Firstly, I just want to give a shout out to any readers who have mastered the art of understanding the unpredictable beast that is ND energy. A confusing little fecker that might give you a whiff of hope that there’s some petrol in the tank… and then you do the most mediocre of chores and feel like your brain has been turned into a smoothie.
If you haven’t mastered that, then… well, how the devil are you going to protect it if you don’t even know how it works? Just kidding. As you were. Keep reading.
So, let’s assume you’ve got at least some understanding of how your energy behaves, in all its unpredictable random sparkliness. The next step is protecting it. Because you’re living in a world that won’t slow down. Not even a teeny bit. Not even if you ask it really nicely.
And this is the bit no one wants to talk about. The world isn’t going to adjust itself around your capacity. Deadlines still exist, clients still want quick replies, and life in its many forms keeps moving at the same pace regardless of how you’re feeling. Which is why protecting your energy isn’t optional. It’s sanity maintenance.
And when you’re neurodivergent, then that’s double funzies, because your energy isn’t linear. It fluctuates. It spikes. It drops. It goes out for a pint of milk and comes back 3 days later. It’s that crazy unpredictable drunk uncle that you don’t want at your wedding.
So, this isn’t about escaping the world. It’s about learning how to stay in it without acquiring yourself a one way ticket to burnout town!
The world isn’t built for you. Accept it…and move on
Most systems are built on the assumption that energy is stable. That you wake up, work, produce, and repeat. Nice, neat, and predictable. Lovely for people whose brains behave like that. Big fan. Congratulations to them. Except that’s not how a lot of ND brains work.
Some days you can fly through work like you’ve unlocked a secret level of existence and suddenly you are unstoppable. Other days, opening your laptop feels like a hostage negotiation between your fingers and your brain. Same person. Same workload. Completely different capacity.
And yet… none of those changes how the world responds to you. You’re still expected to show up, deliver, reply, and keep things moving — even on the days where your brain has very much not signed off on that plan. No one pops up and says, “Ah, I see your brain has gone offline today, let’s circle back when it returns.”
The problem is that external demand stays consistent, while your capacity didn’t get the memo. So, when those two things collide, pressure builds. And when that pressure sits there long enough, it turns into stress, then exhaustion, and eventually burnout.
Which is why this whole “just push through” approach doesn’t really work for brains like ours. (It barely works for anyone, to be honest, but that’s a rant for another day.)
Urgency will eat your energy if you let it
One of the biggest drains on your energy isn’t actually the work itself — it’s urgency. Everything suddenly feels important. Everything feels like it needs doing now. Everything feels like it will fall apart if you don’t respond immediately.
But a lot of that urgency isn’t real. It’s artificial deadlines, other people’s poor planning, and those “quick favours” that somehow take half your day and leave you wondering why you opened your laptop in the first place.
If you’ve spent years being reliable, helpful, and responsive, you’re probably very good at jumping straight into action mode without even questioning it. It feels productive. It feels responsible. It also quietly sucks the life out of you.
The problem is that urgency pushes you into adrenaline. And adrenaline is great … in small, occasional bursts. As a lifestyle choice? Less ideal. You end up running on “just get through it” energy, which works, right up until it really, really doesn’t.
A small but surprisingly effective shift is asking yourself: “is this actually urgent?” Not “does it feel urgent” but is it genuinely time-critical. Because those two things are very different. Even if your brain insists they’re identical.
Energy boundaries are different from emotional ones
I’m the queen when it comes to chatting about boundaries. It’s like I discovered them, 51 years later in my life, and now they are my specialist subject. In fact, it pretty much is that! But most of those conversations are about emotional ones. Protecting your feelings, managing relationships, that sort of thing. Energy boundaries are slightly different. They’re about protecting your capacity.
Because you can technically have the time to do something, but not the energy. You might look at your calendar and think, “Well, I’ve got an hour free,” but your brain is already fried, your sensory load is maxed out, and you’ve made approximately 47,000 decisions already that day. That hour is not usable. It’s like a mirage hour.
This is where one of the most useful sentences you’ll ever learn comes in: “I don’t have capacity for that.” Not followed by your life story. Not turned into something apologetic, or a giant discussion. Just that.
It sounds simple, and it is. It’s also wildly uncomfortable if you’re used to over-explaining, over-justifying, and making sure everyone else is fine first. But it works. Quietly, efficiently, and without wringing out what little energy you had left.
Saying no without it being a 3-part drama
If you’re anything like me, saying no doesn’t just happen. It comes with a full internal production. You draft the explanation, rehearse the tone, anticipate their reaction, and try to make it sound reasonable, valid, and entirely non-offensive to anyone, ever.
The irony being that by the time you’ve finished explaining, you’ve used more energy than the original task would have taken. How’s that for efficiency…or lack of it!
