What might be happening?
When symptoms, sensory needs, energy, emotions, pain, daily life and stress overlap, it can be difficult to know what is causing what. ALPIMS helps you explore the picture without assuming everything has one cause.
You don’t have to find one explanation.
People can have several things happening at once. The same symptom may also be affected by more than one factor — including illness, sleep, sensory load, pain, stress, medication, environment, activity, nutrition, hormones, emotions or everyday demands.
The aim is not to diagnose yourself. It is to make the picture easier to notice, describe and respond to.
Understanding Symptoms →What am I noticing?
Start with the experience rather than trying to work out the explanation immediately.
Could my body need something?
Before trying to solve a complicated problem, it can help to check whether something fairly basic is adding to the difficulty.
What is using capacity?
Sometimes symptoms become harder not because one new thing has gone wrong, but because several demands have accumulated at the same time. Looking at the whole load can reveal things that are easy to miss.
Which areas might be involved?
The ALPIMS Domains are broad areas for exploring overlapping symptoms and experiences. You may recognise things in one domain or across several.
Anxiety & Autonomic
Body alarm, dizziness, heart rate, autonomic symptoms, panic and related experiences.
Explore →Laxity & Connective Tissue
Hypermobility, joints, connective tissue and related physical experiences.
Explore →Pain & Bodily Sensitivity
Migraine, chronic pain, neuropathic symptoms, TMJ and other forms of bodily sensitivity.
Explore →Immune & Inflammatory
Post-viral illness, ME/CFS, allergy-like symptoms, MCAS, gut symptoms and environmental sensitivity.
Explore →Mood & Mental Health
Low mood, trauma, emotional regulation, anxiety and psychological wellbeing.
Explore →Sensory & Neurodevelopmental
Autism, ADHD, sensory processing, executive function, misophonia and related experiences.
Explore →Conditions & experiences
Sometimes you already have a diagnosis. Sometimes you are exploring a possibility. Sometimes an experience — such as sensory overload, fatigue or executive dysfunction — is more useful to explore than a diagnostic label.
Energy & Autonomic
Pain & Sensitivity
Immune & Body
Sensory
Neurodevelopmental
Mental Health & Trauma
What changes it?
Patterns can sometimes be more informative than a single bad day. You don’t need to track everything. A few observations may be enough.
Cause, contributor and trigger are not always the same thing.
Something that makes symptoms worse is not necessarily the original cause of the condition. And something that contributes to your total load may still matter even when it does not explain the whole problem.
When you need help making sense of it.
ALPIMS can help you notice and describe patterns, but it cannot tell you whether a symptom is caused by a particular medical or psychological condition.
Professional care may be useful for:
- new or unexplained symptoms
- significant changes from your usual pattern
- assessment and diagnosis
- reviewing medication or treatment
- investigating possible medical contributors
- developing a management plan
- deciding what requires treatment and what may need adaptation
- coordinating several overlapping concerns
What might I need now?
Understanding can help, but you do not have to completely explain everything before responding to what is happening.
Instead of only asking:
“How do I fix this?”
you might also ask:
“What response fits my capacity and circumstances right now?”
Useful places to go next
Choose what seems relevant. You do not need to work through everything.
What might be happening?
When symptoms, sensory needs, energy, emotions, pain, daily life and stress overlap, it can be difficult to know what is causing what. ALPIMS helps you explore the picture without assuming that everything has one cause.
You don’t have to identify one explanation.
People can have several things happening at once. A symptom can also be affected by more than one factor — including illness, sleep, sensory load, pain, stress, medication, environment, activity, nutrition, hormones, emotions or everyday demands.
The aim is not to diagnose yourself. It is to make the picture easier to notice, describe and respond to.
Understanding Symptoms →What am I noticing?
Start with the experience rather than trying to work out the explanation immediately.
Could my body need something?
Before trying to solve a complicated problem, it can help to check whether something fairly basic is adding to the difficulty.
What is using capacity?
Sometimes symptoms become harder not because one new thing has gone wrong, but because several demands have accumulated at the same time. Looking at the whole load can reveal things that are easy to miss.
Which areas might be involved?
The ALPIMS Domains are broad areas for exploring overlapping symptoms and experiences. You may recognise things in one domain or across several.
Anxiety & Autonomic
Body alarm, dizziness, heart rate, autonomic symptoms, panic and related experiences.
Explore →Laxity & Connective Tissue
Hypermobility, joints, connective tissue and related physical experiences.
Explore →Pain & Bodily Sensitivity
Migraine, chronic pain, neuropathic symptoms, TMJ and other forms of bodily sensitivity.
Explore →Immune & Inflammatory
Post-viral illness, ME/CFS, allergy-like symptoms, MCAS, gut symptoms and environmental sensitivity.
Explore →Mood & Mental Health
Low mood, trauma, emotional regulation, anxiety and psychological wellbeing.
Explore →Sensory & Neurodevelopmental
Autism, ADHD, sensory processing, executive function, misophonia and related experiences.
Explore →Conditions & experiences
Sometimes you already have a diagnosis. Sometimes you are exploring a possibility. Sometimes a particular experience — such as sensory overload, fatigue or executive dysfunction — is more useful to explore than a diagnostic label.
Energy & Autonomic
Pain & Sensitivity
Immune & Body
Sensory
Neurodevelopmental
Mental Health & Trauma
What changes it?
Patterns can sometimes be more informative than a single bad day. You don’t need to track everything. A few observations may be enough.
You can still do something useful.
Understanding can help, but you don’t always need a complete explanation before responding to what is happening.
When you need help making sense of it.
ALPIMS can help you notice and describe patterns, but it cannot tell you whether a symptom is caused by a particular medical or psychological condition.
Professional care may be useful for:
- new or unexplained symptoms
- significant changes from your usual pattern
- assessment and diagnosis
- reviewing medication or treatment
- investigating possible medical contributors
- developing a management plan
- deciding what requires treatment and what may need adaptation
- help coordinating several overlapping concerns
Useful places to go next
Choose what is relevant. You do not need to work through everything.