Posts by Michael Holker
8 articles
Spring Cleaning Your Inner Critic: How to Stop Self-Gaslighting When You've Been Taught to Doubt Your Own Reality
Self-gaslighting is the habit of dismissing, minimizing, or rewriting your own experience to align with someone else's version of reality. It often starts as a survival strategy in relationships where doubting yourself felt safer than…
Five Quiet Signs Your Burnout Has Crossed Into Depression
Burnout and depression share exhaustion and hopelessness, but depression adds pervasive emptiness that persists even when stressors ease, loss of interest in things you once enjoyed, and a sense that nothing will improve. If rest no longer…
Can Your Nervous System Actually Learn to Feel Safe Again?
Yes, your nervous system can learn to feel safe again, though the process happens gradually through repeated experiences of safety rather than through insight alone. When trauma or chronic stress has trained your body to stay on high…
What a neurodivergent-affirming therapy taught me about the cost of appearing fine
When someone tells me they've been masking for years and "doing fine," I've learned to listen for what that phrase actually means. Masking—suppressing neurodivergent traits, scripting social responses, performing neurotypical…
How to Match Coping Tools to Your Nervous System State
When you're anxious, a breathing exercise might settle you right down. When you're numb or shut down, that same breathing exercise can feel pointless or even make things worse. The reason is simple: different nervous system states need…
Self-Blame or Self-Compassion: What Neurodivergent Adults Taught Me About Choosing Differently
Working with neurodivergent adults in North York has shown me that self-blame isn't a character flaw but an adaptive response learned early, often before diagnosis. The people I sit with carry a chronic belief that they are the problem,…
The myth that ADHD is just about paying attention
ADHD is not a deficit of attention but a difficulty directing it, especially toward tasks that feel unrewarding or abstract. The disorder affects executive function, emotional regulation, working memory, and impulse control, all of which…
What ADHD looks like when you've learned to hide it
Adults with ADHD often develop sophisticated masking strategies over decades, presenting as high-functioning while privately struggling with executive function, emotional regulation, and exhaustion from constant compensation. The gap…