12/08/2026
This one hit a little close to home. 💜
There’s something quite humbling about spending your working day supporting regulation, understanding behaviour, talking about co-regulation and helping families find strategies that work…
…and then going home to your own neurodivergent family and discovering that knowing all the things does not magically give you an unlimited nervous system. 😅
At Our NeuroTribe, we talk a lot about supporting the whole family — and that includes the parents and carers who are trying to co-regulate while also managing their own sensory load, executive functioning, emotions, work, relationships and everyday life.
Being a professional doesn’t make us immune to overwhelm.
Being a parent doesn’t mean we’ll always respond perfectly.
Being neurodivergent ourselves certainly doesn’t mean we have regulation completely figured out.
Sometimes we snap. Sometimes we need everyone to STOP TALKING. Sometimes all our beautifully developed strategies disappear when our own capacity is gone. 😂
What matters is noticing, repairing, reconnecting and trying again.
Our kids don’t need us to demonstrate perfect regulation. They need relationships where rupture can be repaired. 💜
And perhaps we need to offer ourselves the same compassion we so readily offer the families we support.
This post from Your Human Therapists is such an important reminder. 💜
You spend all day helping clients regulate their nervous systems.....then snap at your kid over spilled juice. (or the sippy cup that gets chucked at the floor)
You can explain co-regulation beautifully in a session...and still yell "I NEED EVERYONE TO STOP TALKING TO ME RIGHT NOW." (including the tonies box)
You know the theory. You teach the tools. You believe in the work.
And you're still human.
Here's the truth no one tells you in grad school: Knowing what regulation looks like doesn't make you immune to dysregulation. It just means you notice it faster (and maybe judge yourself harder for it).
So if you've ever sat in your car after a rough parenting moment, running your own mental "case notes" on yourself, you're not failing. You're not a hypocrite. You're not bad at your job.
You're a person doing two of the most emotionally demanding (and equally amazing-too) jobs at the same time, often back to back, with nothing in between but a walk downstairs or a five-minute drive.
The repair matters more than the rupture ever will. Your kids don't need a perfectly regulated parent. They need to see you notice, own it, and come back.
You're allowed to be both: a good therapist and a parent who isn't perfectly executing coping skills every 5 minutes.
If you've been feeling this way as a parent & a therapist, we would bet on the fact that you're doing so much better than you think. 🩷
