{"id":25101,"date":"2026-04-14T21:01:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T21:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/?p=25101"},"modified":"2026-04-18T06:40:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T06:40:21","slug":"apdnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/2026\/04\/14\/apdnam\/","title":{"rendered":"A post during Neurodiversity Awareness Month"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Rabbit hole post - <\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A recent Stand4Kind post talked about the power of simple mental\u2011health check\u2011ins \u2014 naming what\u2019s happening inside before it spirals. <\/span><\/p>

That\u2019s what this practice has become for us: a way to help our kids map their internal terrain before it turns into a storm.<\/span><\/p>

And honestly, my wife and I are still learning it too. Parenting a neurodiverse family takes a lot of emotional energy, and some days we forget to extend the same softness to ourselves that we fight to give our kids. But we\u2019re trying. We\u2019re learning. We\u2019re building the language as we go.<\/span><\/p>

Because excitement and anxiety are blur together. Because kids reach for maturity before they have the tools. Because kindness isn\u2019t a mask \u2014 it\u2019s a practice. And because emotional literacy isn\u2019t innate. It\u2019s taught. It\u2019s modeled. It\u2019s lived.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Loving People Without Clipping Their Wings: Notes From the Asylum Between My Ears<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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There\u2019s a moment in the podcast where the host reads Sanni\u2019s letter to Alex Honnold (see below)<\/a>\u00a0 \u2014 a truth delivered secondhand with the kind of gravity usually reserved for someone who actually understands the hero\u2019s wiring.<\/span><\/p>

No flourish. No performance.<\/span><\/p>

Just a clean accounting of what it costs to love someone whose compass keeps swinging toward a cliff face most of us would file under \u201cavoidable risk.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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That moment has been rattling around the asylum between my ears for days, refusing to quiet down and tugging at something I can\u2019t quite name.<\/span><\/p>

And the thing is, it mirrors the emotional math I\u2019ve been trying to untangle in my own writing.<\/span><\/p>

Because the letter from Sanni to Alex isn\u2019t really about climbing. It\u2019s about the emotional calculus of loving someone whose authenticity comes with edges. <\/span><\/p>

Loving people wired differently \u2014 my kids, my partner, myself \u2014 means learning to support without smothering, to balance autonomy with presence, and to hold excitement, anxiety, and respect in the same breath. It\u2019s the work of staying in relationship even when the terrain refuses to cooperate.<\/span><\/p>

I won\u2019t shrink you, and I won\u2019t pretend your wiring doesn\u2019t move something in me.<\/span><\/p>

And it mirrors so much of my own life \u2014 at home, at work, and inside my own skull.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Emotional Load of Loving People Wired Differently<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In my house, we\u2019re a neurodiverse family. That\u2019s not a slogan; it\u2019s a lived ecosystem. Our kids feel deeply, process slowly, and communicate on their own timelines.<\/span><\/p>

Excitement and anxiety share a doorway, and sometimes our kiddos sprint through it without warning. And newsflash – so do emotions! Emotional literacy isn\u2019t a performance for us; it\u2019s a survival skill. <\/span><\/p>

Some days we help our kiddos name what\u2019s happening. Some days we don\u2019t have the capacity to model it. But the contract stays the same: we stay in it with them.<\/span><\/p>

I stumbled into a practice that helps. It started with a podcast \u2014 Michael Easter interviewing a coach who works with elite athletes and combat veterans. The coach talked about helping people distinguish excitement from anxiety by asking them to describe how each one feels in their bodies. Simple. Direct. Almost too obvious.<\/span><\/p>

But it stuck.<\/span><\/p>

Maybe because anxiety has never been a frequent visitor for me. The most anxious I\u2019ve ever been was when I asked my wife to marry me \u2014 and we\u2019d already been together for eighteen months. Outside of that, my nervous system tends to run steady.<\/span><\/p>

So, hearing someone break it down into physical sensations made me realize: not everyone has the language for what\u2019s happening inside them. Kids especially.<\/span><\/p>

Around the same time, I\u2019d already started shifting how I talked to my kids about their bodies and choices. Instead of \u201cThat outfit looks great on you,\u201d I\u2019d ask, \u201cHow does that make you feel?\u201d I didn\u2019t want their sense of worth built on my approval or on some external performance metric. I wanted them to build their own internal compass.<\/span><\/p>

So the two ideas merged.<\/span><\/p>

Now, when I see one of my kids sliding toward anxiety or dysregulation \u2014 and when the moment is safe enough to circle back \u2014 I ask:<\/span><\/p>

\u201cHow does your body feel when you\u2019re excited?\u201d \u201cHow does your body feel when you\u2019re anxious?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d<\/span><\/p>

The first few times, they looked at me like I\u2019d asked them to solve quantum physics. My ten\u2011year\u2011old was confused. My PDA\u2011er needed the right level of regulation to even attempt an answer. And my almost\u2011six\u2011year\u2011old \u2014 autistic, brilliant, and operating on his own internal clock \u2014 would sometimes bring it up two days later, once it had finally clicked.<\/span><\/p>

