What ecosystem do you belong to? Nature + Neurodiversity
Finding our belonging in the natural world
When I was a little girl, nature was my first love — and in my world, nature and creativity were always inextricably linked.
Songs and stories streamed through me as I walked up and down my garden, communing with the trees and playing flower faeries in the nasturtiums.
Early connections
I was devastated when the little patch of ‘woods’ at the bottom of the garden was felled to create a tidier garden. Maybe a neighbour had complained that the high trees blocked their view, but I only knew I felt a deep sense of wrongness about it, which I amplified in my late teens by protesting pine felling with a group of friends at the roadside.
I was no activist ‘tree sitter’, but later, when I went to university, I would regularly escape the busy campus to soak up the sense of peace and belonging among the native Silvertrees near Rhodes Memorial, trees almost certainly unique to Table Mountain, the beloved blue backdrop of my childhood in South Africa.
A children’s book and several poems were birthed out of walking in the little-known Arboretum near Kirstenbosch, where I sought sanctuary when my stress-related eczema went rampant.
This peace was a feeling elusive to me in my other contexts. Growing up in a household full of tension and conflict, bullied at school for being a skinny, pale bookworm. and struggling to connect with my peers in the midst of undiagnosed autism and misunderstood ADHD, I found the relief of being alone in nature deeply healing to my troubled mind and frayed nervous system.
Imagination + Nature: A Place to Be
At the age of five, when my family visited Silvermine Forest in Tokai for ‘braais’ (barbecues), I would sneak off and spend unknown spools of time on the big rocks with my ‘Murdoch’ cap on. The 80s show ‘The A-Team’ was my favourite, for reasons I can no longer remember. I was convinced that a family of moles lived in the ivy-covered mound in our family garden, and I told my visiting best friend all about it earnestly. She was shocked to eventually discover that I’d made it all up.
Now, as an adult, I can spend hours just watching the light change between tree branches or gazing at the nesting and flight of birds. I always have to have my caravan positioned in a place where I can overlook green and life. Daily walks outside are not a luxury, but a necessity, and when days of unrelenting rain occur (which is frequent on my adopted island of Britain), I feel cut off and downhearted.
In my late 30’s, I went on a nomadic journey for a year, living in a van with my partner & getting up close to nature and the sacred sites of the British Isles. (You can read the full story in my memoir here).
Getting dirty and real and basic. Learning to once again listen to the trees. Because I knew that nature was the key to my creativity and to my connection with all life.
I have continued to live rurally in the five years since, and now there feels like no looking back. For me, feeling close to nature’s rhythms keeps me in touch with my own, and allows me to feel connected to the web of life in a way I never could touch on in the overstimulating city.
Yes, I do sometimes miss the easy access to cultural life, but being able to drop into ‘slow time’ in the river’s song and feel the sun on my face with my feet bare on the grass is so worth it. I can always dip into the town life now and again — but having my base here is where it’s at, for me.
Research shows that time in nature is good for everyone, but what intrigues me is why, in particular, it might be helpful for neurodivergent folk. This includes people dealing with ADHD, autists/autistics, those journeying with C-PTSD, and mental health conditions.
Time out of mind
Participating in the online autistic / ADHD community over the past 2 years has given me abundant evidence that overactive minds come with the territory.
When firing on all cylinders is an understatement, we can long for a break from our busy minds. In my experience, the sights and sounds of nature can offer a welcome respite from the insides of our heads and the screens that dominate so much of our daily lives, further stimulating our minds.
Linda Buzzell, MA, LMFT, Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and facilitator of the Canadian Ecopsychology Network states,
“As of now I have never seen a study that didn’t show a measurable, robust positive effect of human contact with any aspect of the rest of nature, including pictures of nature on a wall! People have wondered why this is so, but it seems obvious to me. We are human primates that evolved over millennia with daily immersion in nature.
Fairly recently, in evolutionary terms, we started to live in a more nature-deprived way (what author Richard Louv calls “nature deficit disorder”) so perhaps we’ve been like the frogs not noticing that the water they live in is heating up to boiling. And when we return humans or other animals to their natural evolutionary habitat conditions, physical and mental health improve dramatically, which shouldn’t surprise us.”
Nature as healer is not a new concept but is being taken more seriously in recent years. Environmental Therapy and Forest Bathing are just two examples.
Scientifically backed benefits of forest bathing include lowering blood pressure and stress levels and improving concentration and memory. The latter are often a challenge for neurodivergent people (autism or ADHD) due to the impact on executive functioning.
Ecotherapy actively uses the immersion in the senses as we walk through the woods or beside a river, to bring healing and relief from mental health struggles. It is guided by a therapist and brings an added dimension to what we might be able to experience on our own.
Embodiment
As neurodivergent people, being so much in the mind and dealing with an easily frazzled nervous system, as well as difficulties with proprioception (being able to sense one’s own body in relation to other objects and space), mean that we need all the help we can get to connect more with our bodies.
Nature helps me so much with slowing down enough to hear my own heartbeat, feel the moss on the trees, and let the wind gently stroke my face.
“Embodiment in nature is all about feeling our own symbiotic relationship to our world. We are interconnected with the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we walk upon. Our earth depends upon our ability to protect her.
Embodiment in nature is a simple yet profound way to reset body and mind. We can experience the flowers, clouds, wildlife, and the subtle filtered quality of light as it passes through the branches of the trees. To retreat into nature inspires reflective awareness. Such mindful presence can so easily become lost in our intensely fast-paced and stressful world. Consequently, the quiet mind we cultivate in nature is so very necessary. Once discovered, we can offer the gift of spacious awareness to our relationships, work, and community.
Belonging
Struggling to belong is an almost universal struggle with neurodivergent folks. We are so often misunderstood and even ostracised for our ways of being and communicating. I often long to be alone, as this brings so much relief from complex social dynamics and the draining effort of trying to read people’s indirect communication, yet this can also be lonely.
In nature, I never feel alone. I feel the trees, the river, the rocks and the sea as living beings who communicate with me in various nuanced ways according to the season, the day and my mood.
Time out with trees brings me unfailing relief from stressed human relationships and I come back with renewed hope and a bolstered sense of my own value. Nature, after all, doesn’t judge.
As Jean Hammond, Sacred Woodland Guide, says:
So many of us have a feeling of being cut off from the rhythm of life and from our place within nature. Since as humans we were designed to live and work in co-operation and close contact with the world of trees, birds, animals and insects around us, this disconnection is a powerful contributor to our feelings of stress and overwhelm. Underneath our concrete lifestyles, something in us aches for more.
If you sometimes feel more at home with trees than people, if you wonder if you’ll ever belong because you just don’t care about most of the things other people care about, and if the mundanity of everyday life crushes your soul … come over to Wildmuse Portal and we’ll explore a more authentic, connected, creative and nature-connected life together.
If you enjoy my writing, you might like my book, ‘The Wild Wandering Arc: A Journey through Vanlife, Nature & Love’. If you’d like to support my writing and access more, please subscribe here.