Show Notes
Episode details
* Season (Thread): 8
* Episode number: 09
* Release date: 2026-07-14
* Hosts:
* Natasha Stavros, PhD — author of The Unmasking Diary and Burning Inside Out (coming to a bookstore near you in December 2026)
* Sarah Liebman — licensed marriage and family therapist, ADHD-diagnosed, special interests all things neurodiverse
* Tara Neri, Unmasked Parenting – licensed clinical mental health counselor, certified in ADHD and autism spectrum disorder practice, and the creator of Unmasked Parenting. She is an autistic/ADHD parent with sensory processing differences and has spent over two decades supporting children and families who need more understanding, flexibility, and practical support. Her work blends clinical experience, lived experience, nervous system support, relational repair, and neurodivergent-affirming parenting.
* Audio Engineer and Composer: Noah Smith
* Director: Linda Highfield
* Duration: 30:56
* Audience and tone: Educational, conversational, supportive; stigma-free exploration of neurodivergence, diagnosis, and self-understanding using personal experience as a case study
* Summary: When a late autism diagnosis reveals that your child is likely neurodivergent too, the emotional reckoning is layered: relief, grief, anger, and a fierce protectiveness — all at once. In this episode, Natasha Stavros and Sarah Liebman welcome their first ever guest, Tara Neri (LCMHC, creator of UnmaskedParenting), to explore three frameworks for neurodivergent-affirming parenting after a late diagnosis: 1) distinguishing reflection from projection when you see yourself in your child; 2) interrupting the intergenerational cycle by asking "am I responding or reacting — and to my child, or to my younger self?"; and 3) Tara's signature approach, regulation-first parenting, which centers the parent's own nervous system as the foundation for the child's. The episode closes with a diary excerpt from After the Masquerade in which Natasha navigates alexithymia, sensory exhaustion, and two real-time parenting moments that show what neurodivergent-affirming parenting actually looks like in practice — imperfect, attuned, and quietly revolutionary.
Key takeaways about parenting with reflection and not projection:
* Reflection vs. projection: When you recognize your neurodivergent traits in your child, the path forward begins with the painful but liberating realization that if your child deserves deep love and understanding for who they are, so do you.
* Interrupt the cycle: Breaking intergenerational patterns means pausing to ask “am I responding or reacting, and is it to my child in front of me, or to my younger self?”; when you get it wrong, it’s important to repair rather than pretend it didn’t happen.
* Regulation-first parenting: You cannot pour from an empty cup, regulating yourself first is not permissive parenting, it is the most powerful thing you can model, because children learn self-advocacy and self-compassion by watching you practice it on yourself.
Resources and references
Read more on this topic from our guest Tara Neri:
* Recognition Without Projection - For parents who see themselves in their child and are trying to separate compassion from fear.
* The Nature of Nurture - For parents thinking about what children need from us beyond behavior correction, performance, or compliance.
* You’re Running on Outdated Survival Rules - For parents noticing that old coping patterns may still be shaping how they respond, protect, avoid, or control.
Books
* Brain-Body Parenting by Mona Delahooke - Best for understanding behavior as nervous-system information, not just a choice or discipline problem. This book helps move parenting away from compliance-based responses and toward bottom-up support.
* Low-Demand Parenting by Amanda Diekman - Best for reducing unnecessary demands, rebuilding connection, and supporting neurodivergent kids without constant pressure. Especially useful for families navigating burnout, demand sensitivity, and low capacity.
* Unmasking Autism by Devon Price - Best for adult self-understanding, masking, identity, burnout, and authenticity. This connects strongly to the idea that we cannot help our children unmask while continuing to abandon ourselves.
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The Unmasking Autism Diary: Memoir Excerpt on Recognition Without Projection
Honestly, since I started down this path, I had no idea what cascade of events would take place. I hadn’t really thought about how I would process a diagnosis or what it would mean. All I knew is that whatever it meant, couldn’t be as bad as not knowing. It couldn’t be as bad as the guilt and shame I felt for struggling to function like everyone else - go to work, do my job, eat, sleep, poop, reproduce, buy things, die and decompose.
