Embodied End of Year Reflections: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach
As 2025 draws to a close, many of us feel the pressure of the annual review: a rigid process of checking off to-do lists and judging ourselves against often unreasonable standards. For those of us with neurodivergent nervous systems, this method can trigger familiar shame spirals that are not only painful but also derail the goals and intentions we truly wish to pursue. Both personally and professionally, I have gathered practices this year that have supported me, my community, and participants to explore and support our strengths and challenges with more compassionate and effective strategies. My intention in this post is to help you infuse your end of year practices with embodied, neurodiversity-affirming approaches to reflection and goal setting.
There are so many resources, strategies, and tools out there, and these are only a few that I have found to be particularly helpful in my occupational l therapy practice for neurodivergent adults. If you want more education and support for meeting your goals for 2026 and beyond, take a look at my executive functioning skill building group starting Jan 6th, 2026. More info and sign up is here.
Contents:
1. Explore Your Interest-Based Nervous System
2. Anchor Your Reflection in Sensory Embodiment
3. Set Yourself up for Success in 2026
4. Processes for Your Reflection
1. Explore Your Interest-Based Nervous System:
When reflecting on the past year, instead of asking what you should have done, you might start by asking: What did my body and brain need, and how did I, and my community, meet those needs? Traditional reflection approaches are often based on the assumptions and standards of an importance-based nervous system—the idea that everyone can, and should be able to, easily do a task simply because it is important. This is at odds with the reality that many of us have a much more interest-based nervous system, which is motivated by factors like novelty, passion, community, challenge, and immediate feedback. Read more on supporting the interest-based nervous system here.
Shift your focus: Your reflection is not about judging completed tasks; it’s about collecting knowledge on how you move through the ecosystem of your community and environment. You can then apply that knowledge to your plans for next year. Potential prompts: How can my environment and activities better support my unique nervous system? How might a better-resourced version of myself show up differently in my activities, relationships, and communities?
Center your Strengths: Honor that challenges, like executive functioning struggles, exist alongside strengths like creative and divergent thinking. Myopic focus on challenges can lead to shame-infused goals and self-sabotage. Challenge yourself to frame your review around your unique strengths rather than deficits. This isn’t about ignoring challenges or bypassing accountability but rather allowing your strengths to lead you to solutions.
2. Anchor Your Reflection in Sensory Embodiment
Embodiment means bringing your body into the process—it can enrich the reflection process. Your body holds the record of what created friction and what flowed. A note that the practices below are only offerings. Choose what resonates with you.
Begin your reflection with a sensory practice to ground in the here and now. This can be as simple as taking a few moments to notice the feeling of your feet on the ground or a more structured practice like this Eight Senses Meditation.
Intentionally engage your senses throughout your reflection. Whatever the core medium(s) of your practice (e.g. freewriting, vision boarding, art-making), consider enriching your process by adding sensory elements. This can deepen your process in a number of ways: enhancing the meaning of your process through ritualization, adding novelty and play (see PINCH below), and regulating your nervous system as you reflect. This video walks through a number of sensory-based practices for each sense from a scientific perspective and this is a brief guided 5-4-3-2-1 sensory practice. Note your preferences as you move through guided practices and suggestions. For example, many people find deep pressure calming but you may not. Everyone processes sensation differently. What feels good to you and how can you intentionally bring preferred sensations into your reflection process?
Bring sensory awareness to the process of looking back on 2025 and forward to 2026:
The Stimulation Meter: Think about activities you engaged in this year. What left you understimulated (bored, scrolling, seeking distraction) or overstimulated (overwhelmed, tense, shutting down)? What helped you find your ideal stimulus window, when there was a good fit between your capacity and the demands of the activities you engaged in? For example, what helped you feel sleepy when it was time to sleep, mentally alert when it was time to learn, physically energized when it was time to move your body?
What sensations were present when you felt genuine flow or interest? (e.g., rocking, movement, a specific type of background sound).
What sensory changes did you (or could you) implement to support your nervous system regulation? What helps you gently awaken a frozen nervous system (e.g., a cold drink, changing your clothes, or a walk outside) or move safely through a fight or flight response? (e.g. big movements like shadow boxing, throwing pillows on the floor, going to a batting cage). These may be your hidden supports.
Can this sensory information inform your goals and vision for the future? How can you engage in more activities that support your interest, flow, and stimulus window? More on this below.
