If you’d walked into my house this week, you might have thought a homicide had taken place.
There was blood (a lot) on three floors of my house. 😳
Everyone is okay. I promise.
But the incident involved one of my cats, named Astra, who has apparently decided she is less of a cat cat and more of a person cat.
Something happened this week that forced me to pay attention to a dynamic I’d been missing.
And once I saw it, I realized how familiar it was and how much it relates to my life and work with neurodiversity.
Because
sometimes what looks like bad behavior is actually communication.
Sometimes the person—or animal—who is lashing out, withdrawing, becoming irritable, or struggling to tolerate everyone around them doesn’t need another consequence.
They may need us to ask a different question:
What is making this so hard for you right now?
In this week’s behind-the-scenes video, I’m sharing what happened, what I realized I’d been overlooking, and why it made me think differently about the way we respond when the people we love become dysregulated.
And yes...I’ll also explain why my house looked like a crime scene. 😂
What happened turned into a surprisingly good lesson about space, regulation, and what can happen when we focus only on behavior without understanding what’s underneath it.
It also got me thinking about my own life—and a moment this week when I realized that I needed space too.
How do you know when you’ve reached the point where you need space? And are you good at asking for it before you reach your limit?
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