needs and follow-through, most like to

"make them happy" yet never actually be able to contribute to their happiness because they subconsciously

KNOW... you don't care.

You deserve better.

Frankly, they also deserve better.

___________________

5) You're setting the boundary from an emotion that cannot be held by you long-term.

Setting boundaries from places of

Anger
Fear
Resentment
Frustration

are simply not sustainable; it takes energy to keep those emotions going,

and it's not really possible to sustain those emotions

without serious physical and mental health risks to yourself.

___________________

Setting the boundary from a place of

Love for yourself
Acceptance for the situation
Care for the other

without compromising on the follow-through

will allow you to feel truly

authentic in your boundary-setting and make it a

maintainable boundary with

minimal effort.

09/04/2026

It's F**k-It Friday here @ Bee.In.Harmony -

is it just me, or have people been stomping all over boundaries this week?

___________________

So here's the RUDE coping mechanism I've got for you this week:

"I'm not able to continue communicating right now. I need to go. Bye for now."

___________________

That's it.

If it's a phone call... 🔇

If it's in person... 🚪🚶

You have every right, at any point, to walk away from a conversation,

to disengage,

and take time / space / breath to

PAUSE

and regroup after processing.

___________________

If you want to give the other person an explanation

- esp if you feel THEY are the ones being unreasonable -

own your own feelings rather than trying to place them on the other person

(no matter how "justified" you might feel in blaming the other person for them.)

___________________

If you intend on continued contact:

"I am feeling overwhelmed by what's happening here, and I'm walking away to process. I will check back in with you at x time to let you know if I'm ready to come back together to talk."

___________________

If there's a chance you're going limited or no contact:

"I am feeling overwhelmed by what's happening here, and I'm walking away to process. I'll come back when I'm ready to discuss again."

"When will that be?"

"Right now, I can't give you an answer, and that needs to be okay for right now."

___________________

You are allowed to end a conversation with no explanation.

You are allowed to end a conversation with some or total explanation...

And STILL walk away if they try to engage you in breaking your boundary,

or trying to convince you to change it.

___________________

No.

You are not "allowed"...

You are REQUIRED to follow-through on your boundary.

You are REQUIRED to end the conversation if you said you needed to end the conversation.

You are REQUIRED to walk away.

Because if you didn't actually need it,

then you wouldn't have set it as a boundary to begin with,

and

Boundaries are NOT NEGOTIABLE.

___________________

As a heads up,

Boundaries also teach other people how to love us,

how to accept and respect us,

where are the lines are that they shouldn't be crossing.

___________________

People who value consent

VALUE BOUNDARIES,

and understanding where they stand with you.

And all the other people who don't...

Well there's a reason you're setting those boundaries with them in the first place.

09/03/2026

(VOLUME LOW)

"Yeah but everyone has that experience Bee."

"Everyone's a bit autistic then."

Listen...

these phrases...

MINIMIZE my experience...

and

CENTER yours.

"...Okay. I'm just trying to relate to you."

🥴🥴🥴🫩🫩🫩

🤬

Sometimes you just have to disengage from the conversation, put on Evanescence, and scream it out.

Unmasking has really sent me back in time 🤣😮‍💨



(Also, yeah, singing is masking for me, but when I'm in extreme pain from a migraine with no relief in sight, singing can have a similar effect as bashing my head against the wall:

throwing me in such sensory engagement that it drives everything else from my mind.)

09/03/2026

Happy Deaf Awareness Month!

No better understanding to be had than by listening to actual lived experience of those in the marginalized community.

“deaf, Not Deaf” by Christian Fusco

What struck me most about Deaf, Not Deaf was its exploration of bullying and the complicated search for identity experienced by many mainstreamed Deaf children. Those parts felt painfully familiar. I grew up being bullied by others, often because I was different and because people saw my deafness before they bothered to see me. By the time I reached junior high, however, something in me had changed. I had learned to snap back, defend myself, and make it clear that I was no longer an easy target.

The book’s treatment of cochlear implants especially resonated with me. Something intended to provide access can also become a visible target for ridicule. Children can be merciless toward anything they do not understand, and a cochlear implant can make a Deaf child stand out in an environment already shaped around hearing expectations. The book does not reduce that experience to a simple argument about whether cochlear implants are good or bad. Instead, it shows how technology, identity, acceptance, and belonging can become tangled together.

That complexity matters. Having a cochlear implant does not determine whether someone is Deaf, deaf, hearing, or caught somewhere between those labels. Technology does not assign identity. The individual does. For me, being Deaf is not merely an audiological measurement or something that needs to be corrected. It is part of my identity, my language, my experiences, and the way I understand the world.

