Neurodivergence, Trauma, and Story with Stephanie Isbell, MA, LCPC
Many listeners of the Allender Center Podcast have asked us to explore neurodivergence—especially what it means to parent neurodivergent children or to make sense of a diagnosis in adulthood.
We’re pleased to welcome therapist Stephanie Isbell, a Narrative Focused Trauma Care®–trained clinician who works with neurodivergent adults and families. In conversation with Dan and Rachael, she leads us through the complex intersection of neurodivergence, trauma, identity, and story.
Neurodivergence—which can include autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and more—points to the many ways human brains process the world differently. For many people, these differences have been misunderstood or pathologized, often leading to experiences of shame, isolation, and relational misunderstanding from early childhood.
Stephanie brings both clinical insight and compassionate curiosity to the conversation, helping unpack how neurodivergent people often grow up navigating social miscues, sensory overwhelm, and the pressure to “mask” their natural ways of being in order to fit in. She highlights how considering these experiences as part of a larger story—perhaps our own and perhaps those of the people we love—offers helpful layers of understanding, allowing us to respond with greater compassion.
Throughout the conversation, we are invited to cultivate deeper curiosity—about ourselves and about the people we love. For parents, partners, and communities, this means moving beyond forcing conformity and instead learning to ask better questions, listen more carefully, and honor the unique ways each person experiences the world.
About Our Guest:
Stephanie Isbell, MA, LCPC, was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. She met her husband of 35 years in physics class, which may explain why their relationship has been so resilient! They have three delightful adult children and one delightful son-in-law, and two beloved dogs. Stephanie and her family enjoy music, golf, cooking, raising their own food, and punning. She loves to read and learn about almost everything. All universes are amazing, whether we are referring to the universe “out there” or the one inside each of us!
Stephanie received her Master’s degree in Counseling from The Townsend Institute at Concordia University Irvine and is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. She holds an Advanced Certificate from the International Council on Development and Learning, a Full Certification in Family Systems Trauma Therapy, a Full Certification in Relational Life Therapy from Relational Life Institute, and is Certified in Narrative Focused Trauma Care® with the Allender Center.
About the Allender Center Podcast:
For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.
At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.
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Episode Transcript
Dan: Rachael, we’ve been asked many times to address the issue of neurodivergence. And let’s just start with just what an important topic this is. We’ll get into some of the details, the practicalities, the percentages, but let’s just say that when we’re talking about difference, it just evokes so many things in people’s hearts and minds. The question of, am I neurodivergent? What does it mean if my son or daughter or my spouse or a dear friend is neurodivergent? It’s a phrase that’s been developed since the 1990’s and has really helped those of us who work with human beings to see that there are differences. Oh, what a simple phrase, differences in the way that we metabolize reality, how we look at our own inner world and how we engage the social cues of others. So we’ve got a really phenomenal human being. Stephanie Isbell, thank you for joining us. Stephanie is a therapist in the lovely and glorious state of Montana who works uniquely with folks who are neurodivergent, but also has been through our Narrative Focused Trauma Care process and therefore brings the interplay of story and the processes of uniquely dealing with the word “difference”. So Stephanie, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Stephanie: Oh, I’m really thrilled to do this. Thank you for inviting me.
Dan: Well, before we jump in to what is neurodivergent and all the implications that we’ll have for us to better understand the uniqueness of the world and the God who made us, I just want to sort of begin with letting our audience know now, wait a minute, who are you? How did you get to where you are? I know it’s a broad and could take us literally the entire time, but just to introduce yourself.
Stephanie: Yeah, thanks. I am a sort of “Johnny-come-lately” counselor. This is my third career, but I started as an intern with a marvelous therapist who works with neurodivergent kids and learned the DIR model, which for counselors especially, we’re looking at what’s underneath the underneath the underneath for people, what really makes human beings what they are, which wraps in a lot of physiological variables as well as really early social. And I have come through the NFTC training and various other things to work with adults who have new diagnoses of autism or ADHD, or they are parents who have neurodivergent kids. And I do use narrative therapy and NFTC in specific alongside this knowledge of what’s underneath the underneath.
