We all have operating conditions.

Safety. Sensory environment. Predictability. Communication. Identity. Autonomy. Energy. Recovery. Relationships. Expectations. Choice.

The list is extensive, but we don’t all experience the same conditions, and we don’t all get the same level of understanding when those conditions become inconvenient.

One person needs a quiet environment to concentrate, which is considered entirely reasonable, while another person’s identical need is dismissed as a lack of sensory tolerance. One person requires advance notice of a plan change to be organised, whereas someone else needing the same notice is called a pain in the ass. One person takes time to recover after a demanding day as an understandable necessity, while another is met with questions about their resilience.

It’s not the need that’s the problem. It’s who’s having it.

It truly fascinates me how quickly a perfectly ordinary human requirement becomes a character assessment the moment it belongs to somebody else.

We seem to have quite an ability to mistake the conditions under which we function well for the conditions under which people should function well. And by we, I mean the broader human tendency to treat our own experiences as a reference point, sometimes without even realising we're doing it.

Our preferred communication style becomes good communication, our tolerance for noise for example, becomes a reasonable sensory environment, our ability to cope with uncertainty becomes flexibility, our preferred way of doing things becomes common sense and so on. When somebody operates differently, we are suddenly confronted with a problem that requires investigation, right? Yet, not a problem with the environment, expectations, or arrangements, but a problem with the person.

Maybe they need to be more adaptable, develop their resilience, manage their emotions, improve communication, or become comfortable with discomfort. There is a great deal of personal development available to people who are struggling with conditions that somebody else has decided are perfectly acceptable, and rather less enthusiasm for developing the conditions themselves. A right head scratcher…

I think we should also really acknowledge the fact that we are not independent of our circumstances. Our ability to function is influenced by the conditions around us, and changing those conditions can change what we're able to manage. When predictability disappears, expectations become ambiguous, autonomy is reduced, communication becomes exhausting and opportunities to recover are taken away, someone who was previously doing ok may find themselves struggling. And so, we could either interpret this as a decline in their resilience, or acknowledge that the terms have changed.

This is not to suggest every difficulty can be resolved by changing the environment, or that every request can be met exactly as made. People have competing needs, circumstances are complicated, and sometimes the answer is not immediately obvious. But we cannot have an honest conversation about what is reasonable if we begin by assuming the conditions we have always provided are neutral.

They are not.

They reflect assumptions about how people should communicate, process information, experience surroundings, manage energy, build relationships, and respond when things become difficult.

Also consider the unwritten fine print for a moment...

• You are allowed to experience sensory discomfort, provided you do not make it everyone else’s problem.

• You may require predictability, but must remain sufficiently flexible when it is not given.

• You are entitled to recover, on condition that it does not interfere with productivity.

• You may communicate differently, as long as your communication is still immediately understood by people who communicate in the usual way.

• You are welcome to be yourself, only if your self does not require anyone else to reconsider anything.

• You may have needs, but please submit evidence that they are necessary.

We could call these expectations unreasonable, or we could call them Tuesday.

The point is not that everyone should have identical terms and conditions, which would be both impossible and completely unhelpful. The point is that we have created a hierarchy in which some people’s conditions are treated as ordinary, while others are required to justify their existence. Some people can say they do not work well in a specific environment and watch the environment change, while others must demonstrate that the environment is causing them significant harm before anyone considers adjusting it.

The difference is not always the need itself, but who has the authority to define what is reasonable.

This is where neurodivergence makes the fine print visible, because the consequences of ignoring those conditions are difficult to disguise. And yet we remain invested in the idea that the person who struggles is the one who needs adjusting. We spend years teaching people to manage the consequences of conditions we have never thought to question, calling it independence, resilience, or preparing someone for the real world. The real world, apparently, is a place where terms and conditions are fixed, the fine print is inaccessible, and asking for clarification is considered a personal shortcoming.

The conditions under which we exist should not just be about what we can tolerate, how much energy we have or how well we can navigate our surroundings. They should also be about whether we can exist as ourselves without continually having to edit, explain, minimise or translate who we are, whether we can express ourselves without being corrected at every step , and whether our ways of communicating, connecting, thinking and experiencing the world are allowed to be part of the room, rather than something we must leave at the door every single time.

There is a difference between adapting to a situation and having to repeatedly negotiate your right to be yourself within it, isn’t there?

So, instead of wondering whether someone can learn to tolerate the conditions we have created, we should establish whether those conditions are necessary in the first place and if so, for whose benefit. Could expectations be clearer? Could communication be more flexible? Could people have more autonomy over how they work, learn, participate, or recover? Could we stop treating a person’s ability to endure something as evidence that it is reasonable to expect them to endure it indefinitely?

These are not questions about making life endlessly comfortable, but about what we are actually asking of people. They compel us to recognise the fact that we have terms and conditions too! We need things. We have limits. Our capacity changes. We function differently in different environments, possessing circumstances in which we feel safe, capable, connected, and able to participate.

We might call them needs, or choose to call them standards, boundaries, common sense, or simply the way things should be, instead. The terminology might differ, but the conditions are there, whether acknowledged or not. And while we might like to think we all have an equal say in how those conditions are recognised, the reality looks rather different - some people's terms are accepted without question, others are apparently subject to review, negotiation and approval.

* Terms may be amended without notice, individual requirements may be dismissed at the discretion of others and complaints will be considered evidence of inflexibility.*

None of us exist outside the terms and conditions.

We just don’t all have the same ones.

I cannot wait to share all the details of this labour of love with you, so keep your eyes on your inbox over the next couple of days!

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Respectfully, I think that gets human nature completely backwards.

Talk to neurodivergent people and their families, and you’re unlikely to find a group of people who have suddenly stopped being curious. If anything, you’ll find people asking questions they didn’t even know they were allowed to ask. People discovering new ways to understand themselves and one another. People unpicking years of shame, revisiting old assumptions and learning things that fundamentally change how they see the world.

Frozen by the black-and-white letters.

Before I had my second son, I had no language for autism and very little understanding of it. I was riddled with fear because I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. I couldn’t explain it to myself, let alone to the professionals I was turning to for support.

I still remember seeing the diagnosis written in black and white. I felt completely paralysed. I didn’t know where to turn, where to start, how to parent my son or even what questions I should be asking.

That frozen moment in time, is important because it reminds me that the absence of a diagnosis doesn’t automatically create a space for open-minded exploration, but rather an entirely different kind of paralysis and I remember it so vividly.

Without language, you can spend an awful lot of time trying to make sense of something you don’t yet have the tools to understand. You might know that something isn’t working, but not why. You might recognise that your child experiences the world differently, but have no idea what that means for their everyday life or how you can help or adapt.

Then, once I began to find my footing, I became intensely curious. I started looking for autistic communities. I began reading, and oh boy, did I read. I learnt about sensory processing, interoception, asynchronous development and communication, hyperfocus, monotropism and so much more. Every new concept gave me another way of looking at something I had previously struggled to understand.

Admittedly, not every explanation fitted due to co-occurring conditions, and not every piece of information applied to my son. But at least, I had somewhere to begin and that was the point. I wasn’t looking for something that would explain everything about him... I was looking for a better understanding of the child in front of me.

It was that curiosity, that constant questioning and willingness to learn, that helped me get to know my son and work out how best to support him.

A journey that never stops.

We’re almost twelve years on now. Has that curiosity stopped?

Absolutely not.

My son isn’t the same boy he was when he was first diagnosed. He grows, changes, learns and discovers more about himself and the world every day. His needs, experiences and ways of navigating the world evolve too, which means I have to keep learning, questioning, advocating and adapting alongside him.

A diagnosis could never have given me a complete understanding of who he would become, but it gave me a starting point from which to keep learning.

Fast forward, to almost seven years ago, and another autistic son joined our tribe. By then, I knew things I hadn’t known twelve years earlier. I had a deeper understanding, a wider vocabulary and more experience of looking beyond assumptions. I could approach his needs with a confidence and depth of knowledge I just hadn’t had the first time around and I really to feel like it gave me some sort of advantage.

This being said, I never assumed that because both boys are autistic, they would experience the world in the same way.

They share a diagnosis. They don’t share a brain.

Their presentations are different. Their strengths, challenges, needs and ways of communicating are different. Co-occurring conditions add further layers of complexity, and even where experiences overlap, the way those experiences show up in each of them isn’t the same.

Knowing one autistic child doesn’t automatically teach you how to support another. Understanding one person’s sensory needs, communication style or relationship with the world doesn’t give you a blueprint for someone else’s. Even the knowledge that took me years to build with my eldest couldn’t be transferred wholesale to my youngest.

And why would I expect it to?

The diagnosis gave me a foundation, not a finished picture. It helped me know what to explore, what to consider and what questions I might need to ask. But I still had to get to know my youngest as his own person, rather than view him through the lens of everything I had learnt about his brother.

I had more knowledge, but I still needed curiosity. I had more experience, but I still needed to listen. And I had a better understanding of autism, but I didn’t magically have an understanding of him.

A diagnosis can help us recognise patterns without assuming that every person who shares it will fit the same pattern. It can give us a language for understanding differences without making those differences any less important.

My youngest son wasn’t a repeat of his older brother, and I never expected him to be. The knowledge I had gained was invaluable, but it didn’t make me an expert in either of my children.

The point is that the diagnosis hadn’t narrowed my vision at all. It had given me a lens through which to look, while reminding me that there would always be more to see.

Whether we’re talking about an adult receiving a late-in-life diagnosis or a parent trying to understand their child, there is another side to this argument that I’d like to talk about.

Living without answers isn’t really a state of healthy curiosity. Sometimes, it’s a state of survival. When you repeatedly struggle with things that seem to come naturally to other people, and you have no framework for understanding why, it’s easy to turn that confusion inwards.

I’m broken.

Why can’t I just do things like everyone else?

Why are they behaving this way?

Why can’t they cope?

What am I doing wrong?

What are we missing?

Without a better understanding, people can spend years trying to fix themselves or their children according to expectations that can never be met.

A diagnosis doesn’t miraculously resolve those struggles, it doesn’t guarantee support, acceptance or self-understanding and it certainly doesn’t answer every question. But it can give us a language through which to begin making sense of our experiences or the ones we care for.

It can help turn a vague, painful feeling of being somehow wrong into something we can explore, communicate and work with. It can help us recognise patterns, reconsider old narratives and find other people who understand experiences we may have spent years believing were ours alone.

All these things, then allow us to ask questions without the assumption that we or our children are the problem.

I also believe that we need to stop treating the relief that often follows diagnosis as something to be suspicious of. There’s nothing inherently limiting about finally finding an explanation for something you or your child have struggled with for years. I don’t think relief means complacency nor does validation mean you’ve stopped growing. If anthing, being able to put down the weight of wondering what’s wrong with you or your child might actually give you more room to explore who you and your child are.

I mean, you can finally understand something and still want to understand more, right? You can feel seen without believing you have all the answers and you can stop blaming yourself without stopping your personal development.

We shouldn’t have to remain confused or ashamed to prove that we’re still curious, because curiosity doesn’t always look the way we expect.

It doesn’t always involve researching, questioning professionals or constantly seeking new information. Sometimes it’s existing comfortably in your safe space and recognising a pattern in your own life, or trying something different because you’ve finally understood why the old approach wasn’t working, or finding a word that makes sense of an experience you’ve struggled to explain for ages.

It might be a parent noticing that something they previously interpreted as defiance is actually a response to overwhelm. It might be an adult revisiting childhood memories and seeing them through an entirely different lens. It might be someone discovering that a strategy they’ve spent years trying to master was never particularly suited to the way their brain works.

Curiosity doesn’t have to be loud, academic or visible to be meaningful and it certainly doesn’t have to involve constantly searching for another explanation. It may as well mean sitting with what you’ve learnt, seeing how it fits and allowing yourself to change your mind, time and time again.

Does a diagnosis ever become a full stop?

We’re warned that diagnoses can become a full stop, where parents might attribute everything to autism or ADHD, or that individuals might use a diagnosis as an explanation for everything, and that once a label is in place, the questioning stops.

I wonder whether we’re looking in the wrong direction here?

In my experience, the people I’ve seen treat a diagnosis as the end of the road aren’t the individuals or families living with it. They’re the professionals who, having identified a diagnostic label, seem to become less curious about the person sitting in front of them.

Everything gets bundled under the same umbrella. A child’s distress becomes part of their autism for instance, or communication differences, sensory experiences, emotional regulation or engagement are attributed to the diagnosis, and the conversation moves on. No further exploration. No consideration of co-occurring conditions. No real attempt to understand what might be driving a particular difficulty or whether something else is being missed.

The diagnosis then becomes the explanation rather than the starting point for investigation.

Autism and ADHD are not explanations for absolutely everything a person experiences. They don’t make every difficulty inevitable, nor do they remove the need to investigate, observe and understand. A diagnosis should never become a convenient reason to stop looking more closely.

If anything, greater knowledge of neurodivergence should make us more curious, not less. It should give us more possibilities to consider, more questions to ask and a greater awareness of just how much we might be missing.

It’s rather difficult to argue that parents are closing down curiosity by learning about their children’s neurology while simultaneously accepting professional practice that sometimes does exactly that. So maybe the focus here should be on whether we’re all equally willing to keep asking questions once a diagnosis is received?

A diagnosis is a framework, not a finished picture.

Of course, any framework can be used rigidly since people can make assumptions based on diagnoses. They can attribute every difficulty to autism or ADHD, overlook other explanations or decide that a person can’t do something because of what they believe a label means.

That happens quite a lot and it deserves to be challenged. However, there is a difference between acknowledging that a diagnosis can be misused and suggesting that diagnosis itself makes people complacent or less interested in development and growth.

There’s a strange assumption floating around that identifying with a diagnosis somehow makes us less individual, as though accepting that autism or ADHD is part of our experience means surrendering our personalities, preferences, histories or identities to it completely.

