About this episode

This episode explores how parents of autistic children can reconnect with their sense of joy and well-being despite chronic stress.

Have you lost your sense of aliveness? Your ease? Your feeling of well-being — that quiet sense of being at home inside yourself? If you're parenting a PDA, autistic, or high-needs child and somewhere along the way you stopped feeling like yourself, this episode is for you. I'm sharing the moment I watched my son laugh — during one of his first good days in years — and felt absolutely nothing. Not relief. Not joy. Not ease. Just flatness. And what that moment taught me about what chronic stress actually does to a parent's nervous system. Because here's what I've come to understand: we don't lose our joy, our aliveness, or our well-being. We lose access to them. And that is a completely different problem — with a completely different solution. In this episode: — Why joy, ease, aliveness, and well-being disappear under chronic stress (and why it's not a character flaw) — The difference between losing yourself and losing access to yourself — What I call the Inner Resource — the unshakable ground of well-being that was never actually gone — How I found my way back through sensation in my own body — the tingling, the pulsing, the quiet aliveness that was there all along — Why you…

More episodes of The Regulated Parent

• The #1 Regulation Tool That Cut My Autistic, PDA Child's Meltdowns by 95% · July 18, 2026 · 28 min
• Ep. 51 Am I Damaging My Child? The 3 Shame Spirals That Keep Parents of PDA, Autistic, ADHD Kids Stuck · July 4, 2026 · 36 min
• Ep. 49 The To-Do List Trap: Why Productivity Keeps Parents of High-Needs Kids Dysregulated · June 13, 2026 · 51 min

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