👉🏽 Subscribe for thoughtful, bite-sized emails — from Liz Zhou, a neurodivergent therapist — on how to take care of your nervous system & understand your brain.
When a small accommodation makes a big difference
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This is a story about unmasking. Last fall, I visited my friend in New York City. Knowing that the place would be loud and overstimulating, I made sure to bring my earplugs. My earplugs are designed to block out noise. When I wear them, I still hear everything, but sounds are muffled as if I’m half underwater, half on earth. The earplugs allow me to participate in conversations & stay aware of my surroundings, with minimal auditory overwhelm. It’s like they stretch the battery life of my nervous system — so instead of having to head home after an hour of hanging out at a loud venue, I can linger for 2-3 hours and actually enjoy my time there. ​ One night, we had dinner at an awesome, but fairly loud, restaurant. My friend snapped a photo of me, and I happened to be wearing my earplugs. Then he invited me to take my earplugs off, so I could get a “normal” photo. This is what we ended up with. Looking back, I love both photos. They memorialize a sweet moment in time. But the more unmasked version of me is definitely the photo with earplugs on, because that’s how I actually look in public most of the time. Those earplugs have accompanied me to busy cafés, on plane rides, and even to a rave (!!). They’re one of the best investments & accommodations I’ve ever made for my nervous system health. ​ Choosing to be seen with earplugs on is one small example of unmasking. Because why pretend that I don’t need them, when I actually do? ​ There are lots of different ways to unmask, and a lot of reasons why we choose to mask or unmask. I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong way — only your way, and your choice, in this moment. And in the fairly low-stakes example of wearing my earplugs in public, I choose my own comfort & sensory peace over the potential discomfort of receiving some weird looks from strangers. So, I’m curious… What is one way you’re unmasking & accommodating your needs today? ​ Talk soon, ​ P.S. If you need help figuring out how to unmask & accommodate your needs, I’d love to support you. I offer Nervous System Healing Intensives (short-term, accelerated work) for highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults, online worldwide. Click HERE to learn more. And if you want to get an Intensive on the books, contact me HERE. I’m scheduling Intensives for June 2025 & beyond. ​
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​Liz's Neurodivergent Letters
👉🏽 Subscribe for thoughtful, bite-sized emails — from Liz Zhou, a neurodivergent therapist — on how to take care of your nervous system & understand your brain.
When people ask me what Brainspotting therapy is and how it works, I have a couple different responses. The first is the clinical answer: “Brainspotting is a trauma-informed modality that uses fixed eye positions to facilitate deep healing and processing in the brain, by bringing unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories into conscious awareness.” And if you’re thinking, hmm, okay, but what does that actually mean?, then you might find my second response more helpful. Instead of just...
I have a funny relationship with time, and I’ve noticed a lot of other neurodivergent people do too. Here’s what I mean. You might sit down to write an email for five minutes, and then half an hour passes and suddenly you have nine tabs open, you’re baking a cake in the oven, and the email is still incomplete. (No judgment at all here, by the way – sometimes our brains are non-linear like that, and flow in unexpected ways.) Maybe you have a hard time remembering what you ate for dinner...
I’m writing to you from the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan, the place where I grew up & the land of the Ojibwe people. And my time here, this past week, has me really appreciating the element of water. Water is so healing for the nervous system. Not just because we physically need water to survive. But also because, for many of us with highly sensitive systems, water is uniquely calming & soothing. A view of the lake, with a snippet from the book We Are Water Protectors: "Water is the...