Understanding something about our neurology doesn’t erase who we are. If anything, it can help us separate the things we’ve been made to believe about ourselves from the things that are actually true. We don’t become less individual because we find a language for some of our experiences.

A framework is not the same thing as a conclusion. Understanding something about a person’s neurology doesn’t mean we understand their preferences, their personality, their ambitions, their fears or what a particular experience means to them.

Knowing someone is autistic doesn’t tell you what that feels like for them. Knowing someone has ADHD doesn’t tell you what they find difficult, what they love or what support they need. Even when we recognise familiar patterns, we still have to pay attention to the person right in front of us.

Essentially, a diagnosis can tell us where to look but it cannot do the looking for us.

This is where I think we need to be careful about confusing having language with believing we have all the answers. The problem isn’t that we find an explanation, but when we stop being willing to look beyond it.

Two things can be true at the same time: a diagnosis can be life-changing, and our understanding of ourselves or another person can still remain incomplete. In fact, sometimes the more we learn, the more aware we become of what we don’t know.

No one is an expert on the human condition.

Human beings, neurodivergent or not, are complicated. We change. We contradict ourselves. We surprise the people who know us best. We don’t always understand our own motivations, let alone those of someone else.

No one, regardless of their qualifications, research, experience, privilege or status, has complete access to another person’s inner world.

Expertise matters. Research matters. Lived experience matters. But none of these gives us permission to assume that we have reached the end of what there is to understand.

I sometimes wonder whether the discomfort around diagnosis comes, at least in part, from how readily people accept some explanations while questioning others. We tend to be comfortable with explanations that fit familiar ideas about human behaviour, but when a diagnosis changes how we interpret someone’s experiences, needs or choices, that explanation can be treated as a threat to curiosity rather than an invitation to it.

Yet curiosity isn’t about refusing explanations though, is it? It’s about remaining open to what those explanations might help us discover, while accepting that they will never tell us everything.

For me, a diagnosis didn’t close a door. On the contrary, it opened one I hadn’t even known was there. It gave me language when I was frightened, direction when I felt lost and the beginnings of an understanding that continues to grow, every single day. It helped me see my children more clearly, understand their needs better, advocate for them in a way that meant something and connect with them in so many different ways.

Twelve years later, I’m still asking so many questions and I hope I never stop, because the purpose of understanding neurodivergence was never to become so certain that we no longer need to listen.

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We want answers and we usually start asking questions. We want to know what happened, when it started, and why they feel the way they do. We treat emotional pain like a puzzle we need to solve, assuming that if we can just figure out the root cause, we can fix it. It makes sense as it feeds into our own need for comfort - at least that’s how it feels for me. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. Watching someone struggle without knowing why, what will help, or whether things will get better can leave us feeling helpless. We want something to hold on to and an explanation gives us a sense of order. If we can identify the cause, we can build a narrative around it. If we can build a narrative, we might be able to predict what happens next. And if we can predict what happens next, we feel a little less at the mercy of something we cannot control.

Understanding can become a way of making ourselves feel safe.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that. We are human beings trying to navigate a world that feels more manageable when things make sense. We look for patterns, causes and connections. We use what we know to make sense of what we don't.

More often than not, this comes from a good place. We care about the person and we want to help. We might be frightened by what we’re seeing and reach for information because information makes a situation feel more manageable. If we can identify the problem, perhaps we can do something about it and make things better.

And yet, our desire to understand can become a condition we place on other people.

We want their distress to have a recognisable beginning, a clear explanation and a logical relationship between what happened and how they feel. We want a story we can follow from one point to the next, with enough detail to help us understand what has gone wrong. And when someone cannot give us that story, we can find ourselves becoming less certain about whether their distress is as serious as they say it is.

The problem is that people don’t always know why they are struggling.

Human emotions rarely arrive with a helpful explanation attached. Sometimes we can identify the thing that hurt us. Sometimes we can describe what has been building up over months or years. And sometimes we just know that something feels unbearable, that our capacity has diminished, or that we cannot keep doing what we have been doing.

We might feel overwhelmed without knowing what tipped us over the edge. We might feel anxious without being able to identify a threat. We might feel exhausted by a life that, from the outside, appears perfectly manageable. We might know that something is wrong long before we have the language, perspective or emotional capacity to explain what it is.

And sometimes that explanation only becomes available much later, when we have had enough distance to make sense of an experience that was impossible to understand while we were living through it.

Not knowing why we feel something does not mean the feeling is less real and being unable to articulate an experience does not make that experience less worthy of attention.

So why do we tend to behave as though it does?

We ask people to explain themselves at precisely the moment when explanation might be beyond their reach. We ask them to identify triggers, describe their emotions, distinguish between competing feelings and tell us what would help. We may even ask these questions with genuine kindness, unaware that we have handed someone who is already struggling another task to complete.

It’s almost as if they must first make their experience legible to us, before we can offer support. They must find the right words. They must organise their thoughts. They must present their distress in a way that makes sense to someone who is not experiencing it. And if their explanation is incomplete, inconsistent or difficult to follow, they may find themselves having to defend it.

This is an extraordinary amount of work to demand from someone who has already told us they are finding things difficult. It also assumes that we are entitled to a level of understanding before we can decide how seriously to take another person’s experience.

Consider how easily this happens in everyday life. Someone tells us they cannot manage another social commitment, and we ask what the problem is. They say they are exhausted, so we remind them that they haven’t done very much recently. They explain that a situation feels overwhelming, and we point out that other people manage it without difficulty. They say they need a change, and we ask them to identify precisely what needs to change and why. Urgh…

Maybe we think we are helping them gain perspective? Or we believe that if we can challenge their interpretation, we can help them see that things aren’t as bad as they seem? None of this is innately wrong or misguided, however there is a difference between helping someone explore their experience and treating their experience as a claim that needs to be tested.

The first leaves room for curiosity, whereas the latter puts the person on trial.

We may not intend to question their credibility, but our questions can communicate that their account is not yet sufficient, that we need more evidence and that their explanation must satisfy us before their needs can be considered reasonable.

And if they are already accustomed to being misunderstood, they will undoubtedly recognise this process immediately. They could start anticipating the objections before they have even finished speaking or rehearse their explanations, collect evidence, minimise their needs or offer details they would rather keep private because they know that a straightforward statement of what they are experiencing might not be enough.

And so, eventually, asking for help can begin to feel like preparing a case…

We have to admit that we are not especially good at judging another person’s internal reality from the outside since we use visible details to construct a picture of how their life must feel and when their reported experience does not match that picture, we look for the discrepancy.

Why are they struggling when they have so much going for them? Why are they anxious when nothing bad has happened? Why are they exhausted when they seem to be coping? Why does this particular situation feel so difficult when it looks relatively straightforward?

We really have to come to terms with the fact that what we can observe is not the whole experience.

We do not see every calculation someone makes to get through a conversation, every sensory demand they are managing, every uncertainty they are trying to figure out, every previous experience that has shaped how safe a situation feels, or every small compromise that has gradually depleted their capacity. We may not see the sheer amount of effort involved in maintaining a life that looks effortless to us.

Even when we know someone really well, there are parts of their experience that remain inaccessible to us. We can listen, learn and become more familiar with the things that affect them, but familiarity is not the same as complete understanding.

What I am trying to say is that the absence of an explanation we recognise is not evidence that there is nothing to explain and the fact that we would respond differently to the same circumstances does not tell us how someone else ought to respond to them.

We are all interpreting the world through experiences, expectations, histories and capacities that are not identical. Two people can encounter the same event and experience it in entirely different ways. Neither person’s response becomes invalid simply because the other person cannot imagine feeling the same.

This does not mean we must agree with every interpretation someone makes or abandon our own judgement, but rather recognising that we can take an experience seriously without claiming to know exactly what it means, where it came from or what should happen next.

There is a difference between believing someone is struggling and assuming we understand their struggle and I think we often confuse the two.

We may think that being supportive requires us to identify the cause, offer an explanation or find the right intervention. We can feel uncomfortable when none of these things is possible, as though our presence is of little use unless it produces a solution.

Not every difficult experience is a problem we can solve on someone else’s behalf. Sometimes the cause is complicated, several things have accumulated, the person is still working out what they feel or there is no neat resolution waiting to be discovered.

Sometimes our most useful contribution is to stop making our uncertainty their responsibility. We can acknowledge that we do not fully understand without turning that uncertainty into a demand for further explanation. We can ask what would help without insisting that someone first tell us why they need it. We can remain interested in their experience without treating every unanswered question as a gap they are obliged to fill.

We should allow another person to have an experience that we have not yet understood, without making their access to support dependent on how well they can explain it.

Taking someone seriously without needing a full explanation does not mean never asking questions. Questions can be an important expression of care. They can help someone find language for something they have struggled to articulate, notice a pattern they had not recognised, or discover what might make things more manageable. The distinction is whether our questions serve the person or serve our need to feel certain.

Are we asking because we want to understand what might help, or because we are uncomfortable offering support without knowing why it is needed? Are we making space for someone to explore an experience, or are we waiting for them to provide an explanation that makes their response acceptable to us?

And what happens when the answers never come? Can we still be patient? Can we still believe them? Can we allow someone to need something without requiring them to turn that need into a convincing argument?

I guess accepting that our understanding will always have limits is one of the more difficult parts of caring for other people. We can however offer practical help, reduce a demand, make room for rest, change an expectation or stay alongside someone while they work out what is happening. We can remain open to learning more without withholding everything until we do.

Most importantly though, we can and should stop confusing a person’s ability to explain their distress with their right to have it taken seriously.

No one should have to be articulate when they are overwhelmed, consistent when they are confused, or persuasive when they are asking for help. They should not have to produce a perfectly coherent account of their inner lives to qualify for patience, consideration or support.

There will be times when we need more information to make a decision, understand a situation or work out what practical help is appropriate, however that is different from demanding of someone to prove that their experience is legitimate before we are willing to care about it.

And so I leave you with this: isn’t the most compassionate thing we can say “I believe you, even though I don’t fully understand.”?

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Kieran Rose and his family have done more for the autistic community than we'll ever be able to repay and now they are in need of support.

Over 20 members of the community have come together to bring you this ultimate resource bundle filled with courses, e-books, webinars, toolkits and more! 100% of the proceeds from sales will go directly to Kieran and his family to support his cancer treatment.
This bundle is exclusively available until November 18th so you have to be quick!

What’s in the bundle? More than £500 worth of resources for just £49 $65 €59! Buy now, pay later and bursary options are available.

Without further ado…

- Psychotherapy and Coaching

Course: Soothing RSD - Rewire. Stabilise. Desensitise.

This self-paced course comes complete with videos, meditations and workbooks to help you reframe Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). You’ll learn essential techniques to get you started on your RSD discovery journey with compassion and courage.

Amanda McGuinness - Little Puddins

Guide & posters: Growing Up Autistic Unidentified

A 21-page illustrated digital resource exploring the lived experience of growing up Autistic without knowing you are Autistic. It also includes a collection of visual posters exploring Autistic strengths, Autistic culture, sensory experiences, stimming, self-care, radical acceptance and neuroaffirmative approaches to supporting Autistic people.

Amy Laurent & Jacquelyn Fede - Autism Level UP!

Guide: Energy Three Level System (E3L) Regulation Plan

The Energy Three Level System (E3L) is a different way to support regulation. It is designed to provide a quick entry point into supporting ENERGY regulation for yourself or others. It can be particularly useful if you need a fast way to get regulatory support in place, you are supporting young people who would benefit from simplified language, and/or you understand the concept of ENERGY regulation, but you have limited information about the person you are supporting.

Autistic Mutual Aid Society Edinburgh (AMASE)

Ebook: About Us, With Us: Decision-Making on Autism: Nothing About Us Without Us in Practice

About Us, With Us is a guide to including Autistic people in decisions relating to us - for example, in planning services and events, or formulating policies, research projects and resources. Autistic people are all too often left out of such decisions, or invited to give our approval only when it is too late to change direction. This guide is full of practical tips on how to avoid the many mistakes that Autistic people will be able to spot.

Bryden Carlson-Giving - Neurodivergent Nexus Occupational Therapy

Guide: How Mainstream Evidence-Based Practice Perpetuates Health Inequity

This guide explores how ableism influences each component of evidence-based practice with practical examples of how these challenges show up, and with some resources on how we can do better.

Action Plan: The Empowering Neurodivergent Occupational Participation and Well-being (EMPOWER) Model

A supplemental resource to Bryden’s new paper about the Empowering Neurodivergent Occupational Participation and Well-being (EMPOWER) Model, a neurodiversity-focused occupational therapy model.

Toolkit: Embracing Neurodivergent Occupations Introductory Manual

The mission of the toolkit is to support best practice by occupational therapy practitioners supporting neurodivergent children and youth, including being trauma-informed, strengths-based, anti-racist, and following the principles of disability justice.

Christina Keeble - Neurodivergent Consultant & Neuroaffirming Support

Ebook: The Colouring Book for Neurodivergent Humans and Self-Discovery Guide

This mindful colouring and self-discovery guide is designed to support neurodivergent people to embrace their authentic selves through insights, prompts, and affirmations. It offers supportive strategies for understanding and connection.

Evaleen Whelton - AUsome Training

Guide: Supporting Autistic Children in Identity

This guide for parents, schools and professionals looks at how identity develops through relationships, communication, environment and experience, and asks what Autistic children may be learning about themselves from the adults and systems around them.

Webinar: Autism and Masking with Kieran Rose

An in-depth conversation exploring what masking is, why Autistic people mask, the harm masking can cause, its effects on mental health and development, and the problems with traditional social-skills approaches.

Webinar: Understanding Task Avoidance

Evaleen looks at task avoidance through an Autistic-led, neuroaffirming lens. Rather than treating avoidance as behaviour to be corrected, the session explores what may be happening underneath it, including capacity, safety, demand, uncertainty, sensory and emotional load, relationships and the environment around the child.