Dan: Before we go much further, talk to us about what you mean when you talk about just the broad category of neurodiversity.
Stephanie: Well, neurodiversity should just tell us the more we learn about it, how broad and deep and wide the category of humanity. So when we say divergent, we’re very Western. So we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of neurodevelopmental variables all stacked into one thing, if that’s possible. And we call it something like autism spectrum disorder, which isn’t really a thing in the sense that every neurodivergent person is very, very different from another one. And they are more different from each other often than we are from each other. We ‘normies’ as they call us. So neurodivergence in a Western sense is someone who has characteristics that are more than two standard deviations from the norm. Yeah, right? It doesn’t even make sense. But on a more personal level, these are people who have notable differences, usually in their sensory motor experience of the world and how they behave in relation to that, and more particularly in the way that they manage or can manage social relationships. So that would be my categories that we’re looking at.
Dan: And we normally think about the autism spectrum disorder, but when we’re talking about neurodivergence, we can also talk about folks who have ADD or ADHD, correct?
Stephanie: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dan: So that includes dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia. And again, the reason I want to make sure is that given the reality that I have some degree of dyspraxia, I have significant degrees of dyscalculia, which is the inability to easily make numbers make sense. Math makes sense. Dyspraxia, the inability or the struggle with regard to planning, coordination, movement, practical tasks that most people seem to have further, not to make this about me, but I have been by good friends who work within this field, the idea of what’s called hyper focus, ADHD or ADD. So the reality is approximately about 15% of humanity fits broadly within this term of neurodiversity, but it’s really intriguing though. I know all that about myself. I would even prior to this podcast, I would never call myself neurodivergent. So it’s one of those-
Stephanie: Well, you missed one, Dan. You missed one. High or low intelligence is also a neurodivergence.
Dan: Oh, I fall somewhere between those two extremes. So when we begin to address this, let me just underscore, I’m a pretty bright man and literally up until this moment, even though I had all the data, the two plus two, the two plus two, still if somebody had asked me prior to having you on today, whether I was neurodivergent, no, absolutely not. Right, Rachael?
Rachael: I’m not answering this question.
Stephanie: Wise, wise. Because the underneath of the underneath, just to put a circle around this so we understand what we’re talking about, is all the physiological variables that all these capacities that infants are born with, they have to do with our management of sensory input, the thresholds beyond which we can detect it or are overwhelmed by it, the integration of those sensory inputs, motor planning and praxis, as you mentioned, sensory motor integration, our ability to regulate all of that and modulate it. We don’t even think about this as counselors, but this is what a human being is when they’re born.
Rachael: Wow. Well, I think I would be so curious from you in your work, there are certain aspects of our Narrative Focused Trauma Care training that I’m sure work really well and certain aspects that maybe don’t or have to be contextualized when working with neurodivergence. And I would just, as a clinician working with folks who are neurodivergent, what are some of those nuances or differences that have to be taken seriously and need to actually be skills that are developed in order to be not just more helpful to someone, but actually more kind?
Stephanie: Yeah. So especially my autistic clients have taught me a lot about this. We have to turn on and turn off some things. Often, especially people who have new diagnoses when they’re older or they don’t want diagnosis, that’s a thing too. We have to do a couple of things because our empathy as counselors depends on our neurology being similar to our clients and that is not okay.
Rachael: Say that again. Say that again, because I think that’s really important. Yeah.
