There's a particular kind of overwhelm that belongs to this moment in history.

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It's not just the usual pressures of adulthood: the bills, the deadlines, the responsibilities. It's the sense that the world itself is vibrating at a frequency our nervous systems were never designed to hold.

Wars unfolding in real time. A cost-of-living crisis that feels like a slow-moving avalanche. Housing insecurity that no longer affects "other people" but almost everyone we know. Petrol prices that spike because of geopolitical tensions on the other side of the world.

And the constant pressure to work more, earn more, stretch further, just to keep beans on toast on the table.

It's no wonder so many of us feel like we're living with a permanent knot in our chest.

For neurodivergent people, this overwhelm can hit even harder. Our brains are wired to notice patterns, connect dots, follow threads.

What starts as reading about a conflict can turn into a three-hour deep dive into global alliances, oil markets, political influence and the domino effects that ripple into our daily lives.

We call it a "side quest", but it can leave us overstimulated, anxious and carrying the weight of problems far bigger than any one person can solve.

And it's not just the information itself - it's the pace of it. The speed at which crises unfold, the immediacy with which we receive updates, the expectation that we should understand, process and respond to global events in real time.

So, the question becomes: how do we regulate ourselves in a world that feels fundamentally dysregulated?

The first step is acknowledging that the overwhelm is not a personal failure. It is a rational response to an irrational moment. We are living through overlapping crises - economic, political, environmental, social - and pretending otherwise doesn't make........

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