Harriet Richardson & Kim Mears - Speech and Language Therapists

Prize draw: Win a copy of Exploring Semi-Speaking as a Communication Identity book

A reflective practice companion which takes an expansive approach to supporting autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people who do not always have access to speech. The book challenges traditional ideas about communication. It offers practical insights grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm, and amplifies neurodivergent voices alongside contributions from people with lived and professional experience of semi-speaking, situational mutism and AAC.

- Counsellor & Therapist

Ebook: Delving Into the Complexity of Unmasking Safely with Kieran Rose

Autistic masking is frequently misunderstood as only being about “acting neurotypical.” Kieran begins by conceptualising masking; busting some of the myths that surround it; and looking at why we do it. Jade then explores how we might be able to start unmasking safely, while considering why it’s not as simple as a lot of the mainstream narratives suggest.

Webinar: Autistic Resistance & Challenging Neuronormativity in the Therapy Room

Therapy either upholds neuronormativity and pathologises Autistic people, or challenges normative values and supports Autistic wellbeing through neuroaffirming resistance. This presentation challenges therapists to take the next step in their neuroaffirming practice. It suggests important considerations for Autistic people and families who may be seeking their own therapy, as well as anyone advising or supporting.

Jess Garner - GROVE Online Community for Autistic Young People

Ebook: ‘Being Us’ - Messages from Autistic Kids & Adults

Being Us is a booklet for Autistic young people welcoming them to the Autistic community.

Webinar: Reasonable Adjustments at Mainstream Secondary School

Although focused on the UK, this webinar provides useful context for parents/carers and educators in any country about how Autistic young people experience mainstream secondary/high school, as well as practical ways we can create change.

Webinar: Supporting Autistic Young People with Self-Acceptance

This webinar focuses on exploring different perspectives and pathways we can choose and how these may lead to self-understanding and acceptance.

Jill Holly - NeuroDiversity University

Webinar: Boundaries, Consent & Connection at Christmas: Rethinking Directness Through an Autistic and ADHD Lens

This webinar explores why Autistic and ADHD directness is clear communication, not a deficit, and how rejection sensitivity and the need for connection can make saying “no” feel risky.

Jo Grace - The Sensory Projects

Webinar: Awareness to Identity: A Journey of Acceptance and Understanding

A journey from awareness of difference to embracement of Autistic identity. Exploring the barriers along the way and reflecting on societal understanding of neurodivergence. This will be especially relevant to those newly identified/diagnosed and those considering their own neuro-identity.

Jodie Clarke - Children’s Well-being Practitioner & Autism Specialist

Webinar & resource: Energy Accounting for Autistic Children

This presentation uses the analogy of a smartphone to discuss the concept of “energy accounting,” or how we are charged and drained by different activities throughout the day. The tools presented can be used in schools, workplaces, and homes, and can help support emotional, relational, and physical safety.

Joleen Fernald - Pediatric Therapy Services

Information Sheet: Situational Mutism in the Autistic Community

This information sheet outlines situational/selective mutism in the autistic community and offers potential support strategies.

Kelly Mahler - Occupational Therapist

Course: Less Compliance, More Interoception

This course explores what happens when we stop asking, “How do we make someone do it?” and start asking, “What might this person need in order to participate successfully?” Through community insights, practical examples, and an interoception-informed lens, you’ll discover why lasting participation is built through curiosity, validation, and collaboration… not pressure, rewards, or control.

Kieran Rose - The Autistic Advocate

Webinar: Curating Healthy Lifestyles for Late-Identified Autistic Adults

For Autistic people who are identified in adulthood, there is often an experience of deeply-internalised stigma. This stigma will have unknowingly impacted them in significant ways across multiple domains of their lives; ranging from their identity development, to the relationship they might have with themselves, their bodies, their needs, and also other people. You’ll learn about the ecology of stigma and explore how we might start to move to an ecology of nurture. We’ll look at how an ecology of nurture curates connection, safety and support for late-identified Autistic adults and explore the privileges needed to shift from a trauma to nurture ecology.

Kristy Forbes - inTune Pathways

Ebook: Understanding and Using Declarative Language with PDA Children

Declarative language is one of the most popular tools recommended to people raising, educating, and supporting PDA children. It can be genuinely useful. It can also quietly slip into being one more way to get a child to do something, and PDA individuals feel that difference long before the adults around them do. This guide goes deeper than scripts. It begins with the internal experience of PDA, the nervous system, equity, and felt safety, then works outward to the words themselves, because once we understand what is happening beneath the behaviour, the language tends to follow on its own.

- Neurodivergent Nurse Consulting

Webinar & resource: Health Needs are Not Behaviour: The “Performance Over Health” School Culture

In many schools, young people are expected to meet rigid expectations around attendance, eating, drinking, toileting, and classroom participation. This is often regardless of whether their bodies are able to keep up. For many neurodivergent children and young people, everyday health needs such as hydration, food, digestion, and bathroom use are deeply connected to their sensory experiences, interoception, and underlying health conditions. When these needs are misunderstood or unsupported, they are often treated as behaviour problems rather than healthcare needs.

Webinar & resource: Why They Can Eat It One Day and Not the Next: Understanding Fluctuating Capacity Around Food

Many PDAers experience significant fluctuations in their relationship with food and eating. A food they enjoyed yesterday may feel impossible today. Eating that happens comfortably at home may not happen at school. Hunger does not always lead to eating, and pressure often makes things harder rather than easier. This webinar explores food and eating through the lens of fluctuating capacity, nervous system safety, autonomy, sensory experience, and demand.

Louise Lucas - Curiosity Spot

Ebook: 7 Mindset Shifts Workbook

Because of the breadth of experiences found under the neurodivergent umbrella, it is impossible to provide a prescriptive list of what you ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ do. Instead, this workbook will invite you to develop a neuro-affirming mindset that will allow you to be responsive to the changing needs of clients regardless of neurotype. The workbook introduces each of the Seven Mindset Shifts along with a selection of prompts to support reflection on how they might be integrated into your own practice to support it.

Lyric Rivera - Neurodivergent Consulting & Neurodivergent Rebel

Guide: Sensory Friendly Space Guide

This guide supports the creation of sensory-friendly, inclusive spaces for Neurodivergent people by addressing visual, auditory, and other sensory processing needs. It encourages understanding of sensory processing differences; creating inclusive environments; adjustments to visual and auditory environments; scent and tactile sensitivities; food; movement supports; sensory spaces; and personal needs.

Worksheet: Autistic Brain-Type Disclosure

This resource supports Autistic people in understanding and communicating how autism affects their daily lives, supporting self-advocacy and disclosure. It encourages the development of a personal explanation of autism based on individual experience.

Marion McLaughlin - Aurora Consulting

Ebook: Morven’s First Autistic Pride

Morven’s First Autistic Pride is a story about understanding and celebration. Through gentle conversations and playful moments - from bubbles and books to friendship and shared experiences - Morven learns that being Autistic isn’t something to hide. It’s something to recognise, explore, and take pride in. The story introduces young readers to what it means to be Autistic; the idea of Autistic culture and community; and the importance of self-acceptance and belonging.

Webinar: Autistic Relationships

Explore why Autistic people can be vulnerable in different kinds of relationships, and help bridge the gap and bring people together with knowledge and understanding. Topics covered include Autistic vulnerability; alexithymia; love languages and empathy; what friendship looks like for Autistics; family dynamics; relationships with colleagues; dating while Autistic; relationship red and green flags; sex education; and setting and maintaining boundaries.

Marni Kammersell - Wandering Brightly

Guide: Quick Start Homeschool Curriculum Guide

Are you homeschooling or home educating a child who learns differently? This quick guide from longtime homeschooling parent Marni Kammersell rounds up flexible math, science and language arts resources for ages 4 to 13, from full curricula to playful, interest-led options. It’s written from experience and built on the idea that curriculum should adapt to your child, not the other way around.

Munira Adenwalla - OT4Kids

Workshop: Sensory Processing & Equity

Explore what equity means for neurodivergent people through the lens of sensory processing, autonomy, and the environment. Together, we identify the barriers that create sensory inequity and examine how shifting sensory capacity and power imbalances impact access to learning, play, and safety. You’ll gain practical sensory strategies and accommodations to support children’s nervous systems, respond to their fluctuating capacity, and honour their inner knowing by reshaping environments rather than reshaping children. This session is for parents, educators, and professionals who want to create sensory-responsive, low-demand spaces that provide sensory equity.

Nyck Walsh - Neurodivergent Therapist

Prize Draw: Win a copy of Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy book

Focusing on autism and what is medically known as ADHD, neurodivergent author Nyck Walsh takes readers on an anti-oppressive, intersectional journey into a new standard of care for neurodivergent clients and their therapists. Whether new to or well-versed in the neurodiversity paradigm, readers will learn how to best support their neurodivergent clients in a way that prioritises their well-being, honors their self-expertise, encourages their anti-ableist embodiment, and celebrates their joy.

Scott Neilson - Autistically Scott

Webinar Series: Nurturing Autistic Identity; Autistic Empathy; Autistic Joy and Passionate Interests

This series reframes some of the stigmatising narratives towards Autistic people and promotes the multitude of ways that we express ourselves, as well as what we can consider to cultivate a more positive Autistic identity.

Webinar: Creating Safe Spaces for Autistic People webinar with Laura Hellfeld

Co-delivered with with Laura Hellfeld, and based on the book of the same name, this webinar explores key considerations for making environments more accessible and safer for Autistic people.

Taylor Harrison - Divergently Yours

Facilitated Groups: Virtual Gatherings for Parents/Caregivers in Neurodivergent Families

Gain three months’ access to live weekly virtual gatherings for parents and carers in Neurodivergent families to slow down and connect. You are welcome as you are.

Teodora Byrne - NDwise Hub Consulting

Webinar: Cultivating Digital Space: The Mental Health Lifeline of the Online Autistic Community

Online friendships aren’t less real. Asynchronous communication isn’t less social. Digital communities aren’t just screen time. Sometimes, digital spaces are where we find our people. For many autistic people, these digital spaces are a mental health lifeline. This webinar explores why belonging, psychological safety and connection found online can be just as meaningful, and sometimes even more accessible, than those found offline.

Webinar: When Support Feels Like Surveillance

There is a thin, often invisible line between “checking in” and “checking up.” For many neurodivergent individuals, traditional support systems (at work or home) can trigger a threat response rather than a sense of safety. This webinar explores why neurodivergent people often feel they must perform gratitude, accept help they didn’t consent and downplay discomfort to keep the relationship safe. It examines when it all feels like a spotlight, the weight of being seen, what genuine meaningful support looks like and how we can move from the spotlight onto a beanbag.

Virginia Spielmann - STAR Institute for Sensory Processing

Guide: A Framework on Trauma in Neurodivergent Populations

A practical, thought-provoking guide for therapists, educators, caregivers, advocates, and anyone seeking a more humane way to understand neurodivergent experience. Grounded in occupational therapy, sensory health, disability justice, and neurodivergent perspectives, it asks readers to consider what a person’s nervous system, relationships, environment, and life story may be communicating.

I am very proud and humbled by how our community came together in this time of need.. Seeing people put others first, offer a helping hand, and lift each other up has been truly inspiring. Thank you to everyone who gave their time, energy, and heart. This is what community is all about.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

For the past week (well almost!), my home has been more than a living space. It’s been a high-voltage ecosystem, a temporary village built on celebration. At any given moment, there were six extra people moving through the rooms in a constant, beautiful, chaotic rhythm. There were loud voices, multiple languages spoken and various needs and wants having to be met.

My family (parents, sister and partner, nephew and girlfriend) came over from abroad to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Due to our family dynamic and difficulties flying, it was easier for them to do the travelling, even moreso as they are split living in two different countries. We collectively decided that this arrangement would be easier for my children and we could host the party here.

To exist in a house like that, even for a short period of time, is to exist in total sensory saturation. It’s the visual texture of coat piles growing on the porch hooks and shoes clustered by the door. It’s the acoustics of multiple separate conversations happening at once and the continuous physical movement with some people staying the night, guests coming and going, extra dishes appearing on side tables, doors opening and closing and floorboards creaking overhead at 1:00 am.

Unconsciously, my brain adapted to this frequency and I entered a state of warm hyper-vigilance. Without even realising it, my senses were running continuous background updates to track the group’s momentum. Who needs a fresh drink? Did everyone get clean towels? Who is coming through the front door next? My nervous system matched its pulse to the speed of the crowd and I was absorbing and managing a massive amount of collective energy.

I thoroughly enjoyed having them over, seeing them, hugging them and spending time with them as this is a luxury these days, but I’d be lying if I wouldn’t admit the exhaustion that comes with it. Even though this was a regular occurrence for me while growing up, since moving away and having my children, my life has undoubtedly changed. Of course our home is noisy, sometimes chaotic and in a perpetual state of movement, however it’s also somehow quieter. I realise how perplexing and paradoxical this sounds, but I can’t really explain it any other way. It’s like the noise and the chaos is contained without external interference.. does that even make sense?! I know the rhythm of that chaos. I know the boundaries, the triggers, the schedule, and the predictability of my own household. It’s a self-contained ecosystem, right? Even when it's loud, my nervous system understands it because it's my daily baseline. When visitors, even deeply loved ones, come over, that closed ecosystem is suddenly cracked open. Even the most welcome guests introduce external variables like different energy, unexpected schedules, extra needs to tend to, conversation to sustain, and the underlying performance of being a host (even with family). That requires a completely different kind of cognitive and emotional bandwidth.

On the flip side, having us all together like this, reminded me of how much I am missing out on. Of how rare these types of gatherings have become and of how much I may have taken these things for granted while I had them..

And so, after all of that, in the space of what felt like a flash, it all ended.