Stephanie: Because of the way our empathy works by feedback, facial affect and so forth, our empathy depends on us being, having similar neurology to our client. And so when a client like this sits down in your office, remind yourself, “This person is not the same as me. ” So turn your empathy way down, put it on idle, put your attunement on high and your curiosity on high. So it’s a very different stance. I am learning about this very different entity over here. It’s super fascinating and stay there because they also have trouble reading you. So if you rely on empathy, it’s not going to work well until you know them well. And every single person like this who sits in your office is a very different person. So be careful not to think, “Oh, I’ve worked with someone like this before.” There’ll be similarities, but also differences. So that’s one of the main points. The other one is, and this is equally important, the kind of developmental trauma that someone with autism or ADHD or whatever neurodivergence they have actually, because this is a very broad category, if you don’t understand the specifics of their developmental trauma, you’re going to make some mistakes. So what I will tell you is that trauma involves something beyond what we call just a usual complex PTSD, for example. It goes beyond what we call a racial and cultural trauma. And the reason for that is the universe and their particular culture that they’re in and their family that they’re in, the people that are their parents all are telling them the same things about themselves. That consistent telling of who they are creates another level of trauma because the miscues between all of those people, especially their parents and them, start at infancy. An infant who, for example, has a sensory processing disorder and perhaps has a sensory threshold problem, these are just examples, will maybe cue their mother, “I don’t like to be touched,” when actually they do want to be touched, but in a different way. So mom says, “Oh, they don’t like to be touched and put some down.” Uh-oh. Now we have the start of a feedback loop where the parent is saying, “This is a child who doesn’t want me to touch them,” and then cries like crazy, which eventually becomes, as Steven Porges says, “My baby doesn’t like me.” And whether we as parents know what we know, it doesn’t matter. We as human beings will react to that in certain ways. And this is something therapists have to watch out for because our clients will miscue us. They’ll look away and look down and our bodies will say, “Oh, they didn’t like what I just said.” Keep that curiosity high. What just happened? Nothing. What are you talking about? Oh, and maybe this is a sensory threshold issue, right? So we have to be really careful with those miscues. Does that make sense?
Dan: Totally. And I mean, again, important to hear that we’re talking about not only therapy as a actual process, we’re talking about the therapeutic that is what every human being is meant to engage on behalf of others. And especially as we talk about a mother and a child, parents and a child, siblings and a child, I mean, we’ve got enough data to know that literally one out of every two people with ADHD has also a struggle with dyslexia or dyspraxia. And so already, if you’re in that 15%, and again, that’s a generalized term, but if you’re in that unique set of people who experience the world differently because your brain is organized in a different way, we’re not talking about a defect. And I think that’s where the neurotypical tend to look at people who are neurodivergent and there is shame. And I mean, even for me to be able to name, oh no, wait a minute, you are certainly neurodivergent. Now, looking at that in part, came, because many of my grandchildren struggle with dyslexia. Some of the same have issues already of ADHD and the several that I’m thinking about, and I’m going to go into detail, but they are freaking brilliant in how they see, organize, speak. Some of the drawings that I have from several of my grandchildren that were about five or six or seven, they’re brilliant. And from one sense, they’re sellable. I’m keeping them for my retirement. So we can begin to address the fact that everyone in the world listening to this podcast has someone in their world, be it a son, daughter, grandchild, spouse, friends who operate within that neurodivergence. But let me just take us back to why is there such a struggle between neurodivergent and often those who are referred to as neurotypical?
Stephanie: I would say the main things are the early childhood experience of people with neurodivergences, especially what I call notable ones, which is if you walk through the grocery store and interact with people, people notice. Okay? They have had a very consistent experience of essentially people telling them they’re bad and they’re wrong. And it’s a situation where the child is consistently being asked to do something that they literally cannot do. And this leaves a lot of shame, as you were mentioning, but also can lead either to acting out like crazy because they’re trying to get what they need. “I can’t communicate this, I’m trying,” or a total shutdown. Now, it’s interesting when we talk about this because there are some crossovers with what we call coding in racial minorities, but this is much more traumatic because their entire community is saying the same thing about them. So what neurodivergents tend to develop is what we call masking and because everyone has asked them when they are really dysregulated inside to not act dysregulated, but act prosocial, the problem is you’re asking a neurology of a child to act as if everything’s fine and I can do this thing, which they cannot do, while inside they’re just freaking out. That’s what masking is. It’s quite a different thing and it takes, as you might imagine, an enormous amount of energy. And I would call it on the level of a split if we’re talking about psychotherapy, it’s just a huge thing that they have had to do and that’s what needs to gradually soften, but where’s the community that’s going to promote that?
