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Slowing Down When You're Neurodivergent (and the World Won't): A Reflection on Burnout
- Angie Lamb
- Jun 11
- 3 min read
I've been quiet lately. Not because I ran out of things to say - but because I decided not to add to the noise.
If you've spent any time online recently, you've felt it: the churn. Posts published just to post, "expertise" delivered in the same flattened rhythm, over and over, less about saying something true and more about staying visible - feeding the algorithm. I caught myself standing at the edge of that current, and instead of stepping in, I stepped back.
Here's the honest part: stepping back doesn't come naturally to me.
I run two businesses - partly out of necessity, partly out of that particular ADHD drive that's always reaching for the next thing. Add a history of neurodivergent burnout and a late-in-life understanding of how my brain actually works, and you get someone who has spent a long time mistaking speed and productivity for worth.
So over the last couple of months, navigating a stretch of brain fog, I did something that still feels almost defiant: I slowed down.
I stopped treating every task like a fire that needed putting out. (Most of them weren't fires. I'd just been trained to feel the heat.) I let myself prioritize ruthlessly - to decide that some things could wait, or simply not happen. I rested without negotiating for it first. And I went looking for joy, which turned out to be the part I'd quietly abandoned somewhere along the way.
None of this is dramatic, and that's kind of the point. Slowing down isn't a retreat or a breakdown - but when you're wired for drive and surrounded by urgency, it can feel like rebellion. Like you're breaking a rule everyone else seems to be following.
This is where my practice meets me. On the mat, I learn to not push through. I have to meet my body where it actually is that day - foggy, tired, capable, whatever's true, even when I'm holding multiple truths. I have to pace. I have to breathe. The practice keeps teaching me the same lesson I'm slow to learn off the mat: that presence isn't something you sprint toward, and that pausing is not the same as falling behind.
It's the thing I most want to offer in the work I do with my groups. Not another space asking you to optimize and perform, but a place to exhale. To slow down on purpose. To notice that the pace you've been keeping was never actually yours.
If you're tired of the noise too - if slowing down feels both terrifying and like the most honest thing you could do - you're in good company here.
If you're curious
If any of this resonates — if you're navigating anxiety, burnout, overwhelm, or low mood, and you're wondering whether a body-based approach might offer something you haven't found elsewhere — I'd gently invite you to reach out.
There's no obligation and no fixed starting point, just an open door.
About Angie
Angie Lamb is a Certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT) offering trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming yoga therapy online across Canada. Her work is built around safety, choice, and co-created practices — shaped by her own experience as a neurodivergent person and by years of working with late-identifying autistic and ADHD adults navigating a world not built for their nervous systems.
Want to explore this work?
Monthly community class A by-donation online class for late-identifying autistics and/or those with ADHD. Held monthly, low-pressure, and shaped around this community's needs.
1:1 yoga therapy Co-created sessions, available online across Canada. No fixed sequence — we work toward what actually matters to you.
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