The last goodbyes were called out across the driveway. The car doors slammed, engines started, and taillights disappeared down the street, while others mooched away on foot, dragging their luggage along the path on their way to the train station.

I stepped back inside, shut the door, and turned around.

It was pitch-drop silent.

The drop felt like a free-fall and the sudden silence didn’t really feel like peace, or rest, or a welcome relief. It actually hit me like a physical wall.

What happened in that instant is a case of environmental whiplash. When you slam the brakes on a car going 90 miles an hour, your body flies forward into the seatbelt. Going from peak sensory overload to total isolation does the exact same thing to your internal state. The crowd disappears, but your internal engine doesn’t get the memo so it keeps revving at high speed, spinning wildly in neutral.

I stood in the middle of my living room, completely ungrounded. The room suddenly felt five times bigger and unnervingly still. My brain was still primed for action, listening for footsteps that weren’t coming, waiting for a door to open, expecting someone to walk around the corner and ask me a question.

In the absence of those sounds, the quiet became almost deafening like a ringing, heavy echo chamber.

For a little while, I floated aimlessly between rooms, completely caught in the drop. Should I start clearing the stack of plates? Should I sit down on the sofa with a hot cup of coffee? Should I just stare at the wall? Every option felt strangely weightless, yet every movement required immense effort.

Isn’t peace and quiet what I wanted after all the chaos? Of course I did but true, meaningful rest requires a runway. You cannot expect a nervous system that has been running on high-alert hospitality for days to instantly drop into serene, mindful relaxation the second the door clicks shut. The body needs time to discharge the adrenaline. It needs a bridge between the high-volume connection and multi-lingual conversation and the low-frequency calm of solitude.

Even now, 24 hours later, I feel very discombobulated. I am not sad, or upset or anything really. I just don’t know whether I am coming or going.

I guess, reclaiming my space after it has belonged to a crowd takes time. The house has to clear its lungs, and so do I. Right now, I am caught somewhere between the echoes of yesterday and the quiet of today - a visitor in my own living room, waiting for my nervous system to catch up with my body.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

But I don’t think a bigger life is necessarily a busier one. I think it might be a life with more possibilities. More than one way for something to work. More than one way to participate. More than one place where you can feel like yourself. More than one route through an experience.

That sounds deceptively simple, because we don’t usually notice how much of everyday life is built around there being one accepted way to do something.

There is a particular way we are expected to communicate. A particular way to demonstrate that we are listening. A particular way to work. A particular way to socialise. A particular way to learn. A particular way to respond when something is difficult. You get the gist…

If you can do those things in that way, the world tends to feel remarkably open. If you can’t, however, the number of available options can shrink very quickly.

This is where I think the idea of making the world bigger becomes interesting, because we don’t need to make people capable of doing everything in the same way.

We can create more ways for things to be possible.

That might mean being able to contribute to a conversation without having to speak immediately. It might mean being able to work somewhere other than an office without that automatically being interpreted as disengagement. It might mean being able to maintain a friendship through messages, shared interests or quiet companionship rather than measuring the relationship by how often two people meet in person.

None of those things are radical as such, but they do change the shape of someone’s world.

I guess in a way, that is what we miss when we talk about inclusion as though it simply means allowing someone into something that already exists.

Being allowed in is not the same as having somewhere to belong.

A door can be open while there is still only one acceptable way to behave once you walk through it. Who does that benefit? Who exactly is the door open for?

So through the lens of this conversation around making the world bigger, we should be asking how many ways there are to exist within it.

How many different kinds of participation are recognised? How much variation can the environment hold before the person becomes the problem? How many different versions of a successful day are possible?

That last one really matters to me… we can make someone’s world technically bigger while still keeping our definition of a good life rather small.

If independence always means doing things alone, then needing support will always look like failure. If participation always means being physically present, then remote participation will always look like a lesser version. If communication always means speaking, then other forms of communication will always need to be defended. If productivity always means doing more, then knowing when enough is enough will always look like underachievement.

So no, I don’t think we just need more opportunities as such, but rather more acceptable ways of using them.

That is a different kind of accessibility shaped by comfort.

I don’t think the focus should be on creating a world where every option works for every person. I don’t think that is possible, and I don’t think it is necessary. What we should thrive to achieve is having enough variation that one unsuitable option doesn’t become the end of the road.

If one route doesn’t work, there is another. If one form of communication doesn’t work, there is another. If one environment isn’t manageable, there is somewhere else to go. If one way of participating isn’t possible today, participation doesn’t disappear altogether.

That changes something fundamental altogether doesn’t it?

This is probably one of the reasons why I keep coming back to the idea of comfort.

Now, I don’t think comfort needs another defence… We’ve spent enough time talking about that. What interests me now is what happens when we stop thinking about comfort as something that belongs to one particular place.

We can stop treating the things that help someone function as conditions that belong only in one particular place. If predictability helps, why should predictability be confined to home? If having time to process helps, why should that only be possible in one relationship? If a certain form of communication works, why should it disappear the moment someone enters a workplace, classroom or service? If knowing that you can leave makes participation possible, why does leaving have to be treated as a personal failure?

The point isn’t to reproduce one person’s safe environment everywhere they go but to recognise what makes that environment workable and find ways for some of those conditions to exist elsewhere too.

That creates continuity and continuity can create possibilities.

Someone doesn’t have to become a completely different version of themselves in order to enter a different part of their life. They can take some of what works with them.

That is what I mean when I talk about making the world bigger. Giving people more places in which they can remain themselves and making it possible for some of what makes comfort work to exist in more places.

Hopefully that changes how we understand growth too.

Maybe, just maybe, growth isn’t always about expanding what a person can tolerate. Sometimes it is about expanding what is available to them. Think about it…

A child who can only learn in one particular setting might eventually have several environments in which learning becomes possible. An adult who can only work under very specific conditions might discover that those conditions can exist in more than one kind of workplace. Someone who has always had to choose between connection and recovery might eventually find forms of connection that don’t require them to sacrifice one for the other.

And so, their world has become more compatible with who they already are, which feels like a much more meaningful kind of expansion to me.

A bigger world is one where more of life is available to you.

The question I want to leave people with as this series comes to an end, and as I take these ideas into the live sessions it this: What would happen if we stopped asking people to leave comfort behind and started asking how much of what makes comfort possible we can make available elsewhere?

Join me on the 30th of September at 7:30pm BST for a live session where we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice.

We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

* * recording included with every ticket

Secure your space here.

⭐ The PDA Summit is back again this year and the theme is “Capacity & Capability”. The summit runs from the 1st to the 4th of October and if you are interested in joining, please click on this affiliate link to secure your space. (* by using this link I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.) My session “Who decides what someone’s capacity is?” takes place on Friday the 2nd.

⭐ AuDHD Intensive (on 29th and 30th September 2026) is two online days built entirely around that intersection. Use the code Brilliant10 for 10% off the ticket price. My session will look at AuDHD as a synchronous symbiotic relationship on the 29th at 2.30pm BST.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

Flush Forward! is a friendly toileting guide for parents supporting disabled and neurodivergent young people. I had the privilege of reading and endorsing this book prior to its release date and I wholeheartedly recommend it. The official release date is tomorrow, the 21st of September, but you can of course pre-order it today if you so wish.

The book is split in three parts, looking at the science behind toileting, exploring a wide range of practical ways to support, communication & capacity and growing and changing together.

So, here’s my invitation to get your hands on this book. Jessica Kingsley Publishers kindly offered me a discount code to share with my people, so if you use code FORFLUSH20 on their website, you’ll get 20% off.

What do I have to say about this book? “Comprehensive yet remarkably accessible, this is the definitive toileting guide for parents of disabled and neurodivergent young people. Laura’s unique blend of knowledge and heart helps reframe the toileting journey, turning a challenging topic into a manageable, practical process. It’s the supportive, steady guidance every family needs.”

P.s. it’s incredible to see my name on the back cover!

Reminders:

September’s session will be live, on the 30th at 7:30pm BST, however all ticket holders will receive access to the recording.

Also wanted to let you know, that you can find me at this year’s AuDHD Intensive Online Event where I will be talking about AuDHD as a synchronous symbiotic relationship on the 29th of September at 2:30pm BST. The line-up is quite phenomenal with a wide range of topics being covered, so if you wish to join us, you can use the code Brilliant10 at checkout for 10% off the ticket price.

The PDA Summit is back again this year and the theme is “Capacity & Capability”. The summit runs from the 1st to the 4th of October and if you are interested in joining, please click on this affiliate link if you’d like to support Nicola and the team. You can of course have free access if that is more accessible for you! This is the last year the summit is taking place, so it will be one to remember. My session “Who decides what someone’s capacity is?” takes place on Friday the 2nd of October.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

What once felt like a refuge can start to feel like the only place you can breathe. The familiar room. The familiar routine. The familiar people. The familiar way of doing things. The things you know you can manage without having to prepare yourself for what might happen next.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. At least, not until you realise that the world outside it has gradually become smaller, because so many things outside that familiar space have become so difficult, unpredictable, exhausting or unsafe that retreating becomes easier than continuing to navigate them.

This is where the conversation about comfort becomes more complicated…

It would be easy to say that this is what happens when we stay in our comfort zones for too long, where familiarity becomes a habit, habit becomes avoidance, and avoidance becomes restriction. Yes, it makes sense when we present it like that, however I think that it misses something important. Besides, if you have read any of my articles or posts before, you know I like nuance and looking past linear or tidy concepts.

People don’t usually wake up one morning and decide that they would like their world to become smaller, right? Sometimes it just happens, rather quickly.

You stop going somewhere because it was too much last time.

Then you stop going somewhere else because you know what it will cost you.

You find a way of communicating that works, so you stop using the ones that don’t.

You begin choosing the environments where you don’t have to spend quite so much energy managing yourself.

You decline the invitation, then the next one and the next one…

You work from home because it is easier. You stay home because it is easier.

Eventually, staying home is the only option that feels manageable.

I think that the tricky thing is that every individual decision may have made perfect sense at the time, yet the problem is not any one decision as such. It is what happens when there are fewer and fewer alternatives that meet your needs.

And so, comfort can become a defensive retreat, because the rest of the world has become increasingly difficult to inhabit.

A safe space is enormously valuable. It is where the nervous system finally gets to come down from the constant work of anticipating, adapting and responding. It is where someone can completely be themselves without having to explain or justify every preference. For me, having my own safe space is non-negotiable and the place where I keep my boundaries firmly.

So what happens when that space becomes the only space in which someone can function? In my opinion, that is a very different kind of comfort. Yes, it may still feel safe, but it is no longer necessarily experienced as a choice. There is a difference between I prefer to be here and I can only manage to be here. Even though, from the outside, they can look remarkably similar, the experience itself and the way it feels are completely different. The context in which this is happening has changed.

Think about it this way: someone who chooses to spend most of their time at home may be perfectly content. They may have friendships, interests, work, community and connection that all happen from that space. In contrast, someone else may be spending most of their time at home because everywhere else has become too difficult to access. Same comfort zone, different context and lived experience.

I guess this is one of the reasons why I am wary of the idea that people just need to be pushed out of their comfort zones. If only it were that simple…

If someone’s world has become very small, pushing them further out into an environment they already experience as overwhelming doesn’t make their world bigger. In fact, it can make them retreat further.

Essentially, the more frightening the outside becomes, the more precious the inside becomes and eventually that safe space has to carry everything…

Recovery happens there.

Connection happens there.

Work happens there.

Entertainment happens there.

Identity happens there.

Safety happens there.

Let me be clear by saying that there is nothing inherently wrong with a life that is home-centred. The issue is what happens when the person no longer has meaningful access to anything else. At that point comfort has changed its meaning and becomes refuge, workplace, social world, recovery space and protective barrier all at once.

The important part of discussion isn’t how much time they spend at home but whether they still have a choice.

Perhaps that is where comfort can become restrictive? Not when we enjoy it too much, but when our options slowly begin to disappear?

A genuinely comfortable life can contain quite a lot of variety. You can have your favourite things and still try something new. You can have routines and still change them when you want to. You can have a safe home and still feel able to leave it. You can know exactly where you feel most comfortable without feeling that everywhere else is completely inaccessible.

Comfort becomes something different when the familiar is no longer one option amongst many, but the only option that feels possible.

I think the word cage can be useful here, although maybe not in the way we usually mean it. A cage doesn’t have to be an unpleasant place, does it? It can be somewhere warm, familiar, filled with everything you love and where you feel completely yourself.

The problem is that you cannot leave it and that is what makes this so complicated, because if we describe someone’s comfort as a cage, there is a temptation to assume that the answer is to get them out of it, challenge the routines, remove the familiar, introduce more novelty or encourage more exposure to the outside world.

However, if the comfort is the thing making life manageable, taking it away isn’t necessarily going to create freedom in the way we expect it to.

The answer, then, cannot be about making comfort less comfortable as a pervasive encouragement to leave a place.

Surely, it has to be about making the world outside that comfort more accessible and creating more environments that genuinely feel safe enough to inhabit and so, little by little, the number of places where you can exist can comfortably increase.

I also want to mention the vulnerability that comes with having only one safe place…

If that place disappears, changes or becomes unavailable, there is nowhere else to go. If the one person you can communicate with isn’t available, communication can become impossible. If the one routine that works is disrupted, the whole day can unravel. If the one environment where you feel comfortable is no longer accessible, the world can feel as though it has disappeared with it.

We need more safe spaces, more comfort zones, more routes through the world, more ways of communicating, more environments where people can feel at ease, more relationships without performance.

Comfort itself isn’t the cage.

The cage is what happens when the world outside it becomes so inaccessible that there is nowhere else to go.

Join me on the 30th of September at 7:30pm BST for a live session where we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice.

We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

* * recording included with every ticket

Secure your space here.