Rachael: You mentioned that you work with folks, a lot of folks who are newly diagnosed and what we know or what I’ve heard people say is that it’s not like neurodivergency comes on later in life. It’s something you’re born with. So that’s a lot of time to be navigating a world without the awareness of why and how there have been these miscues, why and how you felt such isolation and shame. And I’m just curious, from your experience, and I might be asking for a friend, it was one of my goals this year to actually get some neuropsych evaluations done. I had a baby at 40 and I’m in that place of like, “Is this just postpartum? Is this perimenopause or is there something else going on here?” And so I’m asking for a friend about the, if there are some presenting things that people come in with, is it this new diagnosis that’s driving people to do more work, to make sense of their world, to get a different kind of attunement, to get healing, or is it just that you specialize in this so people are seeking you out because they know you might have a greater awareness and attunement for who they are?
Stephanie: Well, fortunately and unfortunately, I get a lot of referrals from the psychologists in town that do neuropsychs. But what do people come to me for? They probably had some inkling, but then they got the diagnosis and now they have what I would call an immense neurodivergent identity crisis. How do I make sense of what has been? And that’s what makes NFTC storywork so, so good for them. Because I can use the neuropsych information and develop some information with clients about their sensory motor system, that’s helpful to know the underneath of it, but then also to go back into their stories and help them understand what their experience was. And that takes some understanding of their system, but also they’re having to reassess in a deeper way than most people do: Oh, my mother reacted to me this way in anger because she was frustrated and didn’t know what to do with me, but also every time she pushed me away emotionally, I didn’t have anyone else to go to and I didn’t have anyone who understood me. And then it happened with peers and it happened at school and it happened with the teachers and the coaches and everybody down to the barista. And they have this sense of, I’m a bad person. I’m a defective person. I’m a person who can’t. And that is a lot to dig through, as you might imagine.
Dan: Well, and thinking particularly of some of the privileges I’ve had to work with folks, for example, who had dyslexia and some of the most brilliant men and women who in some ways have developed through memory, through the capacity to memorize, to hold levels of data that make my brain just feel like it’s functioning on one cylinder compared to their 12, and to go back and to be able to say, when we see this as deficiency, as something wrong, we really exclude the uniqueness of how a neurodivergent person comes into the world and offers a way of thinking, a way of seeing, a way of engaging beauty and complexity in ways that, again, we do tend to isolate, judge, and in many ways require that person to be other than who they are, which back to the word masking and to code in a way in which you’re trying to fit in, but at some level you know you can never do so. It does create both trauma, but also, and I’m not trying to put a lovely little silver lining around this, but it does create a remarkable way of looking at the world. At least that’s been the experience I’ve had the privilege to be able to work with folks who are neurodivergent. Do you find that to be true?
Stephanie: Oh, a hundred percent. Each person is so adept in ways that we’re not used to seeing because they’ve had to cope with the world and I mean the sensory environment too. One of the neatest examples I’ve seen of this is, I have a dear friend who’s Native American and her particular clan was the clan that went out in front scouting and in reverse, like behind the tribe when it was moving to make sure there were no attackers, nobody’s following. Everyone in this clan has ADHD, hyper-focused. Why? Because they’re looking and looking and looking and looking. They’re not getting stuck on one thing. They’re just looking and looking and looking. And it is a skill and their neurology allows them to do this really well. So that’s just an example of for the purpose of being in that tribe, they have a clan that is very skilled and neurologically adept at doing something useful for everyone else. If we had the ability to look at every neurodivergent person like this, we’d be making huge strides towards understanding them and giving them the place that they deserve.
