I help parents of PDA, autistic, ADHD and high-needs kids get out of survival mode and feel calmer, more capable and like themselves again.

From triggered, depleted and trapped to calmer, hopeful and even free

No one could have prepared me for the start of parenting. My son was a baby who barely ate or slept, and from the very beginning he needed so much help and so many accommodations, with eating, with sleeping, with almost everything.

He was demand avoidant from a young age too, and there were meltdowns and big challenges all through his early years. When we later read about PDA, we realized how much it had been there all along. Back then he could hold more of it in, and his reactions to losing his sense of autonomy weren't nearly as extreme.

Then around the age of nine, after some health traumas in our home and a really hard time at school, he reached burnout, his PDA became far more externalized, and slowly OCD started to enter the picture too. Not long after, he stopped going to school altogether.

What followed were years of hours-long meltdowns every day, hitting, broken things and calls for help.

I knew so much. I understood his disability. And I still couldn't stay calmer in the hard moments for him. I would hold it together, thinking I was regulated, until I finally exploded in anger and rage, and then fell into shame and despair.

I would lie awake at night certain he would end up institutionalized one day, or in jail, and those fears didn't feel like fears to me. They felt like facts.

What finally helped us

We tried so many things for my son, including medication, and none of it really helped. I saw 15 to 20 therapists for myself, and therapist after therapist validated my pain, but I could see in their eyes that they didn't believe healing was possible in a home like ours. And still a quiet voice inside me whispered, "This cannot be the final answer."

The biggest change we saw came when my husband and I learned to regulate ourselves.

When I first started, I had an agenda, whether I wanted to admit it or not. I wanted to regulate so that he would change, so the meltdowns would stop, so I could finally feel like a good enough parent. And my son could feel that agenda instantly. I wasn't really regulating. I was clamping down on my activation, composed on the outside and still triggered on the inside.

What I understood much later was that my survival reactions lived in my body, and in the old meanings I had learned about how to be safe, lovable, belonging and successful. And underneath all of it, I found something that changed how I saw myself: I am not my survival programming. I am the awareness of it. And I can be in relationship with my programmed body and brain and help it to change.

Showing him I could handle his storm

Little by little, I learned to be with my own activation instead of holding it in or letting it take over. I learned to give my body cues of safety right there in the hard moments, until I could feel safe enough with his storm. And as I could, I was able to mirror to my son: I can handle this. I can be okay with your storm. I've got this.

That didn't mean I was staying totally calm. I could still feel all the activation in me, and I could bring in a felt sense of safety and be with it, whatever he was doing. I call it the U-turn: working with what was going on inside of me, instead of hyperfocusing on changing what was outside of me.

He watched me like a hawk, side-eyeing me, watching to see if I was okay or not. And when he could feel that I wasn't afraid of him or angry with him, and that I was okay with his storm, his nervous system could feel that too, and he would start to come down. My husband noticed. Our caregiver noticed.

I want to be honest with you, though, because it didn't happen overnight. When I first changed, he would escalate more, and it would yank me right back into fear and trying to force him to change. It took us about a year of being consistent before we really saw the difference in him.

Choosing courage, and finding meaning

Along the way, I began to see a bigger meaning in the challenges of this life. This path has been part of my own becoming, and finding meaning and purpose in the pain is what carried me through the hardest years. It became a buffer in the storm, and it helped me keep going, because I knew I was having this experience so I could learn and grow from it, and find my power within it.

Parenting a high-needs child is not an easy path. And I believe you can find that meaning, and your own power, inside it too, even when it's hard.

"I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life."

Brené Brown

That's the work I teach now. I help parents move out of survival mode, so they can stay steadier in the hardest moments, recover faster and feel like themselves again, within the life they're actually living.