⭐ The PDA Summit is back again this year and the theme is “Capacity & Capability”. The summit runs from the 1st to the 4th of October and if you are interested in joining, please click on this affiliate link to secure your space. (* by using this link I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.) My session “Who decides what someone’s capacity is?” takes place on Friday the 2nd.

⭐ AuDHD Intensive (on 29th and 30th September 2026) is two online days built entirely around that intersection. Use the code Brilliant10 for 10% off the ticket price. My session will look at AuDHD as a synchronous symbiotic relationship.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

A person might be avoiding a workplace because the environment is exhausting. A child might be avoiding school because the demands placed on them have become overwhelming. Someone might repeatedly cancel social plans because the particular way those plans happen leaves them depleted for days afterwards. Someone might avoid answering the phone because a spontaneous conversation requires a kind of processing and social interpretation that a message does not.

This is what avoidance looks like, right? It certainly shows us that the person is moving away from something, but that doesn’t tell us very much about what is happening underneath. It’s telling us what someone is doing but not why.

A comfort zone is not necessarily a sanctuary of stagnation… it can be a place of metabolic safety. It is somewhere the demands on the system are sufficiently predictable, manageable or familiar that energy can be spent on something other than simply getting through the experience.

This is one of the reasons why the idea that we should constantly be pushing ourselves outside our comfort zones is way too simplistic. Sometimes we need challenge. Sometimes challenge is exciting, meaningful and exactly what we are looking for. But challenge is not the same thing as distress, and discomfort is not automatically evidence that growth is happening. (read more about the difference between chosen challenge and imposed distress)

There is a difference between choosing something difficult because it matters to you and being repeatedly exposed to something that overwhelms you because other people have decided that tolerating it will make you stronger.

I believe this distinction becomes rather important when we think about avoidance.

Avoidance has acquired a remarkably negative reputation. We talk about people avoiding things as though they have made a poor choice, as though the correct response to discomfort is always to move towards it. Yet avoidance is one of the most basic ways a human being protects themselves. We move away from things that hurt us, overwhelm us, frighten us, exhaust us or demand more from us than we currently have available and I do not see how there is anything inherently dysfunctional about that.

In fact, sometimes avoidance is a sign that a person’s internal warning system is working very well indeed.

I guess, the difficulty comes when we judge the response without considering what produced it. Again, the doing without the why.

I really do think we need to become much more interested in what avoidance is telling us.

If someone repeatedly avoids a particular situation, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have discovered something that needs to be overcome. It might mean that there is something about that situation that we need to understand.

What happens there?

What does it ask for?

What does it cost?

What has happened previously?

What changes when the person has more control?

What happens when they don’t avoid it?

Sometimes the answers will tell us that the person is frightened of something they genuinely want to be able to do. In that situation, avoidance might be keeping their world smaller than they would like, and support might involve finding ways to make that experience more manageable.

But sometimes the person genuinely doesn’t want to do the thing, or the environment really is a poor fit, or the demand really is too high. Other times, the person has already tried, repeatedly, and the experience has consistently cost more than it has given back.

So, in this context, what we call avoidance is actually the only boundary available to someone who has very little control over the situation, which matters, because we can become so focused on removing the avoidance that we forget to ask what function it is serving.

If staying home means someone can recover enough energy to engage with their family, removing that option without changing anything else may leave them even more exhausted.

If cancelling a social event prevents someone from reaching the point of shutdown, persuading them to attend doesn’t teach resilience but rather their limits will be ignored.

If a child refuses school because school has become an overwhelming experience, getting them through the school gates may change the attendance figures without changing the experience that made them refuse in the first place.

Are we then solving anything? Making someone’s experience more meaningful? Or are we adding gasoline to an already roaring fire?

This is where the language of resilience becomes particularly interesting. We tend to measure resilience by how well someone continues in difficult circumstances, but there is another way of looking at it. Resilience is not just the ability to tolerate more and more but the ability to recognise that something is costing too much and respond accordingly.

There is wisdom in knowing when to step back.

There is wisdom in choosing the environment in which you function best.

There is wisdom in recognising that you cannot recover indefinitely from experiences that continually drain you.

On the flip side, of course, avoidance can become restrictive… That is important too. Something that begins as protection can eventually become a limitation, particularly when fear or previous negative experiences make it increasingly difficult to approach things that someone genuinely wants in their life. The world can indeed become smaller…

But even then, I don’t think the answer is to treat avoidance as the enemy.

If someone is avoiding something they desperately want to be able to do, the avoidance is telling us that something is getting in the way.

Maybe they need more predictability or the environment needs to change. Perhaps they need a way of leaving without consequence, more recovery time, different communication, a trusted person alongside them, or a different way into the experience altogether.

Potentially though, once we actually listen, we realise that this isn’t something they want?! That possibility matters too, doesn’t it?

I mean, we tend to assume that the purpose of support is to make people capable of participating in the things that other people consider important. However, a genuinely supportive environment should also leave room for people to decide what is important to them.

Not every “no” needs to become a “yes”.

Not every preference for familiarity is evidence of a life that needs expanding.

What if avoidance is telling us that we need to pay attention? Really pay attention. That’s ridiculously useful.

It might be telling us that the person needs rest, that the environment isn’t working or that the demands have exceeded their available resources. It might be telling us that something happened that we haven’t quite understood, that the person doesn’t feel safe or that they have made a choice about where they want to spend their limited energy.

We don’t have to celebrate every form of avoidance to recognise that it is not inherently bad. I think the problem is that we have become so accustomed to asking people to tolerate the world as it is that we have forgotten to consider what the world is asking of them.

So, before we decide that someone needs to leave their comfort zone, we should make sure we understand what their comfort zone is actually protecting them from.

Join me on the 30th of September at 7:30pm BST for a live session where we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice.

We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

* * recording included with every ticket

Secure your space here.

⭐ The PDA Summit is back again this year and the theme is “Capacity & Capability”. The summit runs from the 1st to the 4th of October and if you are interested in joining, please click on this affiliate link to secure your space. (* by using this link I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

This 4-day online event brings you 27 speakers with an incredible amount of knowledge and passion for PDA support. The summit runs from the 1st to the 4th of October and if you are interested in joining, please click on this affiliate link to secure your space. (* by using this link I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

My session “Who gets to decide what someone’s capacity is?” looks at things like the observable myth, invisible barriers, access & the price of compliance and more. I am so happy to take part this year and I hope you will join us.

Also, a gentle reminder, that September’s webinar is taking place at the end of the month. “What if we made the world bigger?” is a session where we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice. We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

We describe it as something pleasant, something we seek because it makes us feel good, which of course is true, however comfort is doing considerably more than that.

So rather than it just being a feeling, which can be a temporary sensation, I’d like to look at comfort as a state - a condition that sustains that feeling over time if you will.

What does comfort actually do for us? One of the most important things is giving us some of our resources back.

Sometimes comfort is the moment your shoulders drop without you consciously telling them to. It is realising you have stopped monitoring the room. It is no longer rehearsing what you are going to say before you say it, or wondering whether you are standing too close or too far, talking too much, talking too little, looking in the right direction, or responding in the right way. It is opening the front door and immediately knowing where everything is. It is being with someone who already understands that silence isn't a problem. It is putting on the same clothes you have worn a hundred times because you don't have to negotiate with your body about them. It is knowing what happens next and in which order.

None of these things look significant from the outside, however the amount of work required to simply exist has decreased, allowing us to direct our somewhat replenished resources towards something more enjoyable and meaningful to us.

Think about how we rarely notice how much energy uncertainty consumes until it disappears…

When we don’t know what is going to happen, part of us remains alert, always. When an environment is unpredictable, we scan it. When a relationship feels conditional, we monitor ourselves. When sensory input is difficult to process, our attention is diverted towards managing it.

None of this feels like conscious effort, or at least not every single time, which is exactly what makes it so easy to underestimate.

I think this is one of the reasons why comfort matters so much for neurodivergent people. A lot of environments we navigate every single day demand an enormous amount of adaptation, needing far more invisible work than anyone else can appreciate. The difficulty here is not necessarily that someone cannot cope with the environment. It may just be that coping requires them to do far more work than anyone else can see.

Comfort reduces that work by creating a space in which fewer things need to be anticipated, interpreted, suppressed, translated, or endured. When that happens, attention can move outward. Instead of spending energy managing the environment, you can actually experience it. Instead of concentrating on how you are coming across, you can listen to what someone is saying. Instead of calculating what might happen next, you can become curious about what is happening now. I guess, comfort then allows you to be more present in ways that are meaningful to you.

Comfort creates room, and that room matters because human beings cannot remain indefinitely in a state of hyper-adaptation. We need somewhere to put down the things we are carrying, particularly when daily life demands continuous performance. There are spaces where we are expected to be productive, sociable, responsive, flexible, professional, attentive, and emotionally appropriate which is understandable since sometimes that performance is necessary. But if every environment asks us to modify ourselves, eventually there has to be somewhere we do not have to.

Being continually interpreted and wondering how you are being perceived is intensely exhausting.

Comfort interrupts that by creating a temporary suspension of the relentless internal pressure to get everything right. The things that make us comfortable are not really arbitrary preferences but ways of recognising ourselves.

The music we return to. The clothes we choose. The food we make repeatedly. The interests we disappear into. The routines that give shape to our days. The people with whom we feel safe. All these things then become anchors of familiarity in the daily chaos of life.

It feels really powerful to return to something that feels like you, doesn’t it? Comfort offers the experience of something that is yours, a place where you don’t have to defend anything or explain time and time again why something matters to you.

For me, that homecoming is so very restorative and this restoration is precisely another thing comfort gives us.

A lot of people imagine rest as the absence of activity, which for busy brains like mine can have the opposite effect. I can’t just do nothing in the real sense of the word, but rather something that asks very little of me - cue comfort.

When a busy brain tries to do nothing, the silence just makes all the background noise louder. So I guess, rest, in this context, is giving it something so easy to process that it can finally relax.

Returning to a familiar show, a favourite book, or a spot you know by heart gives you a break because there are no surprises and since you already know how it ends, your brain doesn’t have to stay on high alert. Simple, repetitive tasks like tinkering in the garden or folding laundry do just enough to keep your hands busy and quiet the mental chatter, without asking for any real brainpower or decision-making. Add in a physical comfort, like a hot drink or a cosy seat, and you’re pulled out of your head and back into the room. Comfort here means setting the bar so low for a little while that your brain can finally catch its breath.

Point is, that there is quite the difference between inactivity and restoration as the latter actually gives something back.

It’s also important to acknowledge the fact that comfort needs agency.

A comfortable environment is one in which we have some control. If you have no control over what happens next, safety remains out of reach. Comfort cannot always be provided from the outside; it must include the autonomy to decide, to stop, to return, and to be yourself without consequence. (read more about The difference between chosen challenge and imposed distress)

Perhaps this is why comfort can feel so different from person to person. There is no universal list of things that should make someone comfortable, right?

The same environment that feels wonderfully stimulating to one person might be exhausting to another. The same routine that feels reassuring to one person might suffocate somebody else. One person may find conversation engaging, another may need silence. One person may feel safest knowing exactly what will happen, another may find too much structure constraining. And so on…

Essentially, comfort isn’t a formula... It is a relationship between a person and their environment and that relationship changes.

What comforts us when we are depleted may not be what we want when we have capacity. What feels revitalising after an overwhelming day might feel boring on a different day. Sometimes we want familiarity. Sometimes we want novelty. And that’s absolutely fine as we are allowed to change our minds and adapt based on our fluctuating capacity and needs.

All this being said, comfort should not be confused with avoidance. A person choosing the familiar isn’t necessarily refusing the unfamiliar. This feels very black and white and clear cut which doesn’t really reflect someone’s internal reality as they are deciding what their nervous system needs right in that moment.

What does comfort tell us? What is it providing? What disappears when it is taken away? What becomes possible when it is present?

Trying to answer these questions takes us somewhere much more useful than asking whether someone is too comfortable. It opens the door to a very nuanced conversation about energy, capacity, agency, autonomy and having one’s needs met.

Join me on the 30th of September at 7:30pm BST for a live session where we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice.

We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

Secure your space here.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

Somewhere along the way, comfort became synonymous with complacency and staying where things are familiar became evidence of stagnation. We keep being told that growth lives elsewhere… Somewhere beyond the comfort zone, on the other side of fear, waiting for those brave enough to push through.

It is such a familiar idea that we rarely stop to question it. Painful admittance, isn’t it?

We encourage children to step outside their comfort zones. We praise adults for doing difficult things despite discomfort. We speak admiringly about resilience, grit and the ability to tolerate uncertainty. Discomfort has become almost virtuous in itself, while comfort is treated with suspicion. Too much of it, might apparently stop us growing.

The issue I have with this line of thinking is that it assumes that all discomfort is created equal.

It isn’t.

There is a fundamental difference between choosing to stretch yourself from a position of safety and being pushed into distress because you have no other option. One can create the conditions for exploration. The other can leave a person trying to survive.

Unfortunately, from the outside, these experiences can look remarkably similar.

Imagine two people walking into the same crowded event. Both may feel anxious, both may find the noise overwhelming and both may feel uncertain about what to expect.

Yet the conditions surrounding their experiences could not be more different.

One person chose to go. They know what the evening will involve and have arranged their own transport so they can leave whenever they want. They have brought whatever they need to make the environment more manageable and know that someone familiar will be there. Tomorrow has been left deliberately quiet to rest.

The other person has been told they have to attend. They do not know how long it will last, leaving early would have consequences and they are already exhausted before they arrive since they have no control over the sensory environment or social expectations they are about to come up against.

So you see, the activity is identical, however the experience is not.

This is what gets lost when we reduce everything to the question of whether someone is willing to step outside their comfort zone. We focus on what a person is doing without paying enough attention to the conditions under which they are doing it.

Challenge involves agency, right? It means having some degree of choice over whether to engage, how far to go and when enough is enough. It means being able to approach something unfamiliar knowing that support is available if things become too much and that retreat remains possible at any point.