Rachael: I love that. And I was reading the other day, even that in a lot of indigenous communities, they don’t talk about autism and ADHD in the same ways, right? It’s not set aside as a medical designator. But yeah, I hear this a lot with certain friends and colleagues who are getting later, diagnosed later in life who have done a lot of storywork and trauma work. And I think you were putting words to this and it’s that question of like, are some of these particularities of me or nuances of me, are they trauma? Is it because of trauma? Is it because of my neurodivergence? Is it a collision of the two? Is it a compounding of the two? And I would be curious as you bring Narrative Focused Trauma Care and neurodivergency frames together, how do people begin to parse out where certain idiosyncrasies, like anxiety, depression? How do we make sense in some ways of these symptomologies? Because so much of the work I think of healing is just having awareness of who you are and how you perceive the world and what would be kind ways to have a different sense of identity and sense of self, but also different tools and skills to know what your capacity is and to know what will, in some ways, could be transformed as opposed to what might be something that you’re working with for a lifetime. So I would just love your insights there and working with folks.
Stephanie: Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. And so the way I usually start therapy with people, because they usually come in with a neuropsych or their kid has one, is let’s talk about your own sensory system. How does it work? So we actually do a profile and then same with motor system, let’s understand ourselves. And I actually throw myself into the mix, which the DIR model actually does. Here’s the therapist’s profile. How are we different? So you begin to form like community of two, where the two of you are talking very differently about who you are. And from that understanding, you help them go out into the world and watch that have its effect. For example, somebody who has very sensitive auditory processing issues and maybe threshold issues, they walk into Walmart and immediately they can’t do it. Okay. So what if we walked to the door of Walmart and noted all the sounds and watched where they’re coming from? We look, you’ve heard this in trauma situations. They have massive trauma that’s just from the world impinging on them in sensory ways. So we walk through, well, what is it like to encounter another person who looks at you three times because they’re not reading you? There’s a lot of shame that comes up. What if you engaged it directly? This is much later. What if you said, “Hi, I notice that you’re wondering about me. Is there something you want to ask?” That takes a lot of gumption, of course. For someone who’s been traumatized a lot, but the step is so powerful, they realize most people really are fine with it. They’re just trying to get their read socially and they’re having a hard time doing it. And then they discover the other person has shame about not being able to do that. Oh, that’s a game changer. So we’re trying to work at that level, but then also at story, going down and figuring out, well, what was it like when you went to Kindergarten and you realized that your social processing was so slow? What do we do with that? Oh, that’s why the kids didn’t like me. Oh, so much grief there, so much grief about that. But getting at that grief is actually easier than working with most traumatized people in my… Because once people with neurodivergences get the idea of what was happening, it’s almost like what’s that card game where you line up all the cards or dominoes. It’s like dominoes. They just start going down and they’ll come back in the next session and go, “What? Oh, now I get why this and this and this is happening.” It’s very beautiful to watch.
Dan: Oh, it’s such a gorgeous picture again of what happens when we can make sense of what seems to be such insensibility, so different from how others engage. And so to come back to this question, because one of the things that even without having the language for myself of neurodivergence, it has been a marital issue for decades. I just began a week or so ago reading a biography of Blaise Pascal, which brought back… I brought out my English version of the Pensées, my French version of the Pensées, and I set up my wall of, shall we say, reading. And Becky started laughing, and she was like, “Well, when will I see you again?” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” She said, “It is clear by how you’re creating, in some sense, almost a shelter. You’ve got notebooks, you’ve got your remarkable out. It literally is. It’s like you’re going into a realm where I haven’t seen you do this in at least six months or so. So I’m just wondering when you’re going to be coming out of your cave. So having the language of what she’s naming is hyperfocused ADD, neurodivergence, entering into a realm where, as she would put it, you live so much in your head. That would’ve been a very offensive remark 30 years ago. But through a long, shall we say, arduous process for her, but for both of us to engage, how do you help couples begin that process? How do you help a person own and begin with, especially if they’re married to a neurotypical spouse, how they begin to process this? Because part of the complexity again is if you’re in that 15%, the 85% … I mean, we didn’t have language. My mom and dad didn’t have language. The teachers who entirely saw me to be a problem in the classroom didn’t have language. And even today, one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast is to, again, acquaint people with the reality, but particularly if they’re in a marriage, it brings complications.