Getting my diagnosis helped me begin to understand myself better, but as a parent - it feels like there is no room to process. My job is to show up and be present so that my turmoil doesn’t pass onto my child.
Well, first let’s start by acknowledging how ridiculous a notion that is. Nice in theory, but the practice - daunting. When my child, who is very likely autistic like me, is overwhelmed, so am I. When they scream and cry and are overloaded, I am too. Somehow I’m supposed to model self-regulation, when my primary executive function challenge is emotional regulation.
And, it’s not just emotional regulation that I struggle with. Because my emotional dysregulation and inability to pick up or provide socially appropriate non-verbal communications or expectations of social reciprocity has led to some big-T traumas in my life, I have learned to survive by dissociating. How am I supposed to first teach my likely autistic child emotional regulation, when I don’t have it myself, and second how to engage with their emotions?
Of note, many people with autism also struggle with alexithymia, and I am one of those people. Alexithymia comes from the Greek root a for lack of, lexis meaning words and thymos meaning emotions. Alexithymia is the difficulty of connecting words to feelings. For people with autism the characteristics of alexithymia are most commonly associated with cognitive empathy rather than affective empathy. This means that people with autism very often connect deeply in an empathic way, but lack the cognitive skills to identify, especially in real time, theirs and others’ feelings, to distinguish between feelings and bodily sensations of emotional arousal, to describe their feelings, to identify or communicate facial expressions, or even to identify or remember faces.
My therapist asked me how I’m processing everything, outside of the work s**t show that has ensued from a disclosure of my diagnosis. I told her that it’s been really hard. I’m so overwhelmed with life and the idea of having to go back to work, or find a new job just so that I can pay the bills and keep health care for my family.
I feel completely and utterly socially exhausted. All I want to do - no, all I can do - is write, read, and putz around in the garden or go to yoga. I want to remove all sensory stimuli and retreat into my mind away from the social cognitive load that is breaking me.
I mentioned that I’ve been focused on parallel play like working on art next to my daughter, gardening, biking, watching TV with her, or reading books together. None of these really require me to connect on a deeper level, the activity is doing the connection.
I did acknowledge that I’m not totally dissociated from my role as a parent. I’ve been leaning into what it looks like to embrace neurodivergent affirming parenting.
Just this last weekend, my daughter had a friend over and they were climbing on the couch. They decided to crawl under the mid-century modern couch, which sits about six inches off the ground. My daughter’s friend’s head got stuck and she got scared. My daughter started making noise and screaming too. After we separated them and I soothed her friend from her fear and panic, I talked to my daughter. She didn’t want to sit next to me. She didn’t want to make eye contact. She was in a shame spiral.
I told her that she didn’t need to sit next to me or look at me, but that she did need to listen. I told her it was ok and that nothing was her fault. That accidents happen and that when that happens we need to check in on our friend and make sure that they are ok.
She decided to go check on her friend. I listened from outside the door. They began to talk about what happened. Her friend said that she was scared when my daughter made her go under the couch. My daughter swooped to her own defense, “My mommy said I didn’t do anything wrong.”
I came in and knelt down with them, “That’s right, no one did anything wrong. What I think they are saying is that they got scared and that they didn’t feel very supported in that moment when they were scared.” The two girls looked at each other with resolve. They decided to keep playing.
Later that evening, my daughter told me that when other kids cry she feels it in her body. I told her that that’s what it feels like to be overwhelmed.
Over the next twenty-four hours, I noticed that she would act out - yelling, whining, or batting at the air in response to me and her father. I told her that I noticed she was doing this when it looked like she felt rushed and didn’t have the time to communicate. I suggested that she use the word “pause”, or “I need a minute.” She suggested the word, “wait”. I was proud of her.
In both incidents, I’m proud of myself for recognizing my own autistic tendencies and offering her an alternate path to shame.
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