This is freedom. Freedom in knowing you can stop or leave and ironically, that freedom can sometimes make it easier to continue.

When people feel trapped, discomfort quickly becomes distress. The nervous system is no longer responding to novelty alone but to the absence of escape, control or safety. What might otherwise have been a manageable stretch becomes something to endure which is most definitely not the same as growing.

This distinction matters for neurodivergent people, who are too often expected to tolerate environments that have never been designed with their needs in mind. Sensory discomfort is dismissed as something to get used to, social exhaustion is described as a lack of confidence, the need for predictability becomes rigidity and inevitable withdrawal becomes avoidance.

So, before encouraging someone to push through discomfort, perhaps we should ask what exactly we are asking them to push through. Note to say, that there is nothing inherently wrong with pushing oneself, but the context under which this happens matters.

There is a difference between the understandable uncertainty of trying something new and sensory pain. Between nervousness before a meaningful challenge and chronic overload. Between learning to tolerate imperfection and being repeatedly placed in situations where authentic communication is impossible. Between expanding someone’s world and teaching them that their distress will not be taken seriously.

All these things cannot be collapsed into one category called discomfort.

For neurodivergent people, the pressure to keep pushing through has consequences that are not immediately visible. A child may continue attending school or an adult turning up to work, participating in social situations and meeting external expectations. To the observer this translates as them being resilient, however participation does not tell us what participation costs.

A person can be functioning while overwhelmed. They can be successful while exhausted. They can appear to have coped while spending every available resource on getting through.

I think it’s safe to say that what we sometimes call resilience is survival with good public relations.

The traditional idea of the comfort zone suggests that growth requires us to move away from safety. Have we considered that this may be backwards?

Think about exploration for a moment. We are most willing to explore when there is somewhere safe to return to. A child ventures further when they know their parent is nearby. We take risks when failure is survivable. We try unfamiliar things when we trust that we can pause, stop altogether or ask for help if necessary.

So, isn’t safety what makes exploration possible?

For the context of this conversation, comfort, then, is not necessarily the place where growth stops but rather the secure base from which growth begins.

This does not mean that comfort should become the only place we ever inhabit. There are certainly times when familiarity can become restrictive, when fear narrows our worlds and when the things that once protected us begin to contain us.

Even here though, the answer is not necessarily to tear away the refuge.

If someone’s world has become very small, we need to understand why.

What has made everything beyond those boundaries feel impossible? What demands have become too costly? What environments have repeatedly communicated that participation requires pain, performance or the suppression of identity? Why has the world outside become an unsafe place to exist?

When someone’s comfort zone shrinks, it is easy to blame them for staying inside it while ignoring the friction that drove them there. We picture growth as a person standing at the edge of a cliff, being urged to jump into the unknown.

Instead of demanding they jump, what if we made the unknown less hostile?

We can build comfort portability. We can increase predictability, lower sensory demands, honour alternative ways of communicating, integrate recovery directly into participation, and preserve genuine agency. When safety travels with a person, their world expands naturally.

I’m led to believe that this is where the comfort zone metaphor has led us astray for so long. We imagine comfort as a fixed circle around a person, something they must eventually escape if they want to grow.

But comfort is not fixed, is it? It can expand. It can move. It can exist in new places, relationships and experiences.

The goal should never be to make people comfortable with distress, nor should it be to demand that they become increasingly tolerant of environments that harm them.

The goal should be to create enough safety that exploration becomes possible, because there is a monumental difference between stretching and surviving.

One has us ask ourselves what might happen if I try, whereas the other one asks how do I get through it, whatever “it” may be.

We should know which question someone is being forced to answer before congratulating them for stepping outside their comfort zone.

Join me on the 30th of September at 7:30pm BST for a live session where we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice.

We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

Secure your space here.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am, browse a catalogue of resources and check out available training and upcoming events.

So, without further ado, here is what I have planned for the next three months:

September’s webinar is called “What if we made the world bigger? Rethinking comfort, growth and neurodivergent wellbeing.” In this session, we will explore comfort as safety, regulation, recovery, identity and connection, while examining what happens when inaccessible environments make comfort a refuge rather than a choice.

We’ll challenge assumptions about avoidance, resilience and “pushing through”, and consider how we can move beyond asking people to tolerate more towards creating environments where they can safely do more.

October’s webinar is called “Connection has many languages - Rethinking how we recognise connection.” We will explore six different languages of connection and challenge narrow, neuro-normative ideas about what relationships should look like. Together, we’ll look at how connection can be recognised beyond words, behaviour and performance and what becomes possible when we learn to meet people where connection already exists.

November’s webinar is called “Who says it has to happen in that order? Why the space between the steps matters.” We will look at why we are so attached to linear ways of doing things, when sequences can become barriers rather than support, and what happens when we make space for different routes, rhythms and ways of reaching the same goal.

As always, all ticket holders will gain access to the recording and handout.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am and browse a catalogue of resources.

Things I want to do.

Things I want to start.

Things I want to finish.

Things I want to try.

Things I want to learn.

Things I want to make.

Things I want to change.

Things I suddenly realise could be connected to something else I’ve been thinking about for the last three weeks.

Take today for instance, where I had the bright ideas of learning BSL (British Sign Language), writing a book, developing a six week program, teaching myself another language, finishing the three projects I started and redecorating the house.

Honestly, sometimes, it’s fucking brilliant. The ideas are exciting. The connections are exciting. The possibilities are exciting. Everything is exciting really, and I can see what something could become before I’ve even started it.

The problem, however, inevitably comes afterwards, because eventually I have to do something with all of it and that is the moment where things can become considerably more complicated.

I start trying to make sense of the ideas. I research what I need. I look at what already exists. I work out what I’m missing. I think about how I could structure it. I consider the different directions I could take and then I try to make a plan aaaaaand… I freeze.

I freeze precisely because I can see too many possible ways of doing it, and suddenly I don’t know what to finish first, or where to start, or which idea deserves my attention, or whether the idea I’ve chosen is actually the best one.

Then the doubts arrive… My least favourite part.

Maybe it’s not good enough.

Maybe it’s not original enough.

Maybe somebody else has already said it.

Maybe I should approach it differently.

Maybe there’s something I’ve missed.

Maybe I need to do more research first.

Maybe I should work on that other idea instead.

Maybe that one is more important.

Maybe this one has more potential.

Maybe… maybe… maybe!

And so, before I’ve even put proverbial pen to paper, I’ve turned a relatively straightforward task into an enormous cognitive exercise in choosing, evaluating, prioritising, sequencing and predicting.

That is analysis paralysis. I do think there is another layer to it as well though, that is particularly relevant to neurodivergent experience: over-ideation.

The problem here isn’t necessarily too little focus, au contraire in fact. We talk about focus as though it is an on/off switch. You either have it or you don’t. You are focused or you are distracted. We do know though, that focus doesn’t really work that way.

Executive functions are involved in things like holding information in mind, inhibiting responses, shifting attention, planning and regulating behaviour towards a goal. These processes are particularly relevant to ADHD, although difficulties vary considerably between individuals and aren’t exclusive to ADHD.

So someone like me, can have an enormous capacity for attention while struggling with where that attention goes, when it shifts, what gets prioritised and how an intention becomes an action.

That distinction matters to me, because I can focus. I just don’t always have much control over the direction of my focus and that can look very different from what people expect when they hear the word unfocused, right?

Some brains are particularly good at making connections. One thought leads to another, one piece of information connects to something else, a problem suggests a possible solution, that solution suggests another question, that question opens up another possibility and so forth.

The ability to generate lots of ideas isn’t inherently a problem. In fact, idea generation is an important part of creativity. The difficulty comes when generation doesn’t naturally switch into selection.

Coming up with ideas and choosing an idea are different cognitive processes. Developing an idea is different again, completing an idea is different again and the transition between them isn’t necessarily automatic.

You can be exceptionally good at generating possibilities while finding the process of narrowing those possibilities down, incredibly difficult. That strength becomes part of the difficulty while your brain keeps producing possibilities faster than you can turn them into completed things.

Imagine starting with one intention: I want to write this article.

That sounds manageable, yes? Then the thinking begins…

What is the argument?

What’s the strongest angle?

What research supports it?

What has already been written?

How can I make it useful?

What examples should I use?

Should it be personal?

Should it be evidence-based?

Could this become a talk?

Could it become a workshop?

Could there be a second article?

Is there another concept hiding underneath this one?

You’re now way past the point of attempting to write an article since you’re trying to resolve a whole series of questions that your brain has generated around said article.

And every question creates another decision, every decision creates another possibility, every possibility creates another thing to evaluate. Eventually, the cognitive load of deciding how to begin becomes greater than the original task itself.

One of the hardest parts can be accepting that there may not be a single objectively correct place to start or something to do. When you can see multiple possibilities, choosing one can feel like making a commitment.

“If I choose this direction, I’m not choosing that one. If I spend today writing this, I’m not working on the other thing. If I commit to this structure, I might discover later that another structure would have been better.”

So instead of moving forward with an imperfect decision, you keep trying to make the decision better, even though you eventually accumulate so much information that the decision hasn’t become easier at all.

Then, to add insult to injury, perfectionism joins the party - uninvited may I add.

I think this might be the moment that the experience can become particularly painful, because once you’ve generated a huge number of possibilities, you can also become acutely aware of everything that could be wrong with each one.

What if it isn’t good enough?

What if it isn’t original?

What if someone has already done it better?

What if I’ve misunderstood something?

What if I produce something and people don’t find it useful?

What if I could have made it better?

The irony is that the more possibilities you can see, the more opportunities you can also see for imperfection and so creation can become evaluation before creation has even happened.

You aren’t even writing yet. You’re reviewing the thing you haven’t written. You’re anticipating criticism of an idea that exists primarily in your head. You’re trying to solve problems that may never actually happen. You’re attempting to optimise something that hasn’t been made.

And then cue the self-blame, which is perhaps the most frustrating part.

You know you can do it. You know you’re capable. You have done difficult things before. You know the subject. You have the skills. You have the knowledge. You may even have enormous motivation to do the thing.

… eventually you have to give yourself a metaphorical kick up the arse and remind yourself:

I know this.

I can do this.

I’m good at this.

I don’t need to have everything figured out before I start.

Sometimes that works, until the next time when it doesn’t and then you’re annoyed with yourself all over again. There is a huge amount of cognitive activity happening, right?

If the problem isn’t an absence of thought, what is it then? It can be an excess of thought without enough effective filtering, prioritising and sequencing.

Point is that focus and direction are not the same thing. This is the bit I wish we talked about more. You, like me, can be highly attentive and still struggle with attentional control. You can be capable of sustained concentration and still struggle to decide what deserves that concentration. You can become so absorbed in something and still struggle to disengage from it when something else becomes more important. You can have great intellectual curiosity and still struggle to convert that curiosity into a manageable sequence of actions.

This may mean that the cognitive processes required to direct, organise and regulate the abilities you possess aren’t consistently available in the same way.

Oh, you can be overwhelmed by things you actually want to do, which can be difficult for other people to understand. Why would you be overwhelmed by things you’re excited about?! Well, maybe because excitement can generate more cognitive activity. A genuinely interesting idea can lead to more questions, more possibilities and more connections.

The things you care about may become some of the things that generate the greatest amount of mental activity, meaning you want to do x so much that your brain has already started doing seventeen other things with it.

By the time you are ready to act, the original idea has become buried underneath everything your brain has built around it.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having a brain that generates possibilities!

I don’t want this to become another neurodivergent deficit narrative, because there is something genuinely valuable in being able to see possibilities… to make unusual connections, to ask questions other people haven’t thought of, to become intensely interested in something, to see how one idea could develop into another, to notice patterns, to imagine what something could become. It’s magic!

So no, I don’t think that the issue here is that there is nothing to focus on, but rather that there is far too much, all at once.

And this my friends, is how I exhaust myself on a daily basis…

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

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We might get a response like “I’m fine.” “Good, thanks.” “Not too bad.” “I’m okay.” or maybe just an acknowledging nod… and the conversation moves on.

Occasionally though, “I’m fine” isn’t really a description of how someone feels and that’s what I would like to explore in this article.

Sometimes it can be a script, a placeholder or the only answer available. And other times, quite genuinely, the person just doesn’t know yet.

“I’m fine” as a script

We learned very early that “How are you?” is more of a social ritual rather than a request for a comprehensive emotional report, as I have mentioned at the start.

Someone asks, we answer, they answer, we move on.

There are rules to this exchange that are rarely explicitly taught but are nevertheless widely understood. It sounds something like…

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

And that’s it. The end.

For some, this is effortless and almost mechanical. The words just fly out of the mouth without even thinking.

However, for someone who has spent years consciously learning social expectations, a question like “How are you?” can be understood primarily as a social prompt, which doesn’t necessarily register as a request for sharing what it happening internally, but rather this being the part where you say you’re fine.

That doesn’t automatically mean the person is masking distress as they might actually be fine. The important point is that the answer may be functioning as part of a social script rather than serving as an accurate emotional assessment.

Sometimes that’s exactly what the person needs it to do, because it keeps the interaction predictable, it gives them a known response and it allows the conversation to continue without needing an unexpected dive into their internal world.

And that’s enough.

“I’m fine” as a placeholder

Sometimes “I’m fine” means I don’t know yet. Of course this doesn’t literally mean nothing is happening, but the person being asked hasn’t quite worked out what is happening.

Emotions aren’t always immediately identifiable for everyone, particularly for those experiencing alexithymia, meaning something can happen and leave a person feeling something without giving them an obvious label for it.

Are they upset? Overwhelmed? Angry? Embarrassed? Anxious? Exhausted Disappointed? Overstimulated? All of the above? None of the above? (insert head exploding emoji here!)