Stephanie: It certainly does. On the other hand, the spouse is coming in with … Usually these are parents in my realm, but the spouse is coming in with some big question marks themselves and also maybe some judgements about what is happening. And so to have a somewhat, if we can say a simple answer, actually creates a sense of relief in them like, Oh, it wasn’t all directed at me. Oh, it wasn’t a problem with the relationship, really. It’s… they’re struggling with something here. And so I always work with them if I can in a couple because the ‘normie’ part of that couple, assuming there is one, assuming there is one, because some of them, that’s not true, is watching me work and try to figure out what’s going on under the surface here and light bulbs are coming on in their heads. So to turn to them and say, “Does this make sense to you? They’re almost speechless with… uh yes. And here’s a whole bunch of other things I see that fall into those types of categories of behavior or social response. And so it’s actually a very beautiful way. You have an observer who’s very internal to the process for this person and someone who’s supportive. Usually by the time they have gone through the sensory profile and understand how this affects their social processing, the spouse is like, oh, this explains a lot. And then they can work on it together and they have their own trauma stories together because of not knowing what this is and what to do with it. And again, being in your trauma-informed couples therapy is helpful to apply the storywork to the couple as well.
Dan: Again, thank you. So as you think through this, Stephanie, in terms of where a believing community can, shall we say, take a step. When we begin to talk about maturing and the process of growing so often, I don’t know how to put it better, but it feels like there’s a one size fits all. And already what we’re saying is when you perceive the world, when you experience your body, and again, a question that you brought up, Rachael, a while back is, how do we understand neurodivergence? Because again, we don’t have a fundamental beginning point to say that it is merely trauma and/or merely the difference in terms of how a brain’s configured in the womb and through the process of birth. So all we can say is there’s always going to be an intersection of heartbreak, trauma, and something that is a biological set. For example, what I know with regard to hyperfocused ADD, it’s a very different way of metabolizing dopamine. In other words, it takes a whole lot of something intriguing to capture me. And then once I’m captured, there is a primary sense in which reading a book for eight hours is not only no difficulty, it’s more like, and other people don’t do that? Well, how do you read a book and put it down in 30 minutes? You don’t know what the next page holds?
Stephanie: I don’t know either. Don’t know. How do they do that?
Dan: So as you think about, particularly, Stephanie, your own work, your own body, your own experience, what do you hope for your believing community and for those listening today?
Stephanie: Well, first, differentiating ourselves from the culture, really in a big way. This is what neurodivergent kids will help us do if we put them first or in the center as they should be, as some of the more needy of us. Children are all needy, and they are particularly needy of us really paying attention to what goes on. So to differentiate from the culture whose response is applied behavior analysis, ABA therapy, and the culture wants to force those children to be like everyone else. And that is such a massive invalidation of who they are, and it’s so consistent. I mean, some kids get ABA for eight hours a day, for years. And I have had the privilege of working with some people like that, and their ability to even know what they want, because everything has been imposed on them. It’s heartbreaking what has been done to them. So differentiating from that as a community of believers is super important. We must not force people to be who they are not. And that goes all the way from, mommy, I’m afraid to go into this room because it’s overwhelming to me, all the way to, I just can’t understand Jesus the way you’re presenting him. He doesn’t make sense to me. And everything in between, we mustn’t force people to be who they are not.
