Staying Resilient Through the Turn of Autumn
Autumn arrives quietly to begin with and then all at once. The days shorten, the mornings turn cool and damp, the rhythm of the year tightens back up after the looseness of summer.
For a lot of people this is a season of cosy pleasures - halloween, cool walks on crispy fallen leaves, the joy of missing out. If you are neurodivergent, perimenopausal, hypermobile, or living with MCAS or POTS, it can also be a season that quietly knocks you sideways, and often before you have consciously noticed why.
If the turn of autumn tends to leave you flatter, achier, or more frayed than the calendar seems to justify, you are not imagining it. It can still be a time of year that you love, while still honouring that your body may not love it quite as much.
Seasonal change is a real demand, not a mood
Let us start by clearing away the guilt. If you struggle as the seasons shift while others seem to sail through, that is not fragility and it is not you being difficult. Seasonal change asks a great deal of a sensitive system.
The dropping light affects mood, sleep, and the body clock.
Falling temperatures and damp can stiffen hypermobile joints and set off pain.
Barometric shifts and cooler air can be triggers in their own right for an MCAS body
Cold is hard work for a POTS system trying to regulate circulation
Layer in a perimenopausal system, already navigating its own upheaval, on top of all that, and it is no wonder autumn can feel like walking uphill.
So even if you love autumn and the cooling down of the year, if you feel worse as the season turns, believe yourself. Your body is responding to a genuine change in its conditions, not inventing a problem.
Think in terms of a daily budget
One idea that helps many of the women I work with is to picture energy as a daily budget rather than an endless supply. Some days the budget is generous. Some days, for reasons of sleep, hormones, weather, or a flare, it is very small, and no amount of willpower will top it up. As autumn takes hold, the whole budget often shrinks for a while as your body adjusts, and it helps enormously to expect that rather than to fight it.
The skill is spending consciously. Before you say yes to a plan, you can quietly ask what it will cost and whether the budget can bear it. A busy day out is not free. It is paid for in recovery, often the next day or even for days afterwards. When you know that in advance, you can plan a soft day to follow rather than being blindsided by the crash.
Build in recovery, do not just hope for it
The mistake many of us make is packing the calendar and hoping to recover in the gaps that never appear. It works far better to schedule recovery as deliberately as you schedule activity. One demanding day, then a gentle one. A morning out, then a quiet afternoon. A social gathering, then an evening with no plans and no people.
Autumn also offers something summer does not, which is a natural invitation to slow down. The season itself is drawing inward, and you are allowed to draw inward with it. You can meet the shorter days by asking less of yourself, not more. Warmth where you can find it, earlier nights, gentler movement to keep stiff joints mobile, and a steadying anchor or two in the day so there is always something predictable to come home to.
Let the season turn you gently
You are allowed to build your autumn around your real capacity. You are allowed to disappoint an expectation in order to protect your health. A slower autumn that leaves you intact is worth infinitely more than a full one that empties you out before winter has even begun. Pace is not the enemy of a good season. Pace is what makes a good season possible.
If you would like some companionship as the nights draw in, you might curl up with my first story, Little Bird. It follows a family stretched thin by neurodivergence and sensitivity, told partly through the eyes of a boy who feels everything and is noticed by no one. It is exactly the kind of quiet, tender read the darker evenings are made for. Available as a Kindle download, paperback or to order through your local independent bookshop.
You can also check out my Soft Landing Programme to support your nervous system through the winter.
Buy my companion pocket guide, The Little Book of Somatic Practices.
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