Many mainstreamed Deaf children will recognize themselves in this book. They may know the isolation of being surrounded by hearing classmates while still feeling completely alone. They may understand the pressure to fit in, the exhaustion of constantly adapting, and the uncertainty of trying to determine where they belong. Those experiences can remain with a person long after childhood ends.

Without giving away the story, Deaf, Not Deaf handles these subjects with honesty and emotional weight. It reminded me that surviving bullying can make us stronger, but that strength often grows from wounds we should never have been forced to carry. The book gave me space to reflect on the child I was, the defenses I developed, and the Deaf identity I eventually claimed as my own.

My review: 9/10, This was a meaningful and deeply relatable read. It may speak especially strongly to Deaf readers who grew up mainstreamed, but it also offers hearing readers an important glimpse into experiences they may never have considered.

09/02/2026

Wednesday Affirmations:

It makes sense if you're close to the edge of melting down,

if you haven't already.

_______

You've been communicating in an uncomfortable way for way longer than you actually should have been;

You've been forcing yourself to process way faster, slower, harder, or longer than you should have;

You've been engaged with peopleing, language, assessing, and analyzing for too long;

You went from being overstimulated to being overstimulated A LOT, and who knows which added sensory input will be the one to topple the cake;

_______

You're about to explode,

and you're convincing yourself that "if you can just wait a little bit longer,

you can get to a place where you can properly accommodate yourself,

right??"

_______

Babes ... 😮‍💨

If you need to push because of this bu****it world, I get it...

But are you really sure?

_______

Maybe take this as a sign that you actually CAN'T wait just a little bit longer.

_______

You deserve to stop talking,

to go to an empty room,

to scream at the walls,

to throw something hard,

to collapse in a wailing heap,

to run as far as you can...

_______

Because if you don't,

you might just cause a lot more damage to yourself, others, or objects

more than you realize

by waiting.

_______

It makes sense;

Now please.

TAKE CARE of yourself.

09/01/2026

I pushed it too much today.

_________________

It wasn't the executive functioning pushing my ability to

- consider task steps
- arrange them
- initiate them

_________________

It wasn't a vestibular or body migraine from auditory processing disorder from my AuDHD.

_________________

It was my dyspraxia.

Too much verbal communication.

The interesting thing is that it seems to demand a lot of energy from me,

a high demand of "jUsT pUsH!"

that I've come to recognize is one of the ultimate forms of me masking my neurodivergence,

and it occurs regardless of whether that "verbal communication"

is out loud to others or not;

writing in a verbal communication style,

even thinking in a verbal language

creates an intense amount of distress over time spent pushing to do so.

_________________

So today, my partner was on their final work break,

they started to massage my face like they know I frequently need,

and I melted down / shut down.

_________________

They noticed my shaking and wiped away my tears, tilted my chin up to them, then continued to rub firmly.

I didn't have any words.

I'd been screaming inside my head for HOURS,

ready to tear my goddamn hair out and yelling at myself.

_________________

"Just keep it together, just a bit longer, you're fine"...

trying to just push through the language demands from being online,

from wanting to hear my partner's beautiful voice,

from the DAMN A/C that sometimes helps to drown out other sounds

but today was the principle cause of auditory distress...

And I couldn't take it anymore.

_________________

It took a couple minutes of my partner

massaging my jaw line,

creasing their fingers along my neck and the tops of my shoulders,

gently and firming digging their thumbs along the cavities under my cheekbones,

and the bridge of my nose,

the corners where my upper and lower jaw meet,

the bottom of my chin,

along my gums gently over my teeth,

and the sinus cavities under my eyebrow ridge

before I could even sign that I needed them to stay focused there and

not drift towards the rest of my head like they sometimes do for my migraines.

_________________

This is what it means to be dyspraxic / have dyspraxia,

and potentially also to have a hypermobility disorder where your fascia is looser than normal,

and/or to potentially be high-masking with the combination of the other two;

to be holding your body and brain so tensely

in an attempt to coordinate the movement syncopation between breathing and shaping the air,

using your diaphragm, lungs and facial muscles to

GET IT OUT.

_________________

When I'm alone, even holding my face in a hard expression and screaming isn't enough.

Massaging my own facial muscles is a joke;

It just doesn't give the release,

I'm still too focused on controlling the other muscles in my arm to make that happen.

_________________

Relief for me only comes from another person

I trust implicitly with my safety and with my

face making ridiculously smushed expressions

- my partner -

running their thumbs firmly in the crevasses,

forcing me - with consent - to collapse with relief and

giving me permission to melt into them.