Dan: Again, thank you. I love that. Again, because I’ve underscored with that going into great detail, but all three of my children and their spouses are dealing with neurodivergent children. And in some sense, as I look at my children, their own neurodivergence, and to begin to say, what I have seen for all of my children and their spouses is the cost is so high because the expectations of the larger culture, the school system, the church and everything around it is so binding that to, in one sense, break out of that mold feels like you’re literally creating a demand for the world to see difference. And we hate difference, at least in the context of most people’s lives, especially when that difference requires you to parent differently or to have to question, wait a minute, what I would normally do doesn’t seem to be working. Am I going to blame myself? Am I going to blame my child? Versus saying it requires a new way of engaging. But what I’ve seen is so beautiful and that is who my own children are becoming as they deal with the complexities, the patience, the ownership of their lack of patience, the humility to face their failures as parents. In some sense of the word, it has called our whole family into a level of humility and humanity that in some sense, one level, I wish we were quote unquote, all normal. On the other hand, I am really grateful. I’ll put it in this very particular way. I’m really grateful for the artwork that I have available as a result of my children and grandchildren seeing the world differently. Before we end, just again, Rachael, I’m curious about what you’re now thinking regarding this friend that you’ve been worried about.
Rachael: Well, I will say I’ve been really grateful to have good friends who have let me in on some of their journey. It doesn’t feel as daunting. And I do just have a growing curiosity around ways that we get labeled like, oh, this person’s an introvert,” or they’re just anxious because that’s the anxiety piece is one that’s just … And I can make sense of a lot of my anxiety if I have a trauma frame, but there’s some of the anxiety and overstimulation that I’m dealing with that feels like it might be coming from a different category. And instead of being like, we need to work harder, we just need to work harder. I think, again, I’m getting older and I’m tired and I don’t have the same capacity to just power through and it has impact on the people I love. And so yeah, I actually feel a lot of tenderness toward myself. Again, more curiosity. And yeah, I’m just aware of what a… This is such a fraught place because of everything we put words to. For you naming this as… it is its own kind of attachment trauma, attachment wound, it’s its own kind of societal wound, and there is a spectrum. So I know there are folks listening going, you guys are touching on some of what I deal with or what I don’t as a parent, but there’s a severity or there’s such a barrier. So I’m aware of how much heartache there is because of really such our individualistic society and the lack of resourcing and the lack of that kind of capacity, even let’s say as a believing community to say, Okay, we’re going to let things get a little messier or more accessible. And accessibility requires nuance and it requires creativity and it requires sometimes really messing with our neat uniform infrastructure. And so I do feel a lot of compassion and I think just some of the feelings of injustice for what people have had to endure. And so I’m grateful, Stephanie, for your … I feel like you have a very playful, very generous presence and very wise presence. And so I think your presence and posture has invited me to a deeper curiosity and humanity and tenderness. And I feel really grateful for that.
Stephanie: Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. And I would just say to people out there who are parenting, I know there’s a great deal of heartache in this and also there’s such opportunity. You have worked very hard. There are ways that your hard work is forming yourself as well as your child. Keep going. And if you have friends or you or yourself are neurodivergent, you do need your community to tell you, you’re all right. Just be curious about yourself. Be more curious.
Dan: And let the gifting that your way of seeing the world be, in some sense of the word, a prophetic gift that allows for other ways to be, as well as other ways to see. And as we begin to see that the gospel is a kaleidoscope and in those multiple colors, but also in a slight shift, the multiple perspectives those forms and colors bring really is meant to hold us, not merely to struggle or to difference, but something of the multifaceted glory of God. And easy to say that, I know the struggles and I know the struggles that a parent, a spouse, and others will feel in this, but you’ve underscored get more data, open your heart. Don’t just shut down with condemnation of yourself or the other, but allow this growing gift of curiosity to be what propels you into the more. So Stephanie, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stephanie: Oh, you’re welcome. I was very pleased to do this. Thank you.