But over time, something shifted.<\/span><\/p>

Now, when I ask, I see them snap in. Not perfectly. Not every time. But enough to know the practice is landing somewhere deeper than the moment.<\/span><\/p>

And it\u2019s not just about emotions. It\u2019s about boundaries. Agency. The desire to assert maturity without masking. The courage to say, \u201cThis is what I\u2019m feeling,\u201d even when the feeling is messy or inconvenient.<\/span><\/p>

We saw it recently in a real\u2011world moment \u2014 a conflict with peers, some inappropriate behavior, and the classic \u201cboys will be boys\u201d deflection that teaches nothing and protects no one. My ten\u2011year\u2011old stood up for herself. She named what happened. She held her ground. And even though the apology that followed wasn\u2019t exactly self\u2011initiated, she moved through the moment with courage that felt like her own \u2014 with a little mom support.<\/span><\/p>

That\u2019s the ripple effect of emotional literacy. It doesn\u2019t always show up in the moment you teach it. Sometimes it shows up two days later. Sometimes two years.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Workplace Version of the Same Story<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Work isn\u2019t that different.<\/span><\/p>

I operate in a system that moves fast, says it values clarity, and still expects answers without offering preparation, coaching, or feedback. I\u2019m dyslexic, which means I see patterns quickly but don\u2019t always compress them into the single static data point people want. I\u2019m a systems\u2011driven consulting professional in an environment that often prefers the illusion of simplicity over the honesty of complexity.<\/span><\/p>

We\u2019re in resource debt \u2014 the kind everyone feels but no one names, because naming it would require changing the system. Clarity is demanded, but the conditions for clarity aren\u2019t provided. Questions get treated as resistance instead of due diligence. Collaboration gets mistaken for deflection. And when I say yes to stretch work because there\u2019s no one else to do it, the cost stays invisible until it isn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>

It\u2019s a strange thing to be asked for precision while standing in fog.<\/span><\/p>

And yet, like Sanni, I keep showing up with honesty instead of control. I keep trying to support the system without pretending it\u2019s something it isn\u2019t. I keep practicing the virtues \u2014 courage, temperance, wisdom, justice \u2014 even when grace isn\u2019t reciprocated.<\/span><\/p>

Because that\u2019s the contract I\u2019ve made with myself. It isn\u2019t transactional, and it isn\u2019t misframed by expectation \u2014 like Marcus Aurelius, external to all else, it\u2019s simply the most reasonable approach available.\u0003<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Internal Version: Loving My Own Wiring Without Clipping It<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The hardest place to apply the Sanni\u2011letter logic is inward \u2014 where the cliffs are mine. Some shaped by my choices, others by forces I never touched.<\/span><\/p>

My brain runs hot \u2014 part pattern\u2011recognition engine, part myth\u2011making machine, part asylum. Endurance training helps. Routines help. Parenting neurodiverse kids lets me watch my own firmware boot and glitch in real time.<\/span><\/p>

Loving my own wiring means not sanding down the edges that make me\u2026 me. It means accepting that clarity takes time. It means refusing to shrink myself into a version that fits someone else\u2019s operational preference. It means writing my own version of that letter \u2014 the one I keep editing as I journey through reasonable self\u2011scrutiny.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Why the Sanni Letter Matters Here<\/h3>

Because it names a truth I rarely say out loud \u2014<\/h4><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Even though each day, like Alex, I grow a little more emboldened in the simple, plain work of acceptance and adaptation as I keep walking the path of reasonable self\u2011scrutiny:<\/span><\/div>
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Loving someone \u2014 a partner, a child, a colleague, or yourself \u2014 requires holding excitement, anxiety, and respect at the same time. It requires acknowledging the cost of someone\u2019s wiring without trying to rewrite it. It requires staying in the conversation even when the terrain is uneven. It requires courage to support without controlling, and humility to name when the load is heavy.<\/span><\/div>
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That\u2019s the connective tissue between my family, my work, and my internal life. It\u2019s all the same story \u2014 the same terrain repeating in different forms: how do we love people, including ourselves, without clipping anyone’s wings?<\/span><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Closing Loop<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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If there\u2019s a thread running through all of this, it\u2019s simple:<\/span><\/p>

We don\u2019t choose the wiring we\u2019re given, but we choose the contracts we make with each other. We choose honesty over performance. Presence over control. Courage over comfort.<\/span><\/p>

Sometimes we even choose to write the letter \u2014 not to change someone, but to witness them.<\/span><\/p>

That\u2019s the climb. That\u2019s the contract. That\u2019s the work.<\/span><\/p>

Sanni\u2019s letter is that dynamic in miniature \u2014 the quiet contract between two people standing on their own cliffs, choosing not to shrink or to look away.<\/span><\/p>

Just like I\u2019m trying to do in my own life.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Rabbit hole that opened it all up is below - follow the rabbit Alice errr, Shane!<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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And here\u2019s the post from Stand4Kind on LinkedIn that sparked this whole reflection. The name \u2014 Stand4Kind \u2014 feels especially relevant these days.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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