For the Children: Finding My Voice Beyond Behaviorism

*A reflection on what it means to listen beneath behavior and find home in connection.*

My work with neurodivergent children began inside a framework that called autism a disorder.
Over time, I came to see it differently — as a unique neurotype with its own intelligence, sensitivity, and beauty.
I hold deep respect for that truth now — because, quite frankly, I’m one of those neurodivergent souls myself.

My first career was devoted to children labeled with special needs and those on the autism spectrum.
I loved this work — the everyday miracles, the quiet breakthroughs when communication cracked open like sunlight through clouds.

Over twelve years, I worked in private and public schools, clinics, and homes. My specialty was verbal behavior — the idea that language has purpose, that every gesture or sound carries a message. I helped nonverbal souls find ways to reach the world around them.
It was nourishing work, and I was good at it.

In time, I became certified as an Assistant Behavior Analyst. In the world of behaviorism, we say every behavior has a function: to gain attention, escape something, access a tangible item, or fulfill a sensory need — what’s called automatic reinforcement.
I loved the practicality of it. It made sense. It was tidy and measurable. But it also lived on the surface. Behaviorism focused on what could be seen and counted, while ignoring what could only be felt.

Where was the inner world — the energy behind the action, the emotion in the eyes, the soul in the silence?

There were many positives to working in the field of ABA, the most important being the reminder to honor the individual.

There was a time I worked at a well-known private clinic for autism. At first, I felt honored — proud, even — to be part of something that looked important. I adored those children. They were magical, mysterious, radiant in their own ways.
But over time, I started to see through the cracks. The shiny rhetoric of compassion didn’t match the reality behind closed doors. The CEO at that time preached connection but chased productivity. Growth meant numbers, not needs.

I tried to voice my concerns. I tried to speak gently, professionally. But I kept being brushed off, made to feel not important. My fury rose. I was done being ignored.
One night, I wrote a mass email to everyone in the company — all my colleagues — laying out what I saw and what I felt. I ended it with:
For the Children.

The CEO replied with these words: “This is not professional.”

Maybe it wasn’t.
But it was true.

I burned bridges that day. And though I can laugh about it now, I don’t regret it.
Still, those words — not professional — sank into me like poison. Shame curled up inside my chest.

It’s ironic, really. I built a career helping children find their voice — and yet I, the guide, didn’t know how to use mine. Outwardly, I was outspoken. Inwardly, I couldn’t communicate the ache in my own nervous system.

Autism is called a neurodevelopmental condition.
Neuro — the brain and the nervous system, the way neurons wire and fire and translate the world.
Developmental — meaning it begins early, shaping how a person perceives, learns, moves, and relates.

It touches both wiring and unfolding — the structure and the story.

When that chapter ended, I fell apart. I was lost, empty, spiraling — another existential crisis, maybe.
I had lost my center — or maybe I had never been connected to it at all.

I quit my mood medications. I turned to other ways of self-regulating — through substances and disordered eating — doing whatever I could to quiet the ache inside.
Eventually, I landed on a diagnosis of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).

Looking back, I see how many of my C-PTSD patterns mirrored my own neurodivergence — the sensitivity, the sensory overwhelm, the deep need for structure and solitude, the way my nervous system picked up every signal in the room.
For years, I thought these traits made me too much or too fragile, when really they were signs of a nervous system doing its best to protect me in an unkind world.

C-PTSD isn’t one event. It’s what happens when you live inside trauma for too long — when neglect, abuse, or powerlessness shape your reality.
It’s relational. It rewires how you love, trust, and see yourself.

For years, I carried a quiet, pulsing shame. I tried to control it with addiction — food, substances, exercise, shopping — anything to outrun the ache.
Anything that kept me distracted from feeling — scrolling through social media, numbing out to Netflix, or filling the silence with noise.

In ABA, we’re taught that the function of a behavior can’t simply disappear — it needs to be met in another way.
That principle mirrored my life.
I replaced one addiction with another — always searching for control, for calm, for connection.

As physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté teaches, addiction is not a disease to be cured but a response to pain — a longing for connection.
He writes, “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection.”
And, “Don’t ask why the addiction. Ask why the pain.”

At the core of every addiction is emptiness — a body crying out for safety.

I’ve always been a seeker — a warrior spirit chasing truth outside convention.
But everything “out there” eventually turned me back inward.

Healing, I learned, is about tending the inner child.
It’s not about fixing what’s broken, but feeling what was never felt.
It’s about remembering who we are beneath all the coping.
Living from inner alignment instead of external approval.
Seeing the divine in ourselves and others.
Acting from love, not fear.

Over time, I came to see that my sensitivity — the same sensitivity that once made the world feel unbearable — was never the problem.
It was the portal — the very doorway that led me home to myself, and to the kind of listening that heals.
My nervous system’s intensity, my empathy, my need for quiet — these are not defects; they’re the instruments I now use to listen deeply.
They help me sense what lives beneath words and touch what others cannot say.
They’re how I hear the body’s language — in others, and in myself.

This work — my healing, my practice, my art — is for the children.
For the ones who couldn’t speak.
For the ones who felt too much.
For the ones who carried pain that wasn’t theirs to hold.

For the children seven generations back, and seven generations forward.
May they find safety in their sensitivity,
and may their voices rise from silence into song. 💚