3. Set Yourself up for Success in 2026
As you begin to envision your hopes and goal for the next year, you may find ableist or neurotypical assumptions sneaking into your intentions. I was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia and found that my previous goal to get intense exercise four days a week wasn’t honoring the actual needs of my body here and now. I have begun applying the concept of grading that I learned as an occupational therapist to my exercise habit, so my movement goal has shifted to “I get daily movement that responds to the how my body feels that day.” This might mean weightlifting or intense cardio when I have a higher capacity and intense movement would be energizing, or a short walk, stretching, or mobility work when my energy is low and joints are aching. You too may feel tempted to write a goal based on someone else’s values. You may also feel pulled toward goals that worked for your when you were younger or before you began to understand your chronic illness, disability, or burnout experiences. I find in my personal and professional experience that goals are most effective when they are grounded in meeting yourself where you are at. The goal for the next year might not be to set "bigger and better" goals, but to identify ways to move through your daily life with greater alignment between your values and capacities and your actions and activities.
Plan with PINCH: Use the PINCH acronym to center your intrinsic motivation. When planning a task or goal, ask how you can integrate one of these elements of the interest-based nervous system: Passion (or Play), Interest, Novelty, Community (or Challenge or Competition), and Hurry (artificial urgency) into the activity. Read more about PINCH and the interest-based nervous system here.
Ease Inertia: To prevent next year’s to-do list from becoming a source of paralysis, identify the Simplest First Step for goals that you struggle to initiate. Focus on the micro-action needed to transition from your "thinking brain" to your "doing brain". Motivation often occurs after we begin a task, so this strategy reduces the initiation barrier to challenging, large, or mundane tasks so that you can get started and access the motivation to keep going. Learn more here.
Embrace Community: Consider new ways to strengthen relationships and community care. You can integrate Body Doubling into your routine. The simple presence of another person is a social-emotional support that makes the workload feel lighter, a powerful mechanism often utilized by neurodivergent individuals. Some people also choose to “swap” executive functions with friends or family, taking turns providing support for challenging tasks. Others have procrastination parties, where everyone completes a task they’ve been procrastinating and then celebrates together.
Mindset: Remember to approach your reflection with a No Shame Mindset. This is about observation, not self-criticism.
4. Processes For Your Reflection
Now it’s time to take the advice and strategies above and put them into action with your reflection process this year. Take only what resonates with you and leave the rest, or allow the offerings below to inspire your own process.
Try bilateral art making before concrete reflection or goal setting. This simple process combines visual art & movement to release stress, ground, and organize your nervous system. This article walks you through one approach. You can also experiment with different mediums, paper sizes, and positioning. My personal favorite is finger painting on large paper at an easel, as I love the tactile experience of the paint on my hands and the upright positioning of large paper allows me move my whole body during the practice.
Enrich your reflections on 2025 with an annotated timeline. This lovely process incorporates a structured timeline with expressive art elements. As aways, feel free to make it your own; for example, some may feel drawn to choose a shape like a circle or spiral instead of a straight timeline. This practice can help you engage in a holistic review of 2025 and ground you in your current place and time before looking forward.
Visualize 2026 and beyond with an embodied freewriting exercise. The goal is to get clearer on aspects of life you feel inspired and excited by and things that make you feel safe and comfortable. This can inform your practical goal setting by bringing your intrinsic motivation, passions, and values to the surface so they can inform goals that you are truly invested in. I found this practice to be extremely powerful when I tried it before starting my business, and it’s helped align my actions with my values and dreams since. Download the worksheet below for step-by-step guidance on this practice².
Download Future Vision Freewriting Worksheet Here
Your end-of-year reflection doesn't need to be another high-demand executive task. It can be a gentle, sensory-aware ritual of noticing. Be proud of the ways you adapted, built scaffolding, and listened to your unique body and brain this year and the lessons learned that you are gifting to your future self and community.
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Take care,
Megan Black, OTR/L
¹ As a job coach, the term “participant” was used instead of “client” as a general practice when supporting people with intellectual disabilities. I have recently been inspired by Dr. Jennifer Mullan’s incredible book Decolonizing Therapy to replace the terms “client” or “patient” in my work with all people, as a reminder to myself to continuously examine power dynamics and the importance of agency and respect in the therapeutic relationships.
²Shout out to Ari Weinzweig, the owner Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, MI, who wrote the original process that I modified in the downloadable worksheet above.