09/01/2026

September it is Deaf Awareness Month!!

PSA:

Deaf people need hearing people to understand that there is "life after hearing loss",

regardless of when you lose it or "how much of it you lose."

___________________

Culturally Deaf people need hearing people to recognize that treating "hearing loss" as devastating for you personally is understandable, but to

OWN that it is your experience,

rather than using generalized language that gives the impression to other hearing people

that "it is a disabling disability for all deaf people BECAUSE of losing hearing"

when that couldn't be further from the truth for many.

___________________

Culturally Deaf people have built their own society with their own

language
rules
customs
traditions
history
and anti-ableism

in a way of life that simply doesn't make sense in a hearing society

- just as there are MAAAANY aspects of hearing culture that just don't make sense if you are Deaf.

___________________

Now it is absolutely true,

"Not hearing" IS disabling for ALL Deaf and deaf folk

in a HEARING society refuses to accommodate anyone even remotely outside the neuronormative & able-bodied.

If mainstream society actually didn't prioritize the "hearing" and "speaking" experience of communication above all else,

everyone would frankly be a thousand times better off;

it could even be debatable whether the Deaf community would have been created,

but we don't live in that world, sadly.

___________________

Why Would Hearing People - everyone really, broadly speaking - Benefit from Sign?

There are so many advantages of non-speaking communication OVER speaking communication

Just a few:

- in a loud room where you can't hear the other person

- in a quiet room where you don't want to disturb others

- when another conversation is happening and you don't want to distract from it

- when someone is sick

- across distances

- while eating

- when you need to have a private conversation like for example at a doctor's office

- when one person is on the phone

- when you are in the process of developing verbal language, sign has been shown to help the language processing centers of the brain

- Not to mention non-speaking people meltdown significantly less because their needs are being met

- under water

- when you're out in the snow / wind / cold

- through glass walls while being in different rooms / vehicles

- when you don't want to disturb a 3rd person who may be sleeping or going through something

- while someone is working
..And of course, to communicate with everyone who prefers or needs non-speaking communication for a wide variety of reasons:

Deaf people
Hard of hearing
Auditory processing disorder
Situational mutism
Autistics
Children...

___________________

Hearing people are far more

"impaired" in not knowing sign language than they will ever know.

It's ironic because for all that hearing people have prioritized verbal language and treated it as superior,

they still have not been able to get rid of the need for basic signs.

It's also ironic that for all they spent 100 years dismissing sign language as inconsequential or even harmful,

the reality is that non-speaking language predates verbal language,

historically and in neural development.

___________________

DeafGain

Shifting the narrative in general society to be about

Deaf Gain, rather than hearing loss, means there is a

greater chance of shifting society towards

accommodation and acceptance.

___________________

There is SO MUCH GRIEF around perceived "loss" that there hasn't been enough space

for the actual joy that there is ALSO to be had in being D/deaf;

But people who haven't confronted their

internalized ableism and the reality of the capitalistic ableist society we live in

aren't ready for that conversation.

___________________

Curious and want to know more?

Please,

ASK!!

We need people to be more inquisitive,

to ask a question badly

so they can learn to ask a question ethically

and spread the answer authentically.

09/01/2026

Alexithymia, aka "emotional blindness".

Medical professionals describe it as difficulty processing / describing your own emotions, but that really doesn't help people who experience alexithymia

understand what it FEELS like to experience alexithymia.

Oh, the irony.

__________________________

Alexithymia can show up in MULTIPLE ways:

- I consciously know the emotion in my brain, but it doesn't show up in my body unless it's a big emotion, and sometimes not even then

- I consciously feel sensations in my body, but I struggle to name the emotion

- I feel sensations in my body and it compels my brain to act on that emotion, regardless of whether or not I consciously understand the emotion in my brain

- I feel nothing in my body, know nothing in my brain, but my brain is compelled to act on the emotion that exists

- I feel nothing in my body, know nothing in my brain, and do not act on any emotion

__________________________

Alexithymia can be experienced by a wide variety of people, neurodivergents AND neurotypicals;

It can exist in a single moment,

or it can exist as a persistent condition (more likely to be a form of neurodivergence).

__________________________

If you experience difficulty with interoception

- perhaps your nervous system behaves differently due to a chronic condition, or an illness,

or perhaps you are constantly distracted by your monotropic focus like ADHDers and autistics -

then it can be difficult to feel in your body the emotion.

__________________________

If you have not been taught HOW to feel your emotions, you may struggle to

label them in your body and

connect them to the feelings as your brain perceives them.