The truth is most of that explanation is for us. It’s working hard to make the discomfort of setting a boundary feel safer. But “no” doesn’t require a backstory. It doesn’t require a breakdown of your week, your mental state, or your entire life context. As Stu taught me once, it’s an entire sentence. And the more you practise it, the less energy you leak trying to make your boundaries palatable for everyone involved. I promise you it starts to feel easier the more you try it on for size. In fact, it’s so incredibly freeing. Because it’s you having your own back.
Not everything is worth the cost anymore
One of the biggest shifts that comes with protecting our energy is realising that just because something is possible, it doesn’t mean it’s sustainable.
We ‘could’ say yes. We ‘could’ take it on. We ‘could’ push through.
But then we could also decide to deep clean our entire house at 11pm on a Tuesday night. Half of my teenage years were spent piling the entire contents of my bedroom floor onto my bed at about 10om, then crying and putting it all back onto the floor. The question is… should we?
Because every “yes” is stealing from a limited resource. And if you’re not consciously deciding where that energy goes, it gets spent by default. Usually on the loudest, most urgent, or most guilt-inducing thing in front of you.
Protecting your energy means getting honest about trade-offs. Letting go of “shoulds”, looking properly at commitments, and actively choosing long-term stability over the short-term approval that we can often crave. Sweet dopamine.
Sometimes that means making decisions that don’t look particularly impressive on paper but feel a lot safer in our body. Which, frankly, should be the only measure that really counts.
Recovery doesn’t protect itself
One of the sneakiest things about energy is how quickly we decide we’re “fine again”.
You have one good day. Maybe two if you’re feeling particularly wild. You wake up, your brain is cooperating, you answer a few emails without wanting to lie down afterwards, and suddenly you’re like, “Right. I’m back. Power Rangers…let’s go!.”
And off you go. Rebooking everything. Saying yes to things. Catching up on the 463 tasks you’ve been avoiding. Possibly reorganising a cupboard for emotional reasons. Fully convinced you’ve turned a corner.
Newsflash. You haven’t turned a corner. You’ve just found the exit of the car park.
Because early recovery energy is not a full tank. It’s not even half a tank. It’s more like your car has stopped making that alarming flashing noise and you’ve gone, “Great, let’s drive to Scotland.” You’re out of the danger zone. That’s it. But you’re not on the home straight yet.
And this is where we accidentally undo all the progress we’ve made. Not because we’re reckless (well, some of us can be!), but because it feels so good to have energy back that we immediately spend it. All of it. In one go. Like a toddler with birthday money.
Then we’re surprised when we crash again.
Protecting your energy at this stage means doing something deeply unnatural: not filling the space. It means leaving gaps. Building buffers. Resisting the urge to “catch up” on everything all at once. Saying no to your old pace, even when your brain is loudly insisting that this time will be different. (It won’t. Your brain is a liar when it’s excited.)
Recovery isn’t just about getting your energy back. It’s about not immediately burning through it the moment it returns.
When boundaries feel like a scratchy jumper (and they will)
Protecting your energy isn’t just practical — it’s deeply inconvenient on an emotional level. Because when you start doing it properly, things come up. Guilt. Fear. That slightly sick feeling that you’ve just disappointed someone. And sometimes actual pushback from people who were very happy with the old version of you. The one that was constantly nodding like their head wasn’t attached properly. Saying yes, staying available, and overextending herself. Funny that.
That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’ve stopped being as convenient. And yes, it does feel uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. Like you’ve put on a jumper that technically fits but is somehow both itchy and judging you.
You’ll be tempted to soften it, to explain more, to just do the thing this once because it’s easier than holding the boundary. But every time you do that, you teach people (and yourself) that your limits are optional. The real work here isn’t setting the boundary. It’s holding it when it would be much easier not to. This is a huge part of my life story, so believe me when I say I get it. But I’m also now boundaries number one fan!
You don’t have to live at the pace of everything around you
The world might not slow down. That’s true. Deeply annoying, but true. But that doesn’t mean you have to speed up to match it, because that’s how you ended up here in the first place. Remember?
Protecting your energy long-term often means your life looks a bit different. Less stuff, more intention. Not churning your output like a sausage factory. Which, depending on your previous operating style, can feel suspiciously like you’re “not doing enough”. But you are. You’re just not doing everything, thank god.
And yes, sometimes it can feel like you’re not keeping up with everyone else. Like you’re dawdling while the rest of the world is power-walking past you in Lycra, with a podcast on 3x speed. But I can promise you this: they’re exhausted too. They’re just better at pretending they’re not.
What you gain instead is something far more useful: stability, sustainability, and the ability to keep going without repeatedly crashing and having to rebuild yourself from scratch every few months. This isn’t about doing less for the sake of it. It’s about doing what actually works for your brain, your body, and your life in the long term.
Because if it only works when your brain’s on fire and your nervous system is halfway out the window, it doesn’t actually work.