Needless to say, the answer doesn’t arrive immediately. If someone is to ask, “How are you?” shortly after something difficult has happened, the honest answer may genuinely be I don’t know. This may feel like an incomplete answer, so “I’m fine” fills the space. It buys time and it allows the person to carry on while their brain catches up with their experience.

At times, the emotional processing happens later and suddenly the person might have a light bulb moment! This shows that the feeling wasn’t absent as such, it just hadn’t been fully understood yet at the point of the question.

“I’m fine” as processing time

There is also a difference between having an experience and having language for that experience. You can know that something feels wrong without knowing how to explain why.

You can feel overwhelmed without being able to identify the source. You can know you need to leave without being able to construct a coherent explanation of what has become too much and so on.

In these moments, being asked to explain yourself can make that harder, because now you’re also expected to work out what you feel, why you feel it, put it into words, decide which words are appropriate, explain them to another person, answer their follow-up questions, and process their response.

All of that is too much. So, “I’m fine.” removes all the unnecessary cognitive labour and extra processing.

“I’m fine” as protection

In some contexts, “I’m fine” means I don’t have the capacity to explain this right now.

There are times when you know exactly what is wrong and still don’t want to talk about it, so the protection is in place as a firm boundary.

The lack of current capacity can be due to various reasons. Perhaps you’re exhausted. Perhaps you’re already overwhelmed. Perhaps talking about it will make the feelings bigger. Perhaps you know that once you start explaining, there will be questions.

What happened?

Why did that upset you?

What do you mean?

But why didn’t you say something?

Are you sure that’s what they meant?

What are you going to do about it?

One question can become ten or a hundred and something that initially required very little communication can suddenly become a conversation that demands significant emotional, cognitive and social energy.

So, in this case, “I’m fine” is the quickest way to prevent that escalation and it means that right now is not the right time.

“I’m fine” as uncertainty

Alexithymia, as I touched on above, is described as difficulty identifying and describing emotions, which of course isn’t synonymous with being emotionless, uncaring or lacking empathy. In fact, someone can experience emotions intensely while struggling to identify exactly what they’re experiencing.

In this situation, the body may know before the mind has the words, meaning you may know that something has changed without knowing what the change means so identifying the emotional state itself is genuinely difficult.

So if you’re asked “How are you?” you may genuinely not know and “I’m fine” may be the closest available response.

This is important because we assume, willingly or unwillingly, that if someone cannot tell us what they’re feeling, they must lack emotional awareness, which is not the case at all. Emotional awareness is not lacking, it has to be discovered and that takes time.

“I’m fine” as exhaustion

There is also a difference between capacity to experience and capacity to communicate.

You can be completely overwhelmed and still be unable to explain that overwhelm.

In fact, the more depleted you are, the less capacity you may have for the very communication that would help someone else understand what is happening.

Imagine having spent an entire day processing noise, movement, conversations, decisions, unexpected changes, sensory input and social expectations. Someone then asks “How are you?” and so, the honest answer might involve explaining all of that, which of course requires energy.

Here, “I’m fine” can just mean I have nothing spare right now.

It may actually be easier to give the expected answer than to open a conversation that needs another substantial expenditure of energy.

“I’m fine” as masking

Masking can look like saying the socially expected thing, for example, saying “I’m fine” because that’s what people say when someone asks how they are.

In fairness, there are instances when it is quite useful. Not every interaction needs to become an emotional exposure, not everyone needs or should have access to your internal state and you are allowed to have private experiences.

I guess the problem comes when the script behind the mask becomes so automatic that there is no space left for the actual answer or when other people assume that the scripted answer means they now know everything there is to know.

“I’m fine” as literalism

I mean, maybe things are objectively fine even though the person isn't feeling fine? This matters too.

Sometimes you are having a difficult day but still consider yourself fine. Maybe something mildly annoying happened and you don’t feel the need to discuss it. Perhaps you’re tired, but you’re okay. Other times you don’t want to turn an ordinary interaction into a serious conversation.

And sometimes… you just don’t want to talk about your feelings and that’s allowed.

There can be a strange danger in becoming too determined to uncover the real answer, whatever that means. If we decide that every “I’m fine” is secretly a cry for help, we can end up overriding someone’s own communication. The point is that “I’m fine” shouldn’t be interrogated, but rather understood as a phrase with more than one possible meaning.

We don’t expect someone to provide a perfect emotional analysis in real time, yet we can treat them as though they should. This is where good intentions can become another demand.

Someone says “I’m fine.” and we respond with a barrage of questions and exclamations…

“Are you sure?”

“Really?”

“You can talk to me!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Come on! I know something is wrong.”

This whole exchange has now gotten to the point where the person is no longer answering a question - the question. They are being asked to defend their answer. They have to prove that they’re okay, or prove that they’re not. They have to provide an explanation they don’t have or disclose something they weren’t ready to disclose. They have to manage another person’s concern while already struggling to manage themselves.

This doesn’t mean we should never check in again, because there are moments where a different environment, context or circumstance might offer a different response.

What it does mean is that we can leave a door open without pushing someone through it.

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“If you want to talk later, I’m here.”

There is a tendency to think that caring means looking beneath the surface and sometimes it does, but caring can also mean respecting what someone has told you.

If someone says they’re fine, you don’t have to decide whether they’re really fine. You can take the answer as it is and leave room for it to change.

“How are you?” is a surprisingly broad question, isn’t it? And we tend to think of communication as a direct transfer of information.

I ask how you are, you tell me how you are, I now know. Easy, right? Maybe, but human communication is messier than that. Sometimes we don’t know yet or we know but can’t explain or we can explain but don’t have the capacity or we don’t want to explain…

Sometimes we’re using a familiar script or we’re protecting ourselves, or we’re masking or we’re genuinely fine or we will only understand how we felt after we’ve had enough space to feel it…

So the next time someone says “I’m fine.”, we should just make room for the possibility that fine means exactly what they need it to mean in that moment. The important thing is that the person saying it gets to decide when and whether there is more to say.

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Going out usually starts before you consciously decide that you're going out as there is a lot of information to process…

Where are we going?

How long will we be there?

Who will be there?

How are we getting there?

What happens if something changes?

What do I need to take?

What am I going to wear?

Will I be hungry?

Will there be somewhere quiet?

Will I need to talk to people?

Will I be expected to make conversation?

What happens if I’m late?

What happens if we’re early?

What happens if the place is unexpectedly busy?

Admittedly, these kinds of questions do not register for everyone, but for those for which they do, they create a significant amount of cognitive load. And even though this might sound like there is a lack of certainty, sometimes it’s just lack of sufficient information…

Where?

For how long?

Doing what?

With whom?

When are we coming back?

What should I bring?

What is expected of me?

The going out plan might feel perfectly straightforward to the person suggesting it, but it may not feel as undemanding to the person trying to construct it in their head.

Then there is the transition of stopping what you are already doing… This really matters, because you can be deeply engaged in something at home and then suddenly be expected to abandon it because it’s time to leave. Attention has momentum. So does an activity and so does a nervous system. If you’ve been reading, gaming, working, watching something, creating something, researching something or just existing comfortably in a familiar environment, moving from that state into an entirely different environment requires an enormous shift.

For some it can be as effortless as sit → stand → leave.

But for others the process itself is far more intricate than we realise: engaged → interrupt → stop → save → remember where you were → reorient → work out what's happening → prepare → dress → gather belongings → regulate → leave.

So, even though the distance between the sofa and the front door is two feet, the cognitive distance feels like two hundred feet.

Getting dressed is also part of going out. Easy peasy, they say! Is it though?

Clothing isn’t as neutral as it might seem. A particular fabric might feel unbearable today. A waistband might suddenly be too tight. A label might become impossible to ignore. Something that was comfortable yesterday might feel completely wrong today. Temperature matters. Texture matters. Pressure matters. Patterns and fastenings matter. How clothing sits against the body matters.

And then to top it all off, decision making enters the room…

What is appropriate for where we’re going?

What will the weather be like?

Will I be too hot?

Will I be too cold?

Will I need a coat?

What if I take it and then don’t need it?

What if I don’t take it and then do?

All of this means that something other people experience as background information may be occupying a significant amount of attention for others. And if you’re already close to capacity, another sensory demand can be the thing that tips you over the edge.

“It’s only a quick trip!” Well, quick describes duration not demand.

For example, a quick 30 minute outing can involve getting ready, leaving the house, finding transport or parking, navigating a busy environment, finding what you need, making decisions, speaking to someone, paying, remembering where you left your belongings, managing unexpected changes, getting back home and then recovering.

On the other hand, a 3 hour outing in a familiar environment might be easier than that 30 minute one engulfed in unpredictability and continuous navigation.

Predictability changes everything and can dramatically alter the effort needed to go somewhere. If you know where you’re going, what it will look like, who will be there, how long you’ll be there and what will happen when you arrive, your brain has a framework. If you don’t know any of those things, your brain may have to continuously monitor the environment in real time.

What’s happening?

Is this what I expected?

What happens next?

Has the plan changed?

Do I need to respond?

Is something about to happen?

It’s absolutely exhausting, isn’t it?

Essentially, a new place requires you to build that map while simultaneously functioning within it.

Social interaction can be part of the journey too, since going out usually means encountering people and I don’t mean just the physicality of being near another human being.

There may be greetings, eye contact, facial expressions, small talk, questions, unwritten expectations, working out when it’s your turn to speak, interpreting tone, deciding how much information to share, monitoring your own voice, facial expressions or body language, figuring out when someone is just joking, knowing when a conversation has ended…

For someone who masks heavily, social interaction can involve a considerable amount of conscious or semi-conscious monitoring and this is particularly relevant because social demands don’t necessarily look like social demands.

A trip to the shop might involve only a two-minute conversation for instance, but those two minutes still require processing.

You may have to explain what you need, answer questions, understand what you’re being told, remember the information, respond appropriately and then continue with everything else you were doing.

So yes, the interaction itself may be brief but the processing isn’t necessarily.

… and then, after all of that, things unexpectedly change and this is where the carefully constructed internal plan can fall apart.

The shop is closed, the car park is full, the bus is late, the person you’re meeting has changed the time, the café is unexpectedly crowded, the usual entrance is blocked, the item you went to buy isn’t available, someone suggests doing something else, someone you didn’t expect is there, the route changes, the weather changes…

For someone relying on predictability to manage that cognitive load, these are more than minor inconveniences, because they require the brain to generate a new plan. And then possibly another one. And another.

This is one of the reasons why “just be flexible!” can be such an unhelpful instruction. Flexibility goes hand in hand with capacity and we know capacity fluctuates. A person who can adapt easily on a well-regulated day may struggle significantly after poor sleep, sensory overload, prolonged stress, social exhaustion or a series of unexpected changes. The ability didn’t disappear, the available capacity did.

Sometimes the hardest part in all of this, is getting started and being told that something will be easy because it is objectively small doesn’t necessarily match your internal reality at that time. You may know perfectly well it’s small, you may even desperately want to do it but that may not be enough.

This is where executive functioning matters. Knowing what needs to happen and being able to initiate it are not the same thing. The intention can be completely genuine while the initiation remains difficult and repeatedly telling someone to “just do it” doesn’t really create the missing bridge between intention and action.

The bridge here is support which of course varies depending on your needs. It can look like a clear sequence, a visual reminder, a predictable routine, someone sitting alongside you, reducing the number of decisions, removing unnecessary steps, allowing more transition time or purely recognising that the difficulty is real and validating it.

Last but not least, going back home is part of going out. Even though getting back home can signify the end of that particular outing, it can in fact be the beginning of the recovery time.

The outing may have required sustained attention, social interaction to recover from, decisions to revisit or unexpected events to make sense of and now the nervous system needs somewhere to put all of that. Again, this looks differently for everyone.

You might want to shut the blinds and sit in a dark room, or change into your familiar, comfy clothes, or put your favourite show on, listen to some music, sleep or do absolutely nothing.

The funny thing is, for someone else this can look disproportionate. Why would you need the rest of the day off as it were, after going out for an hour? Well, that hour wasn’t the whole experience but rather the only thing that was visible.

One of the biggest misunderstandings around neurodivergence is the assumption that behaviour directly reflects desire.

If someone doesn’t go, they must not want to.

If they cancel, they must not care.

If they need to leave early, they’re being difficult.

If they need a day to recover, they must have overreacted.

I have said it before and I will say it again: capacity and willingness are two very different things.

You can want to go somewhere and not have the capacity to go.

You can love your friends and not have the capacity to socialise.

You can want to attend an event and still find the environment impossible.

You can understand exactly what needs to happen and still struggle to initiate it.

You can have had a perfectly ordinary week and reach the weekend with nothing left.

None of this makes the desire less genuine.

So.. no, opening that front door isn’t the starting point at all and going out isn’t just the physical movement from one place to another, but rather a complex transition between environments, expectations and states of regulation.

Most of the time, the hardest part isn’t the destination nor even the journey itself. It’s everything that has to happen before the door can open and everything that has to happen after it closes again.

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Nowhere is this shortcut mentality more obvious or more damaging than in how we handle our relationships.

We treat trust and belonging like a software update. We send a quick text, we share a supportive post, we make a superficial apology, and we wait for the dynamic to automatically refresh. We demand that closeness be instant because everything else in our lives is on-demand.

The clue however, is right there in the language we use when we talk about building trust.

We live under the illusion that trust is a baseline entitlement and that we should all start with a full tank just by virtue of showing up. We treat it like a birthright, and we get defensive when someone doesn’t immediately hand it over.

When we expect people to trust us without having proven our reliability, consistency, and safety, we are asking them to take an emotional risk for our comfort. Yet belonging needs us to accept that we start at the beginning. We have to earn our way into people’s inner lives by proving, through sustained action, that we are safe places for their vulnerability. You don’t get the keys to the house just because you showed up at the door…

Think about what it takes to physically build something. It is heavy, repetitive, and exhausting. It means getting your hands dirty. It happens one brick at a time, and if you try to skip a row or rush the foundation, the entire structure eventually and inevitably collapses under its own weight.

