Your child seems okay on the surface. They joke, they brush things off, they tell you ‘It’s fine.’ But then, out of nowhere, the mask slips off entirely. The tears come, the words spill out, and suddenly, you realize just how much they’ve been holding inside. And when they finally share it with you, they downplay it—laughing it off, trying to make you feel less worried. But underneath? You know they are deeply not okay.
For neurodiverse students, self-disappointment can feel crushing. They hold themselves to high, sometimes impossible, standards. And when they fall short, the shame runs deep. Instead of reaching out, they bottle it up—because they don’t want to be a burden, because they don’t want to worry you, because they don’t even know how to put it into words.
And when the emotions finally do come out, it’s often overwhelming—for them and for you. They cry, they unload, and then they try to minimize it. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’ But the truth is, it was that bad in their mind. And as a parent, you might not know how to help them carry what they’ve been holding in.
The more they suppress, the more isolated they feel. They don’t want to worry you, but they don’t want to carry it alone, either. So they get stuck in a painful in-between—battling their emotions in silence, only letting them out when it becomes too much. And when they do open up, they immediately try to take it back, covering it with laughter or a quick, ‘I’m being dramatic.’
But these aren’t small moments. These are moments where they’re questioning their worth, their future, and their ability to handle life. And as a parent, you can feel the weight of it, but you might not know how to keep the door open without making them feel like a problem to be fixed.
This week in therapy, a student shared: “I felt so stupid. I completely messed up, and the disappointment was unbearable. I didn’t want to tell my parents—I didn’t want them to see me like that. But I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and when I finally broke down, I could barely get the words out. I was crying so hard. And now I joke about it. It’s easier to make others laugh than to think about how dark it actually was for me at the time.”
As we talked, it became clear that their laughter wasn’t about finding humor—it was about making their pain feel saferto express. They weren’t looking for someone to fix it. They were looking for someone to see it without judgment.
Through therapy, we worked on creating safe spaces for emotions—so they wouldn’t have to reach a breaking point before feeling like they could talk. We focused on:
Helping them identify emotions before they became overwhelming. Practicing low-pressure conversations, where they could share without feeling like they had to make sense of it all. Teaching parents how to hold space for emotions—shifting from ‘How can I fix this?’ to ‘I’m here, tell me as much or as little as you need.’
Over time, they started opening up earlier—before the breakdowns, before the dark thoughts built up too much. And they realized that sharing didn’t mean they were a burden. It meant they didn’t have to carry it alone.
If your child has ever laughed off something that actually hurt them, or if you’ve seen them break down under the weight of their own expectations, they don’t need to figure this out alone. At Warrior Brain, our integrated therapy and tutoring approach helps neurodiverse students process emotions before they become unbearable, while also helping parents support them without pressure.