If you have not been taught how to connect the feelings in your body-brain

with the thoughts in your mind,

you may struggle to identify them.

__________________________

There is a WHOLE HOST of reasons why alexithymia is actually a regular part of the human experience...

Just some people might experience it more than others.

__________________________

Can Alexithymia be overcome?

It depends on why you're experiencing it to begin with.

If you were never taught how to connect thoughts to brain-feelings to body-feelings, then perhaps!

If you struggle with interoception because of distracted focus, it may be possible to work on various meditations and learning to pull your awareness towards your body.

If you have the genetic condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or other conditions where you are less likely to feel sensation throughout your nervous system,

then there is a higher chance you will need to assess your emotions BACKWARDS...

To examine your emotions after your brain has already made a decision on a course of action, and yet catch yourself BEFORE your brain executes said plan so your actions are in alignment with what you want for yourself.

And for some people, it just truly may not be possible.

As always, talk to your health care team, which in a perfect world should include gender and neuroaffirming physical and mental health professionals (and yes, anti-racism!).

08/30/2026

"Brushing teeth, getting dressed, leaving house, going to shops...

These are simple, everyday tasks, why can't I just do these things like every body else??

I don't hate being autistic or ADHD, but sometimes I think to myself, "I wish I could be 'normal' in the sense of not having these struggles."

__________________

It helps me to remind myself:

These are NOT simple, everyday, totally doable tasks;

These are tasks society has deemed to be typical,

but in fact historically were nonexistent,

or at least if they did exist, they looked completely different, and the duration / frequency of expectation were different as well.

__________________

Then I remind myself by going even further back in history, human beings weren't doing any of these small tasks at all.

Our brains have evolved...

But they haven't become robots, and our society today demands even neurotypicals disregard their own human needs.

__________________

A BEE Theory 🐝

Here's the interesting part:

Society is breaking down.

Over the last one to two hundred years, we've seen people fall through the cracks, struggle to assimilate, be unable to keep up.

It started with extremely disabled people - multiple disabilities, extreme physical disabilities.

From there, in a very rough order that could be debated:

- people with 2+ disabilities
- people with BPD
- people with 1+ disabilities
- autistics, antisocial disorder
- ADHDers and people with NPD
- comorbid neurodivergences like AuDHD

And very soon, we will see neurotypicals fall into this.

Only after them will come the people we colloquially call psychopaths and sociopaths.

__________________

Society is BREAKING under the strain, and it will continue to slowly bend and crack

until capitalists finally realize the poor are simply too poor to feed their greed and install a UBI...

Which will come far too late to save most people.

______________

So what's the point of me saying all this depressing stuff that doesn't change our reality today?

Perspective.

Grace.

Compassion for self.

"IT MAKES SENSE."

__________________

"It makes sense that I'm gagging on brushing my teeth and mouth when historically we only ever "brushed" by chewing on a piece of wood."

"It makes sense that I'm struggling to do the laundry when historically laundry was done once a month by every AFAB, and that was the only task done for the day besides food."

"It makes sense that I'm struggling to cook when historically all the locals would contribute to a stone soup that lasted a week."

__________________

Reminding ourselves of these facts can help to give ourselves a break,

to recognize that we do not

*have

to have it

ALL together,

that we can take things one tiny bit at a time, and let go of trying to do it all, or let go of trying to do it all today.

08/28/2026

Happy F**k-It Friday!!!

As you may have seen from yesterday's post...

I paid the ADHD tax;

I spent money, often with good intentions

- in this case I splurged on an enjoyable easy meal I could use for backup for myself and my partner -

But because of the way my brain plays the "out of sight, out of mind" game,

the scaffolding I've been building over the last few grocery shops fell apart

and I wasted $10 on a delicious safe food I didn't even get to enjoy

😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

So.

What was the system?

Say "f**k unloading groceries where possible":

I'd been coming home from my grocery shops and just taking out the cold stuff right away, opting to try to recharge after coming home from groceries

- which is an exhausting journey that leaves me in burnout pain every time.

But last night, there was a flaw;

I let my groceries sit for a couple minutes before attending to the cold stuff...

which was split between different bags, rather than all cold stuff in one bag like I sometimes try to do.

So...

I need to update my scaffolding.

Frozen stuff more separated, and placed in a bag together,

plus the cold stuff HAS to be done the instant I get in.

I may try to build another system for my system;

I'm all ears if you've got tips!

Or tell me:

What scaffolding have you built for yourself to navigate groceries? How do you tell societal norms to f**k off