You cannot build a house with a click of the fingers, so why do we think we can build a safe human connection with one?

When we look for a tick-box version of belonging, we aren’t really trying to connect with people but we are rather trying to manage our own anxiety. We look for a script or a formula because it protects us. If we just follow the rules of being a good friend, partner, or neighbour, we don’t have to look someone in the eye and say, “I don’t know how to fix this, but I am listening.”

I’ve come to realise that people have an incredibly sharp, innate radar for inauthenticity. When you talk a good game but refuse to do the daily, humble work of actually earning that space, people notice, and the result of that performative effort is cynicism.

Cynicism is the absolute death of belonging. When people realise that the language of care and community is just being used as a shield to avoid real change, consistency, or discomfort, they stop trying. They pull back. They protect themselves. You end up with friendships, families, or groups that look perfect on social media or from the outside, but are entirely hollowed out on the inside.

The real work of earning trust is completely unglamorous because it happens in the mundane moments of everyday life. It’s choosing to have a difficult, awkward conversation and actively making space day after day. It’s admitting, out loud, without defence or justification, that you made a mistake that hurt someone you care about, and then actually changing your behaviour moving forward. It’s showing up for people when it is entirely inconvenient for you to do so.

This is the work. It is slow, it is messy, and it cannot be automated.

If we really do want real belonging, we have to stop looking for the quick fix. We have to stop expecting human relationships to move at the speed of technology. We have to be willing to slow down, put down the checklist, and actually face each other.

Upcoming event : 14th of July at 7:30pm BST - Decision paralysis webinar.

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“Just decide.” “Pick one.” “Commit and move on.”

The cultural assumption is that once a choice has been made, everything else automatically falls into place. The uncertainty disappears, the anxiety settles, and the mental tug-of-war comes to an end.

Is that really what happens though? What if making the choice is sometimes just the beginning of a whole new marathon?

The decision may have been made, but the thinking is only just beginning. Instead of relief comes replaying. Instead of certainty comes doubt. Instead of moving forward, the mind circles backward, retracing every step that led to the choice, examining every alternative that was left behind, and searching for evidence that the decision was either brilliant or catastrophic.

It can feel as though the brain refuses to let the decision become a decision. It wants to keep it open, revisiting it over and over again, just in case there is still time to prevent something from going wrong.

Decision paralysis is usually described as the inability to choose. Rarely do we talk about the inability to stop choosing…

The search for proof

Many of us people have spent years being told they make poor decisions. We are labelled either impulsive or overthinkers. Too emotional or too logical. Too slow or too quick. Too trusting or too suspicious. Whatever choice we make, there always seems to be someone ready to explain why another one would have been better, why another one would have made more sense…

Eventually, decisions stop feeling like ordinary parts of everyday life and start feeling like tests. Every choice becomes an opportunity to prove that we are capable, responsible, sensible, and competent. When that is the backdrop, making a choice never really feels like enough, doesn’t it? The brain immediately transforms into a hypervigilant detective, looking for proof that it has passed said tests:

“Was that the right email to send?”

“Should I have chosen the other appointment slot?”

“Did I say yes too quickly?”

“Have I wasted money?”

“What if I regret this tomorrow?”

The absence of immediate certainty then feels like definitive evidence that something has gone wrong. But certainty was never something most decisions could promise in the first place… and that is hard to accept or even begin to consider.

Every yes contains a hundred no’s

Sometimes the distress is not actually about the choice itself per se, but rather the weight of everything that was left behind.

Choosing one career path means not choosing another. Buying one item means leaving something else on the shelf. Spending Saturday with one friend means saying no to another invitation. Even deciding what to cook for dinner means closing the door on every other culinary masterpiece.

Some brains do not just discard those alternatives once the choice is made but they continue holding them all in active awareness. The opportunities not taken remain vividly present, almost… tangible.

Rather than feeling satisfied with one path, the brain keeps glancing over its shoulder toward every other road that still looked open just a few moments ago. This is opportunity grief, and it is incredibly difficult to feel settled when every single decision feels like the active loss of countless other potential futures.

The cost of getting it wrong

For a neurodivergent nervous system, decisions have consequences that extend beyond minor inconveniences. Past experiences have taught us that getting something wrong results in real pain, criticism, embarrassment, punishment, being misunderstood, or completely losing someone’s trust.

After enough of these cycles, unsurprisingly so, the nervous system begins treating decisions as potential threats.

Needless to say, that threat response doesn’t magically vanish the moment a decision is finalised. If anything, the internal alarm blares even louder because the outcome is now entirely out of our hands. “What if I’ve just made everything worse?”

A tired brain keeps thinking

Decision-making is exhausting, physical work since the whole process involves weighing more invisible variables than most people realise. Every single choice triggers a gazillion of parallel considerations:

Weighing sensory and social impact.

Balancing financial and energetic costs.

Anticipating future consequences and other people’s expectations.

Factoring in past traumas and potential misunderstandings.

Navigating practical executive functioning barriers.

… the list goes on!

By the time a decision is finally pushed through, the brain is completely fried. A drained brain has little fuel left to regulate anxious loops, thus making it much easier to catastrophise and far harder to trust yourself.

Why reassurance never quite lasts

Because of this exhaustion and fear, we may look outside of ourselves for a lifeline, hopelessly seeking reassurance after a choice is made.

For a fleeting moment, the outside validation handles the weight, and the anxiety feels muted. But then another question appears… another possibility… another lingering doubt. It just doesn’t stop!

External reassurance can never permanently soothe a nervous system that has learned to associate uncertainty with danger, can it?

Relief isn’t immediate, and that’s ok

We are led to believe that relief should arrive the moment you decide and so, when it doesn’t, we assume we must have chosen incorrectly.

Problem is, that relief is not proof. Neither is anxiety. Feeling uncertain after making a decision does not automatically mean the decision was wrong. It usually just means your nervous system hasn’t realised that the danger has passed. Your brain is still processing, still integrating, and still bracing for an impact that isn’t coming. You have lived for so long under the crushing weight of getting things right that your body has forgotten what ordinary, safe uncertainty feels like.

The point is that not every decision has a perfect answer. Not every choice comes with immediate peace. Sometimes two options are both perfectly good enough, sometimes neither feels ideal.

The goal, then, may not be to eliminate uncertainty, but to become less frightened of it. To know that changing your mind is allowed. That repairing mistakes is possible. That one imperfect decision does not define your competence, and that your worth has never depended on choosing perfectly every single time.

Moral of the story: decision paralysis does not always end when you force a choice.

Hope you can join me, next Tuesday, on the 14th of July at 7:30pm BST when I will be hosting a live webinar where we will explore decision paralysis in more depth. If you can’t make it, that’s ok too because all ticket holders will receive access to the recording.

You can read all the previous decision paralysis articles here:
The myth of the small decision

The tragedy of the infinite menu

Why you can't make decisions when you don't know what you need

Why every decision feels like a test of your worth

A hidden variable: urgency is not universal

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am and browse a catalogue of resources.

We’ve talked about the myth of the small decision, and how what looks like one tiny choice can contain a myriad of invisible decisions hidden beneath the surface. We’ve looked at the tragedy of the infinite menu, where too many possibilities leave the brain overwhelmed before it has even begun. We explored why you can’t make decisions when you don’t know what you need, and how every unmet need adds another layer of uncertainty. Most recently, we looked at what happens when every decision feels like a test of your worth, where the fear of getting it wrong becomes so heavy that making no decision at all can actually feel safer.

I hope that each article revealed another hidden variable in decision paralysis, leaving more room for exploration and discussion.

However… there is another one I’d like to bring to your attention. Time. More specifically, the assumption that everyone experiences urgency in the same way.

Our world expects urgency to be universal. We automatically assume that if something matters, people will naturally feel that it matters. That a looming deadline should create motivation, that a calendar reminder should trigger action, that the closer we get to a due date, the stronger the internal pull to begin, you name it.

It seems obvious because for many people, that is exactly how it works. Yet not every brain experiences time in a way that aligns with calendars, clocks or external deadlines.

Some brains drift in rhythm rather than schedules. Some experience time in flashes and fog rather than predictable linear series of events. There are people who know that something needs doing, yet cannot quite connect with when it needs doing or why it suddenly feels so time critical. I’d say this is the difference between knowing something and feeling it.

Every decision usually contains two questions that need answering : What should I do? and When should I do it?. The first one is obvious and it appears in our minds almost instantaneously when facing a decision. That second one though may be harder to answer due to all of the above.

So, if the decision has already been made, why does nothing happen? Why can’t you get started? That gap, between deciding and beginning is another place where the decision paralysis can creep in. It can feel like standing on one side of a river, looking directly at the place you need to be, without any bridge connecting the two.

You just can’t seem to move - metaphorically speaking of course.

So, in this context, decision paralysis feels very different. It feels like wanting to do something, not being able to begin, feeling the pressure slowly pile up, watching the hours disappear, feeling increasingly guilty and finally forcing yourself to start through stress, fear and complete dysregulation. Then spending the rest of the day recovering as though you have just finished running for your life.

This is the point where it becomes clear that urgency is indeed not universal, more so how it taps into the systems of perceived threats where it can stop feeling like information and start feeling like danger.

The nervous system doesn’t distinguish particularly well between physical danger and social danger. Rejection, criticism, shame and the fear of letting people down, all activate the same protective systems that evolved to keep us alive.

Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn.

None of those states are designed for thoughtful decision-making, since your brain cannot calmly weigh priorities while it is simultaneously preparing for perceived failure. It cannot focus on performance while it is busy protecting you from rejection.

So sometimes it freezes, sometimes it floods with frantic energy, sometimes it over-functions, pushing through with extraordinary effort until the task is finished, only to collapse into exhaustion afterwards.

What others do not see are the negotiations happening inside a nervous system that has learned to associate urgency with danger instead of direction.

The point of the story is that you cannot scare a nervous system into feeling safe enough to make decisions. Of course fear can create movement but it is fuelled by survival which is incredibly costly… And so, if urgency isn’t universal, then neither is decision-making.

On the 14th of July at 7:30pm BST I am hosting a live webinar where we will explore decision paralysis in more depth. Hope you can join me, and if you can’t, all ticket holders will receive access to the recording.

⭐ If you’re on any social media, come join me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

⭐ Come and have a look at my website, to find out what I do, who I am and browse a catalogue of resources.

Without even noticing, your brain has replaced one question with another.

Instead of asking yourself what you should eat, you are now questioning yourself as to why you cannot do something that everyone else seems to manage just fine, without thinking.

That jump changes everything because the moment a decision becomes a judgement about who you are, it stops feeling safe to make one.

As I have discussed in previous articles about decision paralysis, I don’t think it is simply a case about having too many options. I think it is rather about carrying far too much meaning into ordinary moments. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that everyday decisions were never just decisions. They became evidence that we were organised enough, responsible enough, capable enough, independent enough, or adult enough. We learned, without anyone saying the words directly, that struggling with everyday things reflected something about our character rather than our capacity.

So, because of all of this, every choice became a test.

The email waiting for a reply is no longer just an email. Deciding what to cook is no longer just dinner. Booking an appointment, choosing where to sit, deciding which task to start first or what to wear in the morning all begin to carry far more weight than they were ever supposed to. Objectively they are ordinary decisions, but emotionally they start to feel like moments in which we either confirm or disprove our own competence. They are never just anything anymore.

The decision itself becomes almost secondary and what matters now is what we believe the decision says about us.

That is why decision paralysis is so exhausting. Not only is your brain weighing up the available options, but it is also trying to protect you from the possibility of arriving at a conclusion you have spent years fearing.

It is an impossible question because there is no decision in the world that can answer it. And yet… many of us keep trying to find a satisfying answer.

We tell ourselves we are indecisive, lazy, disorganised or unmotivated without stopping to notice what is actually happening underneath. We are struggling because we care so deeply that every decision has become tangled up with our sense of identity. We are trying to avoid becoming the version of ourselves we have been taught to fear.

No wonder we freeze!

The tragedy is that the freeze then becomes further evidence against us. We stand in the kitchen for thirty minutes and conclude that we are hopeless. We stare at the unanswered email for three days and decide we are unreliable. We spend an hour trying to choose which task to start first and convince ourselves we lack discipline.

The original problem disappears beneath layers of self-judgement and so, eventually, we are no longer responding to the decision at all but to shame.

That is why I think one of the most important things we can do is separate decisions from worth. Those two things were never meant to be connected.

A decision can have consequences. It can work well or badly. It can save time, cost money, solve a problem or create another one. You might look back and wish you had chosen differently. That is part of being human and regardless of the time you spend analysing and questioning yourself, some things will just happen because you cannot control everything, regardless how much you try. Plus, hindsight is a beautiful thing…

Needless to say, none of that tells you anything about your value.

A decision cannot measure your kindness. It cannot measure your intelligence, your strength, your generosity or your capacity to love. It cannot tell you whether you are worthy of belonging.

A decision was never designed to answer any of those questions… we only just started asking it to, perhaps because we grew up in environments where struggling with ordinary things was misinterpreted so much so that the pressure became impossible.

I hope that the next time you find yourself paralysed over something that seems insignificant from the outside, you could pause long enough to ask yourself a different question.

If it is the second part that has taken over, then the problem is no longer the decision. It has become the burden of believing that your worth depends on getting it right.

Maybe that is where compassion begins? Not by becoming better at making decisions, but by refusing to let ordinary decisions become extraordinary judgements about who you are.

Remember that your choices will always shape your day but they were never meant to define your worth.

Read previous articles on the subject here:

The myth of the small decision

The tragedy of the infinite menu

Why you can't make decisions when you don't know what you need

On the 14th of July at 7:30pm BST I am hosting a live webinar where we will explore decision paralysis in more depth. Hope you can join me, and if you can’t, all ticket holders